Why America Cannot Live without Wars

 

Published on Thursday, August 29, 2013 by Times of India

Why America Cannot Live without Wars

by Chidanand Rajghatta

 

 

WASHINGTON – On a day marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I-Have-A-Dream" civil rights speech, the United States is poised to unleash another nightmare some 10,000km away in the Middle-East. Washington's war machine is geared up for limited strikes against Syria because Damascus ostensibly crossed a red line by using chemical weapons against its own population, never mind that many regimes worldwide inflict atrocities against their own people by other means.







On a day marking the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I-Have-A-Dream" civil rights speech, the United States is poised to unleash another nightmare some 10,000km away in the Middle-East. (File)

Why a President who came to office on the strength of his anti-war credentials - especially on the phony war foisted on Iraq - is running with the war hounds, is something of a mystery. But the rest of the Washington establishment is champing at the bit to unleash missiles on the Syrian regime, promising a short punitive strike, in keeping with the well-worn belief that America cannot live without a war.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was among those who indicated that the US was "ready to go" the moment President Barack Obama gave the sign. "We have moved assets in place to be able to fulfill and comply with whatever option the president wishes to take," Hagel said on Tuesday.

"We are not good at anything else anymore... can't build a decent car or a television, can't give good education to the kids or health care to the old, but we can bomb the shit of out any country..." – the late George Carlin

This, when a UN team is still investigating the reported use of chemical weapons in the conflict between the regime of Bashir al Assad and the rebels. The UN team has been asked to pack up and get out of the way. "We clearly value the UN's work - we've said that from the beginning - when it comes to investigating chemical weapons in Syria. But we've reached a point now where we believe too much time has passed for the investigation to be credible and that it's clear the security situation isn't safe for the team in Syria," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Tuesday, echoing the kind of impatience that characterized the descent into the Iraq war.

Despite the appalling intelligence failures during previous such conflicts, US officials placed immense faith in their own findings while scoffing at international efforts. "I think the intelligence will conclude that it wasn't the rebels who used it and there'll probably be pretty good intelligence to show that the Syria government was responsible," Hagel said in a BBC interview. The prospect of the war, even a limited strike, upsetting a range of friends and allies, from Israel to India, does not seem to be holding back Washington's war veterans (both Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel served in the military).

If all this recalls the war against Iraq not too long ago, not many in Washington seem keen on remembering it. Instead, explanations are being proffered on how different this case is and how it will be a short, surgical strike, not really a war.
But America's discerning have long recognized that the country can never live without war. It is a country made for war. Small detail: Up until 1947, the Defense Department was called Department of War.

By one count, the United States has fought some 70 wars since its birth 234 years ago; at least 10 of them major conflicts. "We like war... we are good at it!" the great, insightful comedian George Carlin said some two decades ago, during the first Gulf War. "We are not good at anything else anymore... can't build a decent car or a television, can't give good education to the kids or health care to the old, but we can bomb the shit of out any country..."

Similar sentiments have been echoed more recently. "America's economy is a war economy. Not a manufacturing economy. Not an agricultural economy. Nor a service economy. Not even a consumer economy," business pundit Paul Farrell wrote during this Iraq War. "Deep inside we love war. We want war. Need it. Relish it. Thrive on war. War is in our genes, deep in our DNA. War excites our economic brain. War drives our entrepreneurial spirit. War thrills the American soul. Oh just admit it, we have a love affair with war."

And so, America will be off to another (limited) war shortly.

© 2013 Times of India

Chidanand Rajghatta is a columnist and foreign editor for the Times of India.

The Chemical Weapons Pretext for War on Syria: A Pack of Lies

by Ben Schreiner / June 17th, 2013

 

 

In the wake of having its illegal domestic surveillance dragnet exposed, laying bare (yet again) the utter duplicity and criminality of the U.S. ruling class, Washington is once again digging deep to conjure up a pretext for yet another war of aggression in the Middle East.

Using the tired menace of weapons of mass destruction, the White House Thursday claimed with “high confidence” that the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons, specifically the nerve agent sarin, against rebel fighters.

Washington’s announcement of “credible evidence” of chemical weapons use by Syrian forces, coming despite a dearth of actual hard evidence revealed, is now being used as the justification for providing direct U.S. military aid to the Syrian rebels.

The decision to wade further into the Syrian morass, however, came well before the supposed crossing of President Obama’s “red line.”

As the Washington Post reported, “the determination to send weapons had been made weeks ago.”  Moreover, it has long been known that the CIA was overseeing the arming of opposition groups inside Syria.  The debate in Washington over Syria has thus really been over the degree and overtness of U.S. military intervention.  And while the typical Republican hawks (John McCain and Lindsey Graham) have used the latest chemical weapons scare to resume the calls for a “no-fly zone,” prominent Democrats continue to come around to supporting a “no-fly zone” as well.  But then again, American politics has long stopped at water’s edge.

