Home > PSYOPS Blowback & the Imperial Arrogance of the DeceptoCons

PSYOPS Blowback & the Imperial Arrogance of the DeceptoCons

by Open-Publishing - Tuesday 31 January 2006
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Wars and conflicts International Attack-Terrorism Secret Services USA

Spy This, America & Pass it On!
Pentagon Document Shows ’PSYOP’ Messages Boomerang to U.S.

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
January 27, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) A Pentagon "road map" to more effective use of information as a weapon says psychological warfare messages targeted at foreign audiences are increasingly finding their way into the United States.

The 78-page document, released Thursday by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group, spells out the Pentagon’s reasoning for putting greater emphasis on "information operations" as a military tool. It says this should be a core military capability and placed largely in the hands of war-fighting commanders.

"Information, always important in warfare, is now critical to military success and will only become more so in the foreseeable future," it says.

The National Security Archive obtained the document from the Pentagon with a Freedom of Information Act request.

It was classified secret and dated Oct. 30, 2003. It begins with a brief approval note signed by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who called it an attempt to "keep pace with emerging threats and to exploit new opportunities."

The Pentagon has faced a number of "information operations" controversies recently, including questions about a propaganda program that paid Iraqi media to run favorable stories. U.S. military officials in Iraq have defended that as part of their campaign to get the truth out about the war and the rebuilding effort.

The Rumsfeld document, portions of which were blacked out by Pentagon censors before release to the National Security Archive, says the increasing ability of people in much of the world to access information across boundaries makes it more difficult for the U.S. military to target specific foreign audiences.

It says psychological operations — activities by military teams that use a range of communications systems to disseminate messages intended to influence a target audience abroad — are restricted by Pentagon policy from targeting American audiences as well as U.S. military personnel and news organizations.

"However, information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and PSYOP [psychological operations] increasingly is consumed by our domestic audience, and vice-versa," it says.

"PSYOP messages disseminated to any audience except individual decision-makers — and perhaps even then — will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public."

It cited no specific examples.

In releasing the Rumsfeld document, the National Security Archive asserted that the language indicates that "as long as the American public is not ’targeted’" by psychological warfare messages, "any leakage of PSYOP to the American public does not matter."

Larry Di Rita, a senior adviser to Rumsfeld and until recently his chief spokesman, strongly rejected that assertion.

"We feel very confident that we are operating in a manner that is appropriate for the world we’re in and that is proper for the anxieties that people have," he said, while acknowledging that the Pentagon has yet to develop detailed doctrine, or written guidelines, to spell out all the limits and restrictions on information operations.

"I reject the premise" of the National Security Archive’s interpretation of the Rumsfeld document, Di Rita said.

He said that since the document was signed in October 2003, the Pentagon has learned the importance of creating "firewalls" between the military’s psychological warfare operations and its public affairs efforts, which are intended to be truthful at all times. That and other issues were examined as part of a broad, yearlong review of Pentagon priorities and strategies, to be publicly released Feb. 6.

Spy This, America & Pass it On!

NSA listening post in Yakima is secret no more
Satellite dish helps White House eavesdrop

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Monday, January 30, 2006

YAKIMA — Just a few miles north of town, the National Security Agency is eavesdropping on the world with satellite dishes that pick up satellite and microwave signals from cell phones, e-mails and home phones.

The listening post has a view of Interstate 82 from its location on the Army’s gigantic Yakima Training Center, but it may be one of the best-kept secrets in the Pacific Northwest.

That could change during the debate about the Bush administration’s surveillance of domestic communications with parties overseas.

"In the entire country, it happens to be in your back yard," said James Bamford, a former network news investigative producer who documented the Yakima installation in his 1982 book about the NSA, "The Puzzle Palace."

"It doesn’t make noise, doesn’t send smoke," he said. "It’s almost invisible. The whole agency is virtually invisible."

Bamford and others keyed into electronic eavesdropping say the Yakima Research Station has played a major role for decades in Echelon, the global surveillance network operated by the NSA and its counterparts in the British Commonwealth — Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

And it has a sister installation in Sugar Grove, W.Va.

Created by a secret executive order signed by President Truman in 1952, the agency spent its early days doing wiretaps of telephones and telegraph lines. By the late 1960s, it had a growing array of listening posts capable of intercepting satellite signals.

Because the Earth is curved, intercepting satellite communications takes teamwork. The result is Echelon and its network of listening posts. The biggest is thought to be at Menwith Hill north of London.

Passers-by can see the satellite dishes from the freeway north of Selah, but that’s as close as they’re likely to get.

Access is severely restricted, enforced by its location inside a 260,000-acre Army base used primarily for artillery training and target practice.

The base’s official Web site does not mention the installation.

"We really don’t have any comment about the research station," center spokesman Jim Reddick told the Yakima Herald-Republic newspaper last week.

Spy This, America & Pass it On!

