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"Today, the United States enjoys a position of unparalleled military strength and great economic and political influence. In keeping with our heritage and principles, we do not use our strength to press for unilateral advantage. We seek instead to create a balance of power that favors human freedom: conditions in which all nations and all societies can choose for themselves the rewards and challenges of political and economic liberty. In a world that is safe, people will be able to make their own lives better. We will defend the peace by fighting terrorists and tyrants."

"The purpose of our actions will always be to eliminate a specific threat to the United States or our allies and friends. The reasons for our actions will be clear, the force measured, and the cause just. "

George W. Bush      
President of the United States      
September 20, 2002   

http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itps/1202/ijpe/ijpe1202.htm#intro

________________________

Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London:


"I think in this case international law stood in the way .........."

-------------------------

The former chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal.

Mr Blix, said the Attorney General's legal advice to the Government on the eve of war, giving cover for military action by the US and Britain, had no lawful justification.

He said it would have required a second United Nations resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force for the invasion of Iraq last March to have been legal.

__________________

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan reiterated his long-held position that the Iraq War was illegal because it breached the United Nations Charter.

Annan, in an interview Wednesday with the BBC, said, "it was up to the Security Council to approve or determine what those consequences should be.

"From the (UN) charter point of view it was illegal."

____________________

...for those who simply continue to parrot the government's legal advisors and their flawed legal arguments in attempting to justify a pre-emptive act of aggression, ......you might remember or review the history of the Third Reich's attorneys, Hans Frank and Wilhelm Frick, whose own pre-war legal advice to Reichsführer Hitler was that Germany could use the pretext of an imminent threat to "pre-emptively" invade Poland, for which war crime they were both tried, sentenced, and hanged to death by the International Military Tribunal at Nüremberg.

__________________

bonus item, for those who do their own research - - ... what do these folks all have in common?

*Brent Scowcroft: national security adviser to President Bush I. Scowcroft heads the Scowcroft Group which "sells intelligence and other services to globe-trotting corporations."
* Pete Wilson: former GOP Senator, Governor.
* Cresencio Arcos: AT&T executive and former US ambassador.
* Jim Barksdale: former head of Netscape.
* Robert Addison Day: chairman of the TWC Group, a money management firm, Bush Pioneer.
* William DeWitt: Ohio businessman, Bush Pioneer, top fund-raiser for Bush's 2004 Inaugural committee, former partner with Bush in the Texas Rangers baseball team.
* Stephen Friedman: past chairman of Goldman Sachs.
* Alfred Lerner: chief executive of MBNA.
* Ray Lee Hunt: super-rich Texas oil man, Bush Pioneer, finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, Halliburton Board of Directors.
* Rita Hauser: "a prominent lawyer and longtime advocate of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation."
* David Jeremiah: retired admiral.
* Arnold Kanter: national security official under Bush I, founding member of the Scowcroft Group.
* James Calhoun Langdon, Jr.: "a power-lawyer in Texas," Bush Pioneer, Washington lobbyist.
* Elisabeth Pate-Cornell: head of industrial engineering and engineering management at Stanford University.
* John Harrison Streicker: a "real estate magnate."
* Philip Zelikow: National Security Council staffer during Bush I.




(....besides the obvious, ....)

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Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.

Wasn't this the guy who said the invasion would be like the liberation of Paris and that fighting would be over in a snap? Confidence is an important thing to have, but I'll look elsewhere for authoritative advice.

The former chief UN weapons inspector, Hans Blix, has declared that the war in Iraq was illegal.

Hans Blix is a weapons inspector, and not even a very good one. He has no authority to declare any war illegal.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan reiterated his long-held position that the Iraq War was illegal because it breached the United Nations Charter.

With all of the blood on Kofi Annan's hands, he should standing trial instead of making pronouncements about US actions.

The US invasion of Iraq was legal because Iraq was in violation of its cease-fire agreement. Period. The Secretary General's office did not want an invasion because many people in the UN bureaucracy were pocketing bribes from Saddam's regime and there is a reflexive resistance to anything that the US proposes.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal. In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way ..........(sic)"

Paul, if you want to make the case that invading Iraq was illegal, you cannot just simply repeat the statements of other people that agree with you. You have to provide legal reasoning. What law applies, how the legal authority in question applies the law, how the action at issue is in contradiction to that law, what remedies are available, and so forth.

