---

Senators Who Voted FOR
the PATRIOT ACT and
AGAINST CIVIL LIBERTIES:

Alexander (R-TN) --
Allard (R-CO) -------
Allen (R-VA) ---------
Bennett (R-UT) -----
Bond (R-MO) ---------
Brownback (R-KS) -
Bunning (R-KY) -----
Burns (R-MT) --------
Burr (R-NC) ----------
Chafee (R-RI) --------
Chambliss (R-GA) ---
Coburn (R-OK) -------
Cochran (R-MS) -----
Coleman (R-MN) -----
Collins (R-ME) ------
Cornyn (R-TX) -------
Crapo (R-ID) ---------
DeMint (R-SC) -------
DeWine (R-OH) ------
Dole (R-NC) ----------
Domenici (R-NM) ---
Ensign (R-NV) -------
Enzi (R-WY) ---------
Graham (R-SC) ------
Grassley (R-IA) ----
Gregg (R-NH) --------
Hatch (R-UT) --------
Hutchison (R-TX) --
Inhofe (R-OK) -------
Isakson (R-GA) -----
Johnson (D-SD) -----
Kyl (R-AZ) -----------
Lott (R-MS) ---------
Lugar (R-IN) --------
Martinez (R-FL) ----
McCain (R-AZ) -------
McConnell (R-KY) --
Nelson (D-NE) ------
Roberts (R-KS) -----
Santorum (R-PA) ---
Sessions (R-AL) ----
Shelby (R-AL) -------
Smith (R-OR) --------
Snowe (R-ME) -------
Specter (R-PA) -----
Stevens (R-AK) -----
Talent (R-MO) ------
Thomas (R-WY) -----
Thune (R-SD) --------
Vitter (R-LA) -------
Voinovich (R-OH) -
Warner (R-VA) -----

This Isn't The Real America
by President Jimmy Carter

In recent years, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed long-standing global agreements - including agreements on nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who believe that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat and America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or against us!" has replaced the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the threat of terrorism.

Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public awareness of casualties.

Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.

Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

Protection of the environment has fallen by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable.

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need. It is time for the deep and disturbing political divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the historic political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 years.

Published on Monday, November 14, 2005 by the Los Angeles Times

Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," published this month by Simon & Schuster.

© 2005 Los Angeles Times

"Most Wanted" Corporate Human Rights Violators of 2005
Take Action for International Human Rights Day!
http://www.globalexchange.org/getInvolved/corporateHRviolators.html

By Global Exchange
(Click here to read about our definition of human rights.)

INTRODUCTION

Corporations carry out some of the most horrific human rights abuses of modern times, but it is increasingly difficult to hold them to account. Economic globalization and the rise of transnational corporate power have created a favorable climate for corporate human rights abusers, which are governed principally by the codes of supply and demand and show genuine loyalty only to their stockholders.

Though it isn't easy, we can check the power of corporations-and citizens around the world are stepping up to do it. Global Exchange developed this list of some of the world's worst corporate abusers to illustrate that on issues as diverse as assassination, torture, kidnapping, environmental degradation, abusing public funds, violently repressing political rights, releasing toxins into pristine environments, destroying homes, discrimination, and causing widespread health problems, familiar companies like Dow Chemical, Coca Cola, Caterpillar, Lockheed, Philip Morris, and Wal-Mart play a big role. Now we need you to take action!

Several of the companies below are being sued under the Alien Tort Claims Act, a law that allows citizens of any nationality to sue in US federal courts for violations of international rights or treaties. When corporations act like criminals, we have the right and the power to stop them, holding leaders and multinational corporations alike to the accords they have signed. Around the world - in Venezuela, Argentina, India, and right here in the United States - citizens are stepping up to create democracy and hold corporations accountable to international law.

This list of "MOST WANTED" corporate criminals gives you information about the abusive behavior of this year's top fourteen worst corporations, tells you who is responsible, and how to connect with and support people who are doing something about it. The more you know, the less these corporations can continue their abuses out of public eyesight: so share this information with your friends, get on the phone with the CEOs themselves, and exercise your rights as a citizen and consumer today.

CATERPILLAR

CEO: James Owens
Contact the Corporation: Caterpillar Inc.
100 NE Adams St.
Peoria, IL 61629
Phone: 309-675-1000
Fax: 309-675-1182

Human Rights Abuses: contracting with known violators of human rights, enabling house demolition, supplying equipment that kills Palestinian civilians and American peace activists.

For years, the Caterpillar Company has provided Israel with the bulldozers used to destroy Palestinian homes. Despite worldwide condemnation, Caterpillar has refused to end their corporate participation house demolition by cutting off sales of specially modified D9 and D10 bulldozers to the Israeli military.

Israel seeks to portray the destruction of homes as necessary to its self-defense, but nothing could be further from the truth. As the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions has rigorously documented, house destruction is part of Israel's intention to turn the annexation of East Jerusalem and other occupied areas into a concrete fact (http://www.icahd.org/eng/).

In a letter to Caterpillar CEO James Owens The Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights said: "allowing the delivery of your. . . bulldozers to the Israeli army. . . in the certain knowledge that they are being used for such action, might involve complicity or acceptance on the part of your company to actual and potential violations of human rights..."

Peace activist Rachel Corrie was killed by a Caterpillar, D-9, military bulldozer in 2003. She was run over while attempting to block the destruction a family's home in Gaza. Her family filed suit against Caterpillar in March 2005 charging that Caterpillar knowingly sold machines used to violate human rights. Since Rachel's death at least three more Palestinians have been killed in their homes by Israeli bulldozer demolitions.

Who's working on it:

Amnesty International
Jewish Voice for Peace
Human Rights Watch
US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation

CHEVRON

Chairman and CEO: David O'Reilly
Contact the Corporation: Chevron Corp.
6001 Bollinger Canyon Rd.
San Ramon, CA 94583

Human Rights Abuses: environmental destruction, health violations, and violent killings

The petrochemical company Chevron is guilty of some of the worst environmental and human rights abuses in the world. From 1964 to 1992, Texaco (which transferred operations to Chevron after being bought out in 2001) unleashed a toxic "Rainforest Chernobyl" in Ecuador by leaving more than 600 unlined oil pits in pristine northern Amazon rainforest and dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic production water into rivers used for bathing water. The toxic crude oil and formation water seeped into the subsoil, contaminating surrounding freshwater and farmland. As a result, local communities have suffered severe health effects, including cancer, skin lesions, birth defects, and spontaneous abortions. Indigenous communities have been dispossessed of their lands, and millions of hectares of rainforest have been destroyed to make way for the company's pipelines and oil wells.

Chevron is also responsible for the violent repression of nonviolent opposition to oil extraction. In Nigeria, Chevron has collaborated with the Nigerian police and military who have opened fire on peaceful protestors who oppose oil extraction in the Niger Delta. In 1998, two indigenous Ilaje activists were killed by Nigerian military officers flown in by the company while protesting at an oil platform in Ondo state. In 1999, two people from Opia village were killed by military personnel paid by Chevron, after soliciting a meeting to complain about the company's harmful effects on local fishing. And in 2005, Nigerian soldiers fired upon protestors at Escravos oil terminal, leaving one protestor dead.

Additionally Chevron is responsible for widespread health problems in Richmond, California, where one of Chevron's largest refineries is located. Processing 350,000 barrels of oil a day, the Richmond refinery produces oil flares and toxic waste in the Richmond area. As a result, local residents suffer from high rates of lupus, skin rashes, rheumatic fever, liver problems, kidney problems, tumors, cancer, asthma, and eye problems.

In December 2004, the Unocal Corporation, which recently became a subsidiary of Chevron, settled a lawsuit filed by 15 Burmese villagers, in which the villagers alleged Unocal's complicity in a range of human rights violations in Burma, including rape, summary execution, torture, forced labor and forced migration. Despite the settlement, human rights abuses continue along the oil pipeline in Burma, which is still "secured" by the Burmese military. Chevron is responsible for the risks associated with this pipeline.

Who's working on it:

Acción Ecológica
Amazon Watch
Amazon Defense Front
Amnesty International
Center for Constitutional Rights
EarthRights International
Human Rights Watch
Oil Change International
Oil Watch International
Richmond Greens

COCA-COLA

CEO: E. Neville Isdell
Contact the Corporation: Coca-Cola
One Coca Cola Plaza
P.O. Box 1734
Atlanta, GA 30301
Phone: 404-676-2121

Human Rights Abuses: violent killings, kidnap and torture, water privatization, health violations, and discriminatory practices

Coca-Cola Company is perhaps the most widely recognized corporate symbol on the planet. The company also leads in the abuse of workers' rights, assassinations, water privatization, and worker discrimination. Between 1989 and 2002, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia were killed after protesting the company's labor practices. Hundreds of other Coca-Cola workers who have joined or considered joining the Colombian union SINALTRAINAL have been kidnapped, tortured, and detained by paramilitaries who intimidate workers to prevent them from unionizing. In Turkey, 14 Coca-Cola truck drivers and their families were beaten severely by Turkish police hired by the company, while protesting a layoff of 1,000 workers from a local bottling plant in 2005.

