In [the Bush administration's] view, invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neoconservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would "deal with" Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neoconservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future."

There is a startling amount of deception in all this--of hawks deceiving the American people, and perhaps in some cases even themselves. While it's conceivable that bold American action could democratize the Middle East, so broad and radical an initiative could also bring chaos and bloodshed on a massive scale. That all too real possibility leads most establishment foreign policy hands, including many in the State Department, to view the Bush plan with alarm. Indeed, the hawks' record so far does not inspire confidence. Prior to the invasion, for instance, they predicted that if the United States simply announced its intention to act against Saddam regardless of how the United Nations voted, most of our allies, eager to be on our good side, would support us. Almost none did. Yet despite such grave miscalculations, the hawks push on with their sweeping new agenda.

Remember the Kosovo conflict? Between March 24, 1999 and June 10, 1999, the U.S. and NATO battled to protect ethnic Albanians in Kosovo from Serbian aggression otherwise known as ethnic cleansing. During that war, Republican officials and former officials and then Republican candidate for president George W. Bush lead a critical assault on President Clinton including challenging his request for supplemental funding for the war. Now, Republicans are shrilly decrying anyone who questions George W. Bush's war in Iraq as unpatriotic. These republicans are the embodiment of hypocrisy.

The following link is to a 7 page pdf of quotes from numerous republicans openly criticizing and in some cases actively undermining a wartime president.

Republicans Criticized Clinton During Kosovo Conflict

Some highlights:

• Then-GOP Presidential candidate Governor George W. Bush: According to the Houston Chronicle: "Bush, in Austin, criticized President Clinton's administration for not doing enough to enunciate a goal for the Kosovo military action and indicated the bombing campaign might not be a tough enough response. 'Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is,' Bush said." [Houston Chronicle, 4/9/99]
• Then-House Majority Whip Tom Delay (R-TX): The deployment of U.S. military forces in Kosovo is "just another bad idea in a foreign policy without a focus." [Editorial, Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota), 3/17/99]
• Then-Senate Assistant Majority Leader Don Nickles (R-OK): "The Administration, and NATO as a whole, greatly miscalculated the response Slobodan Milosevic would have to a bombing campaign. As I predicted, the Administration has escalated what was guerilla warfare into a much more serious conflict. The bombings have unleashed an evil reign and resulted in a humanitarian disaster." [Senator Don Nickles, Press Release, 4/21/99]
• Representative Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-CA): "This is the most inept foreign policy in the history of the United States." [Washington Times, 4/29/99]
• May 4, 1999 -- The Scotsman reported, "The Senate majority leader, Trent Lott, said at the weekend: 'I think that, as Jesse Jackson would say, give peace a chance here. There seems to be some momentum. There seems to be an opportunity - we should seize this moment. As a matter of fact, you know, I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning. I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.' " [Scotsman, 5/4/99, emphasis added]
• May 19, 1999 -- GOP members of the House Armed Services Committee voted to prevent the use of any of the funds in the fiscal year 2000 defense authorization to fund NATO's efforts -- combat or peacekeeping -- in Yugoslavia. Democratic Rep. Gene Taylor (TX) offered an amendment to remove the Yugoslavia funding restriction, but Republican committee members defeated the measure 27 to 31. [CQ House Committee Coverage, 5/20/99]
• May 20, 1999 -- While speaking on the floor of the Senate Banking Committee about funding air assaults in the Balkans, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) said, "I don't see how we are going to save Social Security if we keep spending the surplus." [Washington Times, 5/21/99]

American audiences are seeing and reading about a different war than the rest of the world. The news coverage in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, reflects and defines the widening perception gap about the motives for this war. Surveys show that an increasing number of Americans believe this is a just war, while most of the world's Arabs and Muslims see it as a war of aggression. Media coverage does not necessarily create these leanings, say analysts, but it works to cement them.

"The difference in coverage between the US and the rest of the world helped contribute to the situation that we're in now,'' says Kim Spencer, president of WorldLink TV, a US satellite channel devoted to airing foreign news. "Americans have been unable to see how they're perceived."

For example, most Americans, watching CNN, Fox, or the US television networks, are not seeing as much coverage of injured Iraqi citizens, or being given more than a glimpse of the antiwar protests now raging in the Muslim world and beyond.

In the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Asia, by comparison, the rapid progress made by US led troops has been played down. And many aspects of the conflict being highlighted in the US - such as the large number of Iraqi troops surrendering, the cooperation between US-led forces and various Gulf states, commentary on America's superior weapons technology, and the human interest angles on soldier life in the desert - are almost totally absent from coverage outside the US.

"Sure, the news we get in the Arab world is slanted," admits Hussein Amin, chair of the department of journalism and mass communication at Cairo's American University. "In the same way the news received in the US is biased." ...