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps:
Imperial Arrogance of the DeceptoCons


NY Times Sunday Editorial
January 29, 2006

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation’s guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen - because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing - and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

Only bad guys are spied on. Bush officials have said the surveillance is tightly focused only on contacts between people in this country and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed it saved thousands of lives by preventing attacks. But reporting in this paper has shown that the National Security Agency swept up vast quantities of e-mail messages and telephone calls and used computer searches to generate thousands of leads. F.B.I. officials said virtually all of these led to dead ends or to innocent Americans. The biggest fish the administration has claimed so far has been a crackpot who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch - a case that F.B.I. officials said was not connected to the spying operation anyway.

The spying is legal. The secret program violates the law as currently written. It’s that simple. In fact, FISA was enacted in 1978 to avoid just this sort of abuse. It said that the government could not spy on Americans by reading their mail (or now their e-mail) or listening to their telephone conversations without obtaining a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The court has approved tens of thousands of warrants over the years and rejected a handful.

As amended after 9/11, the law says the government needs probable cause, the constitutional gold standard, to believe the subject of the surveillance works for a foreign power or a terrorist group, or is a lone-wolf terrorist. The attorney general can authorize electronic snooping on his own for 72 hours and seek a warrant later. But that was not good enough for Mr. Bush, who lowered the standard for spying on Americans from "probable cause" to "reasonable belief" and then cast aside the bedrock democratic principle of judicial review.

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans’ rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn’t like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

Imperial Arrogance of the NeoCons!

The rules needed to be changed. In 2002, a Republican senator - Mike DeWine of Ohio - introduced a bill that would have done just that, by lowering the standard for issuing a warrant from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion" for a "non-United States person." But the Justice Department opposed it, saying the change raised "both significant legal and practical issues" and may have been unconstitutional. Now, the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are telling Americans that reasonable suspicion is a perfectly fine standard for spying on Americans as well as non-Americans - and they are the sole judges of what is reasonable.

So why oppose the DeWine bill? Perhaps because Mr. Bush had already secretly lowered the standard of proof - and dispensed with judges and warrants - for Americans and non-Americans alike, and did not want anyone to know.

War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.

The administration also says that the vote was the start of a war against terrorism and that the spying operation is what Mr. Cheney calls a "wartime measure." That just doesn’t hold up. The Constitution does suggest expanded presidential powers in a time of war. But the men who wrote it had in mind wars with a beginning and an end. The war Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney keep trying to sell to Americans goes on forever and excuses everything.

Other presidents did it. Mr. Gonzales, who had the incredible bad taste to begin his defense of the spying operation by talking of those who plunged to their deaths from the flaming twin towers, claimed historic precedent for a president to authorize warrantless surveillance. He mentioned George Washington, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These precedents have no bearing on the current situation, and Mr. Gonzales’s timeline conveniently ended with F.D.R., rather than including Richard Nixon, whose surveillance of antiwar groups and other political opponents inspired FISA in the first place. Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush is waging an unpopular war, and his administration has abused its powers against antiwar groups and even those that are just anti-Republican.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to start hearings on the domestic spying. Congress has failed, tragically, on several occasions in the last five years to rein in Mr. Bush and restore the checks and balances that are the genius of American constitutional democracy. It is critical that it not betray the public once again on this score.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/opinion/29sun1.htm

Lies & Spies from Uncle George!

The Profit of Doom

My fellow Americans now led astray
toward the burning sands of Armageddon
and the gnashing teeth of Babylonia
by a jug-eared idiot son of a Bush
a Biblical twist of lost souls winning
a war on the world while watching TV

Always the same men with glaring eyes
larger than life and twice as mean
roasting the world with a roar of applause
and the waving of flags proudly held high
saluting of citizens and marching of men
shooting of cannons and broadcast of threats

America the unilateral land of the free
market of values melting pot of Mammon
boasting of greatness and oily excess
tossing all protest behind with our trash
revving the engines of our industry
in the face of a brutalized weeping world

Home of the brave few who dare to resist
an insidious slick conditioning of control
a war on the mind in the vacuum of soul
losing the world in the pledge of obedience
to spies and criminals and General Electric
a nation of fattened domesticated herd-apes

Armed with an army an air force a navy against
everyone else and even ourselves now say CIA
this time the world war includes satellites and lasers
atomic submarines the size of cities and destroyers
secret energy beams stealth bombs and viruses
enough to end the world as our children would never

All these ruthless powers we have given to an idiot
an elite cabal of fascist oilmen drug dealers and spies
for some illusion of security in the roots of slavery
America the brutal the fallen the corrupted the sold
the stolen the bloody the toxic the greedy the deadly
doom promises grand profits according to TV

Trillions of American dollars going into a war machine
who keeps track anymore and who even cares
where all this human energy and processed planet
ending in the bank accounts of whom and why again
we are blindly following behind these men for centuries
feeding their hunger for blood madness chaos and control

America has lost the war on the world before it has begun
conquered by the worms that escaped Nuremberg
sold our souls to dead presidents of the white race
followed a dangerous path carved out by the CIA
armoring ourselves with high-tech holocausts
feeding our overstocked supermarkets until spoiled

