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AL “THE VICTIM” GONZALES

Listen to this Commentary

As George W prepares to depart Washington, it’s appropriate to reflect for a moment on the millions of innocent victims who have paid – and are continuing to pay – such a terrible price for his wrongheaded war on terrorism. For example, Alberto Gonzales.

Say what? Al Gonzales, the Bushites’ legal lackey who okayed everything from their use of torture to their secret and illegal program for spying on millions of Americans? That Al Gonzales?Yes, that one. Bush’s former attorney general has recently been on a whine tour to try to rewrite the history of his feckless and cowardly performance in office: “I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror,” Al whimpered in a Wall Street Journal interview.

Excuse me, Mr. Gonzales, but no. You cannot put yourself in the company of the U.S. soldiers who’ve been killed or brutally maimed because clueless and reckless ideologues like you sent them to war without the protective armor they needed. Nor can you compare yourself to the millions of innocent Iraqi civilians who’ve been killed, maimed, or forced from their homes and their country by the war of lies you helped start.

And even to suggest that you’re on par with real “war on terror” victims who were waterboarded and otherwise tortured with your authorization is itself an atrocity on language, logic, and common decency. You’re not a victim – you’re a perpetrator. Yet, Gonzales, reeks of self-pity. “What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” he asks.

The very fact that he has to ask is a damning measure of his obtuseness. In another way, though, Al really was victimized. He’s one of many unqualified political hacks whom George W thrust into important positions, only to abandon them when they failed.

Heck of a job, George.“Alberto Gonzales,” Austin American

Statesman, January 4, 2009.

“Gonzales Defends Role in Antiterror Policies,”  www.wsj.com 

12.31.09

Posted by Joe Anybody at 3:20 PM PST

Updated: Friday, 16 January 2009 3:31 PM PST

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news just in: Israeli

soldiers shoot at fleeing

civilians

 author: dfv

reports to B´tselem and BBC claim that in two incidents IDF-soldiers shoot at unarmed fleeing Gazans. In one incident a woman holding a white flag was shot straight in the head.

Claims by survivors to human rights watch B´tselem claim that a group of 70 huddled in a house were told by IDF loudspeaker to come out "Men and women seperately" As the group decided the women to go out first one by one they the woman was shot in the head.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7828536.stm

Posted by Joe Anybody at 7:32 PM PST

Updated: Wednesday, 14 January 2009 7:35 PM PST

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Hey all you most friendly and kind Z3 Readers check out this hot topic. And just a FYI ..... when flying and then going through customs, the (sic)homeland security can take your laptop and pour over it for days to see what ever they can about you, or what 'you" have on your computer..... read on and stand tall   

 http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10140373-38.html

Police Blotter is a regular CNET News report on the intersection of technology and the law.

What: Police claim they can legally copy data from the handheld devices of anyone who's arrested.

When: Two judges wrestle with concepts including privacy, the Fourth Amendment, and searches, and reach two different conclusions.

What happened, according to court records and other documents:
Handheld gadgets and laptops seem to know us better than our spouses do. They know whom we talk to, which Web sites we visit, whose e-mail we ignore, and with a little extra smarts, they could probably offer an educated guess about what we want for dinner.

To snatch these useful little devices from our homes, police need warrants. But if we happen to be arrested with gadgets in our pocket or purse, police say they have the right to peruse what could be gigabytes of data for potentially incriminating files or photographs.

The frightening scale of electronic searches has made this an important--and unresolved--privacy question. Two recent federal cases illustrate how judges remain deeply divided about whether to support police powers or defend Americans' privacy rights.

In May 2008, Chester Balmer, an officer with Georgia's Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department, responded to a complaint of sexual activity in a silver pickup truck parked near an apartment complex. Balmer found a Dodge pickup truck with two people inside, obtained the driver's permission to look inside the truck, and allegedly spotted crack cocaine in the ashtray.

Balmer arrested the driver, Bernard McCray, and scrolled through the photos on McCray's mobile phone. He found images of what he believed to be a 14-year-old teenage girl in lewd poses, which led to McCray being charged with possession of child pornography. His lawyer objected to using the images as evidence, saying the warrantless search violated the Fourth Amendment.

U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield disagreed. Because papers, diaries, and traditional photographs can be examined during an arrest, Edenfield reasoned, a mobile phone can too.

The second case yielded a different result. It began with a Florida drug bust involving a man named Aaron Wall. A Drug Enforcement Administration informant offered to sell several kilograms of cocaine to Wall, who was arrested when he allegedly showed up at an exchange point with a bag full of cash.

Wall had two cell phones, which DEA agent Dave Mitchell examined during the booking process (but not during or immediately after the arrest). Mitchell found and took photographs of several text messages on the defendant's phones.

Mitchell would later offer justifications for his warrantless search: 1) he regularly performs mobile-phone searches because it's common to find evidence of crimes in text messages; 2) it's a standard DEA practice authorized by the DEA Legal Department, as long as the search is performed during the booking process; 3) he was concerned that the text messages might expire after a certain amount of time; and 4) the cell phone battery may die.

When the defense attorney objected to the search, U.S. District Judge William Zloch agreed. He said, essentially, that the DEA agent lied: "The court finds Agent Mitchell's statement that he searched the phone because of his concern that text messages might immanently expire is not credible...the true, and only, purpose of the search by Agent Mitchell was to find incriminating evidence."

Zloch ordered that the incriminating text messages be suppressed, which means that prosecutors can't use them in court proceedings.

These two cases capture the different ways to look at digital devices: are they like physical containers, which can be opened at will during arrests, or does their uniquely personal nature mean that a search warrant should be required? Few of us would have traveled with decades' worth of intimate personal diaries, but that's what modern gadgetry lets us do.

