An astute blogger for Salon.com has discovered that two of the leading Republican candidates for President will not rule out the possibility of imprisoning American citizens without review by the courts. Mitt Romney (former governor of Massachusetts) and Rudy Giuliani (former mayor of New York City) made these statements in an interview with a guy from the libertarian Cato Institute.

According to Glenn Greenwald of Salon:

Various Republican candidates attended a meeting of Club for Growth, and afterwards, National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru spoke to Cato Institute's President Ed Crane about what they said. This brief report from Ponnuru is simply extraordinary:

Crane asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind.

. . .

Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.

The source for this information is here.

As Greenwald notes, declining to rule out imprisoning American citizens without due process is quite un-American and contrary to a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court which repudiated the Bush administration in rejecting the government's practice of rounding up citizens without legal process. So what Romney and Guiliani are saying is that they don't give a damn what the Republican-dominated Supreme Court says about this, and neither do they care that they are willing to ignore the most fundamental principle of American government: you don't round up citizens without due process.

This is what the Supreme Court said in 2004 about the practice of designating citizens "enemy combatants" without a chance to defend themselves from interminable inprisonment: "It would turn our system of checks and balances on its head to suggest that a citizen could not make his way to court with a challenge to the factual basis for his detention by his government, simply because the Executive opposes making available such a challenge. Absent suspension of the writ by Congress, a citizen detained as an enemy combatant is entitled to this process."

Greenwald's analysis of the issue is here. Greenwald is outraged that there is no outrage over this. Of course there isn't any outrage. Americans are not trained to discuss civil rights and liberties in an open and honest way. Americans don't keep up with Supreme Court rulings, and the media fails us in refusing to report on these rulings in a way that makes any sense, and if the newspaper does cover an important Supreme Court ruling, the story dies only a few days later and we focus on something else.

No politician ever got elected on a civil rights platform in my lifetime. If anything, opposition to expanded civil rights is a liability for most politicians, and no one is going to risk his election by suggesting that American citizens accused of treasonous behavior be allowed to challenge their "enemy combatant" designations in court or through some other impartial process. For this reason, Romney and Guiliani feel comfortable suggesting that they could impose authoritarian measures that violate Supreme Court rulings in order to keep us "safe." But, once American citizens are rounded up without due process, then it's over.

We need to re-evaluate political dialogue in this country. Americans throw around words like "freedom" and "liberty," but they have no idea what those words mean. Do people realize that most of the Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution focus on protecting the rights of criminal defendants? Do they realize that many of the court rulings expanding freedom of speech and religion grew out of lawsuits filed by religious and political groups that we hate (like the Ku Klux Klan) and don't understand (like the Jehovah's Witnesses)? The answer is no, because American schools do not educate us about the true meaning of the United States Constitution.

I don't need a sociological study to know that most Americans have no idea what freedom and liberty truly mean in this country. All I need to know is that the media and other political commentators have not blinked an eye when two leading Republican candiates for the presidency will not rule out the authoritarian and oppressive technique of rounding up citizens without due process. Until the intellectual classes start battering their eyes at news like this, we will have a very long way to go before our rights and freedoms are truly set in stone.

From a very young age we are taught to be good Americans. Over a 12 year period, assuming a 180 day school year, we give the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag over 2,000 times. That flag hovers over the American classroom like the mother hovers over a child. We obey without asking questions.

Who is a patriot? American language has been bastardized by intellectual bullies who insist that patriotism means pro-war, pro-government, pro-"American," whatever that means. Even if pro-American means supporting the policies that kill others. It is still somewhat eye-opening when someone outs himself as an anti-war thinker. Even with public opinion running against the Iraq war, it remains noteworthy when people protest the war and place anti-war bumper stickers on their car. It still seems naughty to oppose the war.

Authoritarian thinkers have a monopoly on patriotism, at least the way that word is defined in the United States. Somehow the very people who claim the mantle of patriotism are screwing over the soldiers who risked their lives for the wargames waged by neo-conservative warriers who love war but would do anything to keep their own children from fighting it.

As anyone reading this blog knows, I abhor the U.S. war in Iraq. But I loathe the bureaucrats who are denying war veterans the treatment and services they need to function after they return home. After these soldiers fight a war for little men in Washington who don't have the balls to squash a fly or trap a mouse, they throw them out into the street to rot. The following article should make any anti-war leftist angry at the bureacracy in Washington which is re-classifying sick soldiers who desperately need special services.

Here is the article:

How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits
by JOSHUA KORS
The Nation
[from the April 9, 2007 issue]

Jon Town has spent the last few years fighting two battles, one against his body, the other against the US Army. Both began in October 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq. He was standing in the doorway of his battalion's headquarters when a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old Army specialist to the floor, where he lay blacked out among the rubble.

"The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground." Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. "They started shaking me. But I was numb all over," he says. "And it's weird because... because for a few minutes you feel like you're not really there. I could see them, but I couldn't hear them. I couldn't hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead."

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town's neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town's wounds were actually caused by a "personality disorder." Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.

Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits. The conditions of their discharge have infuriated many in the military community, including the injured soldiers and their families, veterans' rights groups, even military officials required to process these dismissals.

They say the military is purposely misdiagnosing soldiers like Town and that it's doing so for one reason: to cheat them out of a lifetime of disability and medical benefits, thereby saving billions in expenses.

The Fine Print

In the Army's separations manual it's called Regulation 635-200, Chapter 5-13: "Separation Because of Personality Disorder." It's an alluring choice for a cash-strapped military because enacting it is quick and cheap. The Department of Veterans Affairs doesn't have to provide medical care to soldiers dismissed with personality disorder. That's because under Chapter 5-13, personality disorder is a pre-existing condition. The VA is only required to treat wounds sustained during service.

Soldiers discharged under 5-13 can't collect disability pay either. To receive those benefits, a soldier must be evaluated by a medical board, which must confirm that he is wounded and that his wounds stem from combat. The process takes several months, in contrast with a 5-13 discharge, which can be wrapped up in a few days.

If a soldier dismissed under 5-13 hasn't served out his contract, he has to give back a slice of his re-enlistment bonus as well. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.

One military official says doctors at his base are doing more than withholding this information from wounded soldiers; they're actually telling them the opposite: that if they go along with a 5-13, they'll get to keep their bonus and receive disability and medical benefits. The official, who demanded anonymity, handles discharge papers at a prominent Army facility. He says the soldiers he works with know they don't have a personality disorder. "But the doctors are telling them, this will get you out quicker, and the VA will take care of you. To stay out of Iraq, a soldier will take that in a heartbeat. What they don't realize is, those things are lies. The soldiers, they don't read the fine print," he says. "They don't know to ask for a med board. They're taking the word of the doctors. Then they sit down with me and find out what a 5-13 really means--they're shocked."

Russell Terry, founder of the Iraq War Veterans Organization (IWVO), says he's watched this scenario play itself out many times. For more than a year, his veterans' rights group has been receiving calls from distraught soldiers discharged under Chapter 5-13. Most, he says, say their military doctors pushed the personality disorder diagnosis, strained to prove that their problems existed before their service in Iraq and refused to acknowledge evidence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury and physical traumas, which would allow them to collect disability and medical benefits.

"These soldiers are coming home from Iraq with all kinds of problems," Terry says. "They go to the VA for treatment, and they're turned away. They're told, 'No, you have a pre-existing condition, something from childhood.'" That leap in logic boils Terry's blood. "Everybody receives a psychological screening when they join the military. What I want to know is, if all these soldiers really did have a severe pre-existing condition, how did they get into the military in the first place?"

Terry says that trying to reverse a 5-13 discharge is a frustrating process. A soldier has to claw through a thicket of paperwork, appeals panels and backstage political dealing, and even with the guidance of an experienced advocate, few are successful. "The 5-13," he says, "it's like a scarlet letter you can't get taken off."

In the last six years the Army has diagnosed and discharged more than 5,600 soldiers because of personality disorder, according to the Defense Department. And the numbers keep rising: 805 cases in 2001, 980 cases in 2003, 1,086 from January to November 2006. "It's getting worse and worse every day," says the official who handles discharge papers. "At my office the numbers started out normal. Now it's up to three or four soldiers each day. It's like, suddenly everybody has a personality disorder."

The reason is simple, he says. "They're saving a buck. And they're saving the VA money too. It's all about money."

Exactly how much money is difficult to calculate. Defense Department records show that across the entire armed forces, more than 22,500 soldiers have been dismissed due to personality disorder in the last six years. How much those soldiers would have collected in disability pay would have been determined by a medical board, which evaluates just how disabled a veteran is. A completely disabled soldier receives about $44,000 a year. In a recent study on the cost of veterans' benefits for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Harvard professor Linda Bilmes estimates an average disability payout of $8,890 per year and a future life expectancy of forty years for soldiers returning from service.

Using those figures, by discharging soldiers under Chapter 5-13, the military could be saving upwards of $8 billion in disability pay. Add to that savings the cost of medical care over the soldiers' lifetimes. Bilmes estimates that each year the VA spends an average of $5,000 in medical care per veteran. Applying those numbers, by discharging 22,500 soldiers because of personality disorder, the military saves $4.5 billion in medical care over their lifetimes.