Once the war has begun does America believe it will win
with 5 billion opponents and not enough barbed wire
will our children be thanking us for saving their future
while the vast masses of mankind are cursing us
for stealing their possibilities and being so stupid
will we still be applauding the son of a Bush then

When the bombs drop and drop they will on us
if we allow these military men to loose their drones
will we all be living in bunkers or in burning heaps
our flags hidden in smoke our cities filled with bones
when our world turns grey and America is a memory
what will the world think of our war and our wasteland

If America loses the world war who will win then
China Islam Cuba Canada the Indians and Hawaiians
the coyotes the cockroaches the weeds the microbes
will our children win their world back from madmen
will women and wisdom be honored and heard
or will we keep tuned to TV until the sorry end

America, America man sheds his waste on thee
we call it progress and patriotism and pride
while the poisons seep into our skin and eyes
so we can not see the bloody stripes crooked stars
being soaked with the gore of our world at war
around a white circle and a spinning broken cross

B.Z.B. Evans
Irregular Unit 008

http://buzzworm.blogspot.com

Blowback Blazes while Chickenhawks Roost in the Whitehouse

B.z.B. Evans
Burning Bush 2006
http://burnbush.blogspot.com

America is undergoing what many others in the world have experienced over the last half-century— the "destabilization" of their nation by CIA manipulation.

Generally "destabilization" includes the overthrow of a democratically elected government, launching of terrorist strikes to justify a military build-up and martial law, and taking control of the media. That’s how Saddam Hussein came to power, and how Osama Bin Laden gained so much influence in Afghanistan. It was thanks to their CIA handlers and weapons suppliers.

Ask the people of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Columbia, Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, Zaire, Ghana, Somalia, Angola, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Korea. Do Mr. Bush and his CIA handlers really want to win a "War on Terror"? There’s much greater profit in continuing the war, for the oil and arms companies, the drug and chemical manufacturers, all of whom are represented by the Bush family, Mr. Cheney and the Bush cabinet.

Ethnic cleansing has been financed by the United States all around the world, under the guise of "National Security," on behalf of multinational corporations. The U.S. support of Israel is contributing to crimes against humanity, and every American bears some responsibility to stop this holocaust of the Palestinians. The War on Terror could end tomorrow. But it would require Americans to address the terror which our government has been financing for the past 50 years.
We desperately need regime change in the USA!

Humanitarian Resistance League Hawai’i
http://metamagic.org/worldnews

Extermination Tech from Uncle George!

CIA Expands Use of Drones in Terror War
’Targeted killing’ with missile-firing Predators is a way to hit Al Qaeda in remote areas, officials say. Host nations are not always given notice.

By Josh Meyer, Times Staff Writer
January 29, 2006 latimes.com
THE NATION

WASHINGTON - Despite protests from other countries, the United States is expanding a top-secret effort to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles as it pursues an increasingly decentralized Al Qaeda, U.S. officials say.

The CIA’s failed Jan. 13 attempt to assassinate Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri in Pakistan was the latest strike in the "targeted killing" program, a highly classified initiative that officials say has broadened as the network splintered and fled Afghanistan.

The strike against Zawahiri reportedly killed as many as 18 civilians, many of them women and children, and triggered protests in Pakistan. Similar U.S. attacks using unmanned Predator aircraft equipped with Hellfire missiles have angered citizens and political leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

Little is known about the targeted-killing program. The Bush administration has refused to discuss how many strikes it has made, how many people have died, or how it chooses targets. No U.S. officials were willing to speak about it on the record because the program is classified.

Several U.S. officials confirmed at least 19 occasions since Sept. 11 on which Predators successfully fired Hellfire missiles on terrorist suspects overseas, including 10 in Iraq in one month last year. The Predator strikes have killed at least four senior Al Qaeda leaders, but also many civilians, and it is not known how many times they missed their targets.

Critics of the program dispute its legality under U.S. and international law, and say it is administered by the CIA with little oversight. U.S. intelligence officials insist it is one of their most tightly regulated, carefully vetted programs.

Lee Strickland, a former CIA counsel who retired in 2004 from the agency’s Senior Intelligence Service, confirmed that the Predator program had grown to keep pace with the spread of Al Qaeda commanders. The CIA believes they are branching out to gain recruits, financing and influence.

Many groups of Islamic militants are believed to be operating in lawless pockets of the Middle East, Asia and Africa where it is perilous for U.S. troops to try to capture them, and difficult to discern the leaders.

"Paradoxically, as a result of our success the target has become even more decentralized, even more diffused and presents a more difficult target - no question about that," said Strickland, now director of the Center for Information Policy at the University of Maryland.

"It’s clear that the U.S. is prepared to use and deploy these weapons in a fairly wide theater," he said.

Current and former intelligence officials said they could not disclose which countries could be subject to Predator strikes. But the presence of Al Qaeda or its affiliates has been documented in dozens of nations, including Somalia, Morocco and Indonesia.