Some analysts note that European press ownership is less concentrated than its counterparts in the US, and is seen as providing more perspectives than either the Arab or American outlets. In Frankfurt, for example, readers have access to 16 different German language newspapers - many of which present different vantage points, which makes for a more lively and varied debate.

European journalists also seem to ask different, more skeptical, questions of this war, often being the ones at White House and Pentagon press conferences to ask whether the invasion of Iraq has turned up any of the weapons of mass destruction that used to justify the invasion - even as their American counterparts repeatedly focus on such questions as whether Saddam Hussein is alive or dead.

This week we saw how the national amnesia induced by the Bush blizzard of bull is serving another useful purpose for the unelected junta: obscuring its hugger-mugger strangulation of the "Independent Commission" appointed to investigate the September 11 attacks.

...Even after severe public pressure forced Bush to convene an independent panel, he tried to sandbag the proceedings by appointing accused war criminal and self-proclaimed master of the public lie, Henry Kissinger, as chairman. But Hank exited the scene rather than submit to disclosure rules that would have revealed the extent of his role as bagman for the Saudis and other interested parties.

Finally, a less controversial bagman for Saudi interests, Thomas Keane--an oil business partner of Osama bin Laden's financier and brother-in-law, Saudi magnate Khalid bin Mahfouz--was appointed to head the panel. At last it seemed the commission's Establishment worthies could actually get down to work. But one should never underestimate--or even misunderestimate--the ingenuity of professional liars like the Bush boys. For they quietly found another way to nobble the commission: subjecting the panel members--who were picked, remember, because of their reputations for impeachable probity and public service--to months-long security checks before allowing them access to the secret documents at the heart of the probe, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports.

Most commissioners already have security clearance from their previous government service, but the Horde has decided to put many of them--those not directly appointed by Bush, apparently--through the glacially-paced FBI background checks yet again. How long will this take? Coy FBI officials will say only that the usual length for such checks is 10 months. But here's the beauty part: the panel is required to deliver its report to Congress in just 14 months--leaving only enough time for the kind of rush-rush, hush-hush whitewash the Horde has always wanted. [Counterpunch: "Down Memory Lane"]

[O]ver the last six months the U.S. government also has continued to take actions that erode basic human rights protections in the United States, including fundamental guarantees central to our constitutional system. The report outlines the broad scope of these changes in five major areas:

An analysis of challenges to the principle of Open Government covers increasing government secrecy and attempts to limit public debate. This includes withholding from Congress information on the implementation of the USA PATRIOT Act; obstructing investigations by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress; and the secretive process with which new draft anti-terrorism legislation has been prepared by the Department of Justice. The new obstacles to wall off the federal government from public scrutiny and increasingly to shield also private corporations include broad new exemptions from the disclosure requirements of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), and the stripping of protections for government whistleblowers.

The erosion of the Right to Privacy is illustrated by a series of initiatives by which federal powers of surveillance, search and seizure, and intelligence gathering have been vastly extended in ways that may affect everyone in the United States. They include the military's Total Information Awareness Program to create data profiles on citizens by tapping and 'mining' public and private databases; the use of expanded search and seizure powers under the USA PATRIOT Act to seize library, bookstore, and other private records; increased powers to intercept telephone and internet communications; and the lifting of restrictions on the use of special foreign intelligence powers in ordinary criminal prosecutions. Federal proposals also would lift restrictions on monitoring and surveillance of the ordinary citizen by city and state police by terminating at a stroke all court-supervised agreements entered into by police departments that prevent police spying on people under no suspicion of having committed a crime.

In assessing the Treatment of Immigrants, Refugees, and Minorities, this report addresses the way some immigrant communities have continued to bear the brunt of many of the Justice Department's anti-terrorism initiatives. It details the monitoring, registration, detention, and secret deportation of immigrants against whom no charges have been made; restrictions on visitors and immigrants alike from many parts of the world; and a reversal of the United States' traditional welcome to refugees fleeing persecution abroad.

A description of the situation of Security Detainees and the Criminal Justice System covers the increasing reliance on ad hoc measures the United States has created to deal with those suspected of ties to al Qaeda, including: the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, the proposed use of military commissions, and the status of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At issue also is the power of the presidency to identify any American citizen as an agent of an enemy and on that basis to strip that citizen of his or her liberty and other rights under U.S. law. The administration maintains that neither the criminal courts nor the regular military courts have jurisdiction over detainees it designates 'unlawful combatants.' While the criminal courts are trying some terrorism-related cases, administration sources have suggested that they may be 'forced' to transfer these cases to special military commissions outside either the federal courts or the traditional military justice systems.

The final chapter of the report concerns the United States and International Human Rights Protection--the international repercussions of the changes in U.S. policy and practice. The examples presented show that some of the most draconian aspects of what the U.S. government has done in response to September 11 are being mimicked by repressive governments to justify human rights violations against peaceful advocates of democratic values. The desire by the United States to take some of these actions has affected its ability to be critical. In lowering its own human rights standards, the United States has encouraged other governments, though often inadvertently, to lower the standards of human rights around the world.

