Choice America Editorial

The nation's—and the world's—final farewells to Coretta Scott King were celebrated in Atlanta on February 7. Three former presidents attended Mrs. King's funeral, as did President Bush.

The day before, he had submitted to Congress a $2.77 trillion budget request for fiscal year 2007, a request whose entire tenor runs counter to the life and work of Mrs. King and her husband, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The budget request gives the Defense Department (DoD) a 4.8 percent—$28.5 billion—increase over the amount appropriated for the current fiscal year, excluding supplemental appropriations for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This increase for DoD actually exceeds by $1.1 billion the total difference ($27.4 billion) between discretionary spending (what Congress enacts every year) for fiscal 2006 ($843.3 billion) and what the president requested for 2007 ($870.7 billion).

Among the other 23 agency discretionary accounts, only International Relations and Veterans Affairs saw increases exceeding one billion dollars. Eight agencies edged up between $100,000 and $600,000, with the other 13 losing $10.8 billion. The biggest loser is Education (-$3.5 billion). The budget terminated vocational education and drug-free school grants to states, arts in education, gifted and talented education, and teacher quality enhancement programs. Community Service Grants under Health and Human Services are terminated as part of the $866 million cut in discretionary spending—with another $3.2 billion cut from mandatory spending (chiefly Medicare) for 2007.

In fact, in presenting the State of the Union to Congress and the public on January 31, Bush proudly announced that his 2007 budget would eliminate completely or reduce funding substantially for 141 “non-security” discretionary programs. When 16 other “reform” proposals are added to the original 141, the president is asking for $20.4 billion less than Congress approved for 2006 non-security spending.

What does it say about a nation that allows its government to spend—before counting war fighting costs—$480.9 billion attempting to secure the homeland (DoD plus $41.6 billion for all non-DoD federal spending) while it undermines community building and community assistance efforts that (1) are essential to millions of today's most vulnerable and (2) expand tomorrow's opportunities by broadening the scope of training for today's youth?

It clearly says that the United States no longer cherishes the spiritual vision articulated by one of the earliest colonial “Founding Fathers”—the Puritan leader, John Winthrop—while still aboard the Arbella in 1630. In a discourse titled “A Model of Christian Charity,” Winthrop wrote one of the enduring images associated with the early Puritan settlers: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” As his title suggests, Winthrop's message to his fellow seekers is one of inclusiveness. Noting that their religious quest for freedom of conscience had a parallel secular quest for moral self-governance, he cautions the company that “the care of the public must oversway all private respects …”

He is even more explicit elsewhere in the sermon:

“We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others' necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience, and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others' conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.”

Winthrop's “city on the hill” radiates the ideal of service to others. Because all are of the same community, they share equal rights and incur commensurate shared responsibilities for contributing to the community's well-being. Should rights conflict with responsibilities, the spirit of community gives priority to the latter in recognition that all are equal in the light of the deity within regardless of their station and condition in this life.

Being human, even Winthrop was not immune to temptations to indulge individual rights over the community's welfare. But neither the historical failings of the Bay Colony nor centuries of slavery, racism, and extermination of Native peoples could extinguish Winthrop's spirit of community. In modern times, that spirit flickered in the mid-20 th century as the single-minded pursuit of personal privilege began to replace the collective responsibility of individual caring—that is, spending not just money but time in community.

This change in attitude might be regarded as a backlash against the artificial “community” created by the massive conscription of men and women (15 million) for World War II. Ironically tagged military “service,” its primary purpose had nothing to do with Winthrop's “supply of others' necessity.” So when this “community” dissolved at war's end, individuals raced to make up for four lost years. In the ensuing scramble, the ethos of voluntary service faded as one facet or organizing principle of daily life and experience. The communal invitation that had served as the welcoming beacon to the city on the hill morphed into a cold reflective beam warning all who approached that the city was now a gated community, a closed bastion, “a mighty fortress.”

The 2007 budget request reinforces this shift from commitment to the inclusive community to assertion of personal privilege as the guiding tenet of the administration. Yes, there is community—if one is privileged, that is. And there is “service,” but not in its moral sense of a giving relationship between equals.

In fact, this budget, together with this year's $70 billion supplemental for DoD, is another extension of the administration's drive to create a fortress based on privilege within a fortress based on military might. The president and other administration officials, as well as many in Congress, constantly claim that the world changed on September 11, 2001, that there are only two realities, pre- and post-9/11. This is as specious as it is shallow.

What changed was our awareness of a group of extremists who were committed to suicidal violence as a statement of their rejection of the spread of western materialistic individualism (privilege) and western militarism. However, their violence was no less an anti-communitarian assertion of privileged individualism in that they decided that the lives and contributions of 3,000 individuals were of less worth than their extremist ideology.

