The Letter of the Law

The White House says spying on terror suspects without court approval is ok. What about physical searches?

By Chitra Ragavan
3/27/06

[...]

"Black-bag jobs."

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse says the white paper cited the Gorelick testimony simply to bolster its legal defense of the NSA's electronic surveillance program. Roehrkasse points out that Justice Department lawyers have told Congress that the NSA program "described by the president does not involve physical searches." But John Martin, a former Justice Department attorney who prosecuted the two most important cases involving warrantless searches and surveillance, says the department is sending an unambiguous message to Congress. "They couldn't make it clearer," says Martin, "that they are also making the case for inherent presidential power to conduct warrantless physical searches." [...]

Hell of war still haunts Iraq vets

Many struggle with mental health disorders, homelessness As fight drags on, questions being raised about true costMany struggle with mental health disorders, homelessness
As fight drags on, questions being raised about true cost

Mar. 20, 2006. 01:00 AM
TIM HARPER
WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON—Every day, Staff Sgt. Eugene Simpson is back in the pocket, looking for the open receiver downfield.

In his mind, he's there again, reliving his days as a high school football quarterback, a junior college cornerback and a point guard on the basketball team.

He can't suppress a grin, and that's the incongruous moment in his story, because this 29-year-old father of four with the upper body physique of the athlete he once was is sitting in his wheelchair in Washington's Veterans Administration hospital, paralyzed from the waist down, a graduate of the Iraq war, Class of 2004.

"I can't let this beat me," he says. "It's a competition, it's that competition left over from my days in sports."

Almost on the other side of the country, Sgt. Michael Sarro, Iraq war, Class of 2005, is lying in a hospital bed in Texas, his 10th or 11th time back there — he's lost count — talking about the nights, when darkness rolls in, and you're all alone, with nothing but time to think, about yourself, about what happened, about why it happened.

"Some of those things I've thought or felt, I'm not sure I want the guys I know to read about," he says. "You know, the military, it's really the biggest tough guy convention you'll find ... you have to keep that tough guy outlook."

No one could ever question the toughness of Simpson or Sarro, two of the more than 17,000 injured Iraq war veterans, many battling back from horrific injuries in this country as it marks the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

But as the fight drags on, there are questions about the cost of this war to a generation of young men and women.

There are even larger questions about the psychological cost to those who have returned and the tens of thousands who will someday return to try to reintegrate into everyday life here.

By some estimates, a U.S. Senate committee was recently told, one in three of the homeless in America are veterans, and more and more they are young veterans of Afghanistan or the two Iraq campaigns.

A study published in the Journal of American Medicine last month concluded about one-third of Iraq war veterans seek mental health help upon their return. The study of 222,620 veterans found the risk for serious mental problems was much higher in Iraq veterans than those returned from Afghanistan or other conflicts.

The study found 80 per cent of those who were diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reported witnessing persons being wounded or killed or being involved in combat in which they fired their weapons.

"For those who survive, they return home having seen hellish things," says Dave Uchic, a spokesperson for Paralyzed Veterans of America.

"They are serving in a constant state of stress. There is no front. It is urban warfare. What if Iraq tips to civil war? They could witness massacres or huge waves of suicide bombings.

"This is a terrible thing they have to deal with over there. But this could get much worse when more and more start coming home."

Canada now has about 2,200 troops stationed in Afghanistan and is starting to suffer casualties. The U.S. experience may serve as a precursor to the types of problems Canadian veterans could face when they return home.

Tom Cray of the U.S. National Coalition for Homeless Veterans told a congressional committee that there are 200,000 veterans living on American streets on any given night, but his network is seeing more and more veterans from this Iraq war, many of them suffering PTSD, on the streets. [...]

"Biggest" Air Attack in Iraq Turns Out to be Bush PR Stunt

Why bother spending billions of dollars on big corporate mainstream media reporters when they could just as easily have the Pentagon supply the stories and footage directly?

They already do in most cases.

Take the breathlessly "covered" air attack in Iraq. "Largest Air Attack in Iraq War Launched Against Insurgents," read one big city headline we saw. And television was right there, providing lead stories on the massive "air attack."

Only, of course, it turned out to be a PR stunt to boost Bush's poll ratings at home and divert attention from the civil war in Iraq, as if the U.S. presence was accomplishing something.