Town says Fort Carson psychologist Mark Wexler assured him that he would receive disability benefits, VA medical care and that he'd get to keep his bonus--good news he discussed with Christian Fields and Brandon Murray, two soldiers in his unit at Fort Carson. "We talked about it many times," Murray says. "Jon said the doctor there promised him benefits, and he was happy about it. Who wouldn't be?" Town shared that excitement with his wife, Kristy, shortly after his appointment with Wexler. "He said that Wexler had explained to him that he'd get to keep his benefits," Kristy says, "that the doctor had looked into it, and it was all coming with the chapter he was getting."

In fact, Town would not get disability pay or receive long-term VA medical care. And he would have to give back the bulk of his $15,000 bonus. Returning that money meant Town would leave Fort Carson less than empty-handed: He now owed the Army more than $3,000. "We had this on our heads the whole way, driving home to Ohio," says Town. Wexler made him promises, he says, about what would happen if he went along with the diagnosis. "The final day, we find out, none of it was true. It was a total shock. I felt like I'd been betrayed by the Army."

Wexler denies discussing benefits with Town. In a statement, the psychologist writes, "I have never discussed benefits with my patients as that is not my area of expertise. The only thing I said to Spc. Town was that the Chapter 5-13 is an honorable discharge.... I assure you, after over 15 years in my position, both as active duty and now civilian, I don't presume to know all the details about benefits and therefore do not discuss them with my patients."

Wexler's boss, Col. Steven Knorr, chief of the Department of Behavioral Health at Evans Army Hospital, declined to speak about Town's case. When asked if doctors at Fort Carson were assuring patients set for a 5-13 discharge that they'll receive disability benefits and keep their bonuses, Knorr said, "I don't believe they're doing that."

Not the Man He Used to Be

Interviews with soldiers diagnosed with personality disorder suggest that the military is using the psychological condition as a catch-all diagnosis, encompassing symptoms as diverse as deafness, headaches and schizophrenic delusions. That flies in the face of the Army's own regulations.

According to those regulations, to be classified a personality disorder, a soldier's symptoms had to exist before he joined the military. And they have to match the "personality disorder" described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the national standard for psychiatric diagnosis. Town's case provides a clear window into how these personality disorder diagnoses are being used because even a cursory examination of his case casts grave doubt as to whether he fits either criterion.

Town's wife, for one, laughs in disbelief at the idea that her husband was suffering from hearing loss before he headed to Iraq. But since returning, she says, he can't watch TV unless the volume is full-blast, can't use the phone unless its volume is set to high. Medical papers from Fort Carson list Town as having no health problems before serving in Iraq; after, a Fort Carson audiologist documents "functional (non-organic) hearing loss." Town says his right ear, his "good" ear, has lost 50 percent of its hearing; his left is still essentially useless.

He is more disturbed by how his memory has eroded. Since the rocket blast, he has struggled to retain new information. "Like, I'll be driving places, and then I totally forget where I'm going," he says. "Numbers, names, dates--unless I knew them before, I pretty much don't remember." When Town returned to his desk job at Fort Carson, he found himself straining to recall the Army's regulations. "People were like, 'What are you, dumb?' And I'm like, 'No, I'm probably smarter than you. I just can't remember stuff,'" he says, his melancholy suddenly replaced by anger. "They don't understand--I got hit by a rocket."

Those bursts of rage mark the biggest change, says Kristy Town. She says the man she married four years ago was "a real goofball. He'd do funny voices and faces--a great Jim Carrey imitation. When the kids would get a boo-boo, he'd fall on the ground and pretend he got a boo-boo too." Now, she says, "his emotions are all over the place. He'll get so angry at things, and it's not toward anybody. It's toward himself. He blames himself for everything." He has a hard time sleeping and doesn't spend as much time as he used to with the kids. "They get rowdy when they play, and he just has to be alone. It's almost like his nerves can't handle it."

Kristy begins to cry, pauses, before forcing herself to continue. She's been watching him when he's alone, she says. "He kind of... zones out, almost like he's in a daze."

In May 2006 Town tried to electrocute himself, dropping his wife's hair dryer into the bathtub. The dryer short-circuited before it could electrify the water. Fort Carson officials put Town in an off-post hospital that specializes in suicidal depression. Town had been promoted to corporal after returning from Iraq; he was stripped of that rank and reduced back to specialist. "When he came back, I tried to be the same," Kristy says. "He just can't. He's definitely not the man he used to be."

Town says his dreams have changed too. They keep taking him back to Ramadi, to the death of a good friend who'd been too near an explosion, taken too much shrapnel to the face. In his dreams Town returns there night after night to soak up the blood.

He stops his description for a rare moment of levity. "Sleep didn't use to be like that," he says. "I used to sleep just fine."

How the Army determined then that Town's behavioral problems existed before his military service is unclear. Wexler, the Fort Carson psychologist who made the diagnosis, didn't interview any of Town's family or friends. It's unclear whether he even questioned Town's fellow soldiers in 2-17 Field Artillery, men like Fields, Murray and Michael Forbus, who could have testified to his stability and award-winning performance before the October 2004 rocket attack. As Forbus puts it, before the attack Town was "one of the best in our unit"; after, "the son of a gun was deaf in one ear. He seemed lost and disoriented. It just took the life out of him."

Town finds his diagnosis especially strange because the Diagnostic Manual appears to preclude cases like his. It says that a pattern of erratic behavior cannot be labeled a "personality disorder" if it's from a head injury. The specialist asserts that his hearing loss, headaches and anger all began with the rocket attack that knocked him unconscious.

Wexler did not reply to repeated requests seeking comment on Town's diagnosis. But Col. Knorr of Fort Carson's Evans hospital says he's confident his doctors are properly diagnosing personality disorder. The colonel says there is a simple explanation as to why in so many cases the lifelong condition of personality disorder isn't apparent until after serving in Iraq. Traumatic experiences, Knorr says, can trigger a condition that has lain dormant for years. "They may have done fine in high school and before, but it comes out during the stress of service."

"I've never heard of that occurring," says Keith Armstrong, a clinical professor with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. Armstrong has been counseling traumatized veterans for more than twenty years at the San Francisco VA; most recently he is the co-author of Courage After Fire: Coping Strategies for Troops Returning From Iraq and Afghanistan and Their Families. "Personality disorder is a diagnosis I'm very cautious about," he says. "My question would be, has PTSD been ruled out? It seems to me that if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, let's see if it's a duck before other factors are implicated."

Knorr admits that in most cases, before making a diagnosis, his doctors only interview the soldier. But he adds that interviewing family members, untrained to recognize signs of personality disorder, would be of limited value. "The soldier's perception and their parents' perception is that they were fine. But maybe they didn't or weren't able to see that wasn't the case."

Armstrong takes a very different approach. He says family is a "crucial part" of the diagnosis and treatment of soldiers returning from war. The professor sees parents and wives as so important, he encourages his soldiers to invite their families into the counseling sessions. "They bring in particular information that can be helpful," he says. "By not taking advantage of their knowledge and support, I think we're doing soldiers a disservice."

Knorr would not discuss the specifics of Town's case. He did note, however, that his department treats thousands of soldiers each year and says within that population, there are bound to be a small fraction of misdiagnosed cases and dissatisfied soldiers. He adds that the soldiers he's seen diagnosed and discharged with personality disorder are "usually quite pleased."

The Army holds soldiers' medical records and contact information strictly confidential. But The Nation was able to locate a half-dozen soldiers from bases across the country who were diagnosed with personality disorder. All of them rejected that diagnosis. Most said military doctors tried to force the diagnosis upon them and turned a blind eye to symptoms of PTSD and physical injury.

One such veteran, Richard Dykstra, went to the hospital at Fort Stewart, Georgia, complaining of flashbacks, anger and stomach pains. The doctor there diagnosed personality disorder. Dykstra thinks the symptoms actually stem from PTSD and a bilateral hernia he suffered in Iraq. "When I told her my symptoms, she said, 'Oh, it looks like you've been reading up on PTSD.' Then she basically said I was making it all up," he says.

In her report on Dykstra, Col. Ana Parodi, head of Behavioral Health at Fort Stewart's Winn Army Hospital, writes that the soldier gives a clear description of PTSD symptoms but lays them out with such detail, it's "as if he had memorized the criteria." She concludes that Dykstra has personality disorder, not PTSD, though her report also notes that Dykstra has had "no previous psychiatric history" and that she confirmed the validity of his symptoms with the soldier's wife.

Parodi is currently on leave and could not be reached for comment. Speaking for Fort Stewart, Public Affairs Officer Lieut. Col. Randy Martin says that the Army's diagnosis procedures "have been developed over time, and they are accepted as being fair." Martin said he could not address Dykstra's case specifically because his files have been moved to a storage facility in St. Louis.

William Wooldridge had a similar fight with the Army. The specialist was hauling missiles and tank ammunition outside Baghdad when, he says, a man standing at the side of the road grabbed hold of a young girl and pushed her in front of his truck. "The little girl," Wooldridge says, his voice suddenly quiet, "she looked like one of my daughters."

When he returned to Fort Polk, Louisiana, Wooldridge told his doctor that he was now hearing voices and seeing visions, hallucinations of a mangled girl who would ask him why he had killed her. His doctor told him he had personality disorder. "When I heard that, I flew off the handle because I said, 'Hey, that ain't me. Before I went over there, I was a happy-go-lucky kind of guy.'" Wooldridge says his psychologist, Capt. Patrick Brady of Baynes-Jones Army Community Hospital, saw him for thirty minutes before making his diagnosis. Soon after, Wooldridge was discharged from Fort Polk under Chapter 5-13.

