Monday, November 21, 2005

Tom Hayden: The Fundamentalists Who Want Tookie Dead. Nov. 21, 2005 Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger State of California Re Stanley Tookie Williams case Dear Governor, As the execution date is drawing near, once again I suggest that you convene a discussion between the contending parties to help you reach a decision. As your legal affairs secretary has written, âo[ogonek]clemency decisions are never easyâo?, and âo[ogonek]only after serious consideration and careful deliberation of this matter will the Governor make his decision.âo? Participants in a deliberative process must approach the issues in a non-dogmatic way. For example, if one party favors the total abolition of the death penalty, they must be able to defend clemency for Stanley Tookie Williams on additional grounds, i.e., that he has experienced a rehabilitation consistent with your stated philosophy as Governor and with accepted standards described in public policy. I believe that opponents of the Dec. 13th execution have put aside their philosophical feelings about the death penalty and set forth a rational and persuasive case that Stanley Tookie Williams' deserves clemency for his thirteen years as an effective peacemaker. In contrast, the prosecution has never shown a similar responsibility in their approach. The Times' coverage describes their approach as âo[ogonek]unusually fierce.âo? Their statements and briefs make no mention of Stanley Tookie Williams' thirteen years as a rehabilitated prisoner. If anything, they wish to deny of this chapter of the Tookie Williams' story, regarding it as all a fabrication. In their view, he cannot be âo[ogonek]rehabilitatedâo? unless he acknowledges guilt for crimes he denies committing, and if he âo[ogonek]de-briefsâo? [snitches] on other inmates who may be gang members. Even then, in the prosecution view, he should die on Dec. 13th [a better person, apparently, for having confessed his sins]. The prosecution declares in its recent filing that Stanley Tookie Williams has âo[ogonek]left his mark forever on our society by co-founding one of the most vicious, brutal gangs in existence, the Crips.âo? Forever : this is the language of prosecutors who no longer represent âo[ogonek]the Peopleâo? but have turned into fundamentalist mullahs in pursuit of a symbolic victory over an enemy that their thirty-year âo[ogonek]war on gangsâo? has failed to defeat. This fundamentalism disqualifies the prosecution as a party to the âo[ogonek]careful deliberationâo? you have promised in this case. The prosecutors do not believe in weighing the past against the present. The past is everything. The prisoner's sins cannot be forgiven. His apologies cannot be accepted. Even thirteen more years of promoting peaceful alternatives to gang violence would not be enough. Spending the rest of his life as a peacemaker behind bars would not be enough. According to this lethal logic, not even death on Dec. 13th can compensate for damage that has been inflicted âo[ogonek]forever.âo? You should ask the prosecution if I am wrong in calling them fundamentalists in this matter. What âo[ogonek]careful deliberationâo? have they gone through to conclude that the past must control the present and future? How do they weigh the value to âo[ogonek]the Peopleâo? of his death on December 13th versus the value of spending the rest of his life behind bars as an advocate against gangs and violence? You will see that there has been no âo[ogonek]careful deliberationâo? whatsoever, simply an unbalanced, even fanatical, campaign to kill Tookie Williams as a trophy in the war on gangs. The prosecution boasts of the âo[ogonek]overwhelming nature of the evidence against himâo[oe][and] non-existence of any credible defenseâo?, a claim expressed in a private communication to me from the Attorney General's office in 2004: âo[ogonek]Thanks, Tom, and I wish this was a matter on which we agreed. This is a case, however, that we in the Lockyer family have been monitoring for a long while, and we're well aware of the PR blitz that's building on this one. We are convinced the People got the facts and the law right in this case, and that the jury reached a proper verdict on guilt and penalty. The job that's given to the Attorney General's office is to defend the jury verdict and uphold the lawâo[oe]âo? I once wondered aloud if Bill Lockyer would become more âo[ogonek]attorneyâo? or more âo[ogonek]generalâo? once elected as the state's chief law enforcement officer. When I first met him years before, Lockyer encouraged me to join him in the Legislature as âo[ogonek]another leftyâo?. But I watched him evolve to become an agent of the forces he once opposed. The very notion that his role is âo[ogonek]to defend the jury verdictâo? as a matter of principle represents the slide into fundamentalism I have warned against. For example, nine federal judges on the U.S. Ninth Circuit dissented strongly on Feb. 2, 2005 concerning the original jury verdict. The nine did not prevail, but their findings cannot be dismissed as irrelevant when carefully deliberating over clemency. But the Attorney General would have you ignore the words of Judge Rawlinson, writing for her colleagues, judges Pregerson, Reinhardt, Thomas, Wardlaw, Fletcher, Fisher, Paez, and Berzon, that Williams' deserved a new evidentiary hearing into the purging of three African-Americans from his jury panel. This blatant whitening of the jury panel occurred, the nine dissenters agreed, because of the âo[ogonek]inexplicableâo? and âo[ogonek]ineffectiveâo? behavior of Williams' appointed counsel, who should have objected to the all-white jury. The counsel's failure to object constituted âo[ogonek]ineffective assistance of counsel, and we should not hesitate to say so.