It turned out that this air blitz was just a bunch of helicopters that flew up to a pretty sparsely populated area, where 40 poor shlubs that happened to be around were detained. There was no shooting, no injuries, no deaths. It was all just show time.

But did the mainstream media expose the stunt? Are you kidding? They just dutifully reported it as if it were some vital military strategic assault.

Soviet propaganda fulfilled the same function as "reporting" like this. The mainstream press has been lobotomized by a corporate culture that doesn't want to "upset" the administration by practicing actual journalism.

Most television news and print coverage fulfill the same role as public relations agencies for the administration, with some exceptions for whistleblowing stories that are shoved in the media's face.

But the "massive air attack" fell into the former category. The mainstream media might as well have had the Pentagon press office or Karl Rove's shop writing their material. Maybe they did.

Pay too much and you could raise the alarm

By BOB KERR
The Providence Journal
28-FEB-06

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Walter Soehnge is a retired Texas schoolteacher who traveled north with his wife, Deana, saw summer change to fall in Rhode Island and decided this was a place to stay for a while.

So the Soehnges live in Scituate now and Walter sometimes has breakfast at the Gentleman Farmer in Scituate Village, where he has passed the test and become a regular despite an accent that is definitely not local.

And it was there, at his usual table last week, that he told me that he was "madder than a panther with kerosene on his tail."

He says things like that. Texas does leave its mark on a man.

What got him so upset might seem trivial to some people who have learned to accept small infringements on their freedom as just part of the way things are in this age of terror-fed paranoia. It's that "everything changed after 9/11" thing.

But not Walter.

"We're a product of the '60s," he said. "We believe government should be way away from us in that regard."

He was referring to the recent decision by him and his wife to be responsible, to do the kind of thing that just about anyone would say makes good, solid financial sense.

They paid down some debt. The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable.

And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.

"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Walter called television stations, the American Civil Liberties Union and me. And he went on the Internet to see what he could learn. He learned about changes in something called the Bank Privacy Act.

"The more I'm on, the scarier it gets," he said. "It's scary how easily someone in Homeland Security can get permission to spy."

Eventually, his and his wife's money was freed up. The Soehnges were apparently found not to be promoting global terrorism under the guise of paying a credit-card bill. They never did learn how a large credit card payment can pose a security threat.

But the experience has been a reminder that a small piece of privacy has been surrendered. Walter Soehnge, who says he holds solid, middle-of-the-road American beliefs, worries about rights being lost.

"If it can happen to me, it can happen to others," he said.

Harold Pinter: Theater's angry old man

At the Prize of Europe, the playwright is all politics

By Porter Anderson
CNN
Friday, March 17, 2006 Posted: 1824 GMT (0224 HKT)

[...] Harold Pinter -- one of a handful of English-language writers whose work has powerfully affected two generations of European and North American theater -- was onstage Sunday in the ornate 300-year-old Teatro Carignano to receive the 10th Premio Europa per il Teatro, or Prize of Europe in Theater.

[...] But if anyone thought this London-born son of a dressmaker would rhapsodize on the career that began in 1948 with his arrival at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, they were surprised.

The task of Europe, he told the assembly, "is to resist the power of the United States" -- a political and cultural force so virulent, Pinter said, that it may "destroy" Europe. [...]

And in "Art, Truth & Politics," a lecture Pinter created for his receipt of the Nobel, the man's terms finally were clear and harrowing, both for the United States and for his own British government.

The United States, Pinter wrote in that lecture, is "brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless." It "no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favor. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain."

"How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal?" he asked in his text. "One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice." [...]

Despite such bleak visions, Pinter's determination embraces hope: "There does seem to me to be more public awareness now," he says, "... of what actions our societies and our countries actually take and have taken. And what it means. And what torture actually is."

And in the winter of his illustrious career, the playwright likes to talk of his characters having lives of their own. "They surprise me."

The role he has assigned to himself, the artist-adamant, may at times surprise him, too. But he wryly insists he's earned his stance as the angry old man of modern theater.

"I've written 29 damned plays," he cracks. "Isn't that enough?"

Afghan family disputes Canadian Forces' account of shooting death

Last Updated Thu, 16 Mar 2006 18:46:45 EST
CBC News

Canadian troops in Afghanistan fired no warning shots and gave no medical attention to a man they shot and killed in a taxi this week, the man's family says. [...]