He began to fight that discharge immediately, without success. Then in March 2005, eighteen months after Wooldridge's dismissal, his psychiatrist at the Memphis VA filed papers rejecting Brady's diagnosis and asserting that Wooldridge suffered from PTSD so severe, it made him "totally disabled." Weeks later the Army Discharge Review Board voided Wooldridge's 5-13 dismissal, but the eighteen months he'd spent lingering without benefits had already taken its toll.

"They put me out on the street to rot, and if I had left things like they were, there would have been no way I could have survived. I would have had to take myself out or had someone do it for me," he says. The way they use personality disorder to diagnose and discharge, he says, "it's like a mental rape. That's the only way I can describe it."

Captain Brady has since left Fort Polk and is now on staff at Fort Wainwright, Alaska; recently he deployed to Iraq and was unavailable for comment. In a statement, Maj. Byron Strother, chief of the Department of Behavioral Health at Baynes-Jones hospital, writes that allegations that soldiers at Fort Polk are being misdiagnosed "are not true." Strother says diagnoses at his hospital are made "only after careful consideration of all relevant clinical observation, direct examination [and] appropriate testing."

If there are dissatisfied soldiers, says Knorr, the Fort Carson official, "I'll bet not a single one of them has been diagnosed with conditions that are clear-cut and makes them medically unfit, like schizophrenia."

Linda Mosier disputes that. When her son Chris left for Iraq in 2004, he was a "normal kid," she says, who'd call her long-­distance and joke about the strange food and expensive taxis overseas. When he returned home for Christmas 2005, "he wouldn't sit down for a meal with us. He just kept walking around. I took him to the department store for slacks, and he was inside rushing around saying, 'Let's go, let's go, let's go.' He wouldn't sleep, and the one time he did, he woke up screaming."

Mosier told his mother of a breaking point in Iraq: a roadside bomb that blew up the truck in front of his. "He said his buddies were screaming. They were on fire," she says, her voice trailing off. "He was there at the end to pick up the hands and arms." After that Mosier started having delusions. Dr. Wexler of Fort Carson diagnosed personality disorder. Soon after, Mosier was discharged under Chapter 5-13.

Mosier returned home, still plagued by visions. In October he put a note on the front door of their Des Moines, Iowa, home saying the Iraqis were after him and he had to protect the family, then shot himself.

Mosier's mother is furious that doctors at Fort Carson treated her son for such a brief period of time and that Wexler, citing confidentiality, refused to tell her anything about that treatment or give her family any direction on how to help Chris upon his return home. She does not believe her son had a personality disorder. "They take a normal kid, he comes back messed up, then nobody was there for him when he came back," Linda says. "They discharged him so they didn't have to treat him."

Wexler did not reply to a written request seeking comment on Mosier's case.

Thrown to the Wolves

Today Jon Town is home, in small-town Findlay, Ohio, with no job, no prospects and plenty of time to reflect on how he got there. Diagnosing him with personality disorder may have saved the Army thousands of dollars, he says, but what did Wexler have to gain?

Quite a lot, says Steve Robinson, director of veterans affairs at Veterans for America, a Washington, DC-based soldiers' rights group. Since the Iraq War began, he says, doctors have been facing an overflow of wounded soldiers and a shortage of rooms, supplies and time to treat them. By calling PTSD a personality disorder, they usher one soldier out quickly, freeing up space for the three or four who are waiting.

Terry, the veterans' advocate from IWVO, notes that unlike doctors in the private sector, Army doctors who give questionable diagnoses face no danger of malpractice suits due to Feres v. U.S., a 1950 Supreme Court ruling that bars soldiers from suing for negligence. To maintain that protection, Terry says, most doctors will diagnose personality disorder when prodded to do so by military officials.

That's precisely how the system works, says one military official familiar with the discharge process. The official, who requested anonymity, is a lawyer with Trial Defense Services (TDS), a unit of the Army that guides soldiers through their 5-13 discharge. "Commanders want to get these guys out the door and get it done fast. Even if the next soldier isn't as good, at least he's good to go. He's deployable. So they're telling the docs what diagnosis to give to get what discharge."

The lawyer says he knows this is happening because commanders have told him that they're doing it. "Some have come to me and talked about doing this. They're saying, 'Give me a specific diagnosis. It'll support a certain chapter.'"

Colonel Martin of Fort Stewart said the prospect of commanders pressuring doctors to diagnose personality disorder is "highly unlikely." "Doctors are making these determinations themselves," Martin says. In a statement, Col. William Statz, commander at Fort Polk's Baynes-Jones hospital, says, "Any allegations that clinical decisions are influenced by either political considerations or command pressures, at any level, are untrue."

But a second TDS lawyer, who also demanded anonymity, says he's watched the same process play out at his base. "What I've noticed is right before a unit deploys, we see a spike in 5-13s, as if the commanders are trying to clean house, get rid of the soldiers they don't really need," he says. "The chain of command just wants to eliminate them and get a new body in there fast to plug up the holes." If anyone shows even moderate signs of psychological distress, he says, "they're kicking them to the curb instead of treating them."

Both lawyers say that once a commander steps in and pushes for a 5-13, the diagnosis and discharge are carved in stone fairly fast. After that happens, one lawyer says he points soldiers toward the Army Board for Correction of Military Records, where a 5-13 label could be overturned, and failing that, advises them to seek redress from their representative in Congress. Town did that, contacting Republican Representative Michael Oxley of Ohio, with little success. Oxley, who has since retired, did not return calls seeking comment.

Few cases are challenged successfully or overturned later, say the TDS lawyers. The system, says one, is essentially broken. "Right now, the Army is eating its own. What I want to see is these soldiers getting the right diagnosis, so they can get the right help, not be thrown to the wolves right away. That is what they're doing."

Still, Town tries to remain undaunted. He got his story to Robinson of Veterans for America, who brought papers on his case to an October meeting with several top Washington officials, including Deputy Surgeon General Gale Pollock, Assistant Surgeon General Bernard DeKoning and Republican Senator Kit Bond of Missouri. There Robinson laid out the larger 5-13 problem and submitted a briefing specifically on Town.

"We got a very positive response," Robinson says. "After we presented, they were almost appalled, like we are every day. They said, 'We didn't know this was happening.'" Robinson says the deputy surgeon general promised to look into Town's case and the others presented to her. Senator Bond, whose son has served in Iraq, floated the idea of a Congressional hearing if the 5-13 issue isn't resolved. The senator did not return calls seeking comment.

In the meantime, Town is doing his best to keep his head in check. He says his nightmares have been waning in recent weeks, but most of his problems persist. He's thinking of going to a veterans support group in Toledo, forty-five miles north of Findlay. There will be guys there who have been through this, he says, vets who understand.

Town hesitates, his voice suddenly much softer. "I have my good days and my bad days," he says. "It all depends on whether I wake up in Findlay or Iraq."

Anyone who pays attention to the media's performance since September 11 knows that the usual dynamic between press and government deteriorated even further as the press stopped asking any questions and allowed the government to set the agenda. At first blush, this made sense as everyone got scared in the wake of 9/11 and the public saw the government like a child views his father.

But on second blush, this was bull. The media simply failed us and allowed the President to beat the war drums all the way to Iraq. Few of us were thinking about war with Iraq on September 12, but the government clearly was, according to first-hand accounts of the Bush administration.

A good summary of the media's failures in this regard was just posted on Salon.com. Here is the opening paragraph, which I provide as a teaser:

It's no secret that the period of time between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq represents one of the greatest collapses in the history of the American media. Every branch of the media failed, from daily newspapers, magazines and Web sites to television networks, cable channels and radio. I'm not going to go into chapter and verse about the media's specific failures, its credulousness about aluminum tubes and mushroom clouds and failure to make clear that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11 -- they're too well known to repeat. In any case, the real failing was not in any one area; it was across the board. Bush administration lies and distortions went unchallenged, or were actively promoted. Fundamental and problematic assumptions about terrorism and the "war on terror" were rarely debated or even discussed. Vital historical context was almost never provided. And it wasn't just a failure of analysis. With some honorable exceptions, good old-fashioned reporting was also absent.

Sounds like a good start. Read the rest here.

There's an old saying: when things go wrong, committee it to death. So when the City Council wonders how to deal with a water main break or Congress discovers that money is disappearing from the public kitty, they hold a press conference and declare that We Are Setting Up a Distinguished Committee to deal with the problem. Then the committee meets a few times, eats some doughnuts, runs off with the free pens and issues a report that no one reads.

George W. Bush knows that the Iraq War is not going well and that four years after Mission Accomplished we are spinning our wheels and no one knows what to do 'cept send more troops and money into the hell-hole and hope to God that somehow things take a turn for the better. The Committee thing didn't work, because the distinguished blowhards assigned for that task told Bush what he didn't want to hear. So the next best thing is to appoint a War Czar, you know, some military guy to take charge of the war and wrap the damned thing up. Problem is, Bush ain't got no War Czar. No one wants the job. Not even the war-mongers.

Here's the story:

The White House has been quietly attempting to appoint a “high-powered czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with authority to issue directions to the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies.” It hasn’t publicly disclosed the position, which was today reported by the Washington Post, because it hoped to “find someone President Bush can anoint and announce for the post all at once.”

But so far, the White House hasn’t found anyone willing to take the job. At least three retired four-star generals have turned down the White House’s offer, including a key administration ally and escalation proponent.