High-ranking U.S. and allied counter-terrorism officials said the program’s expansion was not merely geographic. They said it had grown from targeting a small number of senior Al Qaeda commanders after the Sept. 11 attacks to a more loosely defined effort to kill possibly scores of suspected terrorists, depending on where they were found and what they were doing.

"We have the plans in place to do them globally," said a former counter-terrorism official who worked at the CIA and State Department, which coordinates such efforts with other governments.

"In most cases, we need the approval of the host country to do them. However, there are a few countries where the president has decided that we can whack someone without the approval or knowledge of the host government."

The CIA and the Pentagon have deployed at least several dozen of the Predator drones throughout Iraq, Afghanistan and along the borders of Pakistan, U.S. officials confirmed. The CIA also has sent the remote-controlled aircraft into the skies over Yemen and some other countries believed to be Al Qaeda havens, particularly those without a strong government or military with which the United States can work in tandem, a current U.S. counter-terrorism official told The Times.

Such incursions are highly sensitive because they could violate the sovereignty of those nations and anger U.S. allies, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Predator, built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego, is a slender craft, 27 feet long with a 49-foot wingspan. It makes a clearly audible buzzing sound, and can hover above a target for many hours and fly as low as 15,000 feet to get good reconnaissance footage. They are often operated by CIA or Pentagon officials at computer consoles in the United States.

The drones were designed for surveillance and have been used for that purpose since at least the mid-1990s, beginning with the conflict in the Balkans. After the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush ordered a rapid escalation of a project to arm the Predators with missiles, an effort that had been mired in bureaucratic squabbles and technical glitches.

Now the Predator is an integral part of the military’s counter-insurgency effort, especially in Iraq. But the CIA also runs a more secretive - and more controversial - Predator program that targets suspected terrorists outside combat zones.

The CIA does not even acknowledge that such a targeted-killing program exists, and some attacks have been explained away as car bombings or other incidents. It is not known how many militants or bystanders have been killed by Predator strikes, but anecdotal evidence suggests the number is significant.

In some cases, the destruction was so complete that it was impossible to establish who was killed, or even how many people.

Among the senior Al Qaeda leaders killed in Predator strikes were military commander Mohammed Atef in Afghanistan in November 2001 and Qaed Sinan Harithi, a suspected mastermind of the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole in Yemen, in 2002. Last year, Predators took out two Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan: Haitham Yemeni in May and Abu Hamza Rabia in December, one month after another missile strike missed him.

The attack on Rabia in North Waziristan also killed his Syrian bodyguards and the 17-year-old son and the 8-year-old nephew of the owner of the house that was struck, according to a U.S. official and Amnesty International, which has lodged complaints with the Bush administration following each suspected Predator strike.

Another apparent Predator missile strike killed a former Taliban commander, Nek Mohammed, in South Waziristan in June 2004, along with five others. A local observer said the strike was so precise that it didn’t damage any of the buildings around the lawn where Mohammed was seated. At the time, the Pakistani army said Mohammed had been killed in clashes with its soldiers.

Michael Scheuer, the former chief of the CIA’s special unit hunting Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, said he was aware of at least four successful targeted-killing strikes in Afghanistan alone by November 2004, when he left the agency.

In the attack on Zawahiri, word spread quickly that a U.S. plane had been buzzing above the target beforehand. Afterward, villagers reportedly found evidence of U.S. involvement.

The missiles intended for Bin Laden’s chief deputy incinerated several houses in Damadola, a village near Pakistan’s northwestern border with Afghanistan. But Zawahiri was not there, U.S. officials now believe. Pakistan said it was investigating whether the strikes killed other high-ranking militants.

There were some well-publicized failures before the Zawahiri strike. In February 2002, a Predator tracked and killed a tall man in flowing robes along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The CIA believed it was firing at Bin Laden, but the victim turned out to be someone else.

Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. government had targeted Bin Laden in at least one Cruise missile strike. But the CIA was reluctant to engage in targeted killings because it said the laws regarding assassinations were too vague and the agency could face criminal charges.

Even today, documents and interviews suggest that the U.S. policy on targeted killings is still evolving.

Some critics, including a U.N. human rights watchdog group and Amnesty International, have urged the Bush administration to be more open about how it decides whom to kill and under what circumstances.

A U.N. report in the wake of the 2002 strike in Yemen called it "an alarming precedent [and] a clear case of extrajudicial killing" in violation of international laws and treaties. The Bush administration, which did not return calls seeking comment for this story, has said it does not recognize the mandate of the U.N. special body in connection with its military actions against Al Qaeda, according to Amnesty International.

"Zawahiri is an easy case. No one is going to question us going after him," said Juliette N. Kayyem, a former U.S. government counter-terrorism consultant and Justice Department lawyer. "But where can you do it and who can you do it against? Who authorizes it? All of these are totally unregulated areas of presidential authority."