In India, Coca-Cola destroys local agriculture by privatizing the country's water resources. In Plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola extracted 1.5 million liters of deep well water, which they bottled and sold under the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater was severely depleted, affecting thousands of communities with water shortages and destroying agricultural activity. As a result, the remaining water became contaminated with high chloride and bacteria levels, leading to scabs, eye problems, and stomach aches in the local population. Water shortages have occurred in Varanasi, Thane, and Tamil Nadu as well. The company is also guilty of reselling its plants' industrial waste to farmers as fertilizers, despite its containing hazardous lead and cadmium.

Coca-Cola is one of the most discriminatory employers in the world. In the year 2000, 2,000 African-American employees in the U.S. sued the company for race-based disparities in pay and promotions. In México, Coca-Cola FEMSA, the largest Coca-Cola bottler in Latin America, fired a senior bottling manager for being gay. Finally, by regularly denying health insurance to employees and their families, Coca Cola has failed to help stop the spread of AIDS in Africa. The company is one of the continent's largest private employers, yet only partially covers expensive medicines, while not covering generic medicines at all.

Who's working on it:

Coke Watch
Corp Watch
India Resource Center
Killer Coke
Polaris Institute
Public Citizen
Students Against Sweatshops
USLEAP

DOW CHEMICAL

CEO: Andrew N. Liveris
Contact the Corporation: Dow Chemical Co.
2030 Dow Center
Midland, MI 48674

Human rights abuses: creation of chemical weapons, marketing poisonous chemicals, illegal dumping of toxins into populated areas, environmental destruction, health problems, death

Dow Chemical has been destroying lives and poisoning the planet for decades. The company is best known for the ravages and health disaster for millions of Vietnamese and U.S. Veterans caused by its lethal Vietnam War defoliant, Agent Orange. Dow's "invent first, ask questions later" standard of business led the multinational company to develop and perfect Napalm, a brutal chemical weapon that burned many innocents to death in Vietnam and other wars. In 1988, Dow provided pesticides to Saddam Hussein despite warnings that they could be used to produce chemical weapons.

In 2001, Dow inherited the toxic legacy of the worst peacetime chemical disaster in history when it acquired Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) and its outstanding liabilities in Bhopal, India. As the Students for Bhopal website recounts, "On December 3rd, 1984, thousands of people in Bhopal, India were gassed to death after a catastrophic chemical leak at a UCC pesticide plant. More than 150,000 people were left severely disabled-of whom 22,000 have since died of their injuries-in a disaster now widely acknowledged as the world's worst ever."

Dow refuses to address its liabilities in Bhopal or even admit its existence, continuing in Union Carbide's tradition of profiting from extreme corporate irresponsibility. In India, Dow's subsidiary faces manslaughter charges and is considered a fugitive from justice for a pending criminal case related to the 1984 xhemical explosion. Dow and UCC's lack of accountability in the disaster continue to affect the lives in Bhopal to this day.

World wide, Dow is involved in human rights abuses: environmental destruction, water and ground contamination, health violations, chemical poisoning, and chemical warfare. Dow Chemical's impact is felt globally from their Midland, Michigan headquarters to New Plymouth, New Zealand. In Midland, Dow has been producing chlorinated chemicals and burning and burying its waste including chemicals that make up Agent Orange. In New Plymouth, New Zealand, 500,000 gallons of Agent Orange were produced and thousands of tons of dioxin-laced waste was dumped in agricultural fields. Dow's toxic legacies of human rights abuses traverse to agricultural fields in Central America where Dow exported EPA-banned pesticide DBCP for use on banana and pineapple crops. As a result, thousands of banana workers were exposed to DBCP and became sterile. In retail markets across the world Dow's dangerous chemicals are present as common household solvents, plastics, paints and pharmaceuticals.

Who's working on it:

Dow Accountability Network
EarthRights International
Vietnam Relief and Responsibility Campaign
Fund for Reconciliation and Development
The Vietnam Dioxin Collective
International Campaign for Justice In Bhopal
Students For Bhopal Amnesty International-USA
Greenpeace International
Ecology Center
Tittabawassee River Watch
Beyond Pesticides

DYNCORP/CSC

CEO: Van Honeycutt
Contact the corporation: DynCorp/CSC
2100 East Grand Avenue
El Segundo, CA 90245 USA
Phone: 310.615.0311

Human rights abuses: causing health problems, environmental devastation and death; endangering lives; physically abusing individuals; sex trafficking

Private security contractors have become the fastest-growing sector of the global economy during the last decade - a $100-billion-a-year, nearly unregulated industry. DynCorp, one of the providers of these mercenary services, demonstrates the industry's power and potential to abuse human rights. While guarding Afghani statesmen and African oil fields, training Iraqi police forces, eradicating Colombian coca plants, and protecting business interests in hurricane-devastated New Orleans, these hired guns bolster the security of governments and organizations at the expense of many people's human rights.

DynCorp's fumigation of coca crops along the Colombian-Ecuadorian border led Ecuadorian peasants to sue DynCorp in 2001. Plaintiffs argued that DynCorp knew - or should have known - that the herbicides were highly toxic, and should therefore be held accountable for health problems and death among local people and widespread environmental damage to their subsistence agriculture. A Colombian newsweekly called DynCorp - which also sprays herbicides in Peru and Bolivia - "lawless Rambos."

DynCorp's questionable actions in Haiti include its training of the national police force after the first coup against President Aristide, paving the way for (Tonton Macaoutes) to return to power.

In 2001, a mechanic with DynCorp blew the whistle on DynCorp employees in Bosnia for rape and trading girls as young as 12 into sex slavery. According to a lawsuit filed by the mechanic, "employees and supervisors were engaging in perverse, illegal and inhumane behavior [and] were purchasing illegal weapons, women, [and] forged passports." The mechanic observed DynCorp employees buying and selling women and bragging about the ages and talents of their female slaves. DynCorp fired the whistleblower, who later claimed that "DynCorp is just as immoral and elite as possible, and any rule they can break they do." The company transferred the employees accused of sex trading out of the country, eventually firing some. None were prosecuted.

Who's working on it:

CorpWatch
International Labor Rights Fund and the Law Offices of Cristobal Bonifaz are handling the Ecuadorians' suit, with help from EarthRights International, Amazon Alliance, and Friends of the Earth.

FORD MOTOR COMPANY

CEO: William Clay Ford, Jr.
Contact the Corporation: Ford Motor Company
P.O. Box 685
Dearborn, MI 48126-0685
Email: wford@ford.com

Human rights violations: environmental degradation, climate change, fueling wars for oil

The US automobile industry is fueling America's addiction to oil. Automobiles are the single largest consumer of oil in the US, a country that constitutes less than five percent of the world's population but consumes 25 percent of its oil. The US addiction to oil is linked with a host of human rights and environmental problems, including human rights abuses in countries such as Nigeria, Ecuador, Sudan, South Africa and Indonesia. The US oil addiction has prompted the US government to cozy up to human rights violating governments such as that of Saudi Arabia. It has pushed indigenous people off their land and destroyed hundreds of thousands of acres of rainforests, which are home to half the planet and animal species on the planet. It has fueled wars for oil, such as the war in Iraq, which has so far caused the deaths of more than 2,100 US troops and an estimated 27,000 to 100,000 Iraqis. It has polluted cities, endangering the health of millions of people who live in high-ozone communities and leading to hundreds of thousands of cases of childhood asthma. And, by being a major contributor to global warming, has increased the likelihood of extreme weather events like Hurricane Katrina, which killed at least 1,289 people.

Among automakers, Ford Motor Company is the worst. Every year since 1999, the US Environmental Protection Agency has ranked Ford cars, trucks and SUVs as having the worst overall fuel economy of any American automaker. Ford's current car and truck fleet has a lower average fuel efficiency than the original Ford Model-T.

Ford is also in last place when it comes to vehicle greenhouse gas emissions. According to a recent report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, Ford has "the absolute worst heat-trapping gas emissions performance of all the Big Six automakers." In fact, if Ford were a country, it would be the 10th largest global warming polluter worldwide, behind Italy.

Amazingly, despite the company's recent greenwashing PR campaign, its record has actually worsened. According to Ford's own sustainability report, between 2003 and 2004, the company's US fleet-wide fuel economy decreased and its CO2 emissions went up. Ford is also lobbying to prevent the U.S. and state governments from improving the situation: the company has lobbied against lawmakers' efforts to increase fuel economy standards at the national level and is also involved in a lawsuit against California's fuel economy standards.