The Washington Post reported that "At least three retired four-star generals approached by the White House in recent weeks have declined to be considered for the position, the sources said, underscoring the administration's difficulty in enlisting its top recruits to join the team after five years of warfare that have taxed the United States and its military."

The following quote from the Post is priceless:

"The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going," said retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan, a former top NATO commander who was among those rejecting the job. Sheehan said he believes that Vice President Cheney and his hawkish allies remain more powerful within the administration than pragmatists looking for a way out of Iraq. "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks,' " he said.

Asking an ambitious military man to take on the role of War Czar is like asking a fraternity boy to work as the madam at the whorehouse. But the military guys reacted as if you walked them to the shit-yard and gave them a shovel. Nobody wants to be steering the Titanic into another iceberg.

What makes this story so profound is that (1) the Constitution of the United States already gives us a "War Czar" in the form of Commander in Chief. Article 2, Section 2: "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." The Commander in Chief is George W. Bush. If Bush can't handle it, there's the Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the Vice President and a bunch of Cabinet officials from Secretary of the Army to Secretary of the Navy. Can't we save a few bucks and ask them to be the War Czar?

What also makes the story profound is that this scenario was predicted some time ago by the Onion, America's greatest satirical newspaper, which reported in October 2005 that he was appointing an administrator to run the country:

In response to increasing criticism of his handling of the war in Iraq and the disaster in the Gulf Coast, as well as other issues, such as Social Security reform, the national deficit, and rising gas prices, President Bush is expected to appoint someone to run the U.S. as soon as Friday.

"During these tumultuous times, America is in need of a bold, resolute person who can get the job done," said Bush during a press conference Monday. "My fellow Americans, I assure you that I will appoint just such a person with all due haste."

The Cabinet-level position, to be known as Secretary of the Nation, was established by an executive order Sept. 2, but has remained unfilled in the intervening weeks.

"I've been talking to folks from all across this country, from Louisiana to Los Angeles, and people tell me the same thing: This nation needs a strong, compassionate leader," Bush said. "In response to these concerns, I'm making this a top priority. I will name a good, qualified person as soon as possible."

Among the new secretary's duties are preserving, protecting, and defending the Constitution of the United States, commanding the U.S. armed forces, appointing judges and ambassadors, and vetoing congressional legislation. The secretary will also be tasked with overseeing all foreign and domestic affairs, including those relating to the economy, natural disasters, national infrastructure, homeland security, poverty, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The secretary will report directly to the president.

Don't you think the Onion should get the Pulitzer Prize for this? I think so.

Even if you don't know the difference between a courthouse and an outhouse, you know that, for the most part, you can say whatever you want in this country and get away with it. Everyone knows that the First Amendment means that the government can't punish people for their speech unless they shout fire in a crowded theater or engage in some other disorderly conduct.

The problem with the First Amendment is that some support it in theory but not in practice. I often wonder what would happen if the public could vote on someone's First Amendment rights rather than allow the courts to handle it. And what if we took fact patterns from real cases where the First Amendment protected obnoxious speech and surveyed the public to see what they thought about the speech, without telling them that these fact patterns drew from real cases?

One example is the fact pattern from Cohen v. California, which the Supreme Court decided in 1971. Cohen was an anti-war guy who walked through a courthouse with a jacket that read "Fuck the Draft." People were offended by the jacket but the Court said that "one man's vulgarity is another man's lyric." The average person would probaby say that Cohen should not be allowed to wear this jacket in public, but the Court did.

It's the obnoxious people who expand the First Amendment's freedoms for the rest of us. A recent case from the State of Indiana drives this point home. A teenager created a MySpace page as a prank, making it look like the school principal, Mr. Gobert, had set it up. Little Miss Smartass then attacked the principal on the MySpace, writing:

Hey you piece of greencastle shit. What the fuck do you think of me [now] that you can['t] control me? Huh? Ha ha ha guess what I'll wear my fucking piercings all day long and to school and you can['t] do shit about it! Ha ha fucking ha! Stupid bastard!

The next day, Little Miss Smartass wrote, "die . . . gobert . . . die." Then, she created a MySpace page called "Fuck Mr. Gobert and GC schools."

The school found out about these web pages but it was the local prosecutor who brought up Little Miss Smartass on delinquency charges, thrusting her into the criminal justice system. The Court ruled that Smartass cannot be deemed a juvenile delinquent because the MySpace postings were free speech as she was objecting to the school's policy against wearing body piercings to school. As the Court dryly noted, she "openly criticizes Gobert's imposed school policy on decorative body piercings and forcefully indicates her displeasure with it. While we have little regard for [her] use of vulgar epithets, we conclude that her overall message constitutes political speech."

So there you have it: vulgar but political MySpace postings are protected by the First Amendment. Here's the opinion, if any lawyers are reading this.

Every generation has its First Amendment landmarks. Many decades ago, in the 1920's, it was American communists and anarchists who pressed the courts for speech freedoms. During the 1960's and early 1970's, it was Vietnam war protesters, including the "Fuck the Draft" guy. Today it's Internet speech.

Filth is the essence of freedom of speech. A flag-waver is never going to ask the court to recognize his First Amendment rights. The flag-burner will ask for the Court to protect him, and the Supreme Court did protect him in 1989, outraging the public which wanted to restrict this provocative activity. Constitutional lawyers and scholars watched in horror as the American public enthusiastically endorsed restricting the rights of protect activity. But it wasn't just the great unwashed who wanted to restrict First Amendment speech. Ten years ago, Robert Bork, who almost made it to the Supreme Court in 1987 (but was rejected by the U.S. Senate because he was too conservative) said that the "Fuck the Draft" case was an unfortunate example of "radical individualism." He also wrote in favor of censorship, explaining that

"Censorship as an enhancement of liberty may seem paradoxical. Yet it should be obvious, to all but dogmatic First Amendment absolutists, that people forced to live in an increasingly brutalized culture are, in a very real sense, not wholly free." Bork goes on to complain that "relations between the sexes are debased by pornography"; that "large parts of television are unwatchable"; that "motion pictures rely upon sex, gore, and pyrotechnics for the edification of the target audience of 14-year-olds"; and that "popular music hardly deserves the name of music."

This guy should know better. Shut me up today, and the neighbors are shut up tomorrow. Not everyone is a First Amendment scholar, but eminent law professors should know better. Can you believe that a guy who thinks like this almost made it to the Supreme Court?

More fear-mongering from President Dingbat brings us the following highlights, with my commentary in bold. The context is a Congressional spending bill on the war. Bush wants absolute authority on fighting the war and Congress wants to set timetables. Speaking to a friendly audience, President Dingbat plays his greatest hits like a Beach Boys concert on July 4th. More analysis here.

Dingbat says:

A time of war is a time of sacrifice for our nation, but especially for our military families. Being left behind when a loved one goes to war is one of the hardest jobs in our military. The families here today inspire our nation -- inspire them with their sense of duty and with their deep devotion to our country.

The families gathered here understand that we are a nation at war. Like me, they wish we weren't at war -- but we are. They know that the enemies who attacked us on September the 11th, 2001 want to bring further destruction to our country. They know that the only way to stop them is to stay on the offense, to fight the extremists and radicals where they live, so we don't have to face them where we live.

In fact, Bush was asked about national sacrifice a few weeks ago. When wartime presidents talk about sacrifice, the image that comes to mind is that national effort to devote all resources to the war effort, like World War II, when certain goods and consumer items were not available because they were used to make tanks and weapons and other things deemed necessary to defeat the Nazis and other fascists. Here's what President Dingbat said when he was asked about sacrifice: "Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night. I mean, we've got a fantastic economy here in the United States, but yet, when you think about the psychology of the country, it is somewhat down because of this war."

Watching terrible images on television is the new national sacrifice.

Dingbat also said:

Families gathered here understand that America is not going to be safe until the terrorist threat has been defeated. If we do not defeat the terrorists and extremists in Iraq, they won't leave us alone -- they will follow us to the United States of America. That's what makes this battle in the war on terror so incredibly important. One of the lessons of September the 11th is what happens overseas matters to the security of the United States of America, and we must not forget that lesson.

The consequences of failure in Iraq would be death and destruction in the Middle East and here in America. To protect our citizens at home, we must defeat the terrorists. We defeat them by staying on the offense and we defeat them by helping young democracies defeat their ideology of hate. And it's hard work. But it is necessary work, and thousands of men and women who wear our uniform understand the stakes.

. . .

We owe it to the brave Iraqis. I just spoke to the Prime Minister; I told him I was coming to see you. He said, please thank the people in the White House for their sacrifices and we will continue to work hard to be an ally in this war on terror. We'll continue to do the hard work necessary to help change the conditions that caused 19 young men to get on airplanes to come and kill thousands of our citizens on September the 11th.

This is classic fear-mongering, once again equating September 11 with the Iraq War. This false equation may have generated public support for the war, but everyone knows that Iraq had nothing to do with September 11 and that the Iraq War is a war of choice. Is Bush trying to say that dark-skinned radicals in the Middle East are out to get us, whether on September 11 or some other means? Or is the tape recorder stuck on playback and Bush is reviving the 9/11-Iraq link that greased the skids for war four years ago?

The argument that terrorists will come to the United States if we pull out of Iraq is a canard. It sounds good, and it's hard to argue with a fear-monger. But a survey of military and diplomatic analysts say this is highly unlikely.