With such bipartisan war drums beating louder, it’s little surprise to learn that the Pentagon is working on plans for establishing a “limited no-fly zone” in order to carve out a buffer zone of up to 25 miles along the Jordan-Syria border.

This “no-fly zone,” the Wall Street Journal reports, would “be enforced using aircraft flown from Jordanian bases and flying inside the kingdom.”  And on cue, the Pentagon has confirmed that it will indeed be keeping a contingent of F-16s and Patriot missiles in Jordan following scheduled war games there next week.  (NATO already has Patriot missile batteries stationed along the Turkey-Syria border.)

The very notion of a “limited no-fly zone,” though, stands as but the latest addition to Washington’s growing newspeak.  One may add it to the likes of “collateral damage,” “surgical strikes,” and “protecting civilians.”  Indeed, as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates remarked prior to the NATO assault on Libya in 2011, “Let’s just call a spade a spade.  A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses. That’s the way you do a no-fly zone.”  Syria would be no different.

Of course, the latest impetus used for directly arming the Syrian rebels and reviving the talk of bombing the country—the supposed crossing of President Obama’s “red line” on chemical weapons—is on its very face tenuous, at best.

According to Foreign Policy’s “The Cable” blog, despite their “high confidence,” American intelligence officials have still not been able to determine a chain of custody for the blood samples supplied by Syrian rebels that reportedly tested positive for sarin.  That is, they have not been able to establish who exactly handled the principal piece of evidence establishing “proof” of chemical weapons use by the regime.  A rather remarkable admission given that it took two full weeks for the blood samples to reach Western intelligence agencies from rebel hands.

Faced with such flimsy evidence from U.S. officials, Yuri Ushakov, senior foreign policy adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, commented that, “what was presented to us by the Americans does not look convincing.”

“It would be hard even to call them facts,” Ushakov added.

Indeed, as McClatchy reported, independent chemical weapons experts maintain that “they’ve yet to see the telltale signs of a sarin gas attack, despite months of scrutiny.”

“Ultimately, without more information, we are left with the need to trust the integrity of the U.S. intelligence community in arriving at its ‘high confidence’ judgment,” Greg Thielmann, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Arms Control Association told McClatchy.

And what a leap of faith to place one’s trust in the integrity of the U.S. intelligence community!  After all, that would be the very same intelligence community which claimed it a “slam dunk” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction; the very same intelligence apparatus now snooping on the communications of virtually every American.

Given such an abundant recent history of brazen illegality from Washington, it’s no wonder the American public simply isn’t buying another war in the Middle East.  In fact, just 15 percent in a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll favor U.S. military intervention into Syria.  Only 11 percent favor arming the opposition.

Yet, in a revealing look into the anti-democratic impulse of the U.S. ruling elite who now cynically champion democracy in Syria, former President Bill Clinton publicly advised President Obama last week to disregard the firm public opposition to U.S. military intervention into Syria.  As Clinton remarked, “any president risks looking like ‘a total fool’ if they listen too closely to opinion polls.”

And thus not wanting to look a fool, President Obama has set the American war machine on the grinding path toward deeper intervention into the Syrian conflict.  The threat of a global confrontation ensnaring the likes of Iran and global powers Russia and China is evidently but the price of saving face.  Or as former Obama State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter more tactfully put it, it’s but the price of saving “U.S. credibility.”

The American working class, let alone working people globally, have nothing to gain from saving Washington’s credibility and satiating its imperial blood lust.  In fact, those at real risk of looking like fools are those still listening to the deceitful claims of the war-hungry elite.  For amid deepening internal economic and political crises, all the American ruling class has on offer is but further imperial aggression to be sold on little more than a pack of lies.

Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer living in Salem, Oregon. He may be reached at: bnschreiner@gmail.com. Read other articles by Ben.

 

This article was posted on Monday, June 17th, 2013 at 2:16am and is filed under Disinformation, Obama, Syria.

4 of the Most Awful Arguments for Attacking Syria Made So Far

World  

AlterNet / By Alex Kane

      

4 of the Most Awful Arguments for Attacking Syria Made So Far

There’s no shortage of commentators itching for a U.S. attack on Syria.

 

 

 

The Syria flag painted on cracked ground with vignette.
Photo Credit: Aleksey Klints/Shutterstock.com


 

August 27, 2013  |  

 

 

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There’s no stopping the U.S. now: the gears of war are grinding for an attack on Syria in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack last week that killed at least hundreds of people.

 

President Obama will releasehis report on why the U.S. is justified in striking at Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry upped the rhetorical ante yesterday, calling the alleged chemical weapons attack a “moral obscenity” and stating that “President Obama believes there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people.” And NBC News reports that a strike on Syria could occur as early as Thursday.