"Paris, it’s easy to say we won’t do it there," said Kayyem, now a Harvard University law professor specializing in terrorism-related legal issues. "But what about Lebanon?"

Paul Pillar, a former CIA deputy counter-terrorism chief, said the authority claimed by the Bush administration was murky.

"I don’t think anyone is dealing with solid footing here. There is legal as well as operational doctrine that is being developed as we go along," Pillar said. "We are pretty much in uncharted territory here."

Pillar, who was also the CIA’s National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia before retiring in mid-2005, said there had long been disagreement within the intelligence community over whether targeted killings were legally permissible, or even a good idea.

Before Sept. 11, Pillar said, CIA officers were issued vaguely worded guidelines that seemed to give them authority to kill Bin Laden, but only during an attempt to capture him.

The 9/11 commission investigating the attacks in New York and Washington concluded that such vaguely worded laws and policies gave little reassurance to those who might be pulling the trigger that they would not face disciplinary action - or even criminal charges.

Although presidents Ford and Reagan issued executive orders in 1976 and 1981 prohibiting U.S. intelligence agents from engaging in assassinations, the Bush administration claimed the right to kill suspected terrorists under war powers given to the president by Congress after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It is the same justification Bush has used for a recently disclosed domestic spying program that has the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants, and a CIA "extraordinary rendition" program to seize suspected terrorists overseas and transport them to other countries with reputations for torture.

Strickland, like some other officials, said the Predator program served as a deterrent to foreign governments, militias and other groups that might be harboring Al Qaeda cells.

"You give shelter to Al Qaeda figures, you may well get your village blown up," Strickland said. "Conversely, you have to note that this can also create local animosity and instability."

The CIA’s lawyers play a central role in deciding when a strike is justified, current and former U.S. officials said. The lawyers analyze the credibility of the evidence, how many bystanders might be killed, and whether the target is enough of a threat to warrant the strike.

Other agencies, including the Justice Department, are sometimes consulted, Strickland said. "The legal input is broad and extensive," he said.

Scheuer said he believed the process was too cumbersome, and that the agency had lost precious opportunities to slay terrorists because it was afraid of killing civilians.

But others said they had urged the Bush administration to adopt a multi-agency system of checks and balances similar to that used by Israel, which for decades has convened informal tribunals to assess each proposed targeted killing before carrying it out.

Amos N. Guiora, a senior Israeli military judge advocate who participated in such tribunals, said that although the failed Zawahiri strike itself appeared to be justifiable, the result suggested a lack of adequate deliberations on the quality of the intelligence.

"I think [the] attack was a major screw-up, because so many kids died. It raises questions about the entire process," said Guiora, who now a professor at Case Western Law School and director of its Institute for Global Security Law and Policy.

"It shows the absolute need to have a well-thought-through and developed process that examines the action from a legal perspective, an intelligence perspective and an operational perspective. Because the price you pay here is that you are going to have to be hesitant the next time you pull the trigger."

Back in the USSR!

Q’s expertise lacking in spy rock shock

By James Button, London
January 25, 2006

A FAKE rock allegedly containing a listening device and placed
in a Moscow street has plunged Britain and Russia into their worst
espionage row in a decade, after Russia’s secret service confirmed
that it suspected four British diplomats of spying.

The Federal Security Service, successor to the Soviet KGB, said
claims on Russian television that the diplomats and a Russian
citizen used the rock to gather information were true.

It accused one of the diplomats, second secretary Marc Doe of
the British embassy’s political section, of using British
Government money to covertly fund Russian human rights groups.

The security service has begun searching Moscow for other
suspicious rocks. FSB chief spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko said a
second device had been spotted but was retrieved by British
agents.

The fake rock was exposed on Russian state television on Sunday
night, with film showing British embassy employee Christopher Pirt
walking past the rock and another, Andy Fleming, picking it up
after kicking it.

The program also showed a transmitter apparently hidden inside a
fake rock, a device so rudimentary it would have shamed Q, the MI6
operative who designed James Bond’s gadgets.

While the incident has caused much merriment in the British
press, it could lead to expulsion of the British diplomats.

"We have a gentlemen’s understanding that official intelligence
representatives won’t engage in espionage," Mr Ignatchenko said.
"The agreement seems to have been breached."

He said a Russian accused of having contacts with the alleged
British agents was detained and had confessed to espionage.

The mystery deepened after the FSB said Mr Doe had secretly
passed &163;23,000 ($A55,000) to the Moscow Helsinki Group, a
human rights organisation. But the British Government openly gives
&163;500,000 to Russian human rights campaigners.

Flush the Tyrants!

Famous Faces to Adorn Russian, Ukrainian Toilet Paper

MosNews
24.01.2006

A new brand of toilet paper called “Political” will soon appear in Russian and Ukrainian shops featuring the pictures of famous world leaders, the Adme.ru web-site reports.

The paper contains portraits of several heads of state, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, U.S. President George W. Bush, Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair .

In addition, consumers will be able to “enjoy” pictures of disgraced Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice while making use of the lavatory.