One of the better-known cases is the 5th Circuit's opinion (PDF) in January 2007, which sided with police. Police Blotter has covered other cases that took the pro-police view and the pro-privacy view.

It's worth pointing out that the second proceedings may have turned out differently, if the cops had searched Wall's mobile phone at the time of the arrest, rather than waiting until booking. Then again, this is no tremendous obstacle: if judges insist on that distinction, police can respond by doing a complete copy at the time of arrest. (Note that the state of Florida says "agents should continue to obtain search warrants for securing information from cell phones seized from arrested subject." That shows that a search warrant is no insurmountable hurdle.)

Excerpt from opinion of U.S. District Judge B. Avant Edenfield on January 5, 2009, allowing the mobile-device search:
It is well settled that a search incident to a lawful arrest is a traditional exception to the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment. Such searches are reasonable not only because of the need to disarm the arrestee of any weapons that might be used to resist arrest or effect his escape, but also because of the need "to search for and seize any evidence on the arrestee's person in order to prevent its concealment or destruction." (Unquestionably, when a person is lawfully arrested, the police have the right, without a search warrant, to make a contemporaneous search of the person of the accused for weapons or for the fruits of or implements used to commit the crime.)

As the Fifth Circuit held in Finley, "the permissible scope of a search incident to a lawful arrest extends to containers found on an arrestee's person." A cell phone, like a beeper, is an electronic "container," in that it stores information that may have great evidentiary value (and that might easily be destroyed or corrupted).

While such electronic storage devices are of more recent vintage than papers, diaries, or traditional photographs, the basic principle still applies: incident to a person's arrest, a mobile phone or beeper may be briefly inspected to see if it contains evidence relevant to the charge for which the defendant has been arrested.

Excerpt from opinion of U.S. District Judge William Zloch on December 22, not allowing the mobile-device search:
The search of the cell phone cannot be justified as a search incident to lawful arrest. First, Agent Mitchell accessed the text messages when Wall was being booked at the station house. Thus, it was not contemporaneous with the arrest. Also, the justification for this exception to the warrant requirement is the need for officer safety and to preserve evidence...The content of a text message on a cell phone presents no danger of physical harm to the arresting officers or others. Further, searching through information stored on a cell phone is analogous to a search of a sealed letter, which requires a warrant.

The Court further finds that the search of text messages does not constitute an inventory search. The purpose of an inventory search is to document all property in an arrested person's possession to protect property from theft and the police from lawsuits based on lost or stolen property.

This, of course, includes cell phones. However, there is no need to document the phone numbers, photos, text messages, or other data stored in the memory of a cell phone to properly inventory the person's possessions because the threat of theft concerns the cell phone itself, not the electronic information stored on it.

Surely the government cannot claim that a search of text messages on Wall's cell phones was necessary to inventory the property in his possession. Therefore, the search exceeded the scope of an inventory search and entered the territory of general rummaging.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 5:55 PM PST

Updated: Friday, 16 January 2009 3:26 PM PST

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Z3 Readers here is the Jan 9 2009

Posted by Joe Anybody at 1:28 PM PST

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humanitarian catastrophe

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine#history-byline

Oxford professor of international relations Avi Shlaim served in the Israeli army and has never questioned the state's legitimacy. But its merciless assault on Gaza has led him to devastating conclusions

A wounded Palestinian policeman gestures while lying on the ground outside Hamas police headquarters following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City.

Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

 

The only way to make sense of Israel's senseless war in Gaza is through understanding the historical context. Establishing the state of Israel in May 1948 involved a monumental injustice to the Palestinians. British officials bitterly resented American partisanship on behalf of the infant state. On 2 June 1948, Sir John Troutbeck wrote to the foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, that the Americans were responsible for the creation of a gangster state headed by "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". I used to think that this judgment was too harsh but Israel's vicious assault on the people of Gaza, and the Bush administration's complicity in this assault, have reopened the question.

I write as someone who served loyally in the Israeli army in the mid-1960s and who has never questioned the legitimacy of the state of Israel within its pre-1967 borders. What I utterly reject is the Zionist colonial project beyond the Green Line. The Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the June 1967 war had very little to do with security and everything to do with territorial expansionism. The aim was to establish Greater Israel through permanent political, economic and military control over the Palestinian territories. And the result has been one of the most prolonged and brutal military occupations of modern times.

Four decades of Israeli control did incalculable damage to the economy of the Gaza Strip. With a large population of 1948 refugees crammed into a tiny strip of land, with no infrastructure or natural resources, Gaza's prospects were never bright. Gaza, however, is not simply a case of economic under-development but a uniquely cruel case of deliberate de-development. To use the Biblical phrase, Israel turned the people of Gaza into the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, into a source of cheap labour and a captive market for Israeli goods. The development of local industry was actively impeded so as to make it impossible for the Palestinians to end their subordination to Israel and to establish the economic underpinnings essential for real political independence.

Gaza is a classic case of colonial exploitation in the post-colonial era. Jewish settlements in occupied territories are immoral, illegal and an insurmountable obstacle to peace. They are at once the instrument of exploitation and the symbol of the hated occupation. In Gaza, the Jewish settlers numbered only 8,000 in 2005 compared with 1.4 million local residents. Yet the settlers controlled 25% of the territory, 40% of the arable land and the lion's share of the scarce water resources. Cheek by jowl with these foreign intruders, the majority of the local population lived in abject poverty and unimaginable misery. Eighty per cent of them still subsist on less than $2 a day. The living conditions in the strip remain an affront to civilised values, a powerful precipitant to resistance and a fertile breeding ground for political extremism.