Who's working on it:

Bluewater Action Network
Energy Action
Jumpstart Ford, a coalition of Global Exchange, Rainforest Action Network and the Ruckus Society

KBR (KELLOGG, BROWN, AND ROOT): A SUBSIDIARY OF HALLIBURTON CORPORATION

President and CEO: CEO Andrew Lane
Contact the Corporation: KBR
601 Jefferson Street
Houston, TX 77002
Phone. (713) 753-2000

Human rights violations: Overcharging and providing unnecessary services on taxpayer's dollar, bribery, exploiting third country nationals

KBR is a private company that provides military support services. Notorious for its questionable bookkeeping, dishonest billing practices, and no-bid contracts, KBR has violated human rights on the U.S. dollar.

KBR provides key logistical support for war, occupation and unlawful detention. The company provides the critical support services US troops need to be able to continue their occupation of Iraq. KBR also constructed the detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds of detainees have languished for more than three years, many of whom have suffered abuse and torture.

KBR's dubious accounting in Iraq came to light in December 2003 when Pentagon auditors questioned possible overcharges for imported gasoline. Former employees have testified about KBR's billing for $100 laundry bags and $45 cases of soda, failing to provide simple mechanical parts such as oil filters, feeding soldiers outdated rations, and charging for meals never served. In June 2005, a previously secret Pentagon audit criticized $1.4 billion in "questioned" and "unsupported" expenditures.

However, given KBR's history, this is no surprise. In 2002 the company paid $2 million to settle a Justice Department lawsuit that accused KBR of inflating contract prices at Fort Ord, California. In 2000, the GAO scrutinized KBR for overcharging and providing unnecessary services in the Balkans. Bribes to local officials (such as in Nigeria) or subcontractors also appear to be part of KBR's modus operandi.

Many third-country national (TCN) laborers have been hired by KBR to "rebuild" Iraq. Generally hailing from impoverished Asian countries, they have unexpectedly become part of the largest civilian workforce ever hired in support of a U.S. war.

An intricate network of subcontractors who recruit and employ most TCNs lowers the prime contractors' costs and hinders any oversight by contract auditors. The laborers often take out usurious loans to pay a finder's fee for the overseas jobs. Once abroad, the workers find themselves with few protections and uncertain legal status. TCNs often sleep in crowded trailers and wait outside in scorching heat to eat "slop." Many lack adequate medical care and put in hard labor seven days a week, 10 hours or more a day. Few receive proper workplace safety equipment or adequate protection from incoming mortars and rockets.

KBR is now accused of perpetuating the same system in areas destroyed or damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Reports have surfaced about KBR's subcontractors exploiting TCN's (this time, Latinos), many of whom are unpaid, unfed, living in squalid conditions and suffering from untreated ailments.

Who's working on it:

Corpwatch
Center for Corporate Policy
Halliburton Watch
Houston Global Awareness

LOCKHEED MARTIN

CEO: Robert Stevens
Contact the corporation: Lockheed Martin Corp
6801 Rockledge Dr
Bethesda, MD 20817
Phone: (301) 897-6000

Human Rights Abuses: War profiteering, warmongering

Lockheed Martin is the world's largest military contractor. In 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, the company held $21.9 billion in Pentagon contracts. Providing satellites, planes, missiles, and other lethal high tech items to the Pentagon keeps the profits rolling in. Since 2000, the year Bush was elected, the company's stock value has tripled.

A large company like Lockheed Martin has the ability to shape it's the business environment, and marketing war is very beneficial to the bottom line. As the Center for Corporate Policy (www.corporatepolicy.org) notes, it is no coincidence that Lockheed VP Bruce Jackson - who helped draft the Republican foreign policy platform in 2000 - is a key player at the Project for a New American Century, the intellectual incubator of the Iraq war.

Lockheed Martin is not the only defense contractor that goes behind the scenes to influence public policy, but it is one of the worst. Stephen J. Hadley, who now has Condoleeza Rice's old job as Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, was formerly a partner in a big DC law firm representing Lockheed Martin. He is only one of the beneficiaries of the so-called revolving door between the military industries and the "civilian" national security apparatus. These war profiteers - the makers of the Trident missile; aircraft like the F-16 Fighting Falcon and the F/A-22 and the C-130 Hercules, as well as high tech space based military components like the DSCS-3 satellite - have a profound and illegitimate influence our country's international policy decisions.

Who's working on it:

Brandywine Peace Community
Center for Corporate Policy
War Resisters League

MONSANTO

CEO: Hugh Grant
Contact the Corporation: c/o Kathleen Klepfer, Chief of Staff for Hugh Grant
800 North Lindbergh Boulevard
St. Louis, MO 63167
Phone:(314) 694-1000
Fax: (314) 694-8394
kathleen.lee.klepfer@monsanto.com

Human Rights Abuses: Displacement, health violations, and child labor

Monsanto is, by far, the largest producer of genetically engineered seeds in the world, dominating 70% to 100% of the market for crops such as soy, cotton, wheat, and corn. The company is also one of the most egregious abusers of the human rights of food sovereignty, access to land, and health.

Monsanto promotes mono-culture - the practice of covering large swaths of land with a single crop. This practice pushes out subsistence farms and destroys arable land by drastically decreasing soil and water quality for years, draining soil of key nutrients. The company also undercuts food prices by flooding countries like Mexico, India, and Brazil with cheap, genetically modified foods, resulting in the displacement of millions of farm workers, who are forced to migrate to cities or work as landless peasants or share croppers.

Monsanto is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as "Roundup." Roundup is sold to small farmers as a pesticide, yet harms crops in the long run as the toxins accumulate in the soil. Plants eventually become infertile, forcing farmers to purchase genetically modified Roundup Ready Seed, a seed that resists the herbicide. This creates a cycle of dependency on Monsanto for both the weed killer and the only seed that can resist it. Both products are patented, and sold at inflated prices.

Roundup Ultra, a version of the pesticide that is unavailable on the commercial market, is regularly employed in fumigation of areas of illicit crop production. However, as it destroys fields of drug plants, it also destroys subsistence crops like banana, palm heart, and coffee. Exposure to the pesticide is documented to cause cancers, skin disorders, spontaneous abortions, premature births, and damage to the gastrointestinal and nervous systems.

According to the India Committee of the Netherlands and the International Labor Rights Fund, Monsanto also employs child labor. In India, an estimated 12,375 children work in cottonseed production for farmers paid by Indian and multinational seed companies, including Monsanto. A number of children have died or became seriously ill due to exposure to pesticides.

Monsanto's yearly profits are $5.4 billion.

Who's working on it:

Food First
GM Watch
GRAIN
India Resource Center
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Landless Workers' Movement
Organic Consumers' Association
Via Campesina

NESTLÉ USA

CEO: Joe Weller
Contact the Corporation: Nestlé USA
800 N. Brand Blvd.
Glendale, CA 91203
Phone: 818-549-6000
Fax: 818-549-6952

Human Rights Violations: Abusive child labor, repression of worker rights, aggressive marketing of harmful products, violation of national health and environmental laws

There's a secret in the chocolate industry, and once people find out about it, their chocolate doesn't taste as sweet any more: Much of the chocolate eaten all over the world is made of cocoa beans that have been harvested by illegal child labor, including child slave labor.

The problem of illegal and forced child labor is rampant in the chocolate industry, because more than forty percent of the world's cocoa supply comes from the Ivory Coast, a country that the US State Department estimates had approximately 109,000 child laborers working in hazardous conditions on cocoa farms in what's been described as the worst form of child labor. In 2001, Save the Children Canada reported that 15,000 children between 9 and 12 years old, many from impoverished Mali, had been tricked or sold into slavery on West African cocoa farms, many for just $30 each. Just this summer, the International Labor Rights Fund and a Birmingham law firm filed a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé and several of its suppliers on behalf of former child slaves.

Nestlé is the target of this lawsuit and is singled out by corporate campaigners, because it is the third largest buyer of cocoa from the Ivory Coast, has processing, storage and export facilities there, and is well aware of the tragically unjust labor practices taking place on the farms with which it continues to do business. Nestlé and other chocolate manufacturers agreed to end the use of abusive and forced child labor on cocoa farms by July 1, 2005, but they failed to do so.

Nestlé is also notorious for its aggressive marketing of infant formula in poor countries the 1980s, which may have led to the deaths of countless children who did not receive the nutrients that would have been present in breast milk. Because of this practice, Nestlé is still one of the most boycotted corporations in the world, and its infant formula is still controversial. In Italy in 2005, police seized more than two million liters of Nestlé infant formula that was contaminated with the chemical isopropylthioxanthone (ITX), a component in the packaging's ink. It turned out the company knew about the contamination for months, but did not recall the formula.

Additionally, violations of labor rights are reported from Nestlé factories in numerous countries. In Colombia, Nestlé replaced the entire factory staff with lower-wage workers and did not renew the collective employment contract. In Cabuyao Laguna, Philippines, a 3-year strike against Nestlé was partially precipitated by Nestlé's refusal to include the retirement benefits of the workers in the collective bargaining agreement, despite the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of the workers. The company has brutally attempted to break the strike; this year, two unionists, including prominent labor leader Diosdado Fortuna, have been murdered.