The toilet paper on Russian and Ukrainian markets will differ in order to include more local politicians. The creators hope that before the parliamentary elections in Ukraine, scheduled for March 26, the product will become very popular.

The toilet paper is likely to be cheap - about $0.30 per roll.


This Post can be Found at BuzzWorm:
http://buzzworm.blogspot.com
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Forum posts

  • State of the Union Subterfuge 2006
    A User’s Guide to the War Train
    subterfuge \SUB-tur-fyooj\, noun:
    A deceptive device or stratagem.

    Going to Hell on a War Train!

    Going to Hell on a War Train:
    Stank of the Nation 2006

    Ozone and fear smell sharp like blood
    an acrid undercurrent of inevitability
    as the wheels squeal and brakes burn
    crashing in a slow-motion tumble

    Dangers pile up in deadly drifts
    as the train plows blindly into night
    following the flow of neon and pavement
    toward the rim of a Grand Canyon

    Speeding up rather than slowing down
    even as wildfires rage all around
    the conductor jams the crank ahead
    warning sirens screeching by

    We loaded the 15 tons of fuel with tax
    what did we get- another day of shame
    and deeper in debt to a corporate game
    smash and grab our last glimmers of hope

    Storm clouds roll in with thunder
    carrying a clinging stench of decay
    from the south and the oceans
    yet the train races into oblivion

    Madcap flickers of figments in windows
    prove the passengers preoccupied
    watching pretend people acting heroic
    as they fly by trenches full of bodies

    This train was bound for glory
    once upon a time in a book
    now it’s full speed toward hell
    the demon driver a silly crook

    In the wind we wished for home fires
    roasting sweet treats and meats
    instead the stench of the nation
    is bombed bits of buildings and blood

    P.S.:
    We’ve witnessed the wickedness of war
    yet we follow warlords’ rules
    killing after killing and corruption
    shall our epitaph read: "Death by Fools"?

    State of the Union 2006
    Rest in Peace
    Coretta Scott King

    B.Z.B. Evans
    Ministry of Mutation
    http://wonderkind.blogspot.com

    Going to Hell on a War Train!
    http://peoplejudgebush.org/

    History will Judge Us by our Corruption or our Courage

    Regardless of the rhetoric being spun out of Washington, DC that we "must win" the war in Iraq, and the insurgents must die, along with all the terror-mad men who hate us, if we are to survive these times with any shred of dignity we must face the facts laid out before us by the rest of the world. We are suffering under the most criminally corrupt regime of corporate pirates to ever seize power in the industrial world, and we are being robbed blind as they distract all of us with far-flung manipulations of terror and sacrifice our children. War-profiteers such as the world hasn’t seen since the days of the Roman Empire.

    In reality, the investigations and disclosures about the events of the 9-11 attacks are still being quashed and censored, even in the face of victims families protests, as are the apparently criminal lies of aggression which resulted in the Bush regime launching military deployment to oil-rich islamic lands. In reality, the "insurgents" are mostly people in desperate situations who have lost relatives to gargantuan military weapons doing desperate things for revenge or what they believe is survival. In reality, the "terrorists" are mostly ideologically committed young people who feel the US is challenging them to a global duel of historic proportions, which is exactly what the Bush regime has done since the day they seized the White House with the help of several Bush-appointed justices.

    As tragic and bloody as their "war on terror" (an Orwellian nightmare) is, remember it is all a well-planned vast distraction. How disoriented do we feel some days when we spend so much of our energy focused on some burning country half a world away whose language we do not speak and culture we barely understand? Meanwhile, back at home, the Bush corporate cronies are busy gutting every environmental protection and social program fought for in the last century, robbing consumers at the pumps, clear-cutting forests, building secret mega-weapons, deploying God knows what new spy technology, and generally undermining what we once considered a "democracy." And the very idea that anyone will "win" the war in Iraq is a corruption in itself. Humanity has already lost itself in the bombed-out gardens of Babylon.

    At some point we the people, in order to retain any sanity, will have to face these crooks and put a stop to it. Find their soft underbellies, where they claim to have a heart, plastic or otherwise. Hit them in the profiteering and expose their reptilian lies. Demand justice, and the truth for which so many thousands have died. Allow the investigations of the Bush-Bin Laden-Rumsfeld-Saddam-CIA-Saudi-Cheney-Halliburton-Enron-Unocal-9-11 web of deception to be realized, and it will be like banishing the wicked witch and her flying monkeys. Begin envisioning these war criminals behind bars.

    Our world will not only be happier for it, but will actually have a chance for survival, rather than armageddon.

    B.Z.B. Evans, Irregular Unit 008
    Burning Bush http://burnbush.blogspot.com

    How to Translate "War"

    We should ask ourselves if
    "war" is a universal idea or
    an undiagnosed mental disorder

    see the bloody invasions blasting
    history becoming one long crime
    a wasting contagion on the world

    now in the final hours
    like a fat drunken giant
    fighting flies and wasps
    with a sledgehammer

    The last national challenge:
    translate "patriotic"-
    to extraterrestrials
    before "blasting away"

    B.Z.B. Evans
    BombShelter 2013
    http://godbot.blogspot.com

    Going to Hell on a War Train!