Support the invasion or not, that is not at issue. However, a plain reading of the UN resolutions authorized the use of force. The U.S. Congress authorized the use of force. Further, the intent of both the UN and the U.S. Congress was to authorize the use of force.

For someone who insinuates that people do not do their research, certainly you could strengthen your case if you did yours.

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Cordially,
Rush

elrushbo2@theobviousgmail.com
Remove the obvious...

Some state government should experiment with a system where a person can check in for state-funded (or mandate that insurance cover it) detox once. The person gets a summary immunity from prosecution for "user level" crimes associated with purchase and use of said drugs upon completion of the program. This immunity expires upon conviction for any other drug offense (either a "distributor level" offense, or a "user" offense after the detox).

This wouldn't immunize the person for any robberies, etc. concurrent with prior drug use. It is simply a carrot to get addicts to seek treatment and a stick to keep them clean.

It is not appropriate to do this at a federal level, but if it works in a pilot state or two it might prove useful.

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No animals were harmed in the making of the above post... much.

Bush backs plan to let Iran nuclear site operate
Inspectors key part of proposal

By David E. Sanger and Elaine Sciolino
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE

January 27, 2006

WASHINGTON – President Bush and the Chinese government both declared their full support yesterday for a Russian proposal to allow Iran to operate civilian nuclear facilities as long as Russia and international nuclear inspectors are in full control of the fuel.

Bush's explicit public endorsement puts all of the major powers on record supporting the proposal, even as most acknowledge that it is a significant concession to Iran and runs the risk that it will drag out the negotiations while continuing to produce nuclear material. Yet officials say they believe it is the best face-saving strategy to pursue a negotiated settlement with Iran.

European and American officials familiar with the details of the offer that Russia made to Iran say that Iran would continue to be allowed to operate its nuclear facility at Isfahan, which converts raw uranium into a form that is ready to be enriched. That is a step that both Europe and the United States said last year that they could not allow – and that was explicitly barred under the agreement between Iran and Europe in late 2004, because Iran could divert the uranium to secret enrichment facilities.

Iran began operating the Isfahan facility again in August.

Bush did not discuss the details of the Russian offer. But American, European and Russian officials, who like others discussing the issue spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be seen as interfering in the negotiations, said that the offer would allow Iran to continue operations at the plant that turns yellowcake, a concentrated form of uranium ore, into uranium hexafluoride, a toxic material that centrifuges spin into fuel for reactors or bombs.

Critics of that concession say it could send a signal to Iran that it no longer has to comply with all provisions of its November 2004 agreement with Europe.

“A red line was crossed” when Iran began producing the uranium last fall, said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a nonpartisan research group that follows developments in Iran.

“The Iranians got away with reopening the conversion facility and now people have accepted it's never going to be shut again and have taken it off the table,” he said.

Bush made his statement embracing the Russian idea at a news conference yesterday in which he declared that “The Iranians have said, 'We want a weapon.' ” In fact, Iran has denied that it is pursuing a weapon, and in the afternoon, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, acknowledged that Bush had misspoken.

“He was referring to their behavior,” McClellan said by telephone later.

“Our concern is their intention is to develop a nuclear weapon under the guise of a civilian program.”

Nonetheless, Bush's slip may cement the perception among some members of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency that he has decided, at least in his own mind, that Iran is intent on building a weapon as fast as it can, a situation he has said repeatedly he would not tolerate.

Bush gave no hint yesterday that he was thinking of military action, instead saying that “we are working hard to continue the diplomacy necessary to send a focused message to the Iranian government, and that is: 'Your desires for a weapon are unacceptable.' ”

Some state government should experiment with a system where a person can check in for state-funded (or mandate that insurance cover it) detox once. The person gets a summary immunity from prosecution for "user level" crimes associated with purchase and use of said drugs upon completion of the program. This immunity expires upon conviction for any other drug offense (either a "distributor level" offense, or a "user" offense after the detox).

This wouldn't immunize the person for any robberies, etc. concurrent with prior drug use. It is simply a carrot to get addicts to seek treatment and a stick to keep them clean.

It is not appropriate to do this at a federal level, but if it works in a pilot state or two it might prove useful.

Many states already have such a program, called Drug Court. Generally, a person who has been charged with certain non-violent drug offenses, sometimes even including selling small amounts to support the person's addiction, can have those charges dismissed if the person completes drug treatment, and does other things (like job training, G.E.D. etc., which varies from one program to another). Failure to complete the program usually results in swift incarceration (another motivation to succeed).

Bush backs plan to let Iran nuclear site operate
Inspectors key part of proposal

Clever!

1. USA side with Russia & China
2. Russia & China gets frustrated and angry on Iran, who doesn't cooperate
3. Russia & China sides with USA
4. The Security Council unanimously votes for measures against Iran.

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Spies, Lies and Wiretaps
New York Times Editorial
Published: January 29, 2006

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.
•

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

Only bad guys are spied on. Bush officials have said the surveillance is tightly focused only on contacts between people in this country and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed it saved thousands of lives by preventing attacks. But reporting in this paper has shown that the National Security Agency swept up vast quantities of e-mail messages and telephone calls and used computer searches to generate thousands of leads. F.B.I. officials said virtually all of these led to dead ends or to innocent Americans. The biggest fish the administration has claimed so far has been a crackpot who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch — a case that F.B.I. officials said was not connected to the spying operation anyway.

The spying is legal. The secret program violates the law as currently written. It's that simple. In fact, FISA was enacted in 1978 to avoid just this sort of abuse. It said that the government could not spy on Americans by reading their mail (or now their e-mail) or listening to their telephone conversations without obtaining a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The court has approved tens of thousands of warrants over the years and rejected a handful.

As amended after 9/11, the law says the government needs probable cause, the constitutional gold standard, to believe the subject of the surveillance works for a foreign power or a terrorist group, or is a lone-wolf terrorist. The attorney general can authorize electronic snooping on his own for 72 hours and seek a warrant later. But that was not good enough for Mr. Bush, who lowered the standard for spying on Americans from "probable cause" to "reasonable belief" and then cast aside the bedrock democratic principle of judicial review.

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

The rules needed to be changed. In 2002, a Republican senator — Mike DeWine of Ohio — introduced a bill that would have done just that, by lowering the standard for issuing a warrant from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion" for a "non-United States person." But the Justice Department opposed it, saying the change raised "both significant legal and practical issues" and may have been unconstitutional. Now, the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are telling Americans that reasonable suspicion is a perfectly fine standard for spying on Americans as well as non-Americans — and they are the sole judges of what is reasonable.

So why oppose the DeWine bill? Perhaps because Mr. Bush had already secretly lowered the standard of proof — and dispensed with judges and warrants — for Americans and non-Americans alike, and did not want anyone to know.

War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.

The administration also says that the vote was the start of a war against terrorism and that the spying operation is what Mr. Cheney calls a "wartime measure." That just doesn't hold up. The Constitution does suggest expanded presidential powers in a time of war. But the men who wrote it had in mind wars with a beginning and an end. The war Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney keep trying to sell to Americans goes on forever and excuses everything.

Other presidents did it. Mr. Gonzales, who had the incredible bad taste to begin his defense of the spying operation by talking of those who plunged to their deaths from the flaming twin towers, claimed historic precedent for a president to authorize warrantless surveillance. He mentioned George Washington, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These precedents have no bearing on the current situation, and Mr. Gonzales's timeline conveniently ended with F.D.R., rather than including Richard Nixon, whose surveillance of antiwar groups and other political opponents inspired FISA in the first place. Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush is waging an unpopular war, and his administration has abused its powers against antiwar groups and even those that are just anti-Republican.
•

The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to start hearings on the domestic spying. Congress has failed, tragically, on several occasions in the last five years to rein in Mr. Bush and restore the checks and balances that are the genius of American constitutional democracy. It is critical that it not betray the public once again on this score.