Who's working on it:

Global Exchange
International Baby Milk Action
International Labor Rights Fund

PHILIP MORRIS USA and PHILIP MORRIS INTERNATIONAL (a.k.a. the Altria Group Inc.)

Chairman and CEO: Louis C. Camilleri
Contact the Corporation: Philip Morris USA
Consumer Response Center
P.O. Box 26603
Richmond, Virginia 23261
http://www.philipmorrisusa.com

Philip Morris International
Consumer Service
Case Postale 1171
1001 Lausanne, Switzerland
http://www.philipmorrisinternational.com

Human Rights Abuse: aggressively marketing lethal products

According to the World Health Organization, tobacco is the second major cause of preventable death in the world. Nearly five million lives per year are claimed by the tobacco industry, whose products results in premature death for half the people who use them. Among tobacco companies, Philip Morris is notorious. Now called Altria, it is the world's largest and most profitable cigarette corporation and maker of Marlboro, Virginia Slims, Parliament, Basic and many other brands of cigarettes. Philip Morris is also a leader in pushing smoking with young people around the world.

Philip Morris has consistently misled consumers about the dangers of its products. Documents uncovered in a lawsuit filed against the tobacco industry by the state of Minnesota showed that Philip Morris and other leading tobacco corporations knew very well of the dangers of tobacco products and the addictiveness of nicotine, yet they continued to deny these realities in public until the internal company documents were brought to light. To this day, Philip Morris deceives consumers about the harm of its products by offering light, mild and low-tar cigarettes that give consumers the illusion that these brands are "healthier" than traditional cigarettes.

Philip Morris has actively targeted the world's youth by researching smoking patterns and attitudes and targeting youth as potential customers. Marlboro cigarettes are the top brand for youth in the United States. Although the company says it doesn't want kids to smoke, it spends millions of dollars every day marketing and promoting cigarettes to youth. Overseas, it has even hired underage Marlboro girls to distribute free cigarettes to other children and sponsored concerts where cigarettes were handed out to minors.

As anti-tobacco campaigns and government regulations are slowing tobacco use in Western countries, Philip Morris has aggressively moved into developing country markets, where smoking and smoking-related deaths are on the rise. According to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health, tobacco's killing fields are shifting to the developing world and Eastern Europe, where most of the world's smokers now live. Preliminary numbers released by the World Health Organization predict global deaths due to smoking-related illnesses will nearly double by 2020, with more than three-quarters of those deaths in the developing world.

Meanwhile, Philip Morris' profits continue to grow. In the third quarter of 2005 alone, Altria's net revenue was $25 billion, up from 2004 in large part due to the high performance of Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris International.

Who's working on it:

Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids
Essential Action
Framework Convention Alliance
World Health Organization

PFIZER

CEO: Henry A. McKinnell
Contact the Company: Pfizer
235 East 42nd Street
NY, NY 10017-5755
Phone: 212-573-1000 (switchboard)
Fax: 212-573-7851

Human Rights Abuse: Killer price-gouging

Pfizer is one of the largest and most profitable pharmaceutical companies in the world with revenues of $52.5 billion in 2004. In addition to Viagra, Zoloft, Zithromax, and Norvasc, Pfizer produces the HIV/AIDS-related drugs Rescriptor, Viracept and Diflucan (fluconazole). Like other drug companies, they sell these drugs at prices poor people cannot afford and aggressively fight efforts to make it easier for generic drugs to enter the market. They have even cut off drug shipments to Canadian pharmacies that sold Pfizer drugs to patients in the United States for costs more affordable than those offered in US pharmacies.

To ensure its profits, Pfizer invests heavily in US campaign contributions. Though it can't seem to afford to offer life-saving drugs at affordable prices, it was able to scrounge up $544,900 for mostly Republican candidates in election cycle 2006 (still in progress) and $1,630,556 in the 2004 election cycle.

Drug companies' refusal to put human beings' health ahead of their own greed and profits is especially deadly for people with HIV/AIDS. AIDS killed 3.1 million people in 2004, a shocking death rate that could be greatly reduced if treatment was made available to people who right now cannot afford it. Pfizer and other drug companies have refused to grant generic licenses for HIV/AIDS drugs to countries like Brazil, South Africa, and the Dominican Republic, where patients are forced to pay $20 per weekly pill for drugs like fluconazole, though the average national wage is only $120 per month.

Instead of helping eradicate the world's worst pandemic in history, the World Trade Organization has made matters worse. Beginning in 1995, the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) protected companies by stopping WTO member countries from making generic versions of their drugs. Because of public pressure, the WTO announced a new agreement in 2003 to allow poor countries to access cheap generic antiretroviral drugs, but in practice, the drugs are just as inaccessible to poor countries as they were before.

Who's working on it:

ACTUP: New York, Philadelphia, Paris
Consumer Project on Technology
Doctors Without Borders
Generics Now
Health GAP
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
Treatment Action Campaign

SUEZ-LYONNAISE DES EAUX (SLDE)

CEO: Mr. Gérard Mestrallet
Contact the Corporation: Suez
16, rue de la Ville-l 'Evêque
75383 PARIS Cedex 08
France
Phone: +33 1 40 06 64 00
gerard.mestrallet@suez.com

Human rights abuse: Water privatization

The privatization of water has had a disastrous impact on the human right to clean water, and the French company Suez is the worst perpetrator of this abuse. The company's billions of dollars in profit come at the expense of poor people living in countries where thousands lack access to potable water, and, because of private water contracts, are also facing skyrocketing water prices.

Suez goes by many names around the world - Ondeo, SITA, and others - to mask its worldwide net of controversial activities. But no sleight of hand can hide the fact that Suez, which is one of the largest water companies in the world, has been a leader in turning the human right to water into an unaffordable luxury. According to Public Citizen, Suez has raised water rates, cut off the water of people unable to pay, refused to extend services to poverty-stricken neighborhoods, and then threatened legal action when contracts are terminated.

For example, in Manila, Philippines, after seven years of water privatization under a Suez company (Maynilad Water) contract, studies showed that water rates increased in some neighborhoods by 400 to 700 percent. These studies also showed that the negligence of the company resulted in cholera and gastroenteritis outbreaks that killed six people and severely sickened 725 in Manila's Tondo district.

In Argentina, Suez mixed companies have refused to make promised investments in the water infrastructure, which has resulted in serious water pollution problems. They also charge high consumer rates and cut off water access for citizens unable to pay, leaving those most in need without access to a life-sustaining natural resource.

In Bolivia, a Suez company (Aguas de Illimani) left 200,000 people without access to water and caused a revolt when it tried to charge between $335 and $445 to connect a private home to the water supply. Countless people were unable to afford this charge in a country whose yearly per capita GDP is $915.

Unfortunately, the IMF and World Bank are playing a key role in pushing water privatization all over the world. Many countries have been required to open up their water supply to private companies as a condition for receiving IMF loans, and the World Bank has approved millions of dollars in loans for the privatization of water systems.

Who's working on it:

Corporate Accountability International
Food and Water Watch
Stop Suez

WAL-MART

CEO: Lee Scott
Contact the Corporation: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
702 Southwest 8th Street
Bentonville, AR 72716
Tel. (479) 273-4000

Human Rights Abuses: worker rights violations, labor discrimination, union busting

Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world. It owns 5,100 stores worldwide and employs 1.3 million workers in the United States and 400,000 abroad, as well as a millions more in the factories of its suppliers. Because of the company's enormity, its business model has a huge influence on workers and businesses around the world; so far Wal-Mart has used that influence to ruthlessly drive down costs as a means of making profit, violating a vast array of human rights and labor rights along the way.

Many people have heard of the way that Wal-Mart steamrolls its way into every possible town, destroying local supermarkets and countless small businesses. We have also heard about Wal-Mart's long track record of worker abuse, from forced overtime to sex discrimination to illegal child labor to relentless union busting. Wal-Mart also notoriously fails to provide health insurance to over half of its employees, who are then left to rely on themselves or taxpayers, who provide for a portion of their healthcare needs through government Medicaid.

Less well known is the fact that Wal-Mart maintains its low price level by allowing substandard labor conditions at the overseas factories producing most of its goods. The company continually demands lower prices from its suppliers, who, in turn, make more outrageous and abusive demands on their workers in order to meet Wal-Mart's requirements. In September 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of Wal-Mart supplier sweatshop workers in China, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nicaragua and Swaziland. The workers were denied minimum wages, forced to work overtime without compensation, and were denied legally mandated health care. Other worker rights violations that have been found in foreign factories that produce goods for Wal-Mart include locked bathrooms, starvation wages, pregnancy tests, denial of access to health care, and workers being fired and blacklisted if they try to defend their rights.

Additionally, nearly 70% of Wal-Mart's goods are made in factories in China, a country where garment workers are often kept under 24-hour-a-day surveillance and can be fired for even discussing factory conditions. The Chinese government does not allow independent human rights groups to exist, and all attempts to form independent unions have been crushed. Wal-Mart refuses to reveal its Chinese contractors and will not allow independent, unannounced inspections of its contractors' facilities.

