Besides Diebold, we have serious problems with voter’s having to jump through hoops to get a photo ID … and I seriously question such a need. This is personal with me as I’ve been battling the system to get a copy of my birth certificate for months in order to renew my [now expired] driver’s license; here in Roy Blunt’s home state, we took up the new “proof of citizenship” requirements last year. I was born a few months after the end of the war in what served as a temporary wartime hospital; I’m still being “looked for” — now they’re hunting through the microfiche. Meanwhile, I’m out scout, and I can’t tell you how aggravated I am with this whole process.
Such is our infamous Homeland Security, where Who Knows What can come in via container through any port … Who Knows What will be lifted out of your personal luggage before getting on a plane … and Who Knows How thousands of old, poor or disadvantaged folks will be “guaranteed” their vote under a system that is paranoid by intent and designed to keep them away from the polls by making the hurdles too difficult to leap.
A local radio talk show recently featured a caller who had these same questions — the DJ said that if people couldn’t get a photo ID, then they were too stupid to vote.
Oh REALLY! I would say that the stupid ALREADY voted — and look at the fine mess we’re in today. Perhaps when I’ve finally proved that I am who I’ve always been, I’ll drive down and tell him so to his face.
Miffed, dearhearts … I’m very, very miffed. And fretful about our voting situation in the Land of the Free [?!] and Home of the Brave.
Diebold update, last.
Jude
Photo IDs are solution to problem that doesn’t exist
GOP attempts to scare nation with nonexistent hordes of illegal voters
Cynthia Tucker, Universal Press Syndicate
09.25.06
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=21408
Republican leaders have discovered a grave threat to American democracy that most of us apparently had not noticed: Everywhere, in big states and small, red enclaves and blue, bustling metropolises and rural hamlets, impostors are flocking to the polls to vote under false pretenses. Apparently, the nation has been overrun by fake voters.
What else would explain the GOP’s insistence on using its power to ram through requirements that voters show government-issued photo IDs at the ballot box? Last week the GOP-dominated House passed a measure requiring voters to show government-issued photo IDs to vote in federal elections by 2008.
“Americans should have their votes counted, and not negated by an illegal alien,” said U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind.
Similarly, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue and his state Republican colleagues have backed a stringent state requirement for government-issued photo IDs. (Last week, Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford struck down Georgia’s voter ID law, ruling it violates the state’s constitution. The state is expected to appeal.)
Announcing a plan earlier this month to crack down on fraudulent documents, Perdue said, “It’s simply unacceptable for people to sneak into the country illegally on Thursday, obtain a government-issued ID on Friday, head for the welfare office on Friday and go to vote on Tuesday.”
Now, you can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of a single case in which an illegal immigrant successfully used a fake ID to vote. Neither Burton nor Perdue presented evidence of any such cases.
“People who look carefully at this thing, there’s very little ‘there’ there — very little fraud,” said Thomas Patterson, an expert on elections at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. “If you are an illegal immigrant, the last thing you want to do is show up at a polling place. … We have enough trouble getting people to vote when they’re eligible. The idea that people are going to stick their necks out and get (a) penalty stretches the imagination.”
Patterson notes that the voting and registration rules that apply in much of this country are already more stringent than those in most Western European democracies. In much of Western Europe, for example, the postal service simply notifies voter registration officials when a citizen moves, and his voting precinct is automatically changed. “Here, the onus is on the citizen. You kind of sense that the ballot box belongs to registration officials instead of the citizens,” he said.
The 2004 presidential election followed a campaign that centered on the threat of terrorism, following the worst attack on American territory since Pearl Harbor. Even with those high stakes, only 60 percent of eligible voters bothered to cast ballots.
In the presidential election of 2000, 51 percent of eligible citizens voted. In 1996, about 49 percent cast ballots; in 1992, about 55 percent. In Georgia’s last gubernatorial election, about half the eligible citizens cast a ballot. In Arizona, an enterprising political activist has proposed placing each voter’s name in a draw for a million-dollar lottery, in an effort to boost participation.
Yet, the lack of a problem has made Republicans no less insistent on a solution. It makes you wonder whether they are up to something other than ferreting out voter fraud. Even if there is a legitimate need for a single, government-sponsored identification card in an age of terrorism, it would take years — and a well-organized, government-funded effort — to place those IDs in the hands of every elderly and rural American in out-of-the-way hamlets and every American of color in down-at-the-heels urban neighborhoods.
Of course, Republicans know that. They also know that most minority voters tend to cast their ballots for Democrats; so do many low-income elderly voters. Since those voters are less likely to have driver’s licenses, it’s a safe bet that requiring a photo ID at the polls will shave off a few Democratic voters — enough to make a difference in close races.