As one commentator suggests, "Bush didn’t quite say, 'Give me a blank check or we’ll all be killed,' but he certainly seemed to be going down that road. It wasn’t pretty." There is no turning back from the Iraq war, and few Americans still support it. The only way to defend the war at this point is the say that things will get much worse if we pull out. The evidence for that is to the contrary. Imagine setting the house on fire with your children stuck inside. Pretty horrible, right? Now imagine starting a war in the world's hotspot that you can't get out of.

It's worth knowing that two of our greatest leftist intellectuals are still going strong in their 70's and 80's. Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn both live in the Boston area and taught at leading Universities for years, writing dissent books and speaking out on the side. It's unusual to see a joint interview with Chomsky and Zinn. For those who don't know, Chomsky is a linguist who became politically active in the early 1960's, when the Vietnam War began heating up. He's been one of the great scholars on U.S. foreign policy and our political culture ever since. Zinn is an historian whose classic book, People's History of the United States, belongs in every house and home.

Chomsky and Zinn on Patriotism in America
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
http://www.alternet.org/story/50654/

Democracy Now! was broadcasted from Boston on April 16, Patriots Day in Massachusetts -- a state holiday to mark the start of the Revolutionary War. In a Democracy Now! special, Amy Goodman was joined by two of the city's leading dissidents, Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn.

Amy Goodman What a day to be here. This is a day of the Boston Marathon. It is raining. It is a major storm outside and tens of thousands of people -- were either of you planning to run today?

Zinn: Well we were, yes, but, you know --

Noam Chomsky: -- but you really made it impossible for us.

Goodman: I'm sorry about that.

Zinn: We had a choice of running in the marathon or having an interview with you, what's more important?

Goodman: Well, today is Patriots Day, Howard Zinn, what does patriotism mean to you?

Zinn: I'm glad you said what it means to me. Because it means to me something different than it means to a lot of people I think who have distorted the idea of patriotism. Patriotism to me means doing what you think your country should be doing. Patriotism means supporting your government when you think it's doing right, opposing your government when you think it's doing wrong. Patriotism to me means really what the Declaration of Independence suggests. And that is that government is an artificial entity.

Government is set up -- and here's what a Declaration of Independence is about -- government is set up by the people in order to fulfill certain responsibilities: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. And according to the Declaration of Independence, when the government violates those responsibilities, then, and these are the words of the Declaration of Independence, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish the government.

In other words, the government is not holy; the government is not to be obeyed when the government is wrong. So to me patriotism in its best sense means thinking about the people in the country, the principles for which the country stands for, and it requires opposing the government when the government violates those principles.

So today, for instance, the highest act of patriotism, I suggest, would be opposing the war in Iraq and calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Simply because everything about the war violates the fundamental principles of equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, not just for Americans, but for people in another part of the world. So, yes, patriotism today requires citizens to be active on many, many different fronts to oppose government policies on the war, government policies that have taken trillions of dollars from this country's treasury and used it for war and militarism. That's what patriotism would require today.

Goodman: Noam Chomsky, the headlines today, just this weekend, one of the bloodiest months in Iraq. The number of prisoners in U.S. Jails in Iraq has reached something like 18,000. Who knows if that's not an underestimate? An Associated Press photographer remains in jail imprisoned by U.S. authorities without charge for more than a year. The health ministry has found 70 percent of Baghdad schoolchildren showing symptoms of trauma-related stress. Your assessment now of the situation there?

Chomsky: This is one of the worst catastrophes in military history and also in political history. The most recent studies of the Red Cross show that Iraq has suffered the worst decline in child mortality, infant mortality, an increase in infant mortality known. But it's since 1990. That is, it's a combination of the affect of the murderers' and brutal sanctions regime, which we don't talk much about, which devastated society through the 1990s and strengthened Saddam Hussein, compelled the population to rely on him for survival, which probably saved him from the fate of a whole long series of other tyrants who were overthrown by their own people supported by the U.S.

And then came the war on top of it which has simply increased the horrors. The decline is unprecedented. The increase in infant mortality is unprecedented; it's now below the level of, worse than some of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It's one index of what's happened. The most probable measure of deaths in a study sponsored by M.I.T., incidentally carried out by leading specialists in Iraq and here last October, was about 650,000 killed, soon to be pushing a million. There are several million people [who have] fled, including the large part of the professional classes, people who could in principle help rebuild the country. And without going on, it's a hideous catastrophe and getting worse.

It's also worth stressing that aggressors do not have any rights. This is a clear-cut case of aggression and violation of the U.N. Charter, a supreme international crime and, in the words of the Nuremburg Tribunal, aggressors simply have no rights to make any decisions. They have responsibilities. The responsibilities are, first of all to pay enormous reparations and that includes for the sanctions -- the effect of the sanctions -- in fact it ought to include the support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, which was torture for Iraqis and worse for Iranians.

The paid reparations hold those responsible accountable and attend to the will of the victims. It doesn't necessarily mean follow blindly but certainly attend to it. And the will of the victims is known, the regular U.S.-run polls in Iraq, and the government polling institutions, it's just an overwhelming support for either immediate or quick withdrawal of U.S. troops, about 80 percent think that the presence of U.S. troops increases the level of violence. Over 60 percent think that troops are legitimate targets. This isn't for all of Iraq. If you take the figures of Arab Iraq where the troops are actually deployed, the figures are higher. The figures keep going up. They're unmentioned, virtually unreported, scarcely alluded to in the Baker-Hamilton critical report. That'll be our primary concern, along with the concerns of the Americans.

Goodman: Vice President Cheney is saying this war can be won.

Chomsky: There's an interesting study being done right now by a former Russian soldier in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. He's now a student in Toronto who's comparing the Russian press and the Russian political figures and military leaders, what they were saying about Afghanistan, comparing it with what Cheney, others and the press are saying about Iraq and not to your great surprise, change a few names and it comes out about the same.

They were also saying the war in Afghanistan could be won and they were right. If they had increased the level of violence sufficiently, they could have won the war in Iraq -- in Afghanistan. They're also pointing out -- of course they describe correctly the heroism of the Russian troops, the efforts to bring assistance to the poor people of Afghanistan, to protect them from U.S.-run Islamic fundamentalist terrorist forces, the dedication, the rights they have won for the people in Afghanistan, and the warning that if they pull out it will be total disaster, mayhem, they must stay and win.

Unfortunately, they were right about that too. When they did pull out, it was a total disaster. The U.S.-backed forces tore the place to shreds, so terrible that the people even welcomed the Taliban when they came in. So, yes, those arguments can always be given. The Germans could have argued if they had the force that they didn't, that they could have won the Second World War. I mean the question is not can you win. The question is should you be there.

Goodman: You say and talk about Afghanistan, sure the Russians could have won if they had -- could have -- tolerated the level of violence. What are you saying about Iraq? Do you feel the same way?

Chomsky: It depends on what you mean by win. The United States certainly has the capacity to wipe the country out. If that's winning, yeah, you can win. It's -- in terms of the goals that the United States attempted to achieve, the U.S. government, not the United States, to install a client regime, which would be obedient to the United States, which would permit military bases, which would allow U.S. and British corporations to control the energy resources and so on, in terms of achieving that goal, I don't know if they can achieve that. But that they could destroy the country, that's beyond question.

Goodman: We're talking to Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, on this Patriots Day that is celebrated in Massachusetts. We're in Boston, Massachusetts, and we'll be back with them in a min.

Goodman: As we continue today, talking about the state of the world with two of the leading dissidents here in this country, Howard Zinn, legendary historian, author of many books, "The People's History of the United States," as well as -- his latest is "A Power Governments Cannot Suppress." We're also joined by Noam Chomsky, linguist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His latest book is "Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy." Howard, you went to North Vietnam. Can you talk about how the Vietnam War ended, and also your experience there? Why you went?

Zinn: Well, I went to North Vietnam in early 1968 with Father Daniel Berrigan and the two of us went actually at the request of the North Vietnamese government who were going to release the first three airmen prisoners, American fliers who were in prison in North Vietnam and the North Vietnamese wanted to release them on the Tet holiday, also the Tet Offensive, sort of as a gesture, I suppose as a goodwill gesture, and they asked for representatives of the American peace movement, so Daniel Berrigan and I went to Hanoi for that reason.

And of course it was an educational experience for us. Noam was talking about in response to your question about victory and winning. And the question is, of course, why should we win if winning means destroying a country? And there's still people who say, oh, we could have won the Vietnam War, as if the question was, you know, can we win or can we lose, instead of what are we doing to these people.

And, yes, Noam said, yes, we could win in Iraq by destroying all of Iraq. The Russians could have won Afghanistan by destroying all of Afghanistan. We could have won in Vietnam by dropping nuclear bombs instead of killing two million people in Vietnam, killing 10 million people in Vietnam. And that would be considered victory, who would take satisfaction in that?

What we saw in Vietnam is, I think, what people are seeing in Iraq. And that is huge numbers of people dying for no reason at all. What we saw in Vietnam was the American army being sent halfway around the world to a country, which was not threatening us, and we were destroying the people in the country. And here in Iraq, we're going the other way, we're also going halfway around the world to do the same thing to them. And our experience in Iraq contradicted as I think the experiences of people who are on the ground in Iraq contradicted again and again the statements of American officials.

The statements of the high military, statements like, oh, we're only bombing military targets. Oh, these are accidents when so many civilians are killed. And, yes, as Cheney said, victory is around the corner. What we saw in Vietnam was horrifying. And it was obviously horrifying even to GIs in Vietnam because they began to come back from Vietnam and oppose the war, and formed Vietnam Veterans against the war.