Who's working on it:

Wal-Mart Watch
ACORN
Business Ethics International
Sierra Club
Wake-Up Wal-Mart
International Labor Rights Fund
United Students Against Sweatshops

FBI Pamphlet
Who's a Terrorist?

Right along side those who have Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Weapons of Mass Destruction, they also have terrorist groups such as:

• Those of "Christian Identity"
• Those who "Make Numerous references to US Constitution"
• Those who "Request authority for stop"
• Those who are "defenders of the US Constitution"
• Those who have "Marxist philosophy"
• Those who support "Animals Rights"
• and don't forget "Lone Individuals"

Pictures at: http://www.welfarestate.com/pamphlet/

Click Graphic for Full Size Image

9/11 Was A Military Attack
San Francisco Independent Media Center

Norad exercise just prior to Airplanes as weapons

Pdf file and jpgs from pdf report download PDF (3.8 mebibytes (located at sf.indymedia.org)).

Amalgam Virgo was a multiagency, bilateral air security exercise sponsored by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)

The one in this pdf report happend just prior to 9/11 in the summer of 2001. They didn't know about the attack? So they say . (link for www.defenselink.mil at sf.indymedia.org)

TOO LATE
FOR CORRECTIVE ACTION
by Ed Henry

On the road to bankruptcy, we’ve passed the point of no return. We’re over the top. The Bush administration borrowed $94.4 billion in October and as of the 18th of November the national debt has gone up another $55.7 billion. That’s a total of $150 billion in less than seven weeks or more than $21 billion a week, three billion a day weekends included.

By an overwhelming majority, the Senate just approved a $492 billion Pentagon defense budget for 2006, the fiscal year that we’re already into without an agreed budget and operating on “continuing resolutions” or the elements and allocations of last year’s budget. It was just a few years ago that the media was in a panic and talking about government shutdowns because of conditions like this, but today there’s not a peep from our so-called watchdogs.

At this rate, we’ll hit the statutory debt limit in January and there’s no way for the Secretary of the Treasury to stall it this time because half of the annual interest payments to entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) are all due in December. These “interest” payments do not require any real money because it’s simply a matter of dumping more bogus bonds into trust funds for your kids to buy back (the most heinous part of the pay-it-again Sam scam), but it does dramatically increase the nation’s debt.

Last year, $87.6 billion was added to the Social Security trust fund alone by dumping more nonmarketable bonds into its account and calling it accrued interest. Now standing at $1.8 trillion, this year’s interest will top 90 billion with no one to pay off this debt except the same taxpaying public that provided surpluses in the first place. And people wonder where Enron learned its tricks.

To top it all off, Congress wants to be praised for voting to cut discretionary spending some fifty billion dollars over the next five years. That breaks down to about ten billion a year or two percent of the deficit they plan to run this year. Once you add in the money “borrowed” (stolen) from Social Security, this 2006 deficit is almost a half trillion. A two percent cut, isn’t that frugal?

It’s all a colossal joke that would bring tears to the eyes of any clown. Planning a budget so far over expected receipts is not the kind of fiscal responsibility Americans should expect and demand from their elected representatives. Congress certainly doesn’t deserve accolades for biting (tasting?) the bullet.

After being shot down in Argentina and Brazil on his South American free trade initiative, President Bush rushed off to Japan and China on what’s being billed as a push for human rights, religious freedom, democracy, and the protection of Taiwan – an island where we sheltered our old ally Chang Kai Chek and his entourage when they were ousted and an island still technically a Chinese territory. Guantanamo without a lease agreement.

It’s much more likely that Bush was on his knees begging them to loan us more money and not cash in the hundreds of billions they now hold in legitimate marketable and cashable treasuries. These are the same nations that some time ago warned us to get our financial house in order and are in a position to pull the rug of bankruptcy at any time they tire of our blatant aggressiveness.

In other words, it’s probable that the leaders of these Asian countries politely told Bush to go home and take care of his own people rather than trying to advise them.

At home, a category three hurricane should not have caused the damage it did to New Orleans . In the same season, we had two other major category three hurricanes that didn’t devastate entire cities on the same Gulf Coast. But Katrina, a storm that presented her “soft side” to Louisiana, caused the levees to fail after she passed over the Crescent City “bowl” with sustained winds NOAA reported at 95 miles per hour. Roofs weren’t blown off houses like they were in cities above sea level, but the levees that were supposed to withstand a category three storm broke and caused tremendous flooding resulting in severe damage and the displacement of almost a half million people that broadcasters hesitate to call refugees.

President Bush talks a great game when he promises to rebuild the Gulf Coast in “the greatest reconstruction effort the world has ever seen,” but who is going to pay for it, is it worth the cost, and how can we afford this while conducting a huge military operation in the Middle East and finally trying to do something about our broken borders?

So far, it doesn’t look like much of the money Bush has recently borrowed is finding its way into New Orleans or the hands of its former residents. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), that always was the largest flood insurer, has already run out of money and will probably default or make minor settlements on the policies held by those who were able to afford the high rates of this insurance. Neither have they provided the promised trailers; temporary dwellings that every homeowner in New Orleans was supposed to be able to live in while rebuilding their houses; and trailers that are hardly the thing to provide in a hurricane zone.

Like every other insurance company, FEMA was supposed to pay flood benefits from the premiums they’ve been charging people for years. That money was supposed to be invested wisely or held in trust where it might at least be gaining interest. But there is no FEMA or flood insurance trust fund, real or unreal. What it looks like is that the money collected for years has been spent elsewhere just as your supplemental retirement money has been spent on wars, invasions, and so forth.

Add in the major corporations like General Motors who haven’t left the country to survive and are now closing plants, cutting wages, and turning their health and pension plans over to the government to handle – plus rising energy costs in the face of winter heating – and you’ve got all the makings of a poor holiday retail sales season and a quagmire in our own country.

All while Washington twiddles its thumbs, appoints committees, plays party politics, condones torture, tries to determine who snitched on a spy, and whether our president and his cohorts lied to us about Saddam Hussein or were the victims of faulty information, plus not doing their job of regulating big business, allowing mergers that run out small local businesses, and generally trying to eliminate the middle class that made this country unique.

“Proud to be Union” industrial workers should be asking what their unions have done for them lately because it looks like the unions, in order to support and continue their own bureaucracies, are off supporting teachers and government workers or those who don’t seem to have been doing their jobs very well. More than 70 percent of AFL membership is now composed of government workers. And the majority of American workers are afraid of losing their jobs.

We’re already bankrupt, both morally and financially. We’re just living in the various stages of delusion and denial.

http://uncle-scam.com/Breaking/nov-05/br-8.html

Chancellor of Megalomania
by Balz

Who can be trusted to tell the United States people the TRUTH, when it appears Congress, Senate, the Supreme Court, and Corporate Media are on the Neocon payroll?

Day after day we hear of corruption in the Whitey House, the lies of Scotty (I never had menage a trois with Jeff and Karl) McClellan, and from a Supreme Court appointed pResident who is too paranoid to step outside of a military compound and speak to the public.

They spout values, while hiding their perverted agendas and if one thinks this is out of line, then investigate this:

Witnesses Claim GOP Strategist Participated in 'Gay Orgies'
Sexual misconduct and homosexuality "trendy" on Capitol Hill
by David Mullenax

Barnes Review News editor, Walter Storch, shocked the nation recently alleging chief Republican strategist, Karl Rove (pictured), participated in homosexual orgies in the Washington D.C. area.

”Karl Rove was seen by one of my people entering a private homosexual orgy at a five-star Washington hotel over the Mid-Atlantic Leather (MAL) weekend last year," the respected editor commented.

In a written statement Storch detailed the activities of the GOP strongman, and noted that homosexual activity is "trendy" on Capitol Hill. "Karl used to hang out at JR's, which is on 17th between P & S streets, before he became so well-known. This is a respectable gay bar for discreet people...," adding, "there is an expensive apartment...over near Dupont Circle that certain powerful senators take turns visiting with their pickups."

American voters recalled how the neo-conservative Republican platform paraded their anti-homosexual agenda, which many political pundits claim led to the re-election of President George W. Bush, and they are outraged over the latest story. Many staunch Republicans are embarrassed by the allegations and feel betrayed as Rove's alleged behavior runs contrary to previous party rhetoric.

Washington insiders suggest that bizarre sexual behavior and homosexual fetishes are commonplace among America's politicians.

TBR News, who carries an extensive selection of Barnes Review books and plans to serialize the personal correspondences of President Bush, reported that, "one Supreme Court Justice, several governors (all Republican) and at least one very prominent televangelist" are engaging in a variety of lurid sexual activities that the American public would find distasteful.

In a related story, former Nebraska state senator and attorney John DeCamp announced the arrest of photographer Russell E. "Rusty" Nelson, which occurred two days after the alleged suicide of journalist Hunter Thompson -- whose flamboyant writing became known as “gonzo journalism." Sources close to the investigation suggest Nelson's collection of sexually explicit photographs of U.S. politicians caught the attention of political muscle-men.