In August 2005 a Likud government headed by Ariel Sharon staged a unilateral Israeli pullout from Gaza, withdrawing all 8,000 settlers and destroying the houses and farms they had left behind. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted an effective campaign to drive the Israelis out of Gaza. The withdrawal was a humiliation for the Israeli Defence Forces. To the world, Sharon presented the withdrawal from Gaza as a contribution to peace based on a two-state solution. But in the year after, another 12,000 Israelis settled on the West Bank, further reducing the scope for an independent Palestinian state. Land-grabbing and peace-making are simply incompatible. Israel had a choice and it chose land over peace.

The real purpose behind the move was to redraw unilaterally the borders of Greater Israel by incorporating the main settlement blocs on the West Bank to the state of Israel. Withdrawal from Gaza was thus not a prelude to a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority but a prelude to further Zionist expansion on the West Bank. It was a unilateral Israeli move undertaken in what was seen, mistakenly in my view, as an Israeli national interest. Anchored in a fundamental rejection of the Palestinian national identity, the withdrawal from Gaza was part of a long-term effort to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence on their land.

Israel's settlers were withdrawn but Israeli soldiers continued to control all access to the Gaza Strip by land, sea and air. Gaza was converted overnight into an open-air prison. From this point on, the Israeli air force enjoyed unrestricted freedom to drop bombs, to make sonic booms by flying low and breaking the sound barrier, and to terrorise the hapless inhabitants of this prison.

Israel likes to portray itself as an island of democracy in a sea of authoritarianism. Yet Israel has never in its entire history done anything to promote democracy on the Arab side and has done a great deal to undermine it. Israel has a long history of secret collaboration with reactionary Arab regimes to suppress Palestinian nationalism. Despite all the handicaps, the Palestinian people succeeded in building the only genuine democracy in the Arab world with the possible exception of Lebanon. In January 2006, free and fair elections for the Legislative Council of the Palestinian Authority brought to power a Hamas-led government. Israel, however, refused to recognise the democratically elected government, claiming that Hamas is purely and simply a terrorist organisation.

America and the EU shamelessly joined Israel in ostracising and demonising the Hamas government and in trying to bring it down by withholding tax revenues and foreign aid. A surreal situation thus developed with a significant part of the international community imposing economic sanctions not against the occupier but against the occupied, not against the oppressor but against the oppressed.

As so often in the tragic history of Palestine, the victims were blamed for their own misfortunes. Israel's propaganda machine persistently purveyed the notion that the Palestinians are terrorists, that they reject coexistence with the Jewish state, that their nationalism is little more than antisemitism, that Hamas is just a bunch of religious fanatics and that Islam is incompatible with democracy. But the simple truth is that the Palestinian people are a normal people with normal aspirations. They are no better but they are no worse than any other national group. What they aspire to, above all, is a piece of land to call their own on which to live in freedom and dignity.

Like other radical movements, Hamas began to moderate its political programme following its rise to power. From the ideological rejectionism of its charter, it began to move towards pragmatic accommodation of a two-state solution. In March 2007, Hamas and Fatah formed a national unity government that was ready to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with Israel. Israel, however, refused to negotiate with a government that included Hamas.

It continued to play the old game of divide and rule between rival Palestinian factions. In the late 1980s, Israel had supported the nascent Hamas in order to weaken Fatah, the secular nationalist movement led by Yasser Arafat. Now Israel began to encourage the corrupt and pliant Fatah leaders to overthrow their religious political rivals and recapture power. Aggressive American neoconservatives participated in the sinister plot to instigate a Palestinian civil war. Their meddling was a major factor in the collapse of the national unity government and in driving Hamas to seize power in Gaza in June 2007 to pre-empt a Fatah coup.

The war unleashed by Israel on Gaza on 27 December was the culmination of a series of clashes and confrontations with the Hamas government. In a broader sense, however, it is a war between Israel and the Palestinian people, because the people had elected the party to power. The declared aim of the war is to weaken Hamas and to intensify the pressure until its leaders agree to a new ceasefire on Israel's terms. The undeclared aim is to ensure that the Palestinians in Gaza are seen by the world simply as a humanitarian problem and thus to derail their struggle for independence and statehood.

The timing of the war was determined by political expediency. A general election is scheduled for 10 February and, in the lead-up to the election, all the main contenders are looking for an opportunity to prove their toughness. The army top brass had been champing at the bit to deliver a crushing blow to Hamas in order to remove the stain left on their reputation by the failure of the war against Hezbollah in Lebanon in July 2006. Israel's cynical leaders could also count on apathy and impotence of the pro-western Arab regimes and on blind support from President Bush in the twilight of his term in the White House. Bush readily obliged by putting all the blame for the crisis on Hamas, vetoing proposals at the UN Security Council for an immediate ceasefire and issuing Israel with a free pass to mount a ground invasion of Gaza.

As always, mighty Israel claims to be the victim of Palestinian aggression but the sheer asymmetry of power between the two sides leaves little room for doubt as to who is the real victim. This is indeed a conflict between David and Goliath but the Biblical image has been inverted - a small and defenceless Palestinian David faces a heavily armed, merciless and overbearing Israeli Goliath. The resort to brute military force is accompanied, as always, by the shrill rhetoric of victimhood and a farrago of self-pity overlaid with self-righteousness. In Hebrew this is known as the syndrome of bokhim ve-yorim, "crying and shooting".