Media figures are now racing to opine on what America’s response should be. And there’s no shortage of commentators itching for a U.S. attack, consequences be damned. Here’s 4 bad media justifications for an attack on Syria.

1. Eugene Robinson

The Washington Post’s liberal columnist made the case for an attack in a column published yesterday. Robinson wrote that Obama has to “punish” Assad for the attack because the use of chemical weapons cannot be tolerated and because “this is a case in which somebody has to be the world’s policeman.”

Robinson takes the Obama administration’s claim that the Assad regime carried out the attack at face value. It’s clear that an attack took place. Less clear is who, exactly, carried it out. While the evidence certainly leans towards Assad being the perpetrator, the U.N. still has to do its ground work, and cruise missile strikes can wait.

There’s also other avenues for punishment if it becomes clear Assad did carry out a chemical weapons attack: the International Criminal Court and economic sanctions.

2. New York Times

Here’s another group of liberals providing cover for an Obama attack on Syria. The New York Times editorial board statesthat “the arguments against deep American involvement remain as compelling as ever.” But the Times also says that “Presidents should not make a habit of drawing red lines in public, but if they do, they had best follow through.”

So the main argument the Times is using to justify an attack is that Obama must prove his “red line” on chemical weapons cannot be crossed. But what if the cost of proving that is deeper U.S. involvement in a brutal civil war?

The Times states “the aim is to punish Mr. Assad for slaughtering his people with chemical arms, not to be drawn into another civil war.” But once the U.S. dives into war, the pressure for even greater intervention to tip the balance of the civil war towards the rebels becomes greater.

3. Washington Post’s Editorial Board

It’s not a shock that the hawkish editorial board at the Washington Post favors interventionin Syria. But the board wants the U.S. to go even further than the few pointless and futile cruise missile strikes that the Times and Robinson seem to want. “The military measures could include destroying forces involved in chemical weapons use and elements of the Syrian air force that have been used to target civilians, as well as helping to carve out a safe zone for rebels and the civilian populations they are seeking to protect,” the board writes.

There’s a risk that limited cruise missile strikes on the Syrian regime will raise the pressure for greater U.S. involvement down the road. But the Post wants the U.S. to go all in and throw our military weight on the side of a mixed and divided bag of rebel forces. That nearly guarantees U.S. blood and treasure going to wither on the Syrian battlefield. 

4. Bret Stephens

The most hawkish--and easily derided--case yet comes from Bret Stephens, a neoconservative writer at the Wall Street Journal.Stephens writes that Obama’s“main order of business must be to kill Bashar Assad.” He goes on to compare the situation to the 1930s, and argues that a Tomahawk missile aimed at Assad’s head could “hit and hasten the end of the civil war...What's at stake now is the future of civilization, and whether the word still has any meaning.”

The hyperbole is all too easy to spot. And Stephens seems to think killing Assad will end the civil war. But the death of Assad is unlikely to bring about an end to civil war. It could lead to further ethnic cleansing. And the rebels could then turn the guns on themselves and jockey for power. Killing Assad may feel good, but it would hardly mean an end to the bloodletting.

 

Alex Kane is AlterNet's New York-based World editor, and an assistant editor for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane.

U.S. Exaggerating the Terror Threat to Embassies to Silence Critics of NSA Domestic Surveillance

Democracy Now! / By Amy Goodman

Glenn Greenwald: Is the U.S. Exaggerating the Terror Threat to Embassies to Silence Critics of NSA Domestic Surveillance?

Greenwald also discusses Reuters’ report on the Drug Enforcement Agency spying on Americans.

 

 

 

August 5, 2013  |  

 

The Obama administration has announced it will keep 19 diplomatic posts in North Africa and the Middle East closed for up to a week, due to fears of a possible militant threat. On Sunday, Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the decision to close the embassies was based on information collected by the National Security Agency. "If we did not have these programs, we simply would not be able to listen in on the bad guys," Chambliss said, in a direct reference to increasing debate over widespread spying of all Americans revealed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian. "Nobody has ever questioned or disputed that the U.S. government, like all governments around the world, ought to be eavesdropping and monitoring the conversations of people who pose an actual threat to the United States in terms of plotting terrorist attacks," Greenwald says. Pointing to the recent revelations by leaker Edward Snowden that he has reported on, Greenwald explains, "Here we are in the midst of one of the most intense debates and sustained debates that we’ve had in a very long time in this country over the dangers of excess surveillance, and suddenly, an administration that has spent two years claiming that it has decimated al-Qaeda decides that there is this massive threat that involves the closing of embassies and consulates around the world. ... The controversy is over the fact that they are sweeping up billions and billions of emails and telephone calls every single day from people around the world and in the United States who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism." Greenwald also discusses the NSA’s XKeyscore Internet tracking program, Reuters’ report on the Drug Enforcement Agency spying on Americans, and the conviction of Army whistleblower Bradley Manning.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org,The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. I want to go back to Senator Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, to get Glenn Greenwald’s response. During an appearance on MSNBC’s Meet the Press, he said the NSA surveillance programs had uncovered information about the threats that prompted the U.S. to close 19 embassies in North Africa and Middle East.

SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS: These programs are controversial. We understand that. They’re very sensitive. But they’re also very important, because they are what lead us to have the—or allow us to have the ability to gather this chatter that I referred to. If we did not have these programs, then we simply wouldn’t be able to listen in on the bad guys. And I will say that it’s the 702 program that has allowed us to pick up on this chatter. That’s the program that allows us to listen overseas, not on domestic soil, but overseas.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Chambliss. Glenn Greenwald, your response?

GLENN GREENWALD: You know, it’s so ludicrous. For eight straight years, literally, Democrats, every time there was a terrorist alert or a terrorist advisory issued by the United States government in the middle of a debate over one of the Bush-Cheney civil liberties abuses, would accuse the United States government and the national security state of exaggerating terrorism threats, of manipulating advisories, of hyping the dangers of al-Qaeda, in order to distract attention away from their abuses and to scare the population into submitting to whatever it is they wanted to do. And so, here we are in the midst of, you know, one of the most intense debates and sustained debates that we’ve had in a very long time in this country over the dangers of excess surveillance, and suddenly an administration that has spent two years claiming that it has decimated al-Qaeda decides that there is this massive threat that involves the closing of embassies and consulates throughout the world. And within literally an amount of hours, the likes of Saxby Chambliss and Lindsey Graham join with the White House and Democrats in Congress—who, remember, are the leading defenders of the NSA at this point—to exploit that terrorist threat and to insist that it shows that the NSA and these programs are necessary.

What that has to do with the ongoing controversy about the NSA is completely mystifying. Nobody has ever questioned or disputed that the U.S. government, like all governments around the world, ought to be eavesdropping and monitoring the conversations of people who pose an actual threat to the United States in terms of plotting terrorist attacks. The controversy is over the fact that they are sweeping up billions and billions of emails and telephone calls every single day from people around the world and in the United States who have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism. And, if anything, the only thing that that controversy—the warning has to do with the current controversy is that the argument that a lot of analysts have made, very persuasively, is that when you have an agency that collects everything, it actually becomes harder, not easier, to detect actual terrorist plots and to find the actual terrorists. And if this agency really were devoted, if these surveillance programs were really devoted to finding terrorism, they would be much more directed and discriminating. But they’re not. They’re indiscriminate and limitless, and that’s one of the problems.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, you appeared on ABC’s This Week on Sunday. After speaking with you, the host, Martha Raddatz, asked House Intelligence Committee member Democratic Representative Dutch Ruppersberger to respond to your claim that members of Congress have had difficulty getting details of NSA programs. Let’s go to his response.

REP. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER: Since this incident occurred with Snowden, we’ve had three different hearings for members of our Democratic caucus and of the Republican caucus, where General Alexander has come with his deputy, Chris Inglis, to ask any questions that people have as it relates to this information. And we will continue to do that, because what we’re trying to do now is to get the American public to know more about what’s going on, that NSA is following the law, and that we have checks and balances. We have the courts. We have both the Senate and House Intelligence Committee. We have Justice Department. We have checks and balances here to make sure that NSA does not violate the law in what they’re doing. And, you know, since these two programs have come into effect, especially the metadata, there has not been one incident of any member of the NSA breaking any law whatsoever. But we can do better. I have to educate my caucus more, the Democratic caucus. And we’re trying to declassify as much as we can.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Democratic Congressmember Dutch Ruppersberger. Glenn Greenwald, your response?

GLENN GREENWALD: I hope Dutch Ruppersberger takes a much more prominent role in the political debate, because he’s basically the embodiment of the rotted soul that has become the Democratic Party. Not only does his district encompass Fort Meade, which is the headquarters of the NSA, which explains in part why he is this stalwart, steadfast NSA loyalist, but he is almost drowning in cash from the defense and intelligence industries. He’s the second leading recipient in the entire United States House of Representatives of money from those industries. And he then gets placed on the very committee that the Church Committee created in the mid-1970s to exercise oversight over the agency and the community that basically ensures that his coffers are stuffed full of cash. So of course he becomes the leading spokesperson for that agency and then goes around defending it and saying they’ve done nothing wrong and they’re vital and indispensable to our national security. That’s the leading Democrat on that committee.