âo? [Williams v. Woodford, p. 1338] The nine justices concluded that the Williams case âo[ogonek]sends an unmistakable messageâo? that trials may proceed âo[ogonek]in the face of blatant, race-based jury selection practices.âo? [1339]. Admittedly, these nine federal judges failed to persuade fifteen other colleagues. But for purposes of a clemency hearing, their ringing dissent should contribute to reasonable doubt as to whether execution is the recommended consensus of impartial experts on the case. It should be remembered as well that a majority of the Ninth Circuit recommended Stanley Tookie Williams as a worthy candidate for clemency. In response to the all-white jury controversy, Attorney General Lockyer sent out a public relations spokesman, Nathan Barankan, to offer the opinion that the three blacks were purged for âo[ogonek]other reasonsâo?, ignoring the nine-judge opinion that the Attorney General's argument âo[ogonek]cleared the way for attorneys 'who are of a mind to discriminate' by exercising their peremptory challenges to excise prospective African-American jurors from the jury box.âo? [1316] By Barankan's âo[ogonek]reasoningâo?, a violation would require that the prosecutor openly state a racist intention, not give âo[ogonek]other reasonsâo? for expelling blacks from the jury pool. Obviously no prosecutor would act so openly, but the fact of the matter is that this particular prosecutor was twice censured by the California Supreme Court for âo[ogonek]invidious discriminationâo? by expelling black jurors in two other cases! The Ninth Circuit as a whole additionally declared in 2002 that the William's prosecution was based on âo[ogonek]circumstantial evidence and the testimony of witnesses with less-than-clean backgrounds and incentives to lie in order to obtain leniency from the state in either charging or sentencing.âo? [13651] âo[ogonek]Less than cleanâo? is an understatement here, as we shall see. The opinion of these judges should be central to any decision regarding clemency, where moral and factual doubt should come into play. More than one hundred people on Death Row have been exonerated already based on DNA and other evidence. âo[ogonek]Innocent individuals are sentenced to death, and undoubtedly executed, much more often than previously understoodâo?, according to Judge Mark Wolf of the federal district court in Boston. To decide to execute where there is reasonable doubt would leave an unretrievable stain on your legacy and that of the California justice system. In years to come, books and films will uncover the extraordinary and unethical lengths to which prosecutors and police have gone to snare, drug, convict and execute this âo[ogonek]Bengal tigerâo?, as the prosecutor called him during the original trial. The script will be like that of another L.A. Confidential. If it appears that I exaggerate, take the story of simply one key witness against Tookie Williams, Alfred Coward, from the transcripts. Mr. Coward was provided immunity for his claimed role beside Tookie Williams in the 7-11 murder case. The prosecutors failed to disclose at the time that Coward was an illegal alien from Canada who would face deportation because of his [also undisclosed] career of armed robberies. One of his several armed robberies occurred at 104th and Vermont, the location of the motel where the Yang family later would be murdered. Just a coincidence? Coward came off probation on Feb. 5, 1979, three weeks before the 7-11 murder of Albert Owens. In 1984, four years after the 7-11 case, where he admitted an accessory role in exchange for immunity, Coward was convicted of a conspiracy to steal checks; he received five years probation. In 1989, he was twice arrested for narcotics and burglary; the District Attorney declined to file charges against him. In 1990, he was arrested again; charges were declined. Again in 1990, he pled guilty to burglary, but was placed on probation with concurrence of the DA. In other words, the Coward character in this story led a charmed life of crime in the years after his testimony against Tookie Williams. His luck ran out in 1999, when he robbed and killed someone in Canada. He currently is serving a seven-year sentence in Ontario. The lesson of reliance on âo[ogonek]less than cleanâo? informants is that zealous prosecutors may convict their target, in this case Tookie Williams, on testimony from criminal individuals whose credibility they would never trust