To be sure, Hamas is not an entirely innocent party in this conflict. Denied the fruit of its electoral victory and confronted with an unscrupulous adversary, it has resorted to the weapon of the weak - terror. Militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad kept launching Qassam rocket attacks against Israeli settlements near the border with Gaza until Egypt brokered a six-month ceasefire last June. The damage caused by these primitive rockets is minimal but the psychological impact is immense, prompting the public to demand protection from its government. Under the circumstances, Israel had the right to act in self-defence but its response to the pinpricks of rocket attacks was totally disproportionate. The figures speak for themselves. In the three years after the withdrawal from Gaza, 11 Israelis were killed by rocket fire. On the other hand, in 2005-7 alone, the IDF killed 1,290 Palestinians in Gaza, including 222 children.

Whatever the numbers, killing civilians is wrong. This rule applies to Israel as much as it does to Hamas, but Israel's entire record is one of unbridled and unremitting brutality towards the inhabitants of Gaza. Israel also maintained the blockade of Gaza after the ceasefire came into force which, in the view of the Hamas leaders, amounted to a violation of the agreement. During the ceasefire, Israel prevented any exports from leaving the strip in clear violation of a 2005 accord, leading to a sharp drop in employment opportunities. Officially, 49.1% of the population is unemployed. At the same time, Israel restricted drastically the number of trucks carrying food, fuel, cooking-gas canisters, spare parts for water and sanitation plants, and medical supplies to Gaza. It is difficult to see how starving and freezing the civilians of Gaza could protect the people on the Israeli side of the border. But even if it did, it would still be immoral, a form of collective punishment that is strictly forbidden by international humanitarian law.

The brutality of Israel's soldiers is fully matched by the mendacity of its spokesmen. Eight months before launching the current war on Gaza, Israel established a National Information Directorate. The core messages of this directorate to the media are that Hamas broke the ceasefire agreements; that Israel's objective is the defence of its population; and that Israel's forces are taking the utmost care not to hurt innocent civilians. Israel's spin doctors have been remarkably successful in getting this message across. But, in essence, their propaganda is a pack of lies.

A wide gap separates the reality of Israel's actions from the rhetoric of its spokesmen. It was not Hamas but the IDF that broke the ceasefire. It di d so by a raid into Gaza on 4 November that killed six Hamas men. Israel's objective is not just the defence of its population but the eventual overthrow of the Hamas government in Gaza by turning the people against their rulers. And far from taking care to spare civilians, Israel is guilty of indiscriminate bombing and of a three-year-old blockade that has brought the inhabitants of Gaza, now 1.5 million, to the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe.

The Biblical injunction of an eye for an eye is savage enough. But Israel's insane offensive against Gaza seems to follow the logic of an eye for an eyelash. After eight days of bombing, with a death toll of more than 400 Palestinians and four Israelis, the gung-ho cabinet ordered a land invasion of Gaza the consequences of which are incalculable.

No amount of military escalation can buy Israel immunity from rocket attacks from the military wing of Hamas. Despite all the death and destruction that Israel has inflicted on them, they kept up their resistance and they kept firing their rockets. This is a movement that glorifies victimhood and martyrdom. There is simply no military solution to the conflict between the two communities. The problem with Israel's concept of security is that it denies even the most elementary security to the other community. The only way for Israel to achieve security is not through shooting but through talks with Hamas, which has repeatedly declared its readiness to negotiate a long-term ceasefire with the Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders for 20, 30, or even 50 years. Israel has rejected this offer for the same reason it spurned the Arab League peace plan of 2002, which is still on the table: it involves concessions and compromises.

This brief review of Israel's record over the past four decades makes it difficult to resist the conclusion that it has become a rogue state with "an utterly unscrupulous set of leaders". A rogue state habitually violates international law, possesses weapons of mass destruction and practises terrorism - the use of violence against civilians for political purposes. Israel fulfils all of these three criteria; the cap fits and it must wear it. Israel's real aim is not peaceful coexistence with its Palestinian neighbours but military domination. It keeps compounding the mistakes of the past with new and more disastrous ones. Politicians, like everyone else, are of course free to repeat the lies and mistakes of the past. But it is not mandatory to do so.

• Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/07/gaza-israel-palestine#history-byline

Posted by Joe Anybody at 8:12 PM PST

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 My friends and family

I recieved this post as an email ... I am re-posting it on my Zebra 3 Report

It was written by Dahr Jamail, and independent journalist and activist

Civilian deaths increase as

Israel moves deeper into Gaza

(Photo: Abid Katib / Getty Images Europe)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahr_Jamail

Posted by Joe Anybody at 5:29 PM PST

Updated: Tuesday, 6 January 2009 5:31 PM PST

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Mr Torture & go-ahead-n-spy, Alberto Gonzales, does a dodge the accountability in this article below written by Evan Perez.

Z3 Readers can read the original article here:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123068159621944041.html?mod=article-outset-box   

By EVAN PEREZ

WASHINGTON -- Alberto Gonzales, who has kept a low profile since resigning as attorney general nearly 16 months ago, said he is writing a book to set the record straight about his controversial tenure as a senior official in the Bush administration.

Mr. Gonzales has been portrayed by critics both as unqualified for his position and instrumental in laying the groundwork for the administration's "war on terror." He was pilloried by Congress in a manner not usually directed toward cabinet officials.

 

    Alberto Gonzales

"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that "for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror."

His political problems started with the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006, which grew into a firestorm that Mr. Gonzales said he never saw coming. In November of that year, Democrats had taken control of Congress and the power to conduct investigations of Bush administration policies.

His previous role of White House counsel put Mr. Gonzales at the heart of the administration's decision-making on issues relating to terrorism, making him an easier target than the president. Critics also said he allowed the Justice Department to become politicized through its hiring practices and prosecutions, favoring Republicans for plum positions and targeting Democrats for prosecution.