But the thing that he was asked about, in terms of members of Congress being blocked from information, basic information, isn’t my claim. Members of Congress came to me with his grievance and asked me to write about it. And they gave me correspondence between themselves and the Intelligence Committee. And what they were asking for was not very sensitive information; they were asking for the most basic things, things they read about in media accounts, such as the ruling by theFISA court in 2011 that much of what the NSA has been doing, spying on Americans domestically, is a violation of the Constitution and the law. There really is, Amy, an 85-page, 86-page ruling issued by the FISA court that says the government has been systematically breaking the law and violating the Fourth Amendment in how it spies on us. And not only can we not see that ruling, because it remains a secret at the insistence of the Obama administration, even our elected representatives in Congress, who we’re told are exercising robust oversight, are blocked from seeing it. And that’s the correspondence that we published that was given to me by various House members. So, yeah, they do get meetings with General Alexander where they get to raise their hand and ask questions, and General Alexander says, "We’re violating—we’re not violating the law, and we are strictly adhering to what our guidelines are." He can say whatever he wants. They want to get the actual documents. That’s how you exercise oversight. And they’re being denied it, about the most basic information about both the NSA and the FISA court.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you something, the former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, who was the one who got the Pentagon Papers put into the congressional record, then had them published by Beacon Press, the whole thousands of pages, he said that the senators who have been really sounding the alarms, people like Senator Udall, Senator Wyden, of course, the ones who have been warning Americans in sort of cryptic ways, saying, "You’ve got to find out about this," could actually go much further now that so much has been released by you and even the Obama administration.

GLENN GREENWALD: Right. Well, there was a—there was an article in Foreign Policy magazine over the weekend the Yale Law professor, Bruce Ackerman, that makes the same point. Remember, United States senators have full constitutional immunity against prosecution for anything that they say on the floor of the Senate. And Daniel Ellsberg, when he was trying to get people to read the Pentagon Papers, actually wanted to get Mike Gravel and other senators to go to the floor of the Senate and read the Pentagon Papers, because they would have been immune from prosecution.

You know, as much as I like the fact that Ron Wyden and Mark Udall have been sounding the alarms for a couple of years, winking and hinting at Americans that they would be shocked to learn all the things that the Obama administration is doing in secret, they didn’t have the courage to tell us what those things were that they thought we should know. It took Mr. Snowden to come forward, who doesn’t have immunity, and tell us. And interestingly, the very first interview I ever did on ABCabout this case, I was followed by Senator Udall, and they asked Senator Udall about Edward Snowden. And the first thing he said was, "I deplore his leaks." So, you know, Mark Udall didn’t have the courage to do what Edward Snowden did. He tried to get the country to know there was something going on that we should know but didn’t come forward and say, even though he had this protection.

But I think Senator Gravel and Bruce Ackerman are absolutely right: There are all sorts of ways that if Ron Wyden and Mark Udall and others really believe, as they’re saying, that there are serious abuses going on in the NSA, they could let us know, and could do so with total protection, not—unlike me, who’s reporting it and being threatened with imprisonment, or Mr. Snowden, who’s been charged for letting us know. They could actually exercise their constitutional prerogatives as a senator and tell us what they think that we ought to know. And they ought to do a lot more of that.

AMY GOODMAN: How are you being threatened, Glenn?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, I mean, I’ve, you know, had various politicians and various journalists advocate that I’m violating the law, that I ought to be arrested. There’s been all sorts of debates about—you know, with graphics on the screen of CNN and ABC and other places for months: "Should Glenn Greenwald be prosecuted?" Obviously there are theories that the Obama administration has embraced that make investigative journalism a crime. So I’m not saying that I’m being formally threatened, but I’ve certainly been threatened openly by people who exercise a great deal of influence in Washington and who seem to be channeling what at least some of official Washington thinks. That’s what I’m referring to.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, you were supposed to testify last week before Congress. That hearing was canceled because President Obama was meeting with Democrats. But instead, you released a major piece. And I want to talk about that in a second, but will you be testifying before Congress again? And would you come into the United States to testify? Last week it was going to be by Skype.

GLENN GREENWALD: So, the hearing has—I don’t know if it’s been finalized, but I believe it’s been rescheduled for September the 17th or 18th. They definitely intend to reschedule that hearing that was canceled when President Obama suddenly developed a newfound interest in speaking with House Democrats, whom he’s traditionally ignored, which caused the cancellation of that hearing. So, I believe that it is being rescheduled. Whether I would come and physically appear or appear remotely by video depends on a number of factors, including my schedule, the reporting that I’m doing at the time, as well as the—the legal advices that I get from my lawyers. So, we’ll see whether or not that hearing takes place with me remotely there or physically there, but I absolutely intend to testify.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, that hearing last week was canceled, but minutes before the Senate hearing took place on that same day, you revealed details about a secret NSA program called XKeyscore that’s allowed analysts to search, with no prior authorization, through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of people. One of the top-secret documents you obtained described how the XKeyscore program, quote, "searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents, including the 'To, From, CC, BCC lines' and the 'Contact Us' pages on websites." Another slide shows how the XKeyscore program allows an analyst to learn the IP addresses of every person who visits any website the analyst specifies. Can you lay out what it is you revealed last week?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, the best description of that program that we revealed comes from theNSA, which says that it essentially allows an analyst to search and then to acquire nearly everything that a user does on the Internet. It’s intended to be a comprehensive program. And within the database of XKeyscore is every month, 30—every 30 days, 40 billion Internet records that are put into this database on top of what’s already there, and what any analyst sitting at his or her terminal with access to this program can do is what you just described, which is—they don’t even need to know your email address. So, if they do, they can find all your emails and read them. They can see what search terms you’ve entered in Google, what Internet websites you’ve visited, what Microsoft Word documents you’ve sent, what Google Earth images you’ve surveyed—essentially, as the NSAsays, everything that you can do on the Internet.

But the real issue is, is that Mr. Snowden, in his first interview with us, made the claim, which turned out to be one of the more controversial and high-impact claims, that any—that as an analyst sitting at his desk, he could wiretap the Internet activity of anyone, including the president. And he was attacked as being a liar by the GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, and others for having said that. And this is—the XKeyscore program essentially allows a person to do exactly that.

There are legal constraints on what an analyst can do when targeting a U.S. person. They need to go to the rubber-stamping FISA court first before they target a U.S. person. But even within the XKeyscore database, there are all sorts of communications that Americans have, both with foreign nationals, which does not require a warrant in order for an analyst to intercept and read, or even U.S. persons-to-persons. They try, they say, to filter out domestic communications. But as The New York Times’ Jim Risen said on a CNN segment that I did with him last week, it’s technologically impossible to filter out all of it. Much of even purely domestic communication ends up being put into these databases.

And the key issue with it, Amy is that when you sit at your terminal as an NSA analyst, and you want to go and search, you don’t need anybody’s approval. Nobody looks over your shoulder to see what you’re doing. You don’t need to justify it to anybody. You just enter what’s called justification, three or four words about why you’re doing it, and it then processes it. No court needs to approve it. No supervisor approves it. There’s post-search supervisory auditing, which is extremely random and scattered and not very rigorous. But there’s no pre-search approval requirements, which means an analyst can invade all of this incredibly sensitive online activity anytime they decide to do so.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, I also wanted to ask you about a new story you just tweeted about that was published today by Reuters. The article begins, quote, "A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

“Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin—not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. ...

"The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, orSOD."

Glenn Greenwald, can you talk more about this?

GLENN GREENWALD: So this should be a huge scandal for the following reason. The essence of the Constitution is that the government cannot obtain evidence or information about you unless it has probable cause to believe that you’ve engaged in a crime and then goes to a court and gets a warrant. And only then is that evidence usable in a prosecution against you. What this secret agency is doing, according to Reuters, it is circumventing that process by gathering all kinds of information without any court supervision, without any oversight at all, using surveillance technologies and other forms of domestic spying. And then, when it gets this information that it believes it can be used in a criminal prosecution, it knows that that information can’t be used in a criminal prosecution because it’s been acquired outside of the legal and constitutional process, so they cover up how they really got it, and they pretend—they make it seem as though they really got it through legal and normal means, by then going back and retracing the investigation, once they already have it, and re-acquiring it so that it looks to defense counsel and even to judges and prosecutors like it really was done in the constitutionally permissible way. So they’re prosecuting people and putting people in prison for using evidence that they’ve acquired illegally, which they’re then covering up and lying about and deceiving courts into believing was actually acquired constitutionally. It’s a full-frontal assault on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and on the integrity of the judicial process, because they’re deceiving everyone involved in criminal prosecutions about how this information has been obtained.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Glenn, since we have last spoken, Bradley Manning has been convicted, not of the most serious crime, aiding the enemy, but on about 20 other counts, a number of them involving espionage. You have written extensively about Bradley Manning. Edward Snowden—and then the whole Edward Snowden story exploded. And to show Edward Snowden understood how seriously he would be treated, you know, it was in the midst—he came out in the midst of, you know, the lead-up to the court-martial and the court-martial itself. Can you comment on Bradley Manning’s convictions?

GLENN GREENWALD: Bradley Manning is a national hero, who deserves all kinds of medals and national gratitude, not criminal prosecution, let alone decades in prison. He exposed serious war crimes, all kinds of deceit and—on the part of not only the United States government, but governments around the world. Even Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, a vociferous critic of WikiLeaks, credits the publication of those diplomatic cables with exposing corruption about tyrannies in the Arab world, including in Tunisia, that helped spark the Arab Spring, one of the greatest democratic revolutions of the last several centuries. And clearly his intent was to spark exactly the kind of reform that he was hoping to see in the wake of, for example, publication of the video showing the Apache helicopter killing of journalists and unarmed civilians and rescuers in Baghdad.