The GOP has given up making its policies broadly appealing. Instead, it works hard at keeping a certain slice of voters from the polls. Their focus on blocking the ballot box seems especially harsh — and hypocritical — at the very time that President Bush has claimed that spreading democratic ideals is the centerpiece of American foreign policy. How can we export democracy to Iraq if we are so uncomfortable with it here at home?
The ‘Harder To Vote’ Act
Wade Henderson
September 21, 2006
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/21/the_harder_to_vote_act.php
Wade Henderson is the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
Just two months ago, the nation watched Congress, both House and Senate, overwhelmingly reaffirm a commitment to voting rights when it reauthorized the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law guarantees access to the voting booth for all Americans for the next 25 years.
So it boggles the mind why we are having yet another national discussion about who can and cannot vote in this country.
Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed the “Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006″ (HR 4844), sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., which would require all voters to obtain and show government-issued photo IDs proving their citizenship before they could vote.
Proponents of this ill-advised legislation say it is necessary to prevent voter misrepresentation—people showing up at the polls pretending to be someone they’re not.
While our electoral system isn’t perfect, the supporters of this bill are inflating voter fraud into a problem that just doesn’t exist. Congress and the states have proven extremely successful at preventing non-citizens from voting and ensuring that voters are who they claim to be.
Far greater problems loom over the electoral system than voter misrepresentation—scarcity of polling places, ill-prepared poll workers, faulty voting machines and lack of language-appropriate voting materials, to name just a few.
Just one week ago, on September 12, for example, countless voters in Montgomery County, Maryland, went to vote in the primary and found their regular polling places shuttered. In other cases, they were confronted with broken voting machines and a lack of paper ballots, with the result that they were turned away, disenfranchised, unable to cast their votes
Far from addressing such structural problems, the House-passed legislation creates another one—one that would disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of registered voters.
On the surface, the bill seems reasonable. Many citizens might wonder what’s wrong with showing their government-issued driver’s license when they go to vote. But most states don’t require proof of citizenship to issue a person a driver’s license.
The only document that meets the bill’s requirement for proof of citizenship is a passport. According to the State Department, only 25 percent of Americans over age 18 have a passport. Passports can cost as much as $100.
In order to get a passport, you need your birth certificate. Do you know where your birth certificate is?
Many would probably have to pay for a replacement copy of their birth certificate so they could get a passport. At least another $20.
Let’s face it: HR 4844 is the equivalent of a poll tax since voters would have to pay for a passport to prove their citizenship in order to vote.
So we are left then to wonder why the need for this reckless law that will actually discourage, confuse and discriminate against voters. If passed, this onerous bill would prevent many eligible voters from exercising their right to vote, disproportionately affecting people of color, the elderly, individuals with disabilities, rural and Native American voters, the homeless, low-income people and married women, who studies show to be less likely to carry a photo ID.
Election reform in this country is necessary and a very serious matter, but HR 4844 is simply not the vehicle to address it.
The Senate is due to take up the bill shortly. We expect that, like its 98-0 vote to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, the Senate will give measured consideration of this bill and put an end to attempts to disenfranchise American voters.
Officials Wary of Electronic Voting Machines
IAN URBINA
September 24, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/24/us/politics/24voting.html
WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A growing number of state and local officials are getting cold feet about electronic voting technology, and many are making last-minute efforts to limit or reverse the rollout of new machines in the November elections.
Less than two months before voters head to the polls, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. of Maryland this week became the most recent official to raise concerns publicly. Mr. Ehrlich, a Republican, said he lacked confidence in the state’s new $106 million electronic voting system and suggested a return to paper ballots.
Dozens of states have adopted electronic voting technology to comply with federal legislation in 2002 intended to phase out old-fashioned lever and punch-card machines after the “hanging chads” confusion of the 2000 presidential election.
But some election officials and voting experts say they fear that the new technology may have only swapped old problems for newer, more complicated ones. Their concerns became more urgent after widespread problems with the new technology were reported this year in primaries in Ohio, Arkansas, Illinois, Maryland and elsewhere.
This year, about one-third of all precincts nationwide are using the electronic voting technology for the first time, raising the chance of problems at the polls as workers struggle to adjust to the new system.
“I think there is good reason for concern headed into the midterm elections,” said Richard F. Celeste, a Democrat and former Ohio governor who was co-chairman of a study of new machines for the National Research Council with Richard L. Thornburgh, a Republican and former governor of Pennsylvania.
“You have to train the poll workers,” Mr. Celeste said, “especially since many of them are of a generation for whom this technology is a particular challenge. You need to have plans in place to relocate voters to another precinct if machines don’t work, and I just don’t know whether these steps have been taken.”
Paperless touch-screen machines have been the biggest source of consternation, and with about 40 percent of registered voters nationally expected to cast their ballots on these machines in the midterm elections, many local officials fear that the lack of a paper trail will leave no way to verify votes in case of fraud or computer failure.
As a result, states are scrambling to make last-minute fixes before the technology has its biggest test in November, when voter turnout will be higher than in the primaries, many races will be close and the threat of litigation will be ever-present.
“We have the real chance of recounts in the coming elections, and if you have differences between the paper trail and the electronic record, which number prevails?” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles and the author of the Election Law blog, www.electionlawblog.org.
Professor Hasen found that election challenges filed in court grew to 361 in 2004, up from 197 in 2000. “What you have coming up is the intersection of new technology and an unclear legal regime,” he said.
Like Mr. Ehrlich, other state officials have decided on a late-hour change of course. In January, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico decided to reverse plans to use the touch-screen machines, opting instead to return to paper ballots with optical scanners. Last month, the Connecticut secretary of state, Susan Bysiewicz, decided to do the same.
“I didn’t want my state to continue being an embarrassment like Ohio and Florida every four years,” said Mr. Richardson, a Democrat, adding, “I also thought we needed to restore voter confidence, and that wasn’t going to happen with the touch-screen machines.”
In Pennsylvania, a state senator introduced a bill last week that would require every precinct to provide voters with the option to use paper ballots, which would involve printing extra absentee ballots and having them on site. A similar measure is being considered on the federal level.
In the last year or so, at least 27 states have adopted measures requiring a paper trail, which has often involved replacing paperless touch-screen machines with ones that have a printer attached.
But even the systems backed up by paper have problems. In a study released this month, the nonpartisan Election Science Institute found that about 10 percent of the paper ballots sampled from the May primary in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, were uncountable because printers had jammed and poll workers had loaded the paper in backward.
Lawsuits have been filed in Colorado, Arizona, California, Pennsylvania and Georgia seeking to prohibit the use of touch-screen machines.
Deborah L. Markowitz, the Vermont secretary of state and the president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, said that while there might be some problems in November, she expected them to be limited and isolated.
“The real story of the recent primary races was how few problems there were, considering how new this technology is,” said Ms. Markowitz, a Democrat. “The failures we did see, like in Maryland, Ohio and Missouri, were small and most often from poll workers not being prepared.”
Many states have installed the machines in the past year because of a federal deadline. If states wanted to take advantage of federal incentives offered by the Help America Vote Act, they had to upgrade their voting machines by 2006.
In the primary last week in Maryland, several counties reported machine-related problems, including computers that misidentified the party affiliations of voters, electronic voter registration lists that froze and voting-machine memory cards whose contents could not be electronically transmitted. In Montgomery County, election workers did not receive access cards to voting machines for the county’s 238 precincts on time, forcing as many as 12,000 voters to use provisional paper ballots until they ran out.
“We had a bad experience in the primary that led to very long lines, which means people get discouraged and leave the polls without voting,” said Governor Ehrlich, who is in a tight re-election race and has been accused by his critics of trying to use the voting issue to motivate his base. “We have hot races coming up in November and turnout will be high, so we can expect lines to be two or three times longer. If even a couple of these machines break down, we could be in serious trouble.”
Problems during primaries elsewhere have been equally severe.
In the Illinois primary in March, Cook County officials delayed the results of the county board elections for a week because of human and mechanical problems at hundreds of sites with new voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems.
In the April primary in Tarrant County, Tex., machines made by Hart InterCivic counted some ballots as many as six times, recording 100,000 more votes than were cast. The problem was attributed to programming errors, not hacking.
In the past year, the Government Accountability Office, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the Congressional Research Service have released reports raising concerns about the security of electronic machines.
Advocates of the new technology dispute the conclusions.
“Many of these are exaggerated accusations by a handful of vocal activists,” said Mark Radke, director of marketing for Diebold Election Systems, one of the largest sellers of touch-screen machines. “But if you want to talk about fraud and tabulation error, the newer technology is far more accurate.”
Mr. Radke cited a study from the California Institute of Technology that found that between the 2000 election, when touch-screen machines were not used, and the 2004 election, when they were, there was a 40 percent reduction in voter error in Maryland, making the vote there the most accurate in the country.
“There is always the potential for human error,” Mr. Radke said, “but that is easily correctible.”
But critics say bugs and hackers could corrupt the machines.
A Princeton University study released this month on one of Diebold’s machines — a model that Diebold says it no longer uses — found that hackers could easily tamper with electronic voting machines by installing a virus to disable the machines and change the vote totals.
Mr. Radke dismissed the concerns about hackers and bugs as most often based on unrealistic scenarios.
“We don’t leave these machines sitting on a street corner,” he said. “But in one of these cases, they gave the hackers complete and unfettered access to the machines.”
Warren Stewart, legislative director for VoteTrustUSA, an advocacy group that has criticized electronic voting, said that after poll workers are trained to use the machines in the days before an election, many counties send the machines home with the workers. “That seems like pretty unfettered access to me,” Mr. Stewart said.
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)
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September 25th, 2006
With Bush’s [wee] Brain [amplified and walking around in that pudgy little Karl] promising his cohorts a handy October Surprise to boost their flagging numbers, we should be prepared for the worst … shouldn’t take much, each day brings us a new “worst” — we’re used to it now.
Unfortunately, the “worst” in the hands of this radical administration still comes as a dreadful shock to the public, who appears to believe that as bad as these guys are, they still play by the “rules.” Not. Not — not — NOT. Therefore, we need to look carefully for the tell-tale preparations to bomb Iran into glass at a useful pre-election moment.
Dubby has officially entered the defined perimeters of “Lame Duck” — although he’s actually been more Quack than Waddle for a number of months, now. He has a limited amount of time to accomplish his skewed goals, and if the Dem’s gain control in the elections it will be even harder to put Armageddon into play.
Ahmadinejad’s speech to the UN did not help Dubby’s cause — the American public saw a man with very different ideas than theirs, but he did not drip venom, he did not have two heads, horns nor tail … he was not the face of “evil.” They are more likely, now, to ask why Bush does not talk to this man — indeed, Iran has asked for dialogue again and again … and the Dub has no such intention.
Bombing Iran would be insane, you say? Why, yes … yes it would. And that should be no surprise, either. When cornered, Bush goes rogue and defiant — he always has. Lame Duck, unpopular and poised on possible defeat in the Congress, he will revert to type — and his window of opportunity is closing fast.
You can just FEEL the bubbling, brewing resentment in his psyche, can’t you? Precision strikes on Iran would show those sissy-pants critic’s of Rummy a thing or two — stop this silly quibble about bringing troops home from Iraq when beefing up the numbers has been in the works for some time as the Iranian plans go forward. We’ll need those warm bodies soon enough.
And Georgie don’t need no stinkin’ permission to create a new battle theatre — he has made himself a ‘war president,’ pretends all the powers of a Divine Emperor and he, alone, will Decide the fate of the world … he doesn’t give a rap about either our evaluation or the global response. Those of us who do not approve George’s vision for the Empire are simply too stupid, or too treacherous, to get it and must be ignored and controlled. Our little Crusader has a “mission” that he sees himself fulfilling against all odds — he has set himself to jihad, he has accepted that he won’t be liked or appreciated but his righteousness [sic] will scream from the pages of history, his Old Testament God will reward him later [while Pappy's connections and prestige, and his own clever Legal-Eagles and Stepford Congress will keep him out of an orange jumpsuit while he's still earth-bound.]
Whatever happens next, we will NOT be surprised — but let’s remember that in our out-of-control political situation, many things can go wrong with a preemptive plan … and pray for, envision, an outcome that points back to the Decider[s] with as little chaotic fallout as possible.
Jude
The October Surprise
Gary Hart, HuffingtonPost.com
Saturday 23 September 2006
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/the-october-surprise_b_30086.html
It should come as no surprise if the Bush Administration undertakes a preemptive war against Iran sometime before the November election.
Were these more normal times, this would be a stunning possibility, quickly dismissed by thoughtful people as dangerous, unprovoked, and out of keeping with our national character. But we do not live in normal times. And we do not have a government much concerned with our national character. If anything, our current Administration is out to remake our national character into something it has never been.
The steps will be these: Air Force tankers will be deployed to fuel B-2 bombers, Navy cruise missile ships will be positioned at strategic points in the northern Indian Ocean and perhaps the Persian Gulf, unmanned drones will collect target data, and commando teams will refine those data. The latter two steps are already being taken.
Then the president will speak on national television. He will say this: Iran is determined to develop nuclear weapons; if this happens, the entire region will go nuclear; our diplomatic efforts to prevent this have failed; Iran is offering a haven to known al Qaeda leaders; the fate of our ally Israel is at stake; Iran persists in supporting terrorism, including in Iraq; and sanctions will have no affect (and besides they are for sissies). He will not say: …and besides, we need the oil.
Therefore, he will announce, our own national security and the security of the region requires us to act. “Tonight, I have ordered the elimination of all facilities in Iran that are dedicated to the production of weapons of mass destruction…..” In the narrowest terms this includes perhaps two dozen targets.
But the authors of the war on Iraq have “regime change” in mind in Iran. According to Colonel Sam Gardiner (author of “The End of the ‘Summer of Diplomacy’: Assessing U.S. Military Options in Iran,” The Century Foundation, 2006) to have any hope of success, such a policy would require attacking at least 400 targets, including the Revolutionary Guard. But even this presumes the Iranian people will respond to a massive U.S. attack on their country by overthrowing their government. Only an Administration inspired by pre-Enlightenment fantasy could believe a notion such as this.
Embracing this reverie requires believing in the Iranian Ahmed Chalabi, or perhaps even Mr. Chalabi himself since he has been working both sides of the street in both countries for some time.
It does not involve much imagination to understand the timing. The U.S. is poised to adopt a Congressional regime change of its own in November. A political strategy totally based on fear can offer few other options to prevent this. Besides, occupation by Democrats of even one house of Congress in January would make this scheme more difficult (one would certainly hope).
Further, time for super-power military conquest may be running short in the emerging age of fourth generation warfare. “…the age of Western military ascendancy is coming to an end.” (”No Win,” Andrew Bacevich, The Boston Globe, August 27, 2006).
The consequences? The sunny neoconservatives whose goal has been to become the neo-imperial Middle Eastern power all along will forcast few. But prudent leaders calculate all the risks, and they are historic.
These include: violent reaction throughout the Islamic world; a dramatic increase in jihadist attacks in European capitals and the U.S.; radicalization of Islamic youth behind a new generation of jihadist leaders; consolidation of support for Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, and a rapidly spreading malignant network; escalating expansion of anti-American sentiment throughout the world, including the democratic world; and the formation of WWIII battle lines between the U.S. and the Arab and Islamic worlds.
In more rational times, including at the height of the Cold War, bizarre actions such as unilateral, unprovoked, preventive war are dismissed by thoughtful, seasoned, experienced men and women as mad. But those qualities do not characterize our current leadership.
For a divinely guided president who imagines himself to be a latter day Winston Churchill (albeit lacking the ability to formulate intelligent sentences), and who professedly does not care about public opinion at home or abroad, anything is possible, and dwindling days in power may be seen as making the most apocalyptic actions necessary. ++
War Signals: Is An ‘October Surprise’ Attack On Iran Imminent?
Dave Lindorff
Sep 23 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0922-28.htm
As reports circulate of a sharp debate within the White House over possible US military action against Iran and its nuclear enrichment facilities, The Nation has learned that the Bush Administration and the Pentagon have moved up the deployment of a major “strike group” of ships, including the nuclear aircraft carrier Eisenhower as well as a cruiser, destroyer, frigate, submarine escort and supply ship, to head for the Persian Gulf, just off Iran’s western coast.
This information follows a report in the current issue of Time magazine, both online and in print, that a group of ships capable of mining harbors has received orders to be ready to sail for the Persian Gulf by October 1.
As Time writes in its cover story, “What Would War Look Like?,” evidence of the forward deployment of minesweepers and word that the chief of naval operations had asked for a reworking of old plans for mining Iranian harbors “suggest that a much discussed–but until now largely theoretical–prospect has become real: that the U.S. may be preparing for war with Iran.”
According to Lieut. Mike Kafka, a spokesman at the headquarters of the Second Fleet, based in Norfolk, Virginia, the Eisenhower Strike Group, bristling with Tomahawk cruise missiles, has received orders to depart the United States in a little over a week. Other official sources in the public affairs office of the Navy Department at the Pentagon confirm that this powerful armada is scheduled to arrive off the coast of Iran on or around October 21.
The Eisenhower had been in port at the Naval Station Norfolk for several years for refurbishing and refueling of its nuclear reactor; it had not been scheduled to depart for a new duty station until at least a month later, and possibly not till next spring. Family members, before the orders, had moved into the area and had until then expected to be with their sailor-spouses and parents in Virginia for some time yet. First word of the early dispatch of the “Ike Strike” group to the Persian Gulf region came from several angry officers on the ships involved, who contacted antiwar critics like retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner and complained that they were being sent to attack Iran without any order from the Congress.
“This is very serious,” said Ray McGovern, a former CIA threat-assessment analyst who got early word of the Navy officers’ complaints about the sudden deployment orders. (McGovern, a twenty-seven-year veteran of the CIA, resigned in 2002 in protest over what he said were Bush Administration pressures to exaggerate the threat posed by Iraq. He and other intelligence agency critics have formed a group called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.)
Colonel Gardiner, who has taught military strategy at the National War College, says that the carrier deployment and a scheduled Persian Gulf arrival date of October 21 is “very important evidence” of war planning. He says, “I know that some naval forces have already received ‘prepare to deploy orders’ [PTDOs], which have set the date for being ready to go as October 1. Given that it would take about from October 2 to October 21 to get those forces to the Gulf region, that looks about like the date” of any possible military action against Iran. (A PTDO means that all crews should be at their stations, and ships and planes should be ready to go, by a certain date–in this case, reportedly, October 1.) Gardiner notes, “You cannot issue a PTDO and then stay ready for very long. It’s a very significant order, and it’s not done as a training exercise.” This point was also made in the Time article.
So what is the White House planning?
On Monday President Bush addressed the UN General Assembly at its opening session, and while studiously avoiding even physically meeting Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was also addressing the body, he offered a two-pronged message. Bush told the “people of Iran” that “we’re working toward a diplomatic solution to this crisis” and that he looked forward “to the day when you can live in freedom.” But he also warned that Iran’s leaders were using the nation’s resources “to fund terrorism and fuel extremism and pursue nuclear weapons.” Given the President’s assertion that the nation is fighting a “global war on terror” and that he is Commander in Chief of that “war,” his prominent linking of the Iran regime with terror has to be seen as a deliberate effort to claim his right to carry the fight there. Bush has repeatedly insisted that the 2001 Congressional Authorization for the Use of Force that preceded the invasion of Afghanistan was also an authorization for an unending “war on terror.”
Even as Bush was making not-so-veiled threats at the UN, his former Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a sharp critic of any unilateral US attack on Iran, was in Norfolk, not far from the Eisenhower, advocating further diplomatic efforts to deal with Iran’s nuclear program–itself tantalizing evidence of the policy struggle over whether to go to war, and that those favoring an attack may be winning that struggle.
“I think the plan’s been picked: bomb the nuclear sites in Iran,” says Gardiner. “It’s a terrible idea, it’s against US law and it’s against international law, but I think they’ve decided to do it.”
Gardiner says that while the United States has the capability to hit those sites with its cruise missiles, “the Iranians have many more options than we do: They can activate Hezbollah; they can organize riots all over the Islamic world, including Pakistan, which could bring down the Musharraf government, putting nuclear weapons into terrorist hands; they can encourage the Shia militias in Iraq to attack US troops; they can blow up oil pipelines and shut the Persian Gulf.” Most of the major oil-producing states in the Middle East have substantial Shiite populations, which has long been a concern of their own Sunni leaders and of Washington policy-makers, given the sometimes close connection of Shiite populations to Iran’s religious rulers.
Of course, Gardiner agrees, recent ship movements and other signs of military preparedness could be simply a bluff designed to show toughness in the bargaining with Iran over its nuclear program. But with the Iranian coast reportedly armed to the teeth with Chinese Silkworm antiship missiles, and possibly even more sophisticated Russian antiship weapons, against which the Navy has little reliable defenses, it seems unlikely the Navy would risk high-value assets like aircraft carriers or cruisers with such a tactic. Nor has bluffing been a Bush MO to date.
Commentators and analysts across the political spectrum are focusing on Bush’s talk about dialogue, with many claiming that he is climbing down from confrontation. On the right, David Frum, writing on September 20 in his National Review blog, argues that the lack of any attempt to win a UN resolution supporting military action, and rumors of “hushed back doors” being opened in Washington, lead him to expect a diplomatic deal, not a unilateral attack. Writing in the center, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler saw in Bush’s UN speech evidence that “war is no longer a viable option” in Iran. Even on the left, where confidence in the Bush Administration’s judgment is abysmally low, commentators like Noam Chomsky and Nation contributor Robert Dreyfuss are skeptical that an attack is being planned. Chomsky has long argued that Washington’s leaders aren’t crazy, and would not take such a step–though more recently, he has seemed less sanguine about Administration sanity and has suggested that leaks about war plans may be an effort by military leaders–who are almost universally opposed to widening the Mideast war–to arouse opposition to such a move by Bush and war advocates like Cheney. Dreyfuss, meanwhile, in an article for the online journal TomPaine.com, focuses on the talk of diplomacy in Bush’s Monday UN speech, not on his threats, and concludes that it means “the realists have won” and that there will be no Iran attack.
But all these war skeptics may be whistling past the graveyard. After all, it must be recalled that Bush also talked about seeking diplomatic solutions the whole time he was dead-set on invading Iraq, and the current situation is increasingly looking like a cheap Hollywood sequel. The United States, according to Gardiner and others, already reportedly has special forces operating in Iran, and now major ship movements are looking ominous.
Representative Maurice Hinchey, a leading Democratic critic of the Iraq War, informed about the Navy PTDOs and about the orders for the full Eisenhower Strike Group to head out to sea, said, “For some time there has been speculation that there could be an attack on Iran prior to November 7, in order to exacerbate the culture of fear that the Administration has cultivated now for over five or six years. But if they attack Iran it will be a very bad mistake, for the Middle East and for the US. It would only make worse the antagonism and fear people feel towards our country. I hope this Administration is not so foolish and irresponsible.” He adds, “Military people are deeply concerned about the overtaxing of the military already.”
Calls for comment from the White House on Iran war plans and on the order for the Eisenhower Strike Group to deploy were referred to the National Security Council press office, which declined to return this reporter’s phone calls.
McGovern, who had first told a group of anti-Iraq War activists Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, DC, during an ongoing action called “Camp Democracy,” about his being alerted to the strike group deployment, warned, “We have about seven weeks to try and stop this next war from happening.”
One solid indication that the dispatch of the Eisenhower is part of a force buildup would be if the carrier Enterprise–currently in the Arabian Sea, where it has been launching bombing runs against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and which is at the end of its normal six-month sea tour–is kept on station instead of sent back to the United States. Arguing against simple rotation of tours is the fact that the Eisenhower’s refurbishing and its dispatch were rushed forward by at least a month. A report from the Enterprise on the Navy’s official website referred to its ongoing role in the Afghanistan fighting, and gave no indication of plans to head back to port. The Navy itself has no comment on the ship’s future orders.
Jim Webb, Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan Administration and currently a Democratic candidate for Senate in Virginia, expressed some caution about reports of the carrier deployment, saying, “Remember, carrier groups regularly rotate in and out of that region.” But he added, “I do not believe that there should be any elective military action taken against Iran without a separate authorization vote by the Congress. In my view, the 2002 authorization which was used for the invasion of Iraq should not extend to Iran.” ++
A Crisis Upon Us
Is the Bush Administration Itching to Nuke Iran?
PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
September 25, 2006
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09252006.html
A number of experts have concluded that despite the Bush administration’s desire to attack Iran, the aggression would be too rash and the consequences too dire even for the irrational Bush administration.
Military experts point out that at a time when generals are calling for more troops for Afghanistan and Iraq, it would be ill-advised for Bush to add Iran to the war theater. Experts note that Iran is well armed with missiles capable of attacking US ships and oil facilities throughout the Middle East and that Iran can direct its Shiite allies in Iraq to assault US troops there and set in motion terrorist actions throughout the Middle East.
Diplomatic experts point out that the US is isolated in its desire for war with Iran and has no ally except Israel, thus validating Muslim claims that the US is Israel’s instrument against Muslims in the Middle East. Experts note that military aggression is a war crime and that US violations of international law isolate the US and destroy the soft power on which US leadership has been based. An attack on Iran could be the last straw for Muslims chaffing under the rule of US puppet governments in Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Economic experts point out that the impact on the price of oil would be severe and the economic consequences detrimental. With the US housing bubble deflating, now is not the time for an oil shock.
It is difficult to take exception to this expert analysis. Nevertheless, the Bush administration continues to send war signals. Credible news organizations have reported that US naval attack groups have been given “prepare to deploy orders” that would put them on station off Iran by October 21.
How can Bush administration war plans be reconciled with expert opinion that the consequences would be too dire for the US?
Perhaps the answer is that what appears as irrationality to experts is rationality to neoconservatives. Neocons seek maximum chaos and instability in the Middle East in order to justify long-term US occupation of the region. Following this line of thought, neocons would regard the loss of a US aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf as a way to solidify public support for the war. US public anger at the Iranians could even result in US public support for a military draft in order to win “the war on terror.”
The Bush administration could bring Congress around by announcing a “Gulf of Tonkin” incident or by orchestrating a “terrorist attack.” However, this is unnecessary as Bush has prepared the ground for bypassing Congress with his propagandistic allegations that Iran, by arming Iraqi insurgents, sponsoring terrorism, and building nuclear weapons, is the major part of the ongoing “war against terrorism.” Now that Iran is blamed for rising violence in Iraq, an attack on Iran follows as a matter of course. All Bush has to do is to continue with his lies in order to bring the American public to a new war hysteria.
Bush’s attorney general has demonstrated that he has no qualms about validating any and all extra-legal powers that the White House requires for violating the US Constitution and international law. The congressional attempts to block illegal wiretapping and torture have failed. The Senate has refused to authorize torture, but the Senate has not prevented the administration from torturing detainees. The compromise leaves it to the White House to decide whether its interrogation practices are objectionable. In an editorial (September 22, 2006), the Washington Post concluded that “the abuse can continue.”
Polls show that Bush administration propaganda has convinced a majority of inattentive Americans that Iran is making nuclear weapons. Polls show that a majority support an attack on Iran under this circumstance. The neoconservatives and their media allies have succeeded in causing the public to confuse Iran’s legal nuclear energy program with a weapons program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, whose inspectors pour over Iran’s nuclear energy program for signs of a weapons program, recently denounced a House Intelligence Committee report as “outrageous and dishonest.” Written by the Republican neocon staff, the Republican report falsely alleges that Iran had enriched uranium to weapons grade last April and that the IAEA had removed a senior safeguards inspector to keep the alleged breach of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Pact secret.
Once again neoconservatives have shown that they will tell any and every lie to achieve their goal of attacking Iran. Jingoistic anti-UN Bush supporters will automatically believe the neocon lie and will swallow right-wing talk radio claims that the UN is protecting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. As we learned from the Iraq hysteria, facts and experts are no impediment to the Bush administration’s lies.
Rumsfeld’s neocon Pentagon has rewritten US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack on non-nuclear countries. As the US paid a huge public relations cost in terms of world opinion and distrust of the US by endorsing the first use of nuclear weapons, the revision of US war doctrine must have a purpose.
Neocons claim that tactical nuclear weapons are necessary to destroy Iran’s underground facilities. However, the real reason for using nukes against Iran is to intimidate Iran from retaliating and to threaten the entire Muslim world with genocide unless Muslims bend to the neocons’ will and accept US hegemony over their part of the world.
In his speech to the United Nations, Hugo Chavez might not have been too deep into hyperbole when he described Bush as an example of demonic evil. ++
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
Iran: Calls for Dialogue with the United States
David Culp
Friday, September 22, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0922-27.htm
“We believe the production or use of nuclear weapons is immoral.”
~ Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Hours after he spoke to the United Nations, the Iranian president made this clear, unequivocal statement to a group of us during a private meeting in New York. The Mennonite Central Committee organized an extraordinary, private session for about 50 people to dialogue with President Ahmadinejad about the escalating crisis between the U.S. and Iran.
I left the hour-long meeting convinced, as did many, if not all, of my colleagues, that the Iranian leader is a deeply religious person who approaches the issue of nuclear weapons from a moral perspective. The Iranian leader expressed great interest in establishing a dialogue with the religious community in the United States, and he explained that he views Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as three co-equal religions.
Of course, I suspect that all of the people in this meeting had many areas where we probably disagree with the policies of the Iranian government. For instance, FCNL is concerned about political prisoners in Iran, religious tolerance, and Iran’s position on Israel. We also were aware that the Iranian president met with us as part of his effort to defuse the looming crisis between the Iranian government and the international community over Iran’s nuclear energy program.
But I’ve been a lobbyist working for the abolition of nuclear weapons for more than a decade, and I’ve talked about these issues with a lot of people. Ahmadinejad impressed me as someone who had thought about these issues a lot. He’s a former engineer, who is thinking through the arguments from a number of different perspectives.
For instance, although he starts any discussion by saying that nuclear weapons are immoral, Ahmadinejad also reminded us that the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons, which didn’t prevent their government from collapsing. He added that, during Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s, Iraq’s alliance with a country with nuclear weapons (presumably he was referring to the United States) didn’t have any impact on the war. He convinced me that Iran is not interested in developing nuclear weapons.
Iran is interested in developing nuclear energy. As a former engineer, he believes that nuclear fuel is the cleanest fuel there is and he explained that this energy source is critical for the future development of his country. And Ahmadinejad bristles at suggestions that the United States or anyone else would try to dictate how his country pursued its energy needs.
But how do we get beyond the current impasse, we asked him? Ahmadinejad suggested that the UN’s Committee on Disarmament, based in Geneva, might be one forum where these discussions should take place. He then offered a proposal: Iran will open all of its nuclear facilities to inspections, if the United States will also open its facilities to inspections. Neither Iran nor the U.S. have implemented the Additional Protocol to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that includes additional inspections, although we at FCNL believe both countries should do so. He added that the United States should refrain from building so-called second or third generation nuclear weapons.
Now, I’m not endorsing Iran’s proposals or even arguing this is the only path to peace. And, in our meeting in New York on Wednesday, the Iranian president made other comments that I found deeply troubling. In particular, I was struck by his comments about the Holocaust. He did not deny the Holocaust, but he still conveyed a view that the matter is debatable. In these comments he sounded a lot like politicians in the U.S. Congress who deny that global warming is a fact, even though there is a significant body of evidence that cannot be denied.
But when he spoke about issues that I cover, the nuclear weapons issues, what struck me is that the Iranian president was offering a reasonable basis for real negotiations. Since Ahmadinejad took office, Iran has been backing away from permitting full inspections of its nuclear program. But I think this is a bargaining stance to start negotiations. Iran wants to have full rights for civilian nuclear energy, including nuclear enrichment. Iranian leaders also want some kind of assurance that the United States will not bomb their country.
The day I left Washington to go to New York for this meeting, I attended a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The contrast was striking. Nicholas Burns, the number three official at the State Department, spent most of that hearing lobbing what I can only describe as rhetorical hand grenades at Iran. In his first State of the Union address, President Bush described Iran as part of the “axis of evil.” That’s still the approach of some in the U.S. government.
But what is even more striking is the pride U.S. officials take in insisting they will not even talk to Iran. Nicholas Burns, in his testimony this week to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made a point of saying he has never met with an Iranian government official. Now here is a man who has been part of the U.S. foreign service for decades, and he made a point of pride that he had never met with any Iranian official. If the U.S. continues to insist that no dialogue is possible with Iran, then war is the likely alternative. ++
David Culp is a lobbyist for the Friends Committee on National Legislation’s Quaker Nuclear Disarmament Program. FCNL, the oldest registered religious lobby in Washington, is a non-partisan Quaker lobby in the public interest. FCNL works with a nationwide network of tens of thousands of people from every state in the U.S. to advocate for social and economic justice, peace, and good government. For more information: http://www.fcnl.org
What’s right and good doesn’t come naturally. You have to stand up and fight for it - as if the cause depends on you, because it does. Allow yourself that conceit - to believe that the flame of Democracy will never go out as long as there’s one candle in your hand.
~ Bill Moyers
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September 25th, 2006