    State of the Union Subterfuge:
    What Bush Will Say, What You Should Know


    by Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney
    Amanda Terkel and Payson Schwin / American Progress Report

    Article II, Section 3 of the United States Constitution says: "The President shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." Tomorrow at 9 p.m. ET, President Bush will do just that, delivering his fifth State of the Union address. Below we tell you what to expect and what you need to know.

    Alternative Energy

    What Bush Will Say: "I agree with Americans who understand being hooked on foreign oil is an economic problem and a national security problem." [1/29/06]

    What You Need to Know: For five years, President Bush has consistently steered the nation away from alternative fuels and towards greater dependence on polluting imported fossil fuels.

    BUSH HAS INCREASED DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL: Sixty-six percent of oil consumed in the United States comes from foreign sources, up from 58 percent in 2000. Americans now spend $200,000 a minute on foreign oil, and more than $25 billion annually goes to Persian Gulf states for oil imports.

    BUSH ENERGY BILL CONTAINED LITTLE ON RENEWABLE ENERGY: The energy bill supported and signed by President Bush dropped a provision that would have required utilities "to generate at least 10 percent of their electricity through renewable fuels by 2020."Â? The proposal, championed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), was "was a low-cost, market-driven approach to cutting demand for fossil fuels and easing air pollution."

    BUSH ENERGY BILL WILL NOT REDUCE RELIANCE ON FOREIGN OIL: The same energy bill failed to take any steps that will substantively reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil. Specifically, the final version "rejected a Senate provision that required reduction of oil consumption by one million barrels per day by 2015." Under the bill, "our need for imported oil will continue to grow for as long as models are able to project."

    Warrantless Domestic Spying

    What Bush Will Say: "The terrorist surveillance program is necessary to protect America from attack." [1/26/05]

    What You Need to Know: President Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program undermines the fight against terrorists and violates the law.

    LAWLESS SPYING THREATENS LEGITIMATE TERRORIST INVESTIGATIONS: When laws are broken, the legal system imposes consequences. Revelations about the National Security Agency wiretapping program throw into doubt a wide range of investigations and prosecutions in the fight against terrorism. In criminal cases that can put terrorists behind bars, judges now have to worry that evidence was based on illegal wiretaps. According to several FISA judges quoted by the Washington Post, there are serious concerns that "legally suspect information" acquired through warrantless surveillance was used to obtain FISA warrants, potentially rendering the warrants illegitimate. More broadly, convicted terrorists will be emboldened to challenge their prosecutions, perhaps giving them the opportunity to operate freely once again. [Washington Post, 12/21/05]

    LAWLESS SPYING WASTES VALUABLE INVESTIGATIVE RESOURCES: According to the New York Times, a massive amount of time and resources were devoted to the warrantless domestic spying program but obtained minimal results. The FBI was bombarded with long lists of phone numbers generated by the NSA program. According to a senior prosecutor: "It affected the F.B.I. in the sense that they had to devote so many resources to tracking every single one of these leads, and, in my experience, they were all dry leads." Long after 9/11, "the N.S.A. material continued to be viewed as unproductive, prompting agents to joke that a new bunch of tips meant more calls to Pizza Hut." [New York Times, 1/17/06]

    LAWLESS SPYING THREATENS THE CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES: The Bush Administration is claiming executive power far beyond our historical understanding. Among recent examples: the administration claims it can wiretap without a warrant in the United States, contrary to federal law (FISA); it can torture, contrary to international law and the recent McCain Anti-Torture Amendment; and it can hold a U.S. citizen in detention forever, with no judicial review, simply because the President labels the citizen an "enemy combatant." These positions constitute a direct attack by the executive branch on the checks and balances designed to protect our nation’s democracy.

    Making Tax Cuts Permanent

    What Bush Will Say: "Of course, we’ll talk about fiscal policy in my State of the Union, talking about the Congress to be wise about how we spend the people’s money and to make the tax cuts permanent." [1/26/05]

    What You Need to Know: Making President Bush’s tax cuts permanent would harm the economy and worsen the nation’s poor fiscal health.