And what this Bradley Manning trial really is about is about creating and bolstering this climate of fear in the United States where would-be whistleblowers are afraid to come forward and blow the whistle on what they learn is being done by their government that is corrupt and illegal and deceitful, to basically enable the government license to break the law by—in scaring and intimidating whistleblowers and journalists from reporting on it. And one of the things that has made Mr. Snowden’s behavior so powerful, and the reason it has scared the United States government so much, is because it shows that people are willing to defy that climate of fear. And he’s in Russia and has sought asylum elsewhere precisely because the U.S., as Daniel Ellsberg said, is no longer a safe place for whistleblowers. But the case of Bradley Manning is a huge national disgrace. But I think it will be beneficial, in a tragic way, in showing what the true character of the United States is with regard to transparency and accountability.

AMY GOODMAN: Bradley Manning’s mother expressed support for her son in her first interview since his arrest more than three years ago. Susan Manning lives in Wales and suffers from health problems that makes travel to the U.S. difficult. Speaking to the British Daily Mail, she addressed Bradley directly, saying, quote, "Never give up hope, son. I know I may never see you again but I know you will be free one day. I pray it is soon. I love you, Bradley and I always will." Glenn, as we wrap up this discussion, when you released the video of Edward Snowden and you went to Hong Kong and you released story after story about his revelations—and I want to ask if you’re going to be releasing more—did you ever expect it would come to this point several months later, two months later?

GLENN GREENWALD: You know, honestly, I didn’t. When—I mean, I’ve been writing about surveillance issues for a long time. And for a lot of different reasons, sometimes it’s difficult to make these stories resonate, even when you’re writing about very severe abuses. I mean, remember, in 2005, The New York Times revealed that the Bush administration was spying on Americans in exactly the way that the law makes a felony, and not only were there no prosecutions from that, but the Democrats and the Republicans in Congress joined together, with very little public backlash, and essentially passed two bills in 2007 and 2008 that legalized that criminal eavesdropping program. And so, the concern, from the very first moment that I talked to Mr. Snowden—I remember really well the first conversation I had with him, and he was very clear about the fact that he had no fear about anything in terms of what he wanted to do, except for one, and that one fear he said that he had was that he would essentially sacrifice his liberty and his life and unravel his entire existence in order to make these disclosures and that these disclosures would be met by apathy and indifference on the part of the American public, the U.S. media and the political class. And so, from the beginning, our discussions were always about how to make sure that that didn’t happen, that people understood the true seriousness and the magnitude of what it was that was being revealed.

And I have to say, I mean, two months later, to watch, you know, essentially this extraordinary and unprecedented coalition of conservatives and liberals and tea party and centrists join together in the Congress and defy the White House and the leadership for serious reform in a real way, to see huge shifts in public opinion, to see the national security state for the first time really on its heels, to see numerous countries around the world defying the United States, to see a worldwide debate in multiple countries around the globe over what the United States is doing, to see huge amounts of public support for what Mr. Snowden has done in ways that I think will be consciousness-shifting on lots of levels, has not only been really gratifying, but, yeah, honestly, it has been surprising. And I haven’t fully been able to stop and think about, you know, and analyze all the reasons why it has resonated this way, but clearly there was something kind of in the ether that was ready for this sort of political controversy. And I think that you do see enormous amounts of impact in the way that people are thinking and mobilizing, not just about surveillance, but about the role of the government and secrecy and the United States in general.

AMY GOODMAN: And will you be releasing more information?

GLENN GREENWALD: Yeah, there’s a lot more stories that I’m working on right this very minute.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you for being with us and spending this time, columnist on civil liberties and U.S. national security issues for The Guardian, former constitutional lawyer. Glenn Greenwald first published Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA surveillance programs and continues to write extensively on the topic. His most recent article, we’ll link to, "Members of Congress Denied Access to Basic Information About NSA."

This is Democracy Now! When we come back, we’ll talk about the inauguration of a new president in Iran, what it means for the United States. Stay with us.

  World  

AlterNet / By Noam Chomsky

Chomsky: America's Imperial Power Is Showing Real Signs of Decline

Latin America had long been the reliable “backyard” for the United States—not any more. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

August 2, 2013  |  

 

 

On July 9, the Organization of American States held a special session to discuss the shocking behavior of the European states that had refused to allow the government plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales to enter their airspace.

Morales was flying home from a Moscow summit on July 3. In an interview there he had said he was open to offering political asylum to Edward J. Snowden, the former U.S. spy-agency contractor wanted by Washington on espionage charges, who was in the Moscow airport.