Mr. Gonzales fueled the fire by giving evasive answers to Congress, frequently responding "I don't recall."

Among other things, Mr. Gonzales said Tuesday that he didn't play a central role in drafting the widely criticized legal opinions that allowed the Central Intelligence Agency to use aggressive interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects and expanded the president's power to hold "unlawful combatants" and terrorism suspects indefinitely. He also said he told the truth to Congress about a classified eavesdropping program authorized by the president, and admitted to making mistakes in handling the U.S. attorney firings while maintaining that he made the right decisions. He says that while he bears responsibility as former Attorney General that "doesn't absolve other individuals of responsibility."

Mr. Gonzales, 53 years old, doesn't have a publisher for his book. He said he is writing it if only "for my sons, so at least they know the story."

The chapters on the Bush administration's surveillance program, which involved eavesdropping without court warrants, and other controversial aspects of his work, remain blank. That is in part because he remains under investigation regarding allegations of political meddling at the Justice Department.

The Harvard Law School graduate, onetime corporate lawyer and Texas judge also hasn't been able to land a job. He has delivered a few paid speeches, done some mediation work and plans to do some arbitration, but said law firms have been "skittish" about hiring him.

The biggest blow to Mr. Gonzales came during Senate testimony by James Comey, former deputy attorney general, who recounted dramatic details of a 2004 confrontation at the hospital bed of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Mr. Comey had refused to sign a reauthorization of a secret government program, believed to be the eavesdropping initiative. Mr. Gonzales and Andrew Card, White House chief of staff at the time, drove to the hospital where Mr. Ashcroft was recovering from surgery to instead seek approval from him. Mr. Comey drove to the hospital to stop them. The episode highlighted a dispute between Justice and the White House over the surveillance program's legality.

In Tuesday's interview, Mr. Gonzales said Mr. Comey's characterization of the dispute was "one-sided and didn't have the right context," and gave the impression that he and Mr. Card were attempting to take advantage of Mr. Ashcroft. "I found Ashcroft as lucid as I've seen him at meetings in the White House," he said.

Mr. Gonzales was at a meeting in San Antonio the day of Mr. Comey's surprise testimony. "He didn't have the decency to notify anyone what he was about to testify," he said. "That was extremely disappointing." Mr. Comey declined to comment.

Mr. Gonzales also downplayed his role in formulating opinions that allowed the CIA to use aggressive interrogation methods, which included waterboarding. The memos have since been rescinded and replaced with opinions that explicitly call torture "abhorrent."

Mr. Gonzales said his role as White House counsel at the time was one among several administration lawyers who debated the opinions, but that in the end it was the Justice Department's call. John Yoo, the then-Justice official who had been assigned to draft the memos, had strong feelings and no one could have pressured him to write the memos a certain way, Mr. Gonzales said. Mr. Yoo didn't respond to a request for comment.

In one of his final acts before leaving office, Mr. Gonzales denied he was planning to quit, even though he had told the president of his intention to resign. Asked about the misleading comment Tuesday, he said: "At that point, I didn't care."

Posted by Joe Anybody at 2:13 PM PST

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(CNN) -- An Israeli patrol boat struck a boat carrying medical volunteers and supplies to Gaza early Tuesday as it attempted to intercept the vessel in the Mediterranean Sea, witnesses and Israeli officials said.

"Our mission was a peaceful mission," says former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who was aboard the Dignity.

3 of 3

CNN correspondent Karl Penhaul was aboard the 60-foot pleasure boat Dignity when the contact occurred. When the boat later docked in the Lebanese port city of Tyre, severe damage was visible to the forward port side of the boat, and the front left window and part of the roof had collapsed. It was flying the flag of Gibraltar.

The Dignity was carrying crew and 16 passengers -- physicians from Britain, Germany and Cyprus and human rights activists from the Free Gaza Solidarity Movement -- who were trying to reach Gaza through an Israeli blockade of the territory.

Also on board was former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

Penhaul said an Israeli patrol boat shined its spotlight on the Dignity, and then it and another patrol boat shadowed the Dignity for about a half hour before the collision.

One patrol boat "very severely rammed" the Dignity, Penhaul said.

The captain of the Dignity told Penhaul he received no warning. Only after the collision did the Israelis come on the radio to say they struck the boat because they believed it was involved in terrorist activities, the captain said.

But Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor denied that and said the patrol boat had warned the vessel not to proceed to Gaza because it is a closed military area.

Palmor said there was no response to the radio message, and the vessel then tried to out-maneuver the Israeli patrol boat, leading to the collision. Watch Penhaul describe the boat damage »

The captain and crew said their vessel was struck intentionally, Penhaul said, but Palmor called those allegations "absurd."

"There is no intention on the part of the Israeli navy to ram anybody," Palmor said.

"I would call it ramming. Let's just call it as it is," McKinney said after the boat docked in Lebanon. "Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and one on the side. Watch Cynthia McKinney discuss the collision »

"Our mission was a peaceful mission to deliver medical supplies and our mission was thwarted by the Israelis -- the aggressiveness of the Israeli military," she said.

The incident occurred in international waters about 90 miles off Gaza. Israel controls the waters off Gaza's coast and routinely blocks ships from coming into the Palestinian territory as part of an ongoing blockade that also applies to the Israel-Gaza border. Human rights groups have expressed concern about the blockade on Gaza, which has restricted the delivery of emergency aid and fuel supplies.