According to investigative journalist Tom Flocco, "both men [Nelson, Thompson] had allegedly witnessed homosexual prostitution and pedophile criminal acts in a suppressed but far-reaching child sex-ring probe closely linked to Senate and House members...” In a 1999 U.S. District court trial, the photographer Nelson had informed Judge Warren Urbom that he was in possession of over 30,000 pictures that would place a number of politicians in career ending situations.

During the same trial, Judge Urbom heard eye-witness testimony from a young boy who was kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery for U.S. politicians:

"Where were the parties?...down in Washington, DC... and that was for sex... There was sex between adult men and other adult men but most of it had to do with young boys and young girls with the older folks... specifically for sex with minors... Also in Washington, DC, there were parties after a party... there were a lot of parties where there would be senators and congressmen who had nothing to do with the sexual stuff. But there were some senators and congressmen who stayed for the [pedophile sex] parties afterwards... on a lot of the trips he took us on he had us, I mean, I met some people that I don't feel comfortable telling their name because I don't want to --- ...Q: Are you scared?...Yes..."

Patriotic European-Americans are demanding answers to the allegations of sexual misconduct, abuses, and homosexual orgies participated in by elected politicians. The Jewish-controlled mass-media blackout of these chilling stories is causing an increase in the skepticism felt by those seeking an honest and nationalist government.

National Vanguard
http://www.nationalvanguard.org/story.php?id=4711

Pattern of Megalomania
by Schuyler Ebbets

The Republicans were the first to use the term "coup d'etat" to describe the events surrounding the 2000 election. As each day passed without a clearly defined presidential leader fear and apprehension increased. Many believed that the absence of tanks in the streets proved that American democracy was still in tact. A flawed reasoning based on the assumption that a "coup d'etat" is always defined as the violent overthrow of a legitimate government, accompanied by arrests, executions, and torture. In reality a violent government takeover is more characteristic of a "putsch," and coups are usually covert in nature.

The events surrounding the November 7th, 2000 election were ominously similar to the CIA rigging of legitimate elections in Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador, and democracies around the world. In a government manual entitled "Coup d' Etat" by Edward Luttwak, a Washington think-tank insider with close ties to US intelligence, he says; “The power will come from the state itself. A coup consists of the infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder."

The hand full of men who seized power in the United States used the Supreme Court, “a small but critical segment of the state apparatus,” to facilitate their immediate takeover. The day after the September 11th, 2001 hijackings the Neocons established a shadow government absent of both legislative and judicial branches. On October 26th, 2001 President Bush signed the USA Patriot Act into law, abrogating Constitutional rights and the Bill of Rights, and facilitating the declaration of Martial Law. On November 5th, 2002 Bush signed The Homeland Security act, consolidating the duties of 22 federal agencies into one cabinet level Department of Homeland Security and strengthening Public Law 101-647. Signed by his father in November 1990, Law 101-647 allows Bush to declare a national emergency for almost any reason, an earthquake, a terrorist attack, or even an economic crisis. In the event of a Bush declared emergency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency – FEMA, is empowered to implement the horrific Executive Orders 10995 through 11005. As acting president of the United States during the declaration of a national emergency and Martial Law Bush can also issue Executive Orders, granting him far reaching powers to unilaterally create law without congressional oversight and approval.

We euphemistically refer to this little gang, which now threatens the world with their violent vision of the future, as the 'Neocons', the ‘radical right,’ and some have called them ‘fascists’. Although Cheney appears before the American people as the Vice president, he is truly the leader of the Neocons. Should this gang decide to declare martial law and implement the dictatorial shadow government, Cheney will be first in command and Bush will be his subordinate, according to a plan which is not based on the principles of presidential succession as defined by the US Constitution. The regime’s mastermind behind invasions and military takeovers is the controversial Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld serves as his media front man and helper. Some of the lesser gang members include Douglas Feith, number three at the Pentagon, I. Lewis Libby, a Wolfowitz clone assigned to the State Department, and Cheney's chief of staff, John R Bolton, a right-wing radical also assigned to the State Department to monitor Colin Powell.

This is not the first time that a great democracy has been infiltrated and forced to serve the interests of a few. There exists a chilling pattern of events surrounding the Bush regime’s rise to power and the emergence of Napoleon and Hitler. Among the most glaring of similarities between the infamous three is the manner by which they achieved their status as heads of state, none having been democratically elected by a clear majority of voters, but instead coming to power through the compromise of electoral processes, or by coup d'etat.

[Continue reading at Information Clearing House
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3735.htm]

The bible warns Satan's demons take on the image of God, similar to that done in Eden, (How else do they gain control of earth?): II Corinthians, 11:14

Satan is transformed into an angel of light. II Corinthians,11:15. His ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

The Antichrist is variously understood as being a consummately evil system of government or leader.

The Antichrist will be a leader who deceives many people.

The Antichrist will divide the world and create war without end.

The Antichrist will declare that things which are evil to be good.

The Antichrist will refer to war as peace, death as a solution for justice, and serving the wealthy as a means of helping the poor.

Many nations will recognize that he is evil, but his own people will be inclined to believe his deceptions

Crooks and Liars
John Amato's new On-Line, Virtual Magazine.
Home = http://www.crooksandliars.com/
Video = http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/11/27.html

Breaking News
GOD HAS SPOKEN?
by Blaz
[16:07:00 GMT - 11:07:00 EDT]

I was informed a chunk of marble at the top of the Supreme Court building, above the inscription "Equal Justice under Law", came crashing to the floor, shattered, and Nobody was injured. No links yet. But is this weird or what? (btw) Jesus would never lie, harm, injure, torture, or kill...nor would he turn a neighbor away. Maybe it's time to check your so called Christian values at the door and consider Peace! [Updated: the links]

Losing the Fear Factor
by Tom Engelhardt

It's finally Wizard of Oz time in America. You know – that moment when the curtains are pulled back, the fearsome-looking wizard wreathed in all that billowing smoke turns out to be some pitiful little guy, and everybody looks around sheepishly, wondering why they acted as they did for so long.

Starting on Sept. 11, 2001 – with a monstrous helping hand from Osama bin Laden – the Bush administration played the fear card with unbelievable effectiveness. For years, with its companion "war on terror," it trumped every other card in the American political deck. With an absurd system for color-coding dangers to Americans, the president, the vice president, and the highest officials in this land were able to paint the media a "high" incendiary orange and the Democrats an "elevated" bright yellow, functionally sidelining them.

How stunningly in recent weeks the landscape has altered – almost like your basic hurricane sweeping through some unprotected and unprepared city. Now, to their amazement, Bush administration officials find themselves thrust through the equivalent of a Star-Trekian wormhole into an anti-universe where everything that once worked for them seems to work against them. As always, in the face of domestic challenge, they have responded by attacking – a tactic that was effective for years. The president, vice president, national security adviser, and others have ramped up their assaults, functionally accusing Democratic critics of little short of treason – of essentially undermining American forces in the field, if not offering aid and comfort to the enemy. On his recent trip to Asia, the president put it almost as bluntly as his vice president did at home: "As our troops fight a ruthless enemy determined to destroy our way of life, they deserve to know that their elected leaders who voted to send them into war continue to stand behind them." The Democrats were, he said over and over, "irresponsible" in their attacks. Dick Cheney called them spineless "opportunists" peddling dishonestly for political advantage.

But instead of watching the Democrats fall silent under assault as they have for years, they unexpectedly found themselves facing a roiling oppositional hubbub threatening the unity of their own congressional party. In his sudden, heartfelt attack on Bush administration Iraq plans ("a flawed policy wrapped in illusion") and his call for a six-month timetable for American troop withdrawal, Democratic congressional hawk John Murtha took on the Republicans over their attacks more directly than any mainstream Democrat has ever done. ("I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done. I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he [Bush] criticized Democrats for criticizing them.") Perhaps more important, as an ex-Marine and decorated Vietnam veteran clearly speaking for a military constituency (and possibility some Pentagon brass), he gave far milder and more "liberal" Democrats cover.

For the first time since the war in Iraq began, "tipping points," constantly announced in Iraq but never quite in sight, have headed for home. Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president and drafter of recent presidential attacks on the Democrats, told David Sanger of the New York Times that "Bush's decision to fight back … arose after he became concerned the [Iraq] debate was now at a tipping point"; while Howard Fineman of Newsweek dubbed Murtha himself a "one-man tipping point."

Something indeed did seem to tip, for when the White House and associates took Murtha on, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, and other Democrats leaped aggressively to his defense. In fact, something quite unimaginable even a few days earlier occurred. When Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt of Ohio, the most junior member of the House, accused Murtha (via a Marine colonel from her district) of being a coward, Democratic Representative Harold Ford from Tennessee "charged across the chamber's center aisle to the Republican side screaming that Ms. Schmidts' attack had been unwarranted. 'You guys are pathetic!' yelled Representative Martin Meehan, Democrat of Massachusetts. 'Pathetic.'"