Iraqis say US raid on home killed 11 family members

If there remains any doubt that the US military are nothing but a bunch of cold blooded murderers, let the following story put the matter to rest...

Wed Mar 15, 2006 2:40 PM GMT

By Amer Amery

TIKRIT, Iraq (Reuters) - Eleven members of an Iraqi family were killed in a U.S. raid on Wednesday, police and witnesses said. The U.S. military said two women and a child died during the bid to seize an al Qaeda militant from a house.

Television pictures showed 11 bodies in the Tikrit morgue -- five children, two men and four women. A freelance photographer later saw the bodies being buried in Ishaqi, the town 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad where the raid took place.

The U.S. military said in a statement its troops had attacked a house in Ishaqi early on Wednesday to capture a "foreign fighter facilitator for the al Qaeda in Iraq network".

"Troops were engaged by enemy fire as they approached the building," U.S. spokesman Major Tim Keefe said. "Coalition Forces returned fire utilising both air and ground assets.

"There was one enemy killed. Two women and one child were also killed in the firefight. The building ... (was) destroyed."

Keefe said the al Qaeda suspect had been captured and was being questioned.

RUBBLE

Major Ali Ahmed of the Ishaqi police said U.S. forces had landed on the roof of the house in the early hours and shot the 11 occupants, including the five children.

"After they left the house they blew it up," he said.

Another policeman, Major Farouq Hussein, said all the bodies had gunshot wounds to the head.

Pictures of the house targeted in the raid showed it had been reduced to rubble, while next to it lay the burnt-out wreckage of a truck.

Iraqi police said the U.S. military had asked for a meeting with local tribal leaders.

Photographs of the funeral showed men weeping as five children were wrapped in blankets and then lined up in a row next to freshly dug graves.

Police in Salahaddin province, a heartland of the Sunni Arab insurgency and the home region of Saddam Hussein, have frequently criticised U.S. military tactics in the area.

In January a U.S. air strike on a house in Baiji, further north, killed several members of a family. In December U.S. fighter jets dropped two 500-pound bombs on a village, also in the region, killing 10 people. The U.S. military said the people targeted had been suspected of planting roadside bombs.

(Additional reporting by Ghazwan al-Jibouri in Tikrit and Aseel Kami in Baghdad)

Lawyer: Teacher Disciplined Over Bush Comments Wishes He'd "Picked Different Dictator"

POSTED: 9:55 am EST March 10, 2006

DENVER -- A high school social studies teacher who was disciplined for comparing speeches by President Bush and Adolf Hitler stands by his lecture but wishes "he'd picked a different dictator," his lawyer said.

Teacher Jay Bennish also promised school district administrators that he would make sure future classroom talks immediately offered opposing points of view, his lawyer David Lane told KHOW-AM radio in Denver.

Lane did not return a telephone call from The Associated Press.

Bennish has been on leave from Overland High School in suburban Aurora since March 1 while Cherry Creek School District determines whether his lesson likening Bush's State of the Union address to talks by Hitler violated a district policy requiring teachers to present balancing viewpoints.

After meeting with school administrators Thursday, Lane said the teacher was "not ashamed of what he said. If you want to tape him, tape him. He wished he'd picked a different dictator."

The investigation began after a student recorded part of a Feb. 1 lecture in which Bennish said some of Bush's State of the Union address "sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say."

Bennish has since said he was trying to stimulate his students to think critically and that other parts of the 50-minute lecture balanced his comments about Bush. He has also said he did not necessarily believe that Bush and Hitler had made similar comments but was trying to encourage discussion and thought.

From now on, however, "when he puts out something controversial, he'll put the other side out right then and there," Lane said.

School district spokeswoman Tustin Amole declined to comment on Thursday's meeting and said another could be held Friday. She said the district expected to announce a decision on Bennish on Friday.

The incident prompted a state lawmaker to suggest giving school districts the power to fire instructors who don't present balanced viewpoints on controversial topics.

The Senate took no immediate action on the amendment, which GOP state Sen. Doug Lamborn offered Thursday.

Last year, Lamborn introduced a resolution urging the University of Colorado to fire a professor who had likened some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.