Tuesday's collision was so severe, Penhaul said, that the passengers were ordered to put on their life vests and be ready to get in lifeboats. The Dignity began taking on water, but the crew managed to pump it out of the hull long enough for the boat to reach shore.

"It could have ended with people drowning if they hit us more square on," Dignity's captain, Denis Healey, said. "It could have gone down in minutes."

Palmor said the vessel refused assistance after the incident.

The boat was carrying boxes of relief supplies, volunteers and journalists to Gaza, the Palestinian territory that has been subject to an intense Israeli bombing campaign since Saturday.

Israel Tuesday lambasted McKinney -- the Green Party's 2008 candidate for the U.S. presidency and a former Democratic congresswoman from Georgia -- for taking part in the maritime mission.

In a written statement, the Consulate General of Israel to the Southeast, based in Atlanta, Georgia, said McKinney "has taken it upon herself to commit an act of provocation," endangering herself and the crew.

"We regret that during this time of crisis, while Israel is battling with the terrorist organization of Hamas and defending its citizens, that we are forced to deal with Ms. McKinney's irresponsible behavior," the statement read.

The trip was the Free Gaza Solidarity Movement's sixth in as many months.

Israel launched airstrikes against Gaza on Saturday in what Defense Minister Ehud Barak called an "all-out war" against the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which has ruled the territory since 2007. The Israeli military says its goal is to stop a recent barrage of rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel. Watch the chaos in Gaza and Israel »

The Palestinian death toll has topped 375, most of them Hamas militants, Palestinian medical sources said Tuesday. At least 60 civilians have been killed in Gaza, U.N. officials said.

Hamas has pontinued to fire rockets at southern Israeli towns since the airstrikes began, Israel says. Six Israelis have been killed -- five of them civilians.

Hamas has vowed to defend Gaza in the face of what it calls continued Israeli aggression. Each side blames the other for violating an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire, which formally expired December 19, but had been weakening for months.

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All About Gaza • Israel • Cynthia McKinney

Posted by Joe Anybody at 6:22 PM PST

Updated: Friday, 2 January 2009 6:39 PM PST

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Mood:  sad

Ok Z3 Readers here is one for ya: 

Will You Publish This Story?

By Nida Mariam

23 October, 2008
Combat Law

http://www.countercurrents.org/mariam231008.htm

Lubna, a young woman from Baghdad, mother of four, stranded in Cairo, narrates her ordeals to Nida Mariam

She left al Doura, south Baghdad, in the darkness before dawn.
At five a.m. one morning, in mid-2006, 40 days after her father had been murdered by militiamen in front of her mother's eyes, Lubna Hamed Rasheed, 35 years old at the time, bundled up her belongings, collected her courage, and told her toddler, "As soon as we cross the Iraqi border, we will be out of danger."

There was a stream of cars moving together from her street. And when she, her children, and her neighbours got into the bus station, to take the land route to Syria, it felt as if all of Iraq was waiting to flee.

***
In the moments before Lubna was to arrive for our appointment, I quickly scanned my email to find the record I had been sent of her. No testimony about her experience in Iraq showed up. Five short depressing sentences describing her situation since she had come to Egypt—that was all I had.

The doorbell rang. Dressed in a black abaya, clutching her phone and a loosely wrapped headscarf casually under her chin, she walked in. She had something of a spark in her smile. She greeted us with warmth.

Few minutes later, seated side by side on the comfort of a couch, I suggested something through Omaima, our translator, who sat in front of us, “We can keep your name and other details anonymous, if you’d like.” Lubna stirred some sugar into her tea, set the spoon down on the metal tray, and shook her head resolutely, “No, I wish you could publish this. I want everyone to know.”

***
They shot her father in the leg when he tried to escape. They shot him eight times in all.. But the hospital report said it would have made no difference had they not shot, at all. By the time they took out their guns and fired, his spleen was already bleeding. They had beaten him up badly enough.

That morning, Lubna's mother ran out of her home in al Khadra, west Baghdad, to save her husband from the militiamen. Again and again, she kissed their feet, begging them to stop, begging them for mercy, begging them to leave.

***
I requested Lubna to tell us about her life in Egypt.

Lubna left Baghdad in the darkness before dawn in mid-2006. She bundled up her belongings, collected her courage, and told her toddler: "As soon as we cross the Iraqi border, we will be out of danger"

“I will speak in an Iraqi accent,” she stated, checking with Omaima that her speech was comprehensible, before offering us the first-round, watered-down version, of the trial that was her life.

“I have four children—three daughters and a son. In Iraq I was married to this Egyptian man, when I came here with my children, he divorced me.”

Trite and tragic, that’s how she began.

“We didn’t find any housing. I didn’t know what to do. For six months we were homeless. We slept in the street.”

That the divorce was ugly and unfair and unresolved was sad, not surprising. But the legal particularities of her marriage to that man unravelled a little later.

Her four children, though born in Iraq, were by virtue of their father, registered as Egyptian citizens at birth. Now that he had abandoned her, she had no one else to turn to in Egypt. “And we can’t go back to Iraq because my children are Egyptian and I don’t have anyone in Iraq. I don’t have a house in Iraq. I have nothing there,” she explains. But even if Lubna were to decide to go back to the dangers of Baghdad, she could not take her children with her. They would be denied entry. These were the citizenship laws of the Arab world. Despite their mother’s nationality, as children of an Egyptian immigrant, they had no current legal status in Iraq.

She lay down her cup of tea and reiterated for a second time that afternoon, “My children are not in school. I am very upset because my eldest daughter is 14 years old and cannot read and write.” She explained that her daughters had been out of the classroom for three years now.

But why, if they were Egyptian nationals, were her children not able to enrol in public school?