Today, Winthrop's city stands as a foreboding darkness. It awaits a people whose only fear is failing to serve that of the light in each individual. It is time for the public to look within and rediscover—if necessary, rekindle—that communal light. For only through the commingling of these lights will community be rekindled, morality restored, and the city reclaimed.

Hubert Humphrey laid out the challenge to be met when he said: “The moral test of a society is how that society treats those who are in the dawn of life—the children; those who are in the twilight of life—the elderly; and those who are in the shadow of life—the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.”

By this measure, the current administration fails.

Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org), a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

© 2001-2006 IRC

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Goodness gracious! Could it be that comedians are doing a better job of connecting the dots regarding Dick Cheney's high crimes and misdemeanors than are the unintentionally ridiculous members of the White House press corps?

Huntergate is certainly worthy of coverage, especially now that the vice president has admitted to shooting while intoxicated. But the on-bended-knee "reporters" who hang around the briefing room waiting for a presidential spokesman to feed them their daily diet of spin look pretty absurd chasing after this particular story with so much gusto while they continue to ignore the big picture of Cheney's misuse of intelligence data before and after the invasion of Iraq and his role in schemes to punish critics of the administration.

If the Bush administration's court reporters are not quite up to the job of holding the vice president to account, however, the nation's fearless comedians are up to the task.

"Good news, ladies and gentlemen," announced David Letterman after news of the vice presidential shooting spree finally came out, "we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It's Dick Cheney." Letterman scored another direct hit when he observed: "It turns out now that Dick Cheney did not have a license to hunt, and coincidentally, turns out we didn't have a license to go into Iraq."

Jay Leno was equally on target when he explained that: "You can't blame [Cheney]. Bush says you can spy on people without warrants, you can torture people, you can hold people without a trial, so Dick Cheney thinks, 'Oh what the hell, I can shoot a few guys.'"

Ultimately, however, it was "Daily Show" correspondent Rob Corddry who hit the bullseye, when he reported that: "The Vice President is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Whittington. Now, according to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush. And while the quail turned out to be a 78- year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Wittington's face."

All seriousness aside, there is a good deal of humor to be found in the fact that members of the White House press corps have finally been roused to mount the journalistic barricades by a hunting accident. While they cannot be counted on to go after the big stories, they are unrelenting in their determination to get to the bottom of every tale of celebrity folly -- be it Britney Spears failure to place her baby in a carseat or Dick Cheney's inability to shoot straight after he's downed a cold one.

But, as in the days when Pravda and Tass could not be relied upon to go after the big stories of Soviet shenanigans, Americans now know that, for the full story about this administration, they must turn to the comedians and the satirists who understand that Cheney's abuse of beer and guns cannot compair with his abuse of the most powerful vice presidency in American history.

John Nichols's is the author of The Rise and Rise of Richard B. Cheney: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Most Powerful Vice President in American History (The New Press). Publisher's Weekly describes it as "a Fahrenheit 9/11 for Cheney" and Esquire magazine says it "reveals the inner Cheney."

© 2006 The Nation

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Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, wearing a crisp olive Army uniform with the Bronze Star and other awards, delivered his first public testimony about his central role in Able Danger, a Pentagon computer data-mining program set up long before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to infiltrate the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

Shaffer told a House Government Reform subcommittee that he and other intelligence officers and contractors working on the top-secret program code-named "Able Danger" had identified Mohammed Atta, ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, but were prevented from passing their findings to the FBI.

"I became a whistleblower not out of choice, but out of necessity," Shaffer said. "Many of us have a personal commitment to ... going forward to expose the truth and wrongdoing of government officials who - before and after the 9/11 attacks - failed to do their job."

Shaffer contradicted recent statements by Philip Zelikow, former executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, who denied having met with Shaffer and other Able Danger operatives in Afghanistan in October 2003.

"I did meet with him," Shaffer said. "I have the business card he gave me. I find it hard to believe that he could not remember meeting me."

The commission set up by Congress to probe the Sept. 11 attacks didn't mention the Able Danger project on al Qaeda in its final report in July 2004.

When former Able Danger operatives began to talk with reporters and lawmakers about the program last year, the commission's chairman and vice chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas Kean and former Rep. Lee Hamilton, released a statement saying the panel had looked into the work of Able Danger and found it "historically insignificant."

Shafer was to testify today (Wednesday) at a separate House Armed Services subcommittee hearing devoted to Able Danger.

Spc. Samuel Provance, also dressed in Army green, said he was demoted and humiliated after telling a general investigating the Abu Ghraib scandal that senior officers had covered up the full extent of abuse during interrogations of detainees at the U.S. military prison in Iraq.