    TAX CUTS WILL COST $3.4 TRILLION OVER TEN YEARS: The cost of making the tax cuts permanent will be $3.4 trillion through fiscal year 2015, according to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. This includes the cost of extending the Alternative Minimum Tax relief associated with these tax cuts. [Congressional Budget Office, 1/26/06]

    DEFICITS CAUSED BY TAX CUTS NEGATE ANY POTENTIAL ECONOMIC BENEFITS: Studies by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JTC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and CBO all confirm that deficits undermine economic benefits of the cuts. In their analysis of the 2003 tax cuts, JTC found that any economic benefits of the tax cuts would "eventually likely to be outweighed by the reduction in national savings due to increasing Federal government deficits." Four of the five models they used showed a negative effect on real GDP by the next decade, while the fifth showed no impact at all. CBO and OECD studies confirmed the tax cuts would raise deficits and hurt growth. [American Progress analysis, 1/26/05; CBO, October 2005]

    PERMANENT TAX CUTS OVERWHELMINGLY FAVOR THE WEALTHIEST: Estimates based on data from the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center show that if the tax cuts are made permanent, the top 1 percent of households will gain an average of $71,420 a year when the tax cuts are fully in effect, reflecting a 6.5 percent change in their after-tax income. By contrast, people in the middle of the income spectrum would secure just a 2.1 percent increase in their after-tax income, with average tax cuts of $870. [Tax Policy Center, 12/20/05]

    Katrina Reconstruction

    What Bush Will Say: "I’m going to remind people we show the character and compassion of America by taking focused action...to help devastated areas of our country that have been — areas that have been devastated by natural disasters." [1/26/05]

    What You Need to Know: The Bush administration has bungled the reconstruction efforts and is failing to support New Orleans’ reconstruction plan.

    KATRINA RECONSTRUCTION HAS BEEN SLOW AND BUNGLED: If New Orleans is to thrive, let alone survive, people must be able to return. They cannot do so under current conditions. The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson accurately notes, "the longer the city sits empty and ruined, the less likely its renaissance becomes. Who but the president can break the logjam?" Whole sections of New Orleans still "resemble a moonscape," and only around one-fifth of the city’s original population has resettled. Despite Bush’s claims that New Orleans is "a heckuva place to bring your family," many "neighborhoods still are abandoned wastelands of uninhabitable homes and sidewalks piled with moldy garbage."

    KATRINA RECONSTRUCTION FUNDING HAS BEEN TAINTED BY POLITICS: The $29 billion in aid passed last month was tainted by politics: the package "gave Mississippi about five times as much per household in housing aid as Louisiana received," a "testimony to the clout" of Bush’s political ally, conservative Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R).

    ADMINISTRATION REJECTED RECONSTRUCTION PLAN: President Bush said at last week’s press conference, "It’s important for New Orleans and the state of Louisiana to work together to develop a state recovery plan. ... The plan for Louisiana hasn’t come forward yet." In fact, Louisiana did come up with a plan - which the White House rejected. Rather than supporting the "most broadly supported plan for rebuilding communities," Bush instead backed $6.2 billion in block grants that Congress provided last year. Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA), whose legislation would have established the Louisiana Development Corp. to purchase flood-damaged property, called the block grants "unacceptable." "Clearly the $6 billion isn’t enough," he said. "It ignores the vital recovery in the parishes of Orleans, St. Bernard, Cameron and parts of Plaquemines."

    WHITE HOUSE STONEWALLING KATRINA INVESTIGATIONS: Congressional investigations into the administration’s inadequate response to Katrina have stalled because the "Bush White House is now refusing to turn over Hurricane Katrina related documents or make senior officials available for testimony." Recent news reports revealed that only days before Katrina hit, "the White House received detailed warnings about the storm’s likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property." One House investigator said the committee will find a "disturbing inability by the White House to de-conflict and analyze information," but with the White House stonewalling the investigations with claims of executive privilege, the administration’s mistakes will not be known for years to come.

    via www.allenroland.com
    ONLY THE TRUTH IS REVOLUTIONARY

    ¨÷¨÷¨÷¨M¨÷¨÷¨Ü¨÷¨÷¨T¨÷¨÷¨Ã¨÷¨÷¨N¨÷¨÷¨Ê¨÷¨÷¨X¨÷¨÷¨÷¨÷¨

    "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
    — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    "Power concedes nothing without a demand.
    It never did and never will."
    Frederick Douglass

    Wealth heaped on wealth,
    nor truth nor safety buys,
    The dangers gather
    as the treasures rise.
    Samuel Johnson

    "When the people fear the government you have tyranny...
    when the government fears the people you have liberty."
    — Thomas Jefferson

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    The Impeachment of George W. Bush
    The time has come to call for the impeachment of President Bush: Any President who maintains he is above the law—and acts repeatedly on that belief by http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060130/holtzman

    Activists to Impeach Bush, Impeach Bush Meetups, events, clubs and ...Meet nearby Activists to Impeach Bush! Come to an Impeach Bush Meetup to join their appeal to Congress to impeach George W. Bush for high crimes and ...
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    "Society is like a stew. If you don’t keep it stirred up, you get alot of scum on top."
    — Edward Abbey

    "Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death."
    — Adolf Hitler

    "A long dispute means that both parties are wrong."
    — Francois Voltaire

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    http://metamagic.org/strange

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    http://metamagic.org/worldnews

    BZB’s BriarPatch
    http://briarholler.blogspot.com

    GaiaWurm SurfReport
    http://gaiawurm.blogspot.com

    Burning Bush
    http://burnbush.blogspot.com