When Lubna finally found a place to live in October 6 City just months ago, she had approached the local school authorities, “But they wanted the children's documents from their schools in Iraq, and I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t bring them. My father was killed in the war. My brothers are in detention. I don’t have anyone to run for this and bring the papers.” For all she knows the teachers at that school are dead; and from what she remembers the US Armed

Forces occupy the building now.

And then there was the issue of rent. For five days the landlord had been knocking on the door, demanding the payment, threatening to throw her out again. The last time he had come she had pretended as if she was not home. She could not bear the thought of being back with her children on the street.
Was there anywhere that she had tried to go for assistance?

When Lubna went to the Cairo offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), she was turned away at the gate. The security guards informed her that, despite her Iraqi nationality, she was not eligible for refugee status. “Because my children are Egyptian, we can stay here, so they don’t consider me a refugee.” Omaima, who works extensively with all refugees and helps them with their applications to UNHCR, explained that though Lubna was, in a sense, a refugee, she had a better legal standing than other Iraqis in Cairo, who are granted recognition as asylum seekers primarily in order to be issued residency permits. These other Iraqis do not have the right to employment. As a mother of Egyptian nationals, Lubna has the right to live and work in Egypt.

Lubna’s life has been triumph more than tragedy. For one, despite the legalities surrounding the fact that her nationality is different than her children, she managed, against the odds, to bring them with her to Egypt

Lubna tried to work as a housemaid, but had a lot of problems because of that. She can’t leave her children out of her sight, often afraid to even take them outside. She thinks someone might kidnap them. She gets frightened every time the doorbell rings; she thinks someone has come to attack even though she knows ‘these things’ don’t happen in Egypt. “I have something like a phobia”, she reveals, “Maybe from Iraq, because our life was just in horror. I was seeing people being killed and being raped and being abducted and everything.”

Her mind switched tracks for a brief moment. “Will you publish this story?” she asked in anticipation. “Maybe someone will have a good heart to help me,” when the idea of what we had just begun started to sink in.

***

Lubna decided to leave al Doura because of "those men who cover their faces and only show their eyes". She doesn’t know who they are. Sectarian tensions erupted in this part-Shia, part-Sunni neighbourhood where people once inter-married. These men had gone in and mutilated her neighbour's son. These men started breaking in, looting houses, murdering people, and raping girls. There were blackouts, randomly. She no longer felt safe for her daughters and stopped sending them to school.

She used to make a good living off the lorry that was in her name. She didn’t ever have to work as such, as the lorry driver would transport cement and other building material from construction companies to markets around Baghdad. Then the men stole her lorry, and she lost everything.

The war did not leave anything behind.

II

The second time I met Lubna I drove out to her place in October 6 City, with my friend, Mai, who was kind enough to come and play translator. The weather was gorgeous and Lubna came out, her younger daughter and youngest son trailing behind, to the main street to meet us. Once again, her headscarf draped loosely around her head, she held her phone in her hand. And as before, there was warmth.

As we sauntered back to her block, and up her building stairs, I prepared myself for what I knew from the email would be in her apartment. Nothing. “Lives in a bare flat with not a single piece of furniture; needs clothing—has only one blanket for all five of them to sleep under,” part of it had read.

As we entered, Lubna’s two elder daughters emerged from the bedroom and gathered around us with shy smiles. The younger two children went out to the small balcony to play. We sat down on mats on the floor in the living room, and I gleaned from her manner a newfound sense of belonging, “We didn’t have a place before, but now this is considered our place,” she said. The worst had come to pass, and she was picking up the pieces and beginning to provide for her children a notion of normality that she knew she must maintain.

“You know what you’re like when you don’t sleep for a day?” Lubna directed the question toward me, to get me to fathom what it had been like when she was homeless on the streets. “I would take the children to many places, from morning to night, we would want to sleep but couldn’t. We were very tired.”

Poignant and pointed, she continued, “We’d stay around Saeeda Zainab, or outside the Iraqi embassy. Sometimes, if I had money enough from people at the masjid, we’d go to Mansoora, other times we’d go to Alexandria, and stay at the homes of other Iraqis. For example, in Syria, I met this Iraqi woman, so I went to spend the night with her. In Alexandria, I knew some Iraqi people so I went to spend the night with them. Sometimes I’d stay at some person’s place, sometime in the street, sometime in another person’s. I would just go because I needed to sleep.”

But it wasn’t as easy as that; there were issues of personal pride and cultural etiquette involved, “As soon as I started to feel that they were not very welcoming anymore, I would leave. I would take my children and walk in the streets again.” I hadn’t noticed, but Haneen, her eldest daughter had gone into the kitchen. She came out carrying a tin tray with three small glasses of tea. She set it down between us and rejoined our circle of conversation.

***

Months after Lubna’s husband had divorced her, her husband’s uncle’s wife called and asked to take her eldest daughter, Haneen, to their family home in upper Egypt for a wedding. Lubna went to the police station and signed papers to ensure that she was the sole legal guardian of her four children. She then made her husband’s uncle’s wife put her palm on the Koran and swear that she would return her daughter to her. Then she let Haneen go.

When her husband’s uncle’s wife returned to Cairo after the wedding she told Lubna that Haneen had decided to stay on with her father.

In upper Egypt, Lubna’s mother-in-law told Haneen that Lubna was dead. She then put Haneen to work in the field and to milk the cows in the shed, which Haneen did not want to do.

One day Haneen managed to call Lubna. She was crying. Her grandmother, Lubna’s mother-in-law, was planning to sell Haneen’s hand in marriage to a much older man for a sum of 9000 LE.