otherwise, while protecting those same informants while they continue criminal careers that threaten the lives of others. The irony is that the same prosecutors who refuse to believe in rehabilitation ask us to believe that informants are reliable witnesses. Consistent with the use of snitches as witnesses, the prosecution would require that Tookie Williams now snitch on other inmates or persons suspected of gang affiliation. But exorcising of the devil has not been required for rehabilitation since the Inquisition. There are two problems in âo[ogonek]de-briefingâo?: first, any information obtained through coercion or rewards is inherently suspect and, second, the perception that an inmate has âo[ogonek]snitchedâo? has dire consequences for that inmate's safety. Conversely, the fact that Tookie hasn't âo[ogonek]snitchedâo? may be a sign of integrity and honor, not proof that he is possessed by the Devil. It should be enough that he has expressed remorse and apologies for his past involvements without requiring that he become an informant for the state that seeks to execute him. The prosecution asks you to ignore or disallow any evidence that Tookie Williams has participated for thirteen years in efforts to end self-destructive violence, develop protocols for gang truces, taken stands against gangs which could threaten his life, or counseled thousands of kids to avoid gangs, guns and violence. In asking you to ignore this evidence, the prosecutors defy not only your own goal of rehabilitation but state policies and judicial rulings which affirm rehabilitation as a cornerstone of the correctional system. In closing, let me cite a historic example of why it is unreasonable to hold someone responsible âo[ogonek]foreverâo? for the crimes of a street gang they joined in their youth. It is the story of Richard Daley, the former mayor of Chicago, who was a seventeen-year old member of an Irish gang known as the Hamburgs when the 1919 race riots broke out. Thirty-eight persons died in those riots, which set in motion Chicago's first black gangs in self-defense. Daley was president of the Hamburgs for fifteen years, according to professor John Hagedorn, âo[ogonek]and never commented on what he did during the 1919 race riots.âo? Fast forward to the mid-century when Daley was mayor, and was asked about handing out jobs and contracts to what the FBI called âo[ogonek]the hoodlum element.âo? Daley's answer was that âo[ogonek]I've been criticized for doing this, but I'll make no apologies. I'll always stand alongside the man with a criminal record when I think he deserves another chance.âo? Stanley Tookie Williams is asking for clemency, not for a government contract. He deserves your clemency and your instruction that he continue to promote the end of violence until the end of his days. Sincerely, TOM HAYDEN [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 4:33:15 PM    comment []

Published on Monday, November 21, 2005 by the Houston Chronicle (Texas) Innocent Man Executed in Texas by Lise Olsen They were two teenagers who shared a deadly pact of silence: One grew up in prison tortured by a secret that might have stopped his friend's execution, and the other went to his death without revealing what he knew. Ruben Cantu and David Garza's teenage bond was forged in the unforgiving streets on the south side of San Antonio, where the only rule they learned to respect was never to snitch. When they were both arrested in 1985 for a neighborhood murder-robbery, Cantu, 17 at the time of the crime, insisted he was innocent and was condemned to die. Garza, 15, admitted guilt only to robbery [~] but not the murder [~] and got a deal. Now, Garza has broken a 20-year silence with a surprising story that would appear to clear Cantu and implicate another man. Garza says he was with another neighborhood teen on Nov. 8, 1984, when they broke into a home, shot and killed one man, and seriously wounded another. "Ruben Cantu had nothing to do with the murder, attempted murder and robbery of the two men at 605 Briggs Street. I should know," Garza wrote in a sworn statement obtained by the Houston Chronicle. If his words are true, they provide some of the first evidence ever that the state of Texas wrongfully executed a man, who at the time of his crime was a juvenile. Garza, currently serving a prison term at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont for an unrelated burglary, argues that his attempt to clear Cantu's name comes from a conscience long troubled by the betrayal of a best friend. Not once [~] from the murder trial to the day Cantu was executed [~] did Garza ever disclose who was with him inside the house on the night of the killing. Garza said Cantu also knew the truth about who had done the killing because Garza confided in him two weeks after the murder. Still, Cantu was unwilling to betray friends even to save his own life, Garza said. Even if Garza is lying, the Chronicle found other problems with Cantu's conviction, a case that was built almost entirely on the account of a lone eyewitness. That eyewitness, Juan Moreno, was a 19-year-old illegