The latest outrage is news that the Federal government has been quietly analyzing the behavior of Americans to determine their terror ratings. The terrorism risk assessments are being whipped up in an unmarked, two-story building in Northern Virginia, according to Associated Press.

Welcome to Bush's America, where the government doesn't give a damn about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or democratic rule. Welcome to a society that cares more about celebrity marriages than the gradual but steady erosion of the rights and freedoms that separate us from Saddam's shithole and the totalitarian regimes that World War II veterans risked their lives to exterminate.

Welcome to a country that elects a chief executive whose only qualifications are his last name and an aw-shucks personality, the guy you want to have a beer with, a guy who is not intellectually curious and, according to Bob Woodward's State of Denial, relies on the advice of a certified war criminal (Henry Kissenger) in prosecuting the disgraceful war in Iraq, where almost 3,000 Americans have lost their lives so that George W. Bush could one-up his father and go down in history as a war president.

If you let the family dog take over the sofa, then the sofa smells like a doggy. If you let your 15-year-old kid take over the house, then the house turns into a college dormitory. If you allow George W. Bush guardianship over the U.S. Constitution, you are assigned a terrorism risk assessment without your knowledge.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders since 2002 have been assessed by the Homeland Security Department's computerized Automated Targeting System, or ATS.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years. Some or all data in the system can be shared with state, local and foreign governments for use in hiring, contracting and licensing decisions. Courts and even some private contractors can obtain some of the data under certain circumstances.

. . .

And on Friday as the normal daily flow of a million or more people entered the United States by air, sea and land, the ATS program's computers continued their silent scrutiny. At that Virginia building with no sign, the managers of the National Targeting Center allowed an Associated Press photographer to briefly roam their work space.

But he couldn't reveal the building's exact location. None of the dozens of workers under the bright fluorescent lights could be named. Some could not be photographed.

The only clue he might have entered a government building was a montage of photos in the reception area of President Bush's visit to the center. But there was only one guard and a sign-in book.

Inside, red digital clocks on the walls showed the time in Istanbul, Baghdad, Islamabad, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo, and Sydney. Although billboard-size video screens on the walls showed multiple cable news shows, there was little noise in the basketball-court-sized main workroom. Each desk had dual computer screens and earphones to hear the video soundtrack. Conferences were held in smaller workrooms divided by glass walls from the windowless main room.

Round the clock, the targeters from Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection agency analyze information from multiple sources, not just ATS. They compare names to terrorist watch lists and mine the Treasury Enforcement Communications System and other automated systems that bring data about cargo, travelers and commercial workers entering or leaving the 317 U.S. ports, searching for suspicious people and cargo.

Almost every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is assessed based on ATS' analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

Government officials could not say whether ATS has apprehended any terrorists. Based on all the information available to them, federal agents turn back about 45 foreign criminals a day at U.S. borders, according to Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection spokesman Bill Anthony. He could not say how many were spotted by ATS.

Officials described how the system works: applying rules learned from experience with the activities and characteristics of terrorists and criminals to the traveler data. But they would not describe in detail the format in which border agents see the results or in which the databases store the results of the ATS risk assessments.

Who is a terrorist? Back in the 1980's the Reagan administration took Saddam Hussein off the official terrorist list even though he was using chemical weapons against civilians. The Reagan administration classified Nelson Mandela's African National Congress a terrorist entity while the Apartheid government of South Africa was a close ally. These days, any programs officially designed to stop terror will be enacted. Let God sort out the rough edges.

Bong Hits 4 Jesus is a phrase that you will hear a lot about over the next few months or so as the Supreme Court is taking up an interesting case of student free speech that could help or hurt First Amendment rights in the schools.

A few weeks ago I wrote about this case. Briefly, some smartass high school kid in Alaska posted a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," visible to his classmates on a school field trip. The smartass was not on school property, but the school disciplined him anyway since it affected a school program. The banner was obviously satire and nonsensical, but what's a little satire among authoritarians?

At the moment, I don't see how Mr. Smartass could lose this case. A federal court has already ruled in his favor, but the general view among Supreme Court watchers is that the Court will mostly take cases to rule in the other direction. There is something about this case that has attracted the Court's attention, and I hope I am wrong in suspecting that the Court wants to reign in student speech.

Presently, students have the right to speak in schools (and off school property if it somehow connects with the school) if it does not disrupt the educational process and is not vulgar or obscene. What other exceptions to the First Amendment are available to the schools? May schools ban any speech that makes any reference to drugs? What about satire, traditionally protected First Amendment speech no matter how silly? What about student speech that simply challenges school policy? The Court has not ruled on these issues, yet.

It's been a long time since the Supreme Court took up a student speech case. In 1988, the Supreme Court ruled that schools could freely edit and censor school-sponsored student newspapers. I would imagine that someone smart enough to make it to the Supreme Court was probably working for his or her student newspaper in high school, dutifully covering school board meetings and writing about the high school football team.

But when I think about student journalism, I am reminded of subversive articles and editorials that challenge authority and allow the student to gain confidence in her ability to reach out to peers and the community. I doubt the goodie-goodies recently appointed to the Court by George W. Bush will sympathize with smartass speech by some high school kid. The challenge for these Republican conservatives is to look at the larger picture and find that free speech protects everyone, including the local smartass.

Supernatural coincidence below. Maybe these women were twins but were born to different mothers. Hat-tip to the J-Walk Blog.

IRISH 'TWINS' By PHILIP RECCHIA New York Post

December 3, 2006 -- It's a case of mistaken Ei-dentities.

A pair of Eileen McLaughlins, born on the same day a few miles apart in Brooklyn, discovered each other last week - and learned that not only do their dads and kids also share birthdays, but they have led eerily similar lives from Day One, right down to their profession, choice of husband and penchant for a particular TV psychic.

"It's mind-boggling that Eileen Mary's life has so closely paralleled mine," Eileen Teresa McLaughlin said. "I called my mother and asked her, 'Are you sure I don't have a twin?' "

Yesterday, they met for the first time - at the Kings Plaza Diner, a place both women favored as kids when they shopped - separately, of course - at the popular Kings Plaza Mall.

"I was overwhelmed - she's so beau tiful," Eileen Teresa McLaughlin ex claimed. "I felt like I knew her all my life."

Eileen Mary McLaughlin enthusiastically agreed.

"Same here - as soon as I saw her, I knew it was Eileen Teresa," she said. "It was like seeing an old friend."

The ladies' incredible tale began on Dec. 6, 1960, when both were born in Brooklyn.

Eileen Teresa's dad, Eugene, had been born 32 years earlier on Nov. 12; Eileen Mary's dad, Edward, 25 years earlier, also on Nov. 12.

In 1974, Eileen Mary got her Social Security card. A few months later, on April Fool's Day, Eileen Teresa got hers - bearing the exact same number. The women would share those nine digits for the next 22 years without anyone taking note.

In 1977, Eileen Mary married a carpet layer born Aug. 24, 1956. Eileen Teresa was wed four years later to a carpenter born Aug. 21, 1956.

In 1982, Eileen Teresa became a registered nurse before moving to Monmouth County, N.J. That same year, her first child, Lauren, was born on Valentine's Day. Eileen Mary's first and only child, Tommy, had been born on Valentine's Day four years earlier.

In 1990, Eileen Mary also entered the health-care field, as a medical technician in Canarsie.

Their husbands, both of whom had drinking problems, abandoned their wives during the '90s and remain deadbeat dads to this day, the Eileens said.

Eileen Teresa first became aware of Eileen Mary in 1996, when, after ordering her own credit report, she realized half of it belonged to someone else. She went to the Social Security office, where a staffer discovered the identical numbers and promptly issued Eileen Teresa a new one.

But the confusion didn't end there.

Three weeks ago, Eileen Mary realized that for years she had been receiving Eileen Teresa's annual Social Security statement. So she went to her local Social Security office to straighten things out.

Only after a week of discussions did the office realize its mistake and begin rectifying the Eileens' accounts.

Eileen Mary finally called Eileen Teresa last week to ask if she was aware of the bureaucratic foul-up, and it wasn't long before the myriad coincidences emerged.

The women said they now look forward to celebrating their shared birthday this Wednesday. And finally, they are catching up on their oddly parallel lives, swapping stories and photos about their kids and families - and vowing to stay in touch for the rest of their lives.

You give a boy a war to play with and what does he do with it? He throws away the toy and plays with the box. He spills the new painting kit all over the shag carpet. He tracks mud in the house with his new boots. He shorts out the neighborhood by sticking a new switchblade into the electrical socket.

For three years, the Bush administration and its apologists have attacked war critics as unpatriotic and weak. This was a classic war strategy: attack the truth-tellers and frighten the electorate so that billions of dollars can be flushed down the toilet. But the real loser was Bush, a guy with no substantial experience in government, who thought war could be played like a video game: kill off the bad guys and we all come home to a magnificant parade.

The Iraq Study Group is not a radical bastion. For Christ's sake, Edwin Meese, the sleazy former Attorney General in the Reagan Administration is on the panel. So is James Baker, former honcho in the Reagan and Bush I administrations which fought illegal wars in Central America, a man who got his hands dirty in a major financial scandal in the 1980's. But it does not take a leftist to know that we are not winning the War in Iraq. And only the Pinball Wizard from the rock opera Tommy would be blind to the horrendous legacy Bush is handing future generations that will have to untangle the mess created by this war. According to the Washington Post,

After years of boldly proclaiming that we would stay the course in Iraq, Bush will have someone read the Iraq Study Group's report to him. He will not like what he hears.

A panel of prominent elder leaders yesterday offered a stinging assessment of virtually every aspect of the U.S. venture in Iraq and called for a reshaping of the American military presence and a new Middle East diplomatic initiative to prevent the country from sliding into anarchy.

. . .

As they presented their findings, members of the commission made clear their belief that the Bush administration's Iraq policy is failing.

The foreign press is equally impressed by the Establishment's rebuke. The London Independent: "A more devastating indictment of the strategy of a sitting American president could not be imagined. The cross-party Iraq Study Group's recommendations on future US policy in that blighted country were made public yesterday. Gone are the illusions of "progress" and "victory" peddled by George Bush - and, until recently, Tony Blair. Instead, it paints an unvarnished picture of the "dire" reality in Iraq. It breaks new ground not in the proposals it makes, but in the bluntness with which it speaks truth to power."

A summary of the report's recommendations are here. It otherwise contains a few nuggets which shed light on the propaganda war the administration has waged against the American people. Editor & Publisher reports that, according to the Iraq Study Group:

"There is significant underreporting of the violence in Iraq" by the U.S. military. "The standard for recording attacks acts as a filter to keep events out of reports and databases," the report continues.

Looking at one day, the report found undercounting of violent attacks by more than 1000 percent.

"A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack," the report explained." If we cannot deter mine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn’t hurt U.S. personnel doesn’t count. For example, on one day in July 2006 there were 93 attacks or significant acts of violence [officially] reported. Yet a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light 1,100 acts of violence.

"Good policy is difficult to make when information is systematically collected in a way that minimizes its discrepancy with policy goals."

Truth is not the only casualty. "At least 2,919 service members have been killed since the war started in 2003, according to an AP count. At least 75 people were killed or found dead across Iraq on Wednesday, including 48 whose bullet-riddled bodies were found in different parts of the capital." Ten American soldiers died the other day.

As the American people further turn away from the Iraq War and the Crown Prince who dove head first into the swimming pool without checking for water, maybe the first line of business is getting Bush to a psychiatrist to explore his pathological refusal to face reality. If he's man enough to go.

Is it against the law to advocate mass slaughter so that Americans can have access to Middle Eastern oil? I doubt it, but America's most popular television news analyst says that the U.S. may have to bomb Iran into oblivion if that's what it takes to get the oil we need. As transcribed by Media Matters:

On the December 5 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Bill O'Reilly asserted that "we may have to" "level cities like Tehran, kill hundreds of thousands of people," which, he explained, the United States has "already done in Germany and Japan." O'Reilly then argued that such a move would be necessary, for example, "[i]f Iran takes over Iraq and then fosters a revolution inside Saudi Arabia ... and gets control of all the oil and says we're not selling to the USA, we are going to level that country, because you ... need gasoline to live."

If you want to know why a solid 30 percent of the American people still support President Bush no matter what, you should read the above excerpt and understand that many, many people cheer on this kind of rhetoric.America is tough, ain't no one gonna push us around! We can win Iraq with more torture. Hey, things are wonderful in Iraq!

Let's talk turkey here. This rhetoric would never work against non-Muslim and non-Arab countries. Mega-death policies can be sold where the victims don't look like us. It's easy to fan the flames of discontent by pointing the finger at the Arabs and Muslims. But God-forbid any foreign leader challenges the United States.

In her book about obituary writers, Marilyn Johnson wrote that notable people tend to die in clusters, as if their deaths were pre-arranged. That happened this week, when former United Nations Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick died on December 7 and Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died on December 10.

Kirkpatrick was an American, and Pinochet was from Chile, but they had a lot in common, and at this moment they have a lot to talk about as they step into the cosmic elevator which will shoot immediately to the bottom floor.

What made Kirkpatrick famous was her attempt to distinguish between authoritarian governments and totalitarian governments. Associated Press reminds us that "In a pivotal article in Commentary Magazine, she sought to draw a distinction between authoritarian governments and more extreme violators of human rights like the Soviet Union. She acknowledged that authoritarian states did not meet democratic standards but wrote that they were far preferable to totalitarian regimes."

Kirkpatrick actually argued that the United States should support the authoritarian ones. "Authoritarian regimes really typically don't have complete command economies. Authoritarian regimes typically have some kind of traditional economy with some private ownership. The Nazi regime left ownership in private hands, but the state assumed control of the economy. Control was separated from ownership but it was really a command economy because it was controlled by the state. A command economy is an attribute of a totalitarian state."

It takes a lot of guts to say that authoritarian regimes are preferable to totalitarian regimes. Who was buying this shit? Ronald Reagan was. Impressed by this pointless distinction between repressive regimes, Reagan appointed Kirkpatrick the United States ambassador to the United Nations. The Reagan presidency launched a new era of American support for totalitarian dictatorships throughout the world in the name of "anti-communism." The problem was that the guys we supported were not much better than the communists they opposed.

Wikipedia samples some of her views: "She was one of the strongest open supporters of Argentina's military dictatorship following the March 1982 Argentine invasion of the United Kingdom's Falkland Islands, which triggered the Falklands War. Kirkpatrick sympathized with Argentina's President Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri, whose military regime clamped down on leftists." Also, she supported the military dictatorship in El Salvador, which killed thousands of people in one of the ugliest civil wars of the 1980's.

Kirkpatrick was a classic neo-conservative, a former Democrat who turned right and found her way into the Reagan administration. At some point in American history it became fashionable to openly support totalitarian (or, uh, authoritarian) regimes in the defense of "freedom." This kind of neo-conservatism reached profound heights in the 1970's, when the U.S. government supported Gen. Pinochet, the Chilean dictator who took power in a coup in 1973 which ousted the democratically-elected Salvador Allende. Pinochet was a vicious man who gained American support by presiding over what those in the mainstream call "economic growth." The New York Times obituary for Pinochet captures the ying-yang:

General Pinochet seized power on Sept. 11, 1973, in a bloody military coup that toppled the Marxist government of President Salvador Allende. He then led the country into an era of robust economic growth. But during his rule, more than 3,200 people were executed or disappeared, and scores of thousands more were detained and tortured or exiled.

Indeed, the New York Times obituary devotes quite a bit of space to Pinochet's economic record, while noting that Pinochet was also a repressive leader. The Times can get away with this because Pinochet was our man in Latin America. Conservatives who complain that the New York Times is too liberal cannot explain this paradox. But imagine what would happen if, upon Fidel Castro's death, the Times devoted equal time to the Cuban dictator's efficient managerial skills.

This is the essence of American foreign policy. Open your country to exploitation by U.S. investors, give us cheap labor and access to your resources, join us in the fight against Communism and we don't care how many innocent people fill the mass graves, or how many people are tortured. Funny, how the U.S. went to war against Saddam Hussein twice in 15 years supposedly because of his brutality, but successive American governments supported Pinochet.

In his landmark review of American foreign policy, The Real Terror Network, Edward S. Herman criticized American media, including the New York Times, for playing down Pinochet's human rights abuses and playing up his economic record. This excerpt on Pinochet and the torture network he promoted in South America is worth a read. Pinochet's role in promoting torture, "disappearances" and summary executions in Chile is a sorry chapter in American foreign policy, but not particularly out of the ordinary for Latin America.

Pinochet took power thanks to the Nixon administration's active involvement. When the people of Chile elected a leftist, Salvador Allende, Nixon's chief foreign policy advisor, Henry Kissenger, said: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." As told by Wikipedia, "Allende's increasingly bold socialist policies (partly in response to pressure from some of the more radical members within his coalition), combined with his close contacts with Cuba, heightened fears in Washington. The Nixon administration began exerting economic pressure on Chile via multilateral organizations, and continued to back Allende's opponents in the Chilean Congress. Almost immediately after his election, Nixon directed CIA and U.S. State Department officials to 'put pressure' on Allende's government."

Historians are still debating the exact role that the Nixon administration played in the Pinochet coup, which cost Allende his life. But there is no question that the Nixon administration wanted Allende out and that it supported Pinochet to the fullest even though he overthrew a democratically-elected regime. This account tells it all: "There is no evidence that the U.S. directly backed Pinochet's successful coup in 1973, but the Nixon administration was undoubtedly pleased with the outcome. . . . The U.S. did provide material support to the military regime after the coup, although it criticized them in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000 titled 'CIA Activities in Chile' revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses."

Pinochet held power for several decades, killing thousands who disagreed with him. The blood of these victims in Chile is on our hands. Well, not my hands. I was too young to vote for Nixon and I didn't vote for the guys who supported him later on. That blood is also on the hands of Reagan administration officials like Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who supported Pinochet even as he tortured 28,000 people (according to a Chilean Truth Commission). The American government during Pinochet's reign (1973-1990) could have done something about this reign of terror, but it did not.

We are still in denial about the American role in Pinochet's rise to power and our government's support for this monster. Books have been written about the U.S. relationship with Pinochet, and the 1973 coup still fascinates scholars. But the New York Times obituary for Pinochet says not a word about Pinochet's close relationship with successive American governments. Ignoring any context, it only says in passing that he took power with U.S. support, as if we watched helplessly over the years as Pinochet became a bloody dictator. Terrorism? We would never support terrorism!

The Iraq War is consuming our attention these days, but a growing menace is being ignored: the environment is a commodity that can be bought and sold. According to a recent article by the Associated Press,

The Bush administration is considering doing away with health standards that cut lead from gasoline, widely regarded as one of the nation's biggest clean-air accomplishments.

Battery makers, lead smelters, refiners all have lobbied the administration to do away with the Clean Air Act limits.

A preliminary staff review released by the Environmental Protection Agency this week acknowledged the possibility of dropping the health standards for lead air pollution. The agency says revoking those standards might be justified "given the significantly changed circumstances since lead was listed in 1976" as an air pollutant.

The EPA says concentrations of lead in the air have dropped more than 90 percent in the past 2 1/2 decades.

. . .

Soon after lead was listed as an air pollutant 30 years ago, the Carter administration began removing lead from gasoline. Other big sources of lead in the atmosphere are from solid waste, coal, oil, iron and steel production, lead smelters and tobacco smoke.

Exposure to lead can also come from food and soil. Lead is one of six air pollutants the EPA is required to review every five years to make sure the health limits are protective enough. The others are ozone, soot, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrous oxides.

The EPA has repeatedly missed the deadlines set under the Clean Air Act, incurring the legal wrath of environmental groups.

. . .

The health standards for air pollutants are intended to protect children, elderly and other "sensitive" populations, keep up visibility and limit damage to animals, crops, vegetation and buildings.

. . .

In July, a Washington-based trade group for all U.S. lead battery makers wrote a top EPA air quality official to urge that the agency remove lead from its list of air pollutants.

"That is not to say that air emissions of lead should be uncontrolled, or that no steps should be taken to address public health concerns arising from lead use," the Battery Council International said. "But many other regulatory vehicles exist for meeting these concerns."

Lead is not good for children and other living things. In 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency concluded a lengthy lead clean-up program. According to the EPA, "Adverse health effects from elevated levels of lead in blood range from behavior disorders and anemia to mental retardation and permanent nerve damage. Fetuses and children are especially susceptible to low doses of lead, often suffering central nervous system damage or slowed growth."

People are upset about this environmental rollback, which speaks for itself. The environment really is a commodity. Strict environmental regulations affect corporate profits, and the reverse is also true.

I saw this coming. I didn't exactly expect Bush to ease up on the lead regulations, but this is something the President can do without Congressional approval. When Bush got re-elected in 2004, I thought about the changes that a Presidential administion can undertake without oversight from the other branches of government. That's why, even if the Democratic Congress next year starts to reign in the Bush administration, certain policy changes such as new environmental regulations will have already wreaked havoc on public health. Even as the Bush administration crashes and burns under the weight of the Iraq War, it can still drag us all through the shitpile with bad environmental regulations.

Next time someone complains to you about the Liberal media, ask him to read the Washington Post editorial printed below. Some people condemn terrorists and dictators. Some people come to praise them. And some people say that he made the trains run on time.

The paradox of American foreign policy over the last several decades is that our government pretends to promote democracy and freedom around the world, but if you look at the evidence, an ugly picture emerges. Quite often, our government works to overthrow democratically-elected governments and replaces them with the most brutal dictators imaginable. That's what happened in 1973, when Augusto Pinochet took power in Chile and brutalized the country for two decades, killing and torturing thousands, ruining countless lives. Pinochet, who died this week, was the sort of killer that U.S. governments find it easy to wage war against. But as Franklin D. Roosevelt said about another Latin American dictator, "he may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch."

Pinochet's death creates a problem for people who defend the American system. Here was a first-rate butcher whom the United States fully supported for years. We could have invaded Chile at any time from 1973 through 1988 (when he held power) and restored democratic rule, but we never did. Yet we invaded Iraq in 1991 to undo Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, a monarchy. Reagan invaded Grenada under the guise of freedom and anti-communism. An honest media would ask hard questions about why every U.S. President, from Nixon to Reagan, put up with Pinochet. The best the media can do is to bemoan Pinochet's human rights abuses while pointing out that he did help the economy there.

Imagine what would happen once Fidel Castro dies. Will anyone in American media defend him by saying that he may have been brutal, but everyone in Cuba had health care? He may have set up a gulag but all the children learned to read? Would anyone say that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was "stable" and that civil war only broke out once the United States overthrew him? Our political climate would never tolerate this kind of apologia. Yet, it's happening right now with the death of Pinochet, where editorial writers acknowledge that Pinochet killed and tortured thousands, but the economy thrived in Chile. Frankly, the Washington Post editorial reprinted below would be no less offensive if you replaced Pinochet's name with Adolph Hitler, or Benito Mussolino, who supposedly made the trains run on time (actually, he didn't). That the Post gets away with it says a lot about our political culture, and the false belief that our government only sets out to accomplish good things in the world, and that any problems flowing from our involvement are unintentional and unforeseen.

Indeed, the Post editorial actually suggests that some good things came out of Pinochet's leadership, in that today the country is run by a democratically-elected leader. Somehow this flows from the Pinochet dictatorship. Even sillier, the Post says that the Pinochet experience proves true the canard that authoritarian governments are sometimes worthy of American support over totalitarian governments. Only in America can you get away with this kind of argument.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that other commentators have also slammed this editorial.

A Dictator's Double Standard Augusto Pinochet tortured and murdered. His legacy is Latin America's most successful country.

Tuesday, December 12, 2006; A26

AUGUSTO PINOCHET, who died Sunday at the age of 91, has been vilified for three decades in and outside of Chile, the South American country he ruled for 17 years. For some he was the epitome of an evil dictator. That was partly because he helped to overthrow, with U.S. support, an elected president considered saintly by the international left: socialist Salvador Allende, whose responsibility for creating the conditions for the 1973 coup is usually overlooked. Mr. Pinochet was brutal: More than 3,000 people were killed by his government and tens of thousands tortured, mostly in his first three years. Thousands of others spent years in exile.

One prominent opponent, Orlando Letelier, was assassinated by a car bomb on Washington's Sheridan Circle in 1976 -- one of the most notable acts of terrorism in this city's history. Mr. Pinochet, meanwhile, enriched himself, stashing millions in foreign bank accounts -- including Riggs Bank, a Washington institution that was brought down, in part, by the revelation of that business. His death forestalled a belated but richly deserved trial in Chile.

It's hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy. Earlier this year it elected another socialist president, Michelle Bachelet, who suffered persecution during the Pinochet years.

Like it or not, Mr. Pinochet had something to do with this success. To the dismay of every economic minister in Latin America, he introduced the free-market policies that produced the Chilean economic miracle -- and that not even Allende's socialist successors have dared reverse. He also accepted a transition to democracy, stepping down peacefully in 1990 after losing a referendum.

By way of contrast, Fidel Castro -- Mr. Pinochet's nemesis and a hero to many in Latin America and beyond -- will leave behind an economically ruined and freedomless country with his approaching death. Mr. Castro also killed and exiled thousands. But even when it became obvious that his communist economic system had impoverished his country, he refused to abandon that system: He spent the last years of his rule reversing a partial liberalization. To the end he also imprisoned or persecuted anyone who suggested Cubans could benefit from freedom of speech or the right to vote.

The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right

To be disabled in America is to constantly deal with inconveniences that rise to the level of exclusion. It's no surprise that the last comprehensive civil rights law enacted in the United States was the Americans with Disabilities Act, in 1991. This was decades after similar laws were passed to protect racial minorities, women, religous actors and whistleblowers. Somehow disabled people got lost in the mix.

We've come a long way since the days when people in wheelchairs could not enter buildings or enjoy the benefits of citizenship. But a recent court ruling shows that disability discrimination is not so obvious to us, even as the disabled are helpless to deal with everyday inconveniences.

A federal court has found that U.S. currency discriminates against blind people and others with limited sight. Here is the decision. American paper money is the same size whether its a dollar, or five dollars or 100 dollars. It's also the same color and the bills all look alike if you are not paying close attention. So what does does this all mean for people with limited sight? They cannot differentiate between a dollar bill and a 10 dollar bill. They have to rely on others, including cashiers, to tell them that the 50 dollar bill is not a five dollar bill.

The government opposed the lawsuit, saying that it costs too much to redesign the currency or create other alternatives to allow blind people to differentiate the dollars, including embossed dots, micro-perforations and raised printing. The judge wouldn't have it: "The government also contends that any 'drastic or sudden' changes to the currency could undermine international recognition and acceptance of U.S. currency 'as a common medium of exchange throughout the world. This contention is not only unsupported, but, on its face, is fairly absurd."

While any changes in U.S. currency would cost millions of dollars in research, labor and new machinery, the judge said, the costs would be relatively small in light of the budget of the department that prints the money. The government now has to decide among feasible alternatives in redesigning money.

As expected, when a judge rules in favor of a civil rights theory, some right wing ideologue complains about "judicial activism." A Las Vegas newspaper could not control itself in imagining a worst-case scenario: "Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act to make sure federal offices didn't refuse to hire, say, a person who walks with crutches for some desk job, where being fleet of foot is not a legitimate job requirement. Does anyone really imagine the authors of that act meant to require $20 bills to be different shapes and sizes from $1 bills? Certainly no one else had been able to find that language in the law -- or any statement of such an intent in the congressional debate -- till now. What will Judge Robertson mandate next? Handicapped ramps on nuclear submarines? Special provisions for blind airline pilots?"

Another website which seems to specialize in attacking disability rights lawsuits is similarly dismissive. It makes you wonder how this country would look if people could not enforce their civil rights through the courts.

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, wants to limit free speech to stop terrorism:

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich last night defended his call to limit freedom of speech to combat terrorism, comments that last month provoked strident criticism from liberal groups.

Gingrich said the threat of biological or nuclear attack requires America to consider curbs to speech to fight terrorists, if it is to protect the society that makes the First Amendment possible.

. . .

Gingrich cited last month's ejection of six Muslim scholars from a plane in Minneapolis for suspicious behavior, which included reports they prayed before the flight and had sat in the same seats as the Sept. 11 hijackers.

"Those six people should have been arrested and prosecuted for pretending to be terrorists," Gingrich said. "And the crew of the U.S. airplane should have been invited to the White House and congratulated for being correct in the protection of citizens."

. . .

On Nov. 27, he said the First Amendment may require a "different set of rules" for terrorists, comments made while he addressed a free speech award dinner hosted by the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications.

Gingrich was referring to an incident in Minnesota recently when Muslim passengers were detained at an airport. According to the local paper, "The religious leaders were heading home after a three-day North American Imams Federation conference in Bloomington. The pilot ordered the men off the flight after their praying, conversation and behavior alarmed several passengers and flight attendants. The imams denied that they did or said anything that could be considered threatening. They were released without charges after being questioned for five hours by federal law enforcement officials."

The following is a summary of what happened at the airport:

Before passengers boarded, one became alarmed by an overheard discussion. "They seemed angry," he wrote in a police statement. "Mentioned 'U.S.' and 'killing Saddam.' Two men then swore slightly under their breath/mumbled. They spoke Arabic again. The gate called boarding for the flight. The men then chanted 'Allah, Allah, Allah.' "

Marwan Sadeddin, another of the imams, said, "What bothers me the most is these false statements and lies that we were shouting, 'Allah, Allah.' This never happened."

Another, Ahmad Shqeirat, said, "That is a lie. We were not talking politics. And even if we did, so what? What is suspicious about that?"

Once the six were seated, two in front, two in the middle and two in back, and paid visits to each other to chat, some passengers became alarmed, the police report said. One passed a note to a flight attendant citing the alleged comments about Allah and Saddam.

Flight attendants alerted the pilot, who called airport police and asked them to remove the men from the plane. They left "cooperatively," according to the police report.

A bomb-sniffing dog examined the men, their luggage and the entire airplane and found nothing. The plane left for Phoenix about three hours late after the other 141 passengers reboarded.

After being questioned by agents of the U.S. Marshals Service, the FBI, the Secret Service and the Transportation Security Administration, the men were released.

The Muslim passengers were let go and Gingrich wants to arrest them for impersonating terrorists? The real anti-American is Gingrich for advocating the wholesale revision of First Amendment values because a group of Muslims allegedly prayed loudly and talked about the War in Iraq. Gingrich is not some out of work politician trying to get his name in the papers. He might run for president in 2008.

Gingrich is an icon among conservatives who think this so-called intellectual has revolutionary ideas. He actually has a lurid political history . His personal life is not much better. If he is elected president, though, we are in deep dung, and the repressive measures of the Bush administration will become standard doctrine for years to come.

The terror camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is the Bush administration's goose that lays the golden eggs. So long as we keep throwing them in the clink, the argument goes, we are taking one more terrorist off the streets and away from your children. "That's why there hasn't been another 9/11," they say, usually before another election.

We know that Bush & Co. have been executing "extraordinary rendition," where guys are shipped from Guantanamo to foreign countries, apparantly for the kind of real torture that will squeeze out of them the next terror plot. This begs the question: what happens to these people when they are sent abroad? Most of them are let go.

This story is a must read:

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.

Decisions by more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia to release the former detainees raise questions about whether they were really as dangerous as the United States claimed, or whether some of America's staunchest allies have set terrorists and militants free.

The United States does not systematically track what happens to detainees once they leave Guantanamo, the U.S. State Department says. Defense lawyers and human rights groups say they know of no centralized database, although one group is attempting to compile one.

. . .

But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.

Two conclusions can be drawn from this news. Either the U.S. is rounding up mostly innocent people and throwing them into internment camps without any rights or recourse, or the U.S. is not taking care to ensure that, upon transfer, they are getting the justice they deserve. The article says that the U.S. is not following through on what happens to these people. Why not? The possibility that innocents are being detained as alleged terrorists or that the U.S. is not taking care to ensure that dangerous people are walking the streets again is worrysome. Either foul-up only creates more resentment, and more terrorists.

The paradox is shown in the article as follows:

The United States insists that the fact that so many of the former detainees have been freed by other countries doesn't mean they weren't dangerous.

"They were part of Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

But Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing several detainees, says the fact that hundreds of men have been released into freedom belies their characterization by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth."

"After all, it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such 'vicious killers' or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantanamo," Colangelo-Bryan said.

When analysts try to understand what's going on, they often attribute things to political motivations. It may very well be the case that Bush & Co. were rounding up people as trophies in the "war on terror" and that no one cared whether they were innocent or not. Here's another explanation: the incompetent goons who fouled up every program over the last six years, from Hurricane Katrina to post-Iraq war occupation and planning to Social Security reform, have done it again. It's like asking a television repair man to perform open heart surgery.

Over the past decade or so, we've been reading about setbacks to the death penalty. Two themes emerge from these stories: (1) some poor slob is set free, right before execution, because DNA testing shows he didn't do the crime, or (2) some malfunction in the death penalty apparatus causes the death row inmate to go into convulsions or prolonged agony.

I continue to wonder if the death penalty will ever be abolished in the United States, and my sense is that the DNA angle will clinch it. Even right wingers don't want to see innocent people put to death, and once you pull the trigger, there's no bringing him back.

The method of execution is a dark horse in this equation. Last week, two events highlighted the problems associated with lethal injection, once deemed a humane alternative to the electric chair. As reported in Saturday's New York Times:

Gov. Jeb Bush yesterday suspended all executions in Florida, citing a troubled execution on Wednesday and appointing a commission to consider the humanity and constitutionality of lethal injections.

Hours later, a federal judge ruled that the lethal injection system in California violated the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

“Today has been the most significant day in the history of the death penalty in America in many years,” said Jamie Fellner, director of United States programs for Human Rights Watch. “These developments show that the current lethal-injection protocols pose an unacceptable risk of cruelty.

Yes, that Jeb Bush, George W's little brother. Big brother couldn't kill them fast enough as governor of Texas, but maybe Jeb has a conscience. The lethal injection that got under Jeb's skin was particularly incompetent, according to the Times: "Florida started its moratorium two days after Angel N. Diaz’s execution appeared to go awry. Dr. William Hamilton, medical examiner in Alachua County, Fla., said yesterday that the needle with the lethal chemicals that should have gone directly into Mr. Diaz’s veins punctured the veins before entering soft tissue. It took a second dose and 34 minutes for him to die."

At the same time, a Federal judge ruled that lethal injection in California violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

Judge Fogel found that prison execution teams had been poorly screened and had included people disciplined for smuggling drugs and with post-traumatic stress disorder. Moreover, the team members are poorly trained and supervised, he said.

Record keeping is spotty, the judge found, and the chemicals used are sometimes improperly prepared. The death chamber, he added, is badly lighted and overcrowded.

“Defendants’ actions and failures to act have resulted in an undue and unnecessary risk of an Eighth Amendment violation,” Judge Fogel wrote. “This is intolerable under the Constitution.”

Judge Fogel also noted concerns about the chemicals that California, Florida and 35 other states use. The protocols vary slightly, but almost all call for a series of three chemicals. The first is a barbiturate to render the inmate unconscious. The second is a paralyzing agent that makes the inmate unable to speak, move or breathe. The third is potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Both sides in California agreed that it would be unconstitutional to inject a conscious person with either or both of the second two chemicals. The paralyzing agent would leave the inmate conscious while he suffocated, and potassium chloride is extremely painful.

I am the last person to defend violent criminals. But there is no question in my mind that the death penalty is a school-kid's solution to this serious problem. Execution does not bring the innocent victim back, and eye for an eye is the kind of bumper sticker nonsense that often drives national policy. Why is it OK to execute a common killer but the President can kill thousands in an unjust war? Until someone can answer that question for, me, I'll support any measure to stop the death penalty, even if Jebby Bush spearheads the effort.

It's tough to get away with a good lie. Too many people are paying attention. And too many people are taking notes. When you lie about war, well, those bodies do tend to pile up after a while.

This week's war lie belongs to Tony Blair. The London Independent reports:

The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.

A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.

In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, "at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests."

Mr Ross revealed it was a commonly held view among British officials dealing with Iraq that any threat by Saddam Hussein had been "effectively contained".

Shouldn't someone ask George W. Bush about this? The fickle finger of fate is pointing in his direction, too. According to the article, Mr. Ross "also reveals that British officials warned US diplomats that bringing down the Iraqi dictator would lead to the chaos the world has since witnessed. 'I remember on several occasions the UK team stating this view in terms during our discussions with the US (who agreed),' he said. 'At the same time, we would frequently argue when the US raised the subject, that 'regime change' was inadvisable, primarily on the grounds that Iraq would collapse into chaos.'"

This all reminds me of the Downing Street Memos, documents which surfaced a few years ago from London which reported real-time concerns by Tony Blair's people that Bush and Co. were pell-mell rushing towards war, come hell or high water, without any real basis to think that Saddam posed a threat to anyone. In a rational world, someone's ass would be in a sling because of the Downing Street Memos, but George W's only punishment was re-election. For those of you worried that W. is not sleeping well, haunted by the deaths of thousands, don't worry. According to People magazine, he's sleeping like a baby. In some quarters, we have a name for people like this.

Two foreign policy experts who used to work for the U.S. government were not allowed to publish an opinion article in the New York Times without substantial editing by the Bush administration. These experts tried to argue that Bush should negotiate with Iran in stablizing Iraq, one of the recommendations by the Iraq Study Group. According to these writers, they wanted to talk about certain matters that already have entered the public record through other newspaper articles. Citations to those articles are linked from the New York Times website.

The Times today published the opinion piece with blacked out sentences to show where the Bush administration made its edits. I have never before seen an opinion piece in any newspaper with overt deletions, but this is the Times' way of showing that it will not be kicked around by the Bush administration. At this point, the news here is not the message of the opinion piece -- the non-controversial view that Bush should talk to Iran -- but the Bush administration's paranoia that someone will question its policies in the country's most influentual newspaper.
The blacked out opinion piece is here. Scroll down to see the blackouts and the Times' trick for accessing the blocked messages. You may have to register with the Times' website to do this, but it's worth the hassle to see how the Bush administration reacts to dissent at a time when its public standing is at an all-time low and the Iraq war has devolved into an unmanagable mess.

The opinion article that discusses the edited opinion piece is below.

December 22, 2006 What We Wanted to Tell You About Iran By FLYNT LEVERETT and HILLARY MANN

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.

These aspects have been extensively reported in the news media, and one of us, Mr. Leverett, has written about them in The Times and other publications with the explicit permission of the review board. We provided the following citations to the board to demonstrate that all of the material the White House objected to is already in the public domain. Unfortunately, to make sense of much of our Op-Ed article, readers will have to read the citations for themselves. (See links at left.)

The decisions of the C.I.A. and the White House took us by surprise. Since leaving government service three and a half years ago, Mr. Leverett has put more than 20 articles through the C.I.A.’s prepublication review process and the Publication Review Board has never changed a word or asked the White House for permission to clear these articles.

What’s more, we have spent a collective 20 years serving our country as career civil servants in national security, for both Republican and Democratic administrations. We know firsthand the importance of protecting sensitive information. But we also know the importance of shared knowledge. In the entrance to the C.I.A.’s headquarters the words of the Gospel of John are inscribed, “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

National security must be above politics. In a democracy, transparency in government has to be honored and protected. To classify information for reasons other than the safety and security of the United States and its interests is a violation of these principles. It is for this reason that we will continue to press for the release of the article without the material deleted.

Flynt Leverett is a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation. Hillary Mann, a former Foreign Service officer, participated in the United States discussions with Iran from 2001 to 2003.

John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded this song in 1970-71, when the Vietnam War was raging, with four years to go. You can't improve on the original, but it's time for for an update. And while we're at it . . .

In 1968, a wonderful animated film was released, Yellow Submarine. Watch it here.
I'm not sure how the movie can be posted on the Internet, so enjoy it while it lasts.

The movie took two years to create and it came out at the height of the psychedelic era. Perfect timing, because the movie is psychedelic, yet timeless. The movie makers used Beatles songs from 1965-67 to outline the plot, and the 1967 version of the animated Beatles star in the film. As Wikipedia tells us,

As with most motion picture musicals, the music takes precedence over the actual plot, and most of the story is a series of set-pieces designed to present Beatles music set to various images, in a form reminiscent of Walt Disney's Fantasia (and foreshadowing the rise of music videos and MTV fifteen years later). Nonetheless, the movie still presents an entertaining modern-day fairy tale that caters to the ideals of the "love generation".

. . .

The movie's style contrasts greatly with the efforts of The Walt Disney Company and other animated films previously released by Hollywood up until the time. The film uses a style of limited animation that deliberately defies reality and paints a landscape that could never exist in the real world; something that appealed greatly to the escapists of the 1960s.

Roger Ebert loves the movie. The Beatles were not involved in producing Yellow Submarine (the British voices in the film are not theirs), but they warmed up to it and made a cameo appearance at the end. Watch the movie here.