We saw villages as far away from any military target as you can imagine, absolutely destroyed. And children killed and their graves still fresh by American jet planes coming over in the middle of the night. When I hear them talk about John McCain as a hero, I say to myself, oh, yeah, he was a prisoner and prisoners are maltreated and everywhere and this is terrible. But John McCain, like the other American fliers, what were they doing? They were bombing defenseless people. And so, yes Vietnam is something that by the way, is still not taught very well in American schools. I spoke to a group of people in an advanced history class not long ago, 100 kids, asked them how many people here have heard of the My Lai Massacre? No hand was raised. We are not teaching -- if we were teaching the history of Vietnam as it should be taught, then the American people from the start would have opposed the war instead of waiting three or four years for a majority of the American people to declare their opposition to the war.

Goodman: Noam Chomsky, you went to Cambodia after the bombing.

Chomsky: I went to Laos and North Vietnam.

Goodman: When and why?

Chomsky: Two years after Howard, early 1970. I spent the week in Laos. A very moving week. Happened to be in Laos right after the CIA mercenary army had cleared out about 30,000 people from the Plain of Jarres area in Northern Laos, where they had been subjected to what was then the most fierce bombing in human history. It was exceeded shortly after by Cambodia. These are poor peasant society, probably most of them didn't even know they were in Laos. There was nothing there. The planes were sent there because the bombing of North Vietnam had been temporarily stopped, and there was nothing for the air force to do so they bombed Laos. They had been living in caves for over two years trying to farm at night. They had finally been driven out by the mercenary army to the surroundings of Vientien.

And I spent a lot of time interviewing refugees with Fred Branfman, who did heroic work in bringing this story finally to the American people. And so more interesting things in Laos. Then I went to North Vietnam, also where Howard had been invited by the government, but I was actually invited to teach. It was a bombing pause, a short bombing pause, and they were able to bring people in from outlying areas back to Hanoi and the Polytechnic University, or what was left of it, the ruins of the Polytechnic University. And I came and lectured on just about anything that I knew anything about -- these are people who had been out of touch with the faculty, students, others who had been out of touch with the world for five years, and they asked me everything from what's Norman Mailer writing these days, to technical questions and linguistics and mathematics, whatever else I could say anything about.

I also traveled around a little bit, not very much, but for a few days. But enough to see what Howard described, right close to Hanoi, I never got very far away, which was the most protected area because in Hanoi there were embassies and journalists, so the bombing of the city was nothing like what it was much farther away. But even there you could see the ruins of villages, the shell of the major hospital in Thanh Hoa, which had been bombed by accident of course. Areas that were just moonscapes, where there had been villages in an effort to destroy a bridge and so on. So that those were my two weeks in Laos and North Vietnam.

Goodman: You were a linguistics professor at MIT at the time?

Chomsky: Yes.

Goodman: So, why did you go? What drove you to? And, what was the response here at home?

Chomsky: Well, I was able to -- and actually I had intended to go only for one week to North Vietnam. But -- if you really want to know the details -- the U.N. bureaucrat in Laos who was organizing flights was a very bored Indian bureaucrat who had nothing to do, and apparently his only joy in the world was making things difficult for people who wanted to do something, not untypical. And fortunately for me, he made it difficult for me and my companions, Doug Dowd and Dick Fernandez to go to North Vietnam. So I had a week in Laos, which was an extremely valuable week. I wrote about it in some detail. But, I was teaching at the time, I was to be away, it was a vacation week, so actually I taught linguistics at the Polytechnic University.

Goodman: What about the opposition here at home and your level of protest at MIT? What did you do?

Chomsky: Well, MIT was a curious situation. I happened to be working in the laboratory, which was 100 percent supported by the three armed services, but it was also one of the centers of the anti-war resistance. Starting in 1965, along with an artist friend in Boston, Harold Tovish, we organized, tried to organize national tax resistance, this was 1965. Like Howard, I was giving talks, taking part in demonstrations, getting arrested.

By 1966 we were becoming involved directly in support for a draft resistance, helping deserters and others. That just continued -- it's worth remembering. One often hears today justified complaints about how little protest there is against the war in Iraq, but that's very misleading. And here is, as Howard was saying, a little sense of history is useful.

The protest against the war in Iraq is far beyond the protest against Vietnam on any comparable level. Large-scale protest against the war in Vietnam did not begin until there were several hundred thousand U.S. troops in South Vietnam.The country had been virtually destroyed, the bombing had been extended to the north, to Laos, soon to Cambodia, where incidentally we have just learned -- or rather, we haven't learned, but we could learn if we had a free press -- that the bombing in Cambodia, which is known to be horrendous, was actually five times as high as was reported, greater than the entire allied bombing in all of World War II on a defenseless peasant society, which turned peasants into enraged fanatics. During those years the Khmer Rouge grew from nothing, a few thousand scattered people to hundreds of thousands, and that led to the part of Cambodia that we're allowed to think about.

But the real protest against the war in Vietnam came at a period far beyond what has yet been reached in Iraq. First few years of the war, there was almost nothing. So little protest that virtually nobody in the United States even knows when the war began. Kennedy invaded South Vietnam in 1962. That was after seven years of efforts to impose a Latin American-style terror state, which had killed tens of thousands of people and elicited resistance.

In 1962, Kennedy sent the U.S. Air Force to start bombing South Vietnam, under South Vietnamese markings -- but nobody was deluded by that -- initiated chemical warfare to destroy crops and ground cover, and started programs which rounded openly millions of people into what amounted to concentration camps, called strategic hamlets, where they were surrounded by barbed wire to protect them as it was said from the guerrillas, who everyone knew they were voluntarily supporting, an indigenous South Vietnamese resistance. That was 1962.

You couldn't get two people in a living room to talk about it in October 1965, right here in Boston, maybe the most liberal city in the country. There were then already a couple hundred thousand troops, bombing North Vietnam had started. We tried to have our first major public demonstration against the war on the Boston Common, the usual place for meetings. I was supposed to be one of the speakers, but nobody could hear a word. The meeting was totally broken up by students marching over from universities, by others, and hundreds of state police, which kept people from being murdered. The next day's newspaper, the Boston Globe, the world newspaper was full of denunciations of the people who dared make mild statements about bombing the North.

In fact right through the protests, which did reach a substantial scale and were really significant, especially the resistance, it was mostly directed against the war in North Vietnam. The attack on South Vietnam was mostly ignored. Incidentally the same is true of government planning. We know about that from the Pentagon Papers and the subsequent documents -- there was meticulous planning about the bombing of the North. Where should you bomb? And how far should you go? And so on. Bombing of the South -- in the internal documents, there's almost nothing. There's a simple reason for it. The bombing of the South was costless. Nobody's going to shoot you down. Nobody's going to complain. Do whatever you want. Wipe the place out. Which is pretty much what happened.

North Vietnam was dangerous. You could hit Russian ships in harbor. As I said there were embassies in Hanoi where people could report that you were bombing an internal Chinese railroad that happened to pass through North Vietnam. So there could be international repercussions and costs, so therefore, it was very carefully calibrated. If you look at, say, Robert McNamara's memoirs, lots of discussion of the bombing of North Vietnam, virtually nothing about the bombing of South Vietnam. Which even in 1965, was triple the scale of the bombing of the North, and it had been going on for years. Now there is a great deal more protest.

There actually one interesting illustration, I'll end with that, Arthur Schlesinger, best known American historian, in the case of Vietnam, the early years he supported it. In fact if you read his Thousand Days, story of the Kennedy administration, it's barely mentioned except for the wonderful things that's happening. By 1966, as there was beginning to be concern about the costs of the war, we were reaching situations rather like a lead opinion today about Iraq: It's too costly, we might not be able to win, and so on. Schlesinger wrote, I'm almost quoting, that we all pray that the hawks will be right in believing that more troops will allow us to win. And if they are right, we'll be praising the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government in winning a war in Vietnam after turning the land -- turning it into a land of ruin and wreck. So we'll be praising their wisdom and statesmanship, but it probably won't work. You can translate that into today's commentaries, which are called the doves.

On the other hand, greatly to his credit, when the bombing of Iraq started, Schlesinger took the strongest position of anyone I've seen, of condemnation of it. First stated so strong that it wasn't, almost never -- didn't appear in the press and I haven't heard a word about it since. As the line began he said this is a date, which will live in infamy. And he recalled President Roosevelt's words at Pearl Harbor, a date that will live in infamy because the United States is following the path of the Japanese fascists, a pretty strong statement. I think that sort of reflects a difference you see in public attitudes too. Opposition to aggression is far higher than it was in the '60s.

Goodman: Howard Zinn, how did Vietnam end, the war end, and what are the parallels that you see today? Do you see parallels today?

Zinn: Well, I suppose if you believe that Henry Kissinger deserved the Nobel Prize, you would think that the war ended, because Henry Kissinger went to Paris and negotiated with the Vietnamese. But the war ended, I think, because finally after that slow buildup of protests, I think the war ended because the protests in the United States reached a crescendo, which couldn't be ignored. And because the GIs coming home were turning against the war, and because soldiers in the field were -- well, they were throwing grenades under the officers' tents, the "Fragging Phenomenon." There's a book called "Soldiers in Revolt" by a man named David Cortright, and he details how much dissidence there was, how much opposition to the war there was among soldiers in Vietnam and how this was manifested in their behavior and desertions, a huge number of desertions. And essentially the government of the United States found it impossible to continue the war. The ROTC chapters were closing down.