"Young soldiers were scapegoated while superiors misrepresented what had happened and tried to misdirect attention away from what was really going on," Provance said. "I considered all of this conduct to be dishonorable and inconsistent with the traditions of the Army. I was ashamed and embarrassed to be associated with it."

The Abu Ghraib interrogations caused an international uproar in 2004 after the release of photographs of Iraqi prisoners in sexual and other degrading positions.

Provance made a new allegation about the Abu Ghraib controversy, saying that U.S. forces had captured the 16-year-old son of an Iraqi general under Saddam Hussein, Hamid Zabar, to pressure the general into providing information.

"I was extremely uncomfortable about the way General Zabar had been treated, but particularly the fact that his son had been captured and used in this way," Provance said. "It struck me as morally reprehensible, and I could not understand why our command was doing it."

Rep. Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican and chairman of the national security subcommittee that held the hearing, told Provance: "It takes a tremendous amount of courage for someone of your rank to tell a general what they may not want to hear."

Asked what his current military duties are, the former computer specialist replied," The only thing I've been doing since being demoted is picking up trash and pulling guard duty."

Russell Tice, a former National Security Agency analyst who was a New York Times source for its reporting on domestic wiretapping, told of having been classified as mentally ill and then fired in connection with an earlier episode at the espionage agency.

Tice said he would have to testify in closed hearings about the details of the eavesdropping program, which President Bush authorized soon after the Sept. 11 attacks. But under questioning by lawmakers, Tice suggested that other NSA programs also raised concerns for him.

"Some of the programs that I worked on I believe treaded on illegalities and, I believe, unconstitutional activity," Tice said.

In one of the hearing's most dramatic moments, Tice read aloud the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, which protects Americans against "unreasonable searches and seizures" without a court warrant. Tice also read an NSA policy that limits the signals agency to monitoring foreign communications.

"As intelligence officers, we take an oath and swear to protect the Constitution," Tice said.

Michael German, a veteran FBI agent, said he was punished after reporting his bosses in Tampa, Fla., for having altered documents in a counter-terrorism investigation.

"They produced false documents and literally took Whiteout to change official records," German said.

Richard Levernier said the Energy Department pulled his security clearance after he complained that the agency was glossing over security problems at nuclear weapons sites.

"These agencies are out of control," said Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican. "If we don't take action we're all in trouble."

Shays said he convened the hearing because military and intelligence employees don't have the same whistleblower protections the government affords other federal workers or even employees of private firms.

"Whistleblowers in critical national security positions are vulnerable to unique forms of retaliation," Shays said. "There is nothing top secret about gross waste or the abuse of power."

Rep. John Duncan, a Tennessee Republican, criticized Defense Department officials for directing "trumped-up charges" against Shaffer. Duncan ridiculed the Pentagon for having accused the decorated intelligence officer of misusing small amounts of money while the government was wasting billions of dollars on rebuilding Iraq.

"If they really wanted to go after me, I had millions of dollars of equipment I was responsible for," Shaffer said.

After he began speaking out about Able Danger, Shaffer said, the Pentagon leaked personal information about him, including allegedly inflated expense reports for $67 in extra phone charges. Shaffer said the charges were to cover calls transferred from his work phone to his cell phone on weekends, so that he could be available at all times.

As the overflow hearing room grew silent, Weldon asked Shaffer to respond to separate Pentagon allegations that the colonel had been romantically involved with one of his aides.

"Have you ever had an affair with anyone on my staff, male or female?" Weldon asked.

"No, sir, but that was what DIA (the Defense Intelligence Agency) put out," Shaffer replied.

Copyright © The Sacramento Bee

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

Former President Jimmy Carter criticized the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program Monday and said he believes the president has broken the law.

"Under the Bush administration, there's been a disgraceful and illegal decision — we're not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we're spying on the American people," Carter told reporters. "And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act."

Carter made the remarks at a union hall near Las Vegas, where his oldest son, Jack Carter, announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

The former president also rebuked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for telling Congress that the spying program is authorized under Article 2 of the Constitution and does not violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed during Carter's administration. Gonzales made the assertions in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which began investigating the eavesdropping program Monday.

"It's a ridiculous argument, not only bad, it's ridiculous. Obviously, the attorney general who said it's all right to torture prisoners and so forth is going to support the person who put him in office. But he's a very partisan attorney general and there's no doubt that he would say that," Carter said. "I hope that eventually the case will go to the Supreme Court. I have no doubt that when it's over, the Supreme Court will rule that Bush has violated the law."

The former president said he would testify before the Judiciary Committee if asked.

"If my voice is important to point of the intent of the law that was passed when I was president, I know all about that because it was one of the most important decisions I had to make."

Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press

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