PATRIOT II is a collection of provisions that touch upon virtually every aspect of law enforcement in the United States and abroad. Among other things, it would:

• Cancel judicial consent decrees that prevent local police departments from spying on civil rights groups and other organizations that might once have been deemed subversive.
• Require anyone suspected of participating in terrorist activities and any noncitizens suspected of supporting "terrorist" groups to submit a DNA sample for inclusion in a "Terrorist Identification Database."
• Allow the attorney general to revoke the U.S. citizenship of anyone who provides assistance to any group the government considers to be a "terrorist" organization. Once the individual's citizenship is revoked, the attorney general would then be free to deport him -- or to hold him indefinitely in government custody.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Justice Department and FBI have dramatically increased the use of two little-known powers that allow authorities to tap telephones, seize bank and telephone records and obtain other information in counterterrorism investigations with no immediate court oversight, according to officials and newly disclosed documents.

The FBI, for example, has issued scores of "national security letters" that require businesses to turn over electronic records about finances, telephone calls, e-mail and other personal information, according to officials and documents. The letters, a type of administrative subpoena, may be issued independently by FBI field offices and are not subject to judicial review unless a case comes to court, officials said.

Attorney General John D. Ashcroft has also personally signed more than 170 "emergency foreign intelligence warrants," three times the number authorized in the preceding 23 years, according to recent congressional testimony.

"We're still making it up as we go along and hope for the best," [Capt. Jim Wherry of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, the army's legal arm], of Rock Island, Ill., said. "We are trying to have as little to do with this country as possible while, in effect, taking it over."

I have been in and out of Iraq more often than the Turkish army these past few days, viewing the war both firsthand and on the surprisingly copious array of television news channels available all over Syria and Jordan. I heard Donald Rumsfeld on the radio discussing "the humanity that goes into" building the kind of weapons of mass destruction that America prefers these days. I saw for myself enough of their effects, the inevitable consequences of their inbuilt humanity, to convince myself that no dialogue is possible with Washington's current leadership.

We no longer speak the same language. To them, terms like "freedom," "humanity," "democracy" and "liberation" signify the opposite of what they mean to me. I resent this theft and abuse of language.

And I am enraged at George W. Bush for forcing me, now the war is under way, to accept implicitly that the coalition must continue with its killing and destroying until the stated goal of "regime change" has been achieved. To stop at anything less now would be crueler to most Iraqis than whatever atrocities this conclusion brings. This is like Sophie's Choice.

Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that "it is against the Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them".

AI's Annual Report 2002 details human rights violations in 2001. It records:

• Confirmed or possible extrajudicial executions in 47 countries in 2001.
• People "disappeared" or remained "disappeared" from previous years in 35 countries.
• People reportedly tortured or ill-treated by security forces, police or other state authorities in 111 countries.
• Confirmed or possible prisoners of conscience in 56 countries.
• People arbitrarily arrested and detained , or in detention without charge or trial in 54 countries.
• During 2001, people were sentenced to death in 50 countries and executions were carried out in at least 27 countries. These figures include only cases known to Amnesty International; the true figures are certainly higher.
• Serious human rights abuses by armed opposition groups committed serious human rights abuses, such as deliberate and arbitrary killings of civilians, torture and hostage-taking, in 42 countries.

You need to keep an eye on the back pages of the newspapers and the brief recaps that follow, "And in other news today..." There is stuff flying under the radar you would not believe.

Harking back to the Revolutionary and Civil wars, the House is talking about a national day of humility, prayer and fasting to seek guidance from God during a time of war and terrorism. A vote on urging President Bush to designate such a day was expected later in the week.

Blix described as problematic his cooperation with the U.S. government, saying "I even had a sense, shortly before the (U.S.) decision to go to war, that they were irritated by our work."

According to the excerpts, Blix said Washington tried to obtain results to its liking, adding "whenever we could not do that, there was criticism."

As we continue the relentless bombing of Baghdad, which the military tells us is the necessary prelude to saving it, it's fair to ask when the rebuilding of essential institutions like the public schools will begin here at home. (Don't hold your breath. The money for that sort of thing has completely evaporated.) ...

Laura Bush has visited the school [a high school within walking distance of the White House], which has won a series of national honors. But academic honors and a visit by the first lady are, frankly, irrelevant in an era in which social concerns — such as support for public schools and health care, and the need to assist the poor, the hungry and the unemployed — have been forced to the perimeter of public consciousness. Those issues, crucial to our conception of ourselves as a just and humane people, have been devalued and shunted aside by an administration that is committed to an ill-advised, budget-busting war and a devastating parade of tax cuts for the very wealthy.