There could, however, be no greater sign of a politically changed landscape than the decision of former President Bill Clinton (who practically had himself adopted into the Bush family over the last year) to tell a group of Arab students in Dubai only two-and-a-half years late that the Iraqi invasion was a "big mistake." Since he is undoubtedly a stalking horse for his wife, that great, cautious ship-of-nonstate, the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, should soon turn its prow ever so slowly to catch the oppositional winds.)

If you want to wet an index finger yourself and hoist it airwards to see which way the winds are blowing, then just check out how the media has been framing in headlines the recent spate of administration attacks. Headline writing is a curious in-house craft – and well worth following. Changing headline language is a good signal that something's up. When the president attacks, it's now commonly said that he's "lashing out" – an image of emotional disarray distinctly at odds with the once-powerful sense of the Bush administration as the most disciplined White House on record and of the president and vice president as resolutely unflappable. Here's just a small sampling:

The Miami Herald, "President Lashes Out at Critics of Iraq War"; the Associated Press, "Cheney Latest to Lash Out at Critics"; the Buffalo News, "Bush Lashes Out at War Critics"; even the Voice of America, "Bush Lashes Out at Political Opponents Over Iraq Accusations."

In other headlines last week, the administration was presented in post-Oz style as beleaguered, under siege, and powerless to control its own fate: The Associated Press, for example, headlined a recent Jennifer Loven piece, "Iraq War Criticism Stalks Bush Overseas"; the New York Times, a David Sanger report, "Iraq Dogs President as He Crosses Asia to Promote Trade"; and CNN headlined the Murtha events, "A Hawk Rattles GOP's Cage."

The language used in such recent press accounts was no less revealing. Sanger, for example, began his piece this way:

"President Bush may have come to Asia determined to show leaders here that his agenda is far broader than Iraq and terrorism, but at every stop, and every day, Mr. Bush and his aides have been fighting a rearguard action to justify how the United States got into Iraq and how to get out."

While Loven launched hers with, "His war policies under siege at home…," attributing the siege atmosphere and the Bush "counterattack" to "the president's newly aggressive war critics."

Lashing out, stalked, dogged, under siege, counterattacking, fighting a rearguard action – let's not just attribute this to "newly aggressive war critics." It's a long-coming shift in the zeitgeist, as evident in the media as in the halls of Congress.

On Thursday, for instance, ABC primetime TV news, which led with a story on the president "lashing out" at critics, then offered a long, up-close-and-personal segment in which a teary-eyed Murtha spoke of the war-wounded he's regularly visited at hospitals and the fraudulence of administration policy. That same night, another primetime news broadcast turned the president's claim that the Democrats were "irresponsible" in their criticisms into a montage of Bush repeatedly saying "irresponsible" in different poses – so many times in a row, in fact, that the segment could easily have come from a sharp opening sequence on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show.

None of this would have been possible even weeks ago in a country where it was once gospel that you don't attack a president while he's representing the United States abroad. That's why, in the Watergate era, Richard Nixon had such a propensity for trips overseas and undoubtedly why our stay-at-home president's handlers decided to turn him into a Latin American and Asian globetrotter. The question is: How did this happen? What changed the zeitgeist, and where are we heading?

Poll-Driven Politics

Polls are, it might be said, what's left of American democracy. Privately run, often for profit or advantage, they nonetheless are as close as we come these days – actual elections being what they are – to the expression of democratic opinion, serially, week after week. Everyone who matters in and out of Washington and in the media reads them as if life itself were at stake. They drive behavior and politics. Fear, too, is a poll-driven phenomenon. Not surprisingly then, it was the moment late last spring when presidential approval ratings fell decisively below the 50 percent mark and looked to be heading for 40 percent, that the White House took anxious note and so, no less important, did a previously cowed media. Somewhere in that period, the fear factor, right in the administration's hands, was transformed into a feeling fearful factor. As I've written elsewhere, faced with the mother of a dead soldier on their doorstep, all the president's men blinked and the Camp Casey fiasco followed. Soon after, before hurricane Cindy could even blow out of town, hurricane Katrina blew in and the president's ratings headed for free fall. In just the last month, they look as if they had been shoved over a small cliff, dipping in the latest Harris and Wall Street Journal polls to an almost unheard-of 34 percent (only five points above Richard Nixon's at his Watergate nadir).

The poll numbers that once gave the administration's fear factor meaning have simply evaporated – as have any figures that might indicate that this administration is capable of stanching its own wounds. Emboldening media and political opposition in Washington, such figures give Murtha-like cover to behavior that not long ago would have been unthinkable. A record 60 percent of Americans surveyed in the most recent USA Today poll, including one in four Republicans, said "the war wasn't 'worth it.' One in five Republicans said the invasion of Iraq was a mistake." Those who felt things were "going well" for the country as a whole dropped nine percentage points in a month.

Democrats long ago fled the ranks of presidential supporters, as more recently have independents; now moderate Republicans are beginning to peel away too. According to Tom Raum of the Associated Press,"[Bush's] approval on handling Iraq fell from 87 percent among all Republicans in November 2004 to 78 percent this month. Among Republican women, from 88 percent a year ago to 73 percent now. Among independents, approval on Iraq fell from 49 percent in November 2004 to 33 percent now." If you want a figure that, from the administration's viewpoint, offers a frightening glimpse into a possible future, consider the 79 percent of Americans who believe I. Lewis Libby's indictment is "of importance to the nation"; this, despite Republican claims that the grounds for indicting were insignificant, and a new Libby defense fund made up of Republican high-rollers and assorted neocons.

In other words, replace the still emotionally charged issues of the war in Iraq and the president's actions, where, at 34-40 percent, a bedrock base of support remains more or less intact, with a less charged ethics-in-government issue, and that vaunted Rock of Gibraltar shatters. This is the previously inconceivable future so many Republican politicians suddenly fear.

Just for the heck of it, throw in another factor – "intensity" – and you have an even more volatile picture, given the lack of positive, potentially mobilizing news on the domestic and foreign horizons. E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post suggests that the polling figures are even worse than they look because intensity of feeling on the war issue is now "on the side of the war's opponents." He adds:

"The findings on the strength of feelings about the war were matched by the intensity of feelings about Bush himself: Only 20 percent of those surveyed said they strongly approved of the overall job Bush was doing, while 47 percent strongly disapproved. A president who has always played to his base finds that his base is steadily shrinking."

In other words, doubt and demoralization are setting in – a political rot that can do untold damage. Given how many independents and moderate Republicans who once supported the war have changed their minds, the scathing attacks on Democrats for mind-changing on the war may not prove a winning strategy either. They may, as Raum comments, "backfire on Republicans."

But here's a question: Can we trace Bush's polling near-collapse to its origins anywhere? In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine under the eerie title, "The Iraq Syndrome" (subscription only), John Mueller, an expert on how wars affect presidencies, offers a canny, cool-eyed interpretation of changing American opinion on Iraq. He tracks polling data on the three sustained wars – Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq – the U.S. has fought in the last half-century-plus where we took more than 300 casualties.

All three show approximately the same polling pattern: broad enthusiasm at the outset, a relatively quick and steep falloff in support, followed by steady erosion thereafter from which no long-term presidential recovery seems possible (certainly not via heightened rhetoric). In all three wars, as support fell, pro-withdrawal sentiment rose. Though some experts link this pattern to an American "defeat-phobia," Mueller points out that, in cases like Lebanon in the Reagan years and Somalia in the Clinton era, Americans have been quite capable of swallowing withdrawal and defeat (of a sort) without making the presidents involved pay any significant political cost.

The crucial factor in loss of support for each of these wars, Mueller insists, is a growing casualty list, and not just any casualties either – only American ones. (The fact that "vastly more" Iraqis have died than all the victims of "all international terrorists in all of history" matters little, he observes, in American popular judgments on the war.) What makes Iraq stand out in this list of three "is how much more quickly support has eroded in the case of Iraq. By early 2005, when combat deaths were around 1,500, the percentage of respondents who considered the Iraq war a mistake – over half – was about the same as the percentage who considered the war in Vietnam a mistake at the time of the 1968 Tet offensive, when nearly 20,000 soldiers had already died."

If Mueller's right, then the steady drip of American casualties – many less dead and many more wounded than in Korea and Vietnam, in part because of improved medical care and triage techniques – has seeped deeply into American consciousness. This seems so, despite the administration's careful attempt to keep returning bodies and individual funerals out of sight and so out of mind; despite the fact that the American dead – 60 soldiers in the first 19 days of October – have largely been kept off the front pages of American papers and photos of dead Americans off television (where dead Iraqis can regularly be seen). Short of massive draw-downs of American forces in Iraq, there is no casualty end in sight for this administration; and drawing down ground forces (while substituting air power for them), as Richard Nixon learned in his "Vietnamization" program, only solves a home-front problem at the cost of creating staggering problems on the war front.