The OAS expressed its solidarity with Morales, condemned“actions that violate the basic rules and principles of international law such as the inviolability of Heads of State,” and “firmly” called on the European governments - France, Italy, Portugal and Spain - to explain their actions and issue apologies.
An emergency meeting of UNASUR—the Union of South American Nations—denounced “the flagrant violation of international treaties” by European powers.

Latin American heads of state weighed in, too. President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil expressed the country's “indignation and condemnation of the situation imposed on President Evo Morales by some European countries” and warned that this “serious lack of respect for the law…compromises dialogue between the two continents and possible negotiations between them.”

Commentators were less reserved. Argentine political scientist Atilio Boron dismissed Europe as “the whore of Babylon,” cringing before power.
With virtually identical reservations, two states refused to sign the OAS resolution: the United States and Canada. Their growing isolation in the hemisphere as Latin America frees itself from the imperial yoke after 500 years is of historic significance.

Morales' plane, reporting technical problems, was permitted to land in Austria. Bolivia charges that the plane was searched to discover whether Snowden was on board. Austria responds that “there was no formal inspection.” Whatever happened followed warnings delivered from Washington. Beyond that the story is murky.

Washington has made clear that any country that refuses to extradite Snowden will face harsh punishment. The United States will “chase him to the ends of the earth,” Sen. Lindsey Graham warned.

But U.S. government spokespersons assured the world that Snowden will be granted the full protection of American law - referring to those same laws that have kept U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning (who released a vast archive of U.S. military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks) in prison for three years, much of it in solitary confinement under humiliating conditions. Long gone is the archaic notion of a speedy trial before a jury of peers. On July 30 a military judge found Manning guilty of charges that could lead to a maximum sentence of 136 years.

Like Snowden, Manning committed the crime of revealing to Americans—and others—what their government is doing. That is a severe breach of “security” in the operative meaning of the term, familiar to anyone who has pored over declassified documents. Typically “security” means security of government officials from the prying eyes of the public to whom they are answerable—in theory.

Governments always plead security as an excuse—in the Snowden case, security from terrorist attack. This pretext comes from an administration carrying out a grand international terrorist campaign with drones and special operations forces that is generating potential terrorists at every step.
Their indignation knows no bounds at the thought that someone wanted by the United States should receive asylum in Bolivia, which has an extradition treaty with the U.S. Oddly missing from the tumult is the fact that extradition works both ways—again, in theory.

Last September, the United States rejected Bolivia's 2008 petition to extradite former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada—“Goni”—to face charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. It would, however, be an error to compare Bolivia's request for extradition with Washington's, even if we were to suppose that the cases have comparable merit.

The reason was provided by St. Augustine in his tale about the pirate asked by Alexander the Great, “How dare you molest the sea?” The pirate replied, “How dare you molest the whole world? Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an Emperor.”

St. Augustine calls the pirate's answer “elegant and excellent.” But the ancient philosopher, a bishop in Roman Africa, is only a voice from the global South, easily dismissed. Modern sophisticates comprehend that the Emperor has rights that little folk like Bolivians cannot aspire to.

Goni is only one of many that the Emperor chooses not to extradite. Another case is that of Luis Posada Carriles, described by Peter Kornbluh, an analyst of Latin American terror, as “one of the most dangerous terrorists in recent history.”

Posada is wanted by Venezuela and Cuba for his role in the 1976 bombing of a Cubana commercial airliner, killing 73 people. The CIA and FBI identified him as a suspect. But Cubans and Venezuelans also lack the prerogatives of the Emperor, who organized and backed the reign of terror to which Cubans have been subjected since liberation.

The late Orlando Bosch, Posada's partner in terrorism, also benefited from the Emperor's benevolence. The Justice Department and FBI requested that he be deported as a threat to U.S. security, charging him with dozens of terrorist acts. In 1990, after President George H.W. Bushoverturned the deportation order, Bosch lived the rest of his life happily in Miami, undisturbed by calls for extradition by Cuba and Costa Rica, two mere pirates.

Another insignificant pirate is Italy, now seeking the extradition of 23 CIA operatives indicted for kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Egyptian cleric in Milan, whom they rendered to Egypt for torture (he was later found to be innocent). Good luck, Italy.

There are other cases, but the crime of rendition returns us to the matter of Latin American independence. The Open Society Institute recently released a study called “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition.” It reviewed global participation in the crime, which was very broad, including among European countries.

Latin American scholar Greg Grandin pointed out that one region was absent from the list of shame: Latin America. That is doubly remarkable. Latin America had long been the reliable “backyard” for the United States. If any of the locals sought to raise their heads, they would be decapitated by terror or military coup. And as it was under U.S. control throughout the latter half of the last century, Latin America was one of the torture capitals of the world.
That's no longer the case, as the United States and Canada are being virtually expelled from the hemisphere.

Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor & Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of dozens of books on U.S. foreign policy. He writes a monthly column for The New York Times News Service/Syndicate.