In some ways, it's similar to the situation now where the government in Iraq, the government is finding, our government is finding that we don't have enough soldiers to fight the war. So they're sending them back again and again. And where they're recruiting sergeants here in the United States, they're going to enormous lengths, lying to young people about what will await them and what benefits they will get. The government is desperate to maintain the military force today in Iraq. And I think in Vietnam, this dissidence among the military, and its inability to really carry on the war militarily, was a crucial factor. Of course, along with the fact, we simply could not defeat the Vietnamese resistance. And resistance movements -- and this is what we are finding out in Iraq today -- resistance movements against a foreign aggressor, they will get very desperate, they will not give in. And the resistance movement in Vietnam would not surrender.

And so, the U.S. government found it obviously impossible to win without, yes, dropping nuclear bombs, destroying the country and making it clear to the world that the United States was an outlaw nation and impossible to hold the support of the people at home. And so, yes, we finally did what a number of us had been asking for many, many years to withdraw from Vietnam and the same arguments were made at that time. That is, when we called in 1967, well, I wrote a book in 1967 called "Vietnam, the Logic of Withdrawal," and the reaction to that was, you know, we can't withdraw. It will be terrible if we withdraw. There will be civil war if we withdraw. There will be a bloodbath if we withdraw. And so we didn't withdraw and the war went on for another six years, another eight years, six years for the Americans to withdraw, eight years totally. The war went on and on, and another 20,000 Americans were killed. Another million Vietnamese were killed.

And when we finally withdrew, there was no bloodbath. I mean it wasn't that everything was fine when we withdrew, and there were reeducation camps set up, and the Chinese people were driven out of Hanoi on boats, so it wasn't. But the point is that there was no bloodbath, the bloodbath was what we were doing in Vietnam. Just as today when they say, oh, there will be civil war, there will be chaos if we withdraw from Iraq. There is civil war, there is chaos, and no one is pointing out what we have done to Iraq. Two million people driven from their homes and children in dire straits, no water, no food. And so the remembrance of Vietnam is important if we are going to make it clear that we must withdraw from Iraq and find another way, not for the United States, for some international group, preferably a group composed mostly of representatives of Arab nations to come into Iraq and help mediate whatever strife there is among the various fractions in Iraq. But certainly the absolute necessary first step in Iraq now is what we should have done in Vietnam in 1967, and that is simply get out as fast as ships and planes can carry us out.

Goodman: This is Democracy Now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. My guests here in Boston, as we broadcast from Massachusetts on this Patriots Day, are Noam Chomsky, a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Howard Zinn, a legendary historian. Taught at Spellman for years until he was forced out because he took the side of the young women students and then went to Boston University and only recently, in the last few years, was given -- what -- given an honorary degree by Spellman?

Zinn: Yes.

Goodman: Did you feel vindicated?

Zinn: I always feel vindicated.

Goodman: Noam Chomsky, what did you think of Nancy Pelosi, House speaker, third in line in succession for the presidency after Dick Cheney, going to Syria together with the first Muslim Congress member in the United States, Keith Ellison from Minneapolis?

Chomsky: The only thing wrong with it was that it was the third person in line. I mean, if the United States government were sincerely interested in bringing about some measure of peace, prosperity, stability in the region instead of dominating it by force, now they would of course be dealing with Syria and with Iran. Pretty much the way the Baker-Hamilton report proposed except beyond what they proposed because they proposed, they should be dealing with it in matters concerning with Iraq. But there are regional issues. In the case of Syria, there are issues related to Syria itself, but also to Lebanon and to Israel. Israel is in control of, in fact has annexed in violation of Security Council orders, has annexed a large part of Syrian territory, the Golan Heights. Syria is making it very clear that they are interested in a peace settlement with Israel, which would involve, as it should, the withdrawal of the Israeli troops from occupied territories.

Goodman: Are there secret negotiations going on between Israel and Syria now?

Chomsky: You never know what's going on in secret. But so far Israel has been flatly refusing any negotiations. In fact, the only debate that's going on now is whether it's the United States that's pressuring Israel or Israel is pressuring the United States to prevent negotiations on the Golan Heights and in fact on the occupied territories all together. This is called a very contentious issue, Israel-Palestine, which is kind of surprising. It's a contentious issue only in the United States, and even not among the American population. It's a contentious issue because the U.S. government and the Israeli government are blocking a very broad international consensus, which has almost universal support, even the majority of Americans and which has been on the table for about 30 years, blocked by the U.S. and Israel. And everyone knows who's involved in this, what the general framework for a settlement is.

It was put on the -- it was brought to the Security Council in 1976, by the Arab states, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, the so-called confrontation states, and the other Arab states. They proposed a two-state settlement on the internationally recognized border, a settlement, which included the wording of U.N.-242, the first major resolution, recognition of the right of each state in the region to exist in peace and security within secure and recognized boundaries, that would include Israel and a Palestinian state. It was vetoed by the United States, and a similar resolution vetoed in 1980.

I won't run through the whole history, but throughout this whole history, with temporary and rare exceptions, there is a couple here and here, the U.S. has simply blocked the settlement and still does, and Israel rejects it. Sometimes it's dramatic. In 1988, the Palestinian National Council, their governing body, formally accepted a two-state settlement. They tacitly accepted it before. There was a reaction from Israel immediately; it was a coalition government, Shimon Perez, Yitzhak Shamir. Their reaction was, quoting, that "there cannot be an additional Palestinian state between Jordan and Israel." An additional implying that Jordan already is a Palestinian state, so there can't be another one, and the fate of the territories will be settled according to the guidelines of the state of Israel. Shortly after that, the Bush No. 1 administration totally endorsed that proposal -- that was the Baker plan, James Baker plan of December 1989 -- fully endorsed that proposal, extreme rejectionism.

And so it continues with rare exceptions, just moving to today, the Arab league proposal has been reintroduced. It's 2002, but they brought it up again a couple of weeks ago. That goes even further. It calls for full normalization of relations with Israel within the framework of the international consensus on a two-state settlement, which might involve to use official U.S. terminology from far back, minor and mutual modifications, like straightening out the border, or in other words in the wrong place or something. And then there are technicalities to be resolved, plenty of them.

But that's the basic framework, supported by the Arab world, by Europe, by the nonaligned countries, Latin America and others. It is supported by Iran, it doesn't get reported here. One loves Ahmadinejad's crazed statements, but do not report the statements of his superior, Ayatollah Khameni who's in charge of international affairs -- Ahmadinejad doesn't have anything to do with it -- who has declared a couple of times that Iran supports the Arab league position. Hezbollah in Lebanon has made it clear that they don't like it; they don't believe in recognizing Israel, but if the Palestinians accept it, they will not disrupt it. They are a Lebanese organization. And Hamas has said, they would accept the Arab League consensus. That leaves the United States and Israel in splendid isolation, even more so than in the past 30 years in rejecting a political settlement. So it's contentious in a sense, but not in that there's no way to resolve it. We know how to resolve it.

Goodman: Do you think it will change?

Chomsky: It depends on people here. If the majority of the American population, who also accept this, decide to do something about it, yeah, it will change.

Goodman: Do you think it's changing, for example, with Carter's book coming out?

Chomsky: I think it's one of the signs of change, and there are many others. Or is it just a change mood in the country, I mean, anybody who's been giving talks about this just knows it from personal experience. I mean not very long ago, if I was giving a talk on the Middle East, I mean, even at MIT, there would be armed police present, or at least undercover police to prevent violence, disruption, breakup of meetings and so on. That's a thing of the past. By now it's much easier to talk about this. Actually, Carter's book is quite interesting. Carter's book was essentially repeating what is known around the world.

Goodman: "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid."

Chomsky: Yeah. He -- there were a couple of errors in the book. They were ignored. The only serious error in the book, which a fact checker should have picked up, is that Carter accepted a kind of party line on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. Israel invaded Lebanon and killed maybe 15,000-20,000 people and destroyed much of southern Lebanon. They were able to do it because the Reagan administration vetoed Security Council resolutions and supported them and so on.

The claim here, you know, you read Thomas Friedman or someone, is that Israel invaded in response to shelling of the Galilee from -- by Palestinians, Palestinian terror attacks. And Carter repeats that; it is not true. There was the border, there was a cease-fire. The Palestinians observed it despite regular Israeli attempts, something as heavy bombing and others to elicit some response that would be a pretext to the planned invasion. When there was no pretext, they invaded anyway. That's the only serious error in the book, ignored. There are some very valuable things in the book, also ignored. One of them, perhaps the most important is that Carter is the first, I think, in the mainstream in the United States to report what was known in dissident circles and talked about, namely that the famous road map, which the quartet suggested as steps towards settlement of the problem -- the road map was instantly rejected by Israel.

Amy Goodman is the host of the nationally syndicated radio news program Democracy Now!

What didn't pop into the iPod this afternoon but this gorgeous song by the BeeGees, once a psychedelic folk band in the 1960's before they went disco in the 1970's and erased their soulful past.

"Massachusetts" is from 1967, when the BeeGees were trying to be another Beatles. In recording this song, they came damned close. Here are the guitar chords.

Rudy Guiliani's campaign theme is going to exploit September 11 and warn voters that the country will get hit again if a Democrat is elected in 2008. Read about it here. God help us all if this autocratic bullshit artist with no foreign policy experience is elected.

September 11 is the gift that keeps on giving. Republican candidates have exploited that tragedy for six years now, most obviously in staging the Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004 at an unusual time-frame, late August. George W. mentions 9/11 every chance he gets, and the Republicans in 2004 and 2006 campaigned on the backs of the victims of September 11 by warning voters that another attack awaits a Democratic victory.

Is there anything more disgusting than these obvious efforts to scare the shit out of the American voter? We all remember how we felt on 9/11. The Republicans want those bad feelings to linger. Politicizing 9/11 should be made against the law.

With a deft skill for public relations, Rudy turned himself into a folk hero on September 11, saving his political career as it was winding down as Mayor of New York City. After several years of alienating New York residents with his temper and repressive First Amendement and police policies, his dust-covered presence on television in the aftermath of 9/11 somehow made him "America's Mayor." In fact, according to people who have chronicled his career, Rudy was a failure when it came to securing New York City and his reckless post 9/11 actions placed first-responders (police and firefighters) at risk as they were sent into Ground Zero without adequate protection and many are now suffering from serious respiratory problems.

As MSNBC reported last year, "not everyone is touting the former mayor’s leadership credentials. In their new book, “Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani and 9/11,” (HarperCollins) investigative reporters Dan Collins and Wayne Barrett argue that—far from being a heroic soldier in the war on terror—Giuliani failed to take adequate precautions before the attacks and was directly responsible for many of the city’s failures to cope with the crisis."

Below is an interview with Wayne Barrett, one of the few real investigative reporters focusing on New York politics. It wouldn't be a bad idea to read Barrett's book.

NEWSWEEK: Do you think most Americans have an accurate perception of Rudy Giuliani?

Wayne Barrett: After the 9/11 attacks, Giuliani said all the right things—he hit a chord with Americans when the president disappeared. [Giuliani] stood tall that day and empathized and said reassuring things. The powerful visual of him walking the canyons of 9/11, covered in soot, will stick with everyone. The problem is that he did a lot of wrong things [too]—mostly prior to that day, some even on that day, and many after that day, as the respiratory cases related to 9/11 are showing. This book is a story of stark contrasts between this great capacity he showed that day to lead and the way in which those visuals have insinuated him into the American mind and his paltry performance preparing the city for a terrorist attack even though the city had been attacked [in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing] just months before he took office in 1994.

Giuliani managed to convert that persona we all saw on 9/11 and appreciate [it] into a marketing device and turn himself into a legend as someone who understood the threat and really prepared the city. But, as our book shows, he seemed to have had no appreciation of the terror threat prior to 9/11. In fact, he took many steps backward in preparing the city.

In what ways?

The dumbest decision he made was to put the [city’s emergency] command center in the World Trade Center even though his principal security advisers urged him to put it elsewhere. His own emergency-management director, Jerry Hauer, wanted it to go where [current New York City Mayor Michael] Bloomberg has now put it: in Brooklyn ... If he had, he could have managed the crisis much more capably ...

Also there was his decision not to support Jerry Hauer when he tried to do what he was mandated to do—to create matrixes of which agencies were in charge of which responsibilities and develop protocols for anticipated incidents. The police department resisted every single protocol that Jerry suggested. [The police commissioner] refused to sign off on them, and Giuliani didn’t make him. So there were no interagency protocols [on 9/11] for terror attacks or for a high-rise fire.

There’s also a whole chapter about radios. It took until March of 2001 for the fire department to come up with new radios. And the radios failed in the first week and had to be withdrawn. But they could have been reconfigured to an analog mode, which would have made them [operable]. The company was willing to reconfigure them, but the lame-duck administration walked away from them instead and left the fire department with the same radios that had failed in 1993. In fact, there were memos we found all the way back to 1990 that said the radios would cost firefighters’ lives. And yet they were still carrying those radios 11 years later. That is inexcusable policy. Also, they were not interoperable, so the fire department couldn’t communicate with the police department [preventing commanders from warning firefighters inside the towers of the impending collapse on 9/11].

Giuliani took office in January 1994, not long after the [first] World Trade Center bombing. Wasn’t there pressure on him to prevent another attack?

Everyone agrees that the question of terrorism never came up in selection of a police commissioner, which began not long after the attack. A water main broke in the first month of [Giuliani’s] administration, and he was more concerned with how the city responded to that. That’s when he began to form the Office of Emergency Management—because he found out about the water main break on TV and he wanted to be notified about these things right away ... He wanted to position himself as a man to fix those sorts of problems. He was more concerned about how to handle water-main breaks than terror attacks.

Is the city better prepared today?

Sure. There’s no question that the fire department’s radio communication is substantially better. Also, there are enormous ways the police department has changed now. Maybe now they are preventing terror attacks ... There were 16 or 17 detectives assigned to [the FBI's] Joint Terrorism Task Force when Giuliani took office, and when he left office in 2001 there were still 16 or 17 officers assigned. [Police Commissioner] Ray Kelly has increased that five- or sixfold, and he’s increased the amount of personnel assigned to terrorism to over 1,000. Clearly, he has prepared the police as far as having an understanding of the terror threat. And there are command and control protocols now ... In many ways, we are much better off. Though we are still glaringly deficient in some areas.

Like?

No one has done anything about those who are above a fire line in a high-rise building. That’s a failing of the Bloomberg administration—and was in the Giuliani administration—and a failing of our own government. Los Angeles requires helicopter pads on every skyscraper [for rescues]. But that’s the only city I know of that has begun to deal with the question of how to rescue people above a fire.

A recent poll showed Giuliani is the favored 2008 Republican presidential candidate. Would he make a good president?

Every poll shows he is a very serious presidential candidate. Some polls indicate he is the most admired figure in American culture. I think that’s largely a consequence of 9/11. But if the rationale for his candidacy is 9/11 then shouldn’t both the Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, be interested in the true story of his performance leading up to and after the attacks? I think so. Sometimes in America, as strong as spin is, the facts matter. I think these facts should matter.

Giuliani has other strengths politically. He’s widely credited with having greatly reduced crime in New York City. He can run on those credentials. He is a formidable candidate. The power of the 9/11 visual will stay with him now and maybe forever. But the 9/11 Commission acknowledged that it did not ask him tough questions, and Americans have yet to ask him a single tough question about how he handled 9/11. Maybe our book will create a framework for which a more truthful assessment of his role can begin.

The bubble boy does not want to be around anyone who disagrees with him. The bubble boy is George W. Bush, who plays with Dick Cheney and Condi Rice and used to play with Donald Rumsfeld before they rolled him out to pasture and found someone else to prosecute the horrible war in Iraq.

The bubble boy wants to be told that his war is wonderful and that someday his image will be carved into Mount Rushmore next to Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. But the bubble boy will be remembered as a pathological killer who wanted war so badly that he could taste it and then flew too close to the sun and his wings melted. War is fun when someone loses and arm or a leg and suffers post-traumatic stress disorder for the rest of his life and cannot provide for his family.

It must be fun to live in a bubble. Imagine, all your friends sit around and tell you that you're wonderful, and your pet doggie snuggling by your smelly feet and chewing on a bone while your public approval ratings approach Nixon-Watergate levels and young American solders are coming home every week in body bags to grieving families who wonder why the war was sold to them in the first place.

According to media reports a few weeks ago, the bubble boy claims the right to hold public appearance without having to deal with people who disagree with him. The irony is that bubble boy found some lawyers willing to disgrace themselves in court by making the legal argument that the President should be allowed to do this. Read on (and more commentary here):

2 Ejected From Bush Speech Posed a Threat, Lawyers Say By DAN FROSCH New York Times

DENVER, April 13 — Lawyers for two men charged with illegally ejecting two people from a speech by President Bush in 2005 are arguing that the president’s staff can lawfully remove anyone who expresses points of view different from his.

Lawyers for the two, Michael Casper and Jay Klinkerman, said the men were working as organizers for a public presidential forum on Social Security at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver on March 21, 2005, when they were involved in ejecting two audience members, Alex Young and Leslie Weise.

Mr. Young and Ms. Weise filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court here, saying they were ejected shortly after they had arrived in a car that had an antiwar bumper sticker, although they had done nothing disruptive. The suit charged Mr. Casper and Mr. Klinkerman with violating Mr. Young’s and Ms. Weise’s First Amendment right to free speech.

Mr. Casper and Mr. Klinkerman lost their motion for dismissal, and this week their lawyers filed an appeals brief arguing that their clients had the right to take action against Mr. Young and Ms. Weise precisely because the two held views different from Mr. Bush’s.

“They excluded people from a White House event because they posed a threat of being disruptive,” said a lawyer for Mr. Casper, Sean Gallagher.

The brief filed by Mr. Gallagher and other lawyers refers to a 1992 case involving a woman who wore a button supporting Bill Clinton for president as she tried to enter a campaign rally in support of George H. W. Bush and Dan Quayle. She was denied entry until she removed the button.

A lawyer for Ms. Weise and Mr. Young, Martha Tierney, said that case was different because the event was sponsored by the Strongsville, Ohio, Republican Party, a private entity. “I think if the court adopts this argument, they’ll essentially gut the First Amendment in terms of viewpoint discrimination,” Ms. Tierney said.

Earlier this year, Mr. Young and Ms. Weise filed a separate lawsuit against three White House staff members who were also working at the Denver speech, saying they were responsible for their removal and thus had violated their right to free speech.