For an administration still fighting "withdrawal" with all its strength, this may prove a problem with no exit – further casualties acting as a motor propelling the unhappiness that changes more minds and pushes falling polling figures ever downward, propelling unease about the country, which only leads to escalating casualty figures of another kind – those growing defections from the ranks of your core political supporters.

When Agendas Go Bump in the Night

To put the present crisis in some perspective, you could say that two central agendas of the Bush administration proved to be in conflict, although for years this was less than evident (even to the players involved). There was the long-planned neoconservative drive to invade Iraq and, through that act, begin to remake the Middle East. The neocons were backed in this by Vice President Cheney and his crew in the vice-presidential office as well as allied figures like John Bolton, Stephen Hadley, and (some of the time) Donald Rumsfeld, none of whom were necessarily neocons. The motives this disparate group held for remaking the region in their image ranged from the urge to establish a planetary, militarily enforced Pax Americana and/or an urge to control the oil heartlands of the planet to a desire – from the Likudniks in the administration – to secure the region for an ascendant Sharonista Israel.

Whatever the overlapping motivations, at the heart of this policy lay an urge to unleash a constitutionally unfettered "war president" on the world. (Torture was a crucial issue in all of this largely because, once established as an essential tool of the war on terror, it would be proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that George Bush's presidency had been freed of all restraints.) Put into full effect on March 20, 2003, when the "war on terror" melded into an invasion of Iraq, the policy was meant to place in the president's hands every global lever of power that mattered for all time.

It now seems far clearer that the endless fallout from the fatal decision to invade Iraq is eating away at another agenda entirely, one that emerged from the domestic political wing of this administration – from Karl Rove, Andrew Card, Tom DeLay, and their ilk. This was the Republican desire to nail down the country as a purely red (as in red-meat) Republican land. The vetting of the K-Street lobbying crowd, the increasing control over the flow of corporate dollars into politics, the gerrymandering of congressional districts to create an election-proof House of Representatives, the mobilization of a religious base dedicated to an endless set of culture wars, the ushering in of a right-wing Supreme Court, and so many other activities were all meant to create an impregnable Republican Party in control of every lever of power in our country into an endless future.

The unfettered, imperial president and the unfettered, imperial Republican Party were joined at the hip by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which led to both the "war on terror" abroad and the PATRIOT Act and the Homeland Security Department domestically. Had the Bush administration pursued both agendas, minus an invasion of Iraq, the two might have remained joined far longer. The crucial invasion decision, made almost immediately by the neocon war party backed by the president, was supported by White House Chief of Staff Andrew ("From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August") Card and Karl ("the architect") Rove, both of whom believed that a good war, well promoted and correctly wielded domestically, might drive a Republican agenda to eternal domination in America. None of them expected that it would prove to be the wedge driven between the two agendas.

The first hint of this was caught perfectly in a classic headline: On May 2, 2003, George Bush co-piloted an Air Force jet onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln (carefully kept thirty miles out of its San Diego home port so that the president could have his "top gun" photo-op instead of climbing a gangplank like any normal being). Following this "historic landing," he stepped up to an on-deck podium where, under a White House banner that read "Mission Accomplished," he declared that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." This was clearly meant to be the stunning start of the president's campaign for reelection in 2004, a classic piece of Rovian image manipulation and a nail in the coffin of the Democratic Party. And so it seemed to most at the time.

But if you revisit the CNN story about the landing and speech, headlined "Bush calls end to 'major combat,'" it's hard now not to note the subhead lurking just under it: "U.S. Central Command: Seven Hurt in Fallujah Grenade Attack." Seven wounded American soldiers – that really says it all. The photo-op that was meant for the reelection campaign was already being undermined by another story; two policies yoked together were already pulling in different directions. Our present moment was already being born, unnoticed but in plain sight.

Now both agendas are in disarray with no help whatsoever on the horizon. Imagine, for instance, that the South Koreans timed the announcement of the withdrawal of the first of their troops from (Kurdish) northern Iraq for the moment the president arrived in their country. Imagine that Tony Blair's people are now said to be perfecting total withdrawal plans for next year, and that the president recently may have had to slap down the top American general in Iraq for suggesting withdrawal (or at least draw-down) plans of his own. Imagine that various European nations are now investigating (or in the case of an Italian court charging) American agents in the war on terror with crimes. Imagine that the president, who often insisted Saddam had been overthrown to rid Iraq of its torture chambers ("the torture chambers and the secret police are gone forever") and to end the reign of a "murderous tyrant who … used chemical weapons to kill thousands of people," now faces a "tip-of-the-iceberg" torture scandal in Iraq involving the people we've brought to power and another spreading scandal about the American use of a chemical-like weapon, white phosphorus, on civilians in the city of Fallujah. Imagine that we proved less capable than Saddam of delivering basics like electricity and potable water to the people of Iraq, that we squandered billions of taxpayer dollars in "reconstruction" funds there, and that we face an insurgency that continues to grow and spread in opposition to a shabby elected government all but in league with the Iranians. Imagine that the president's Iraq War is now devouring his presidency and that it can only get worse.

The Middle East is a sea of political gasoline just waiting for the odd administration match or two; American foreign policy is in a kind of disarray for which even the final days of Vietnam offer no comparison; while at home, the Delay, Frist, Libby, and Abramoff scandals (and associated indictments) can only grow and spread. Special Counsel Fitzgerald has just announced his decision to impanel a new grand jury, sure to drive the Plame scandal ever deeper and higher into the administration and ever closer to the 2006 elections or possibly beyond. It would be easy to go on, but you get the idea.

It is a truism of American politics that voters are almost never driven to the polls by foreign policy. In this case, however, the war in Iraq has chased the president and his men ever since he landed on that carrier deck. How little he knew what he was asking for when, in a moment of bravado, he said of the Iraqi insurgents, "Bring 'em on." He just barely beat the erosive effects of his war to the polls in November 2004. Now, it continues to eat inexorably into the heartland of Republican political domination. Even Republican discipline in Congress – without the Hammer's hammer – has disintegrated under the heat of the war. As Chris Nelson wrote recently in his Washington insider's newsletter, The Nelson Report:

"The stunning swiftness of the bipartisan Congressional collapse of support for the administration's conduct of the war in Iraq, and by extension the entire anti-terrorism effort, is such that it has not been fully appreciated by the 'leadership' of either party. That's the real meaning of a Senate vote which Republicans tried to spin into a victory for the president, because they avoided the Democrat's amendment to set performance-based withdrawal deadlines."

Now, the war threatens to crack open the Republican base and chase the dream of a single-party Republican political future – only recently so close – right off the map. No wonder the Democrats have just come out swinging (sort of). The political shock and awe the administration so regularly deployed after Sept. 11, 2001, no longer works. The Democrats suddenly have discovered that – no thanks to them – the American people are somewhere else, and they have little to fear from George Bush or Dick Cheney. No presidential "counterattack," no "lashing out," no set of speeches or new agenda (to be announced in the 2006 State of the Union Address or anywhere else) is likely to change any of this for the better for this president. Fear is no longer on the Bush administration's side. No wonder they're now afraid – very, very afraid.

Tom Engelhardt, who runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com ("a regular antidote to the mainstream media"), is the co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of American triumphalism in the Cold War. His novel, The Last Days of Publishing, has just come out in paperback.

Copyright 2005 Tom Engelhardt
http://www.antiwar.com/

Senate and Congress Have Failed U.S.
[Who voted in favor of War and passed pay raises for themselves?]
We Need Another Choice
"None of the Above"
http://www.NobodyForPresident.org

What Goes Around, Comes Around
1992

Mr. Speaker, last week I showed that this administration, President Bush's administration, deliberately and not inadvertently helped to arm Iraq by allowing United States technology to be shipped to the Iraqi military and to the Iraqi weapons factories. Throughout the course of the Bush administration, United States and foreign firms were granted export licenses to ship United States technology directly to Iraqi weapons facilities, despite ample evidence showing that these factories were producing weapons.

I also showed how the President misled the Congress and the public about the role United States firms played in arming Iraq.

Today I will show that the highest levels of the Bush administration, including the President himself, had specific knowledge of Iraq's military industrialization plans, and despite that knowledge, the President mandated the policy of coddling Saddam Hussein as spelled out in National Security Directive 26 (NSD-26) issued in October 1989. This policy was not changed until after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, by which time the Bush administration had sent Saddam Hussein billions of dollars in United States financial assistance, technology and useful military intelligence information.

I will also show how the President's policy of appeasing Saddam Hussein was at odds with those in the administration who saw Iraq as a major proliferation threat. This will help set the stage for next week's report which will discuss Iraq's clandestine technology procurement network and the Italian bank agency in Atlanta's role in funding that network.

Henry B. Gonzalez, (TX-20) - (House of Representatives - July 27, 1992)
http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/congress/1992/h920727g.htm

The Iran-Contra Scandal in Perspective
http://nsarchive.chadwyck.com/icessayx.htm

Bush Meets Godzilla
[Click Above for Short 400 KB FLASH Animation]

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