From then on, with the help of a sympathetic aunt, Haneen would call Lubna crying almost every week. Lubna used all the tactics she had. And even threatened to fax President Mubarak and inform the police until she had her daughter back. It took eight months before Lubna had Haneen back in her custody.

***

Lubna’s life has been triumph more than tragedy. For one, despite the legalities surrounding the fact that her nationality is different than her children, she managed, against the odds, to bring them with her to Egypt.

When coming to Egypt via Syria, the fact that she was Iraqi and her children Egyptian caused her much trouble. She explained, “I had my passport, I could easily get into Syria with no visa, because I am Iraqi. But as Egyptians, my children should have a visa, even simply to pass through.” Furthermore, as they were minors they were all registered on her husband’s passport, and he had already left. With no Egyptian embassy operating in Iraq at the time, Lubna had to issue them some strange one-way transit document that nobody had seemed to recognise and sign a paper promising to leave Syria for Egypt in two weeks time. But the authorities wouldn’t let her in easily, the bus driver begged the police on her behalf. Lubna faced much harassment from then. Then they let her through into Syria but refused to let her take the road to Jordan. They insisted she take a flight. And then there was a ray of luck, “The Egyptian ambassador sympathised with me, when he saw me crying at the Egyptian embassy. He called me in, asked them to bring me food, and he took the children and got their photos taken for the travel document, even though it was after hours, and at 2 pm the embassy closed its doors. But he sympathised with me when he saw the little one crying. He was a young man, and had very good, kind manners.” She considers him the one who saved her life, kept her family intact. By then, however, Lubna was already out of money, so she sold her cell phone, borrowed money from some generous refugees and bought five plane tickets to Cairo. She arrived in Cairo with not a guinea in hand.

Lubna’s present legal predicament is her own nationality. Her passport has expired. “I wanted to renew my passport and when I went to the Iraqi embassy they ask me where my mehram is! I went three times to Iraqi embassy in Mohandiseen last month.” Lubna is 37 years old she and is still considered a minor and requires an immediate male relative in order to renew her citizenship documents. The male relative has to be Iraqi so even her husband coming, were he to oblige her, would not do. Lubna has no other relatives in Egypt. With her father dead, and her brothers traumatised, she has no one to help her from Iraq.

“How can I bring those here?

Everyone has their own problems and we are all scattered around the globe, I cannot reach any of them. How can I bring you someone if I don’t have anyone?” she asks rhetorically. As for protection for her children, “They said, ‘we are not responsible for them, they are Egyptian, ’” explaining how she is falling through the crack. Lubna’s situation presents the precariousness of a woman’s legal status in the current socio-political milieu of the Middle East.

Despite her divorce and everything else, Lubna has kept her children together, and when I asked if they have any physical or psychological problems because of everything they’ve been through, she praises God, “Besides Mohammed’s cough, the kids are fine, mashallah.” The toll has perhaps all been borne by her, “I have a problem. I get nauseous quite often. When I put cold water I feel better, and it affects this area,” physically indicating a searing pain around the crown of her head. “The pain stays,” she says, “And sometimes I feel faint.”

***

Before the fall of Baghdad, Lubna says she would never bother to have breakfast at her home in al Doura: "I would take a cab, and go to my mother's in al Khadra to have breakfast there every morning. Every morning, I would go to have breakfast with her. We would have thick cream and hot bread.”

“We were something beautiful back then."

That is:

> before her father was killed;

> before her mother withdrew from social life;

> before her brothers were tortured;

> before her family was scattered—her sisters seeking asylum in Syria, her brothers getting detained in Buka prison and Abu Ghraib;

> before her brother-in-law was caught in a landmine;

> before her cousin was cut up;

> before another was blown up;

> before yet another went to the market and never returned;

> before all of that,

> before the fall of Baghdad, while still sitting around and chatting in the garden over breakfast, they were something beautiful.

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Posted by Joe Anybody at 12:48 AM PST

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Mood:  incredulous

Impeach Bush To Stop Pardons

Dear Representative and Senators,

President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney stand accused of 39 grave and impeachable offenses, including war crimes, torture, warrantless wiretapping, and outing a covert CIA operative.

Most of these offenses are felonies for which Bush and Cheney can be criminally prosecuted after they leave office. But prosecutions will be impossible if Bush issues blanket pre-emptive pardons for Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, other senior officials, and even himself.

Can Bush do this? Absolutely. Gerald Ford set the precedent in 1974 when he gave Richard Nixon a blanket pre-emptive pardon for any crime he "may have committed."

Presidential pardon power is nearly unlimited under the Constitution. We support efforts in Congress to outlaw pre-emptive or self-pardons, but even if a bill passes Congress before Bush leave office, Bush will certainly veto it. So how can we stop Bush's pardons?

The Founding Fathers clearly anticipated a corrupt President might pardon his co-conspirators, and specified impeachment as the remedy.

George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights, argued at the Constitutional Convention that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."

James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution, added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter [pardon] him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

As your constituent, I urge you to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney before they issue pardons. But if that fails, I urge you to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney afterwards for issuing pardons that constitute obstruction of justice and abuse of power.

A post-inaugural impeachment would prohibit those impeached from ever holding federal office, either elected or appointed. Arguably, impeachment would also nullify pre-impeachment pardons and permit prosecutions. Finally, impeachment would tell future Presidents they cannot abuse their pardon power to put themselves above the law.

In 1776, Thomas Paine famously wrote, "in America, the law is King." Congress must not allow a President to commit crimes with impunity, or it makes the President a King - or worse, a Dictator.

Posted by Joe Anybody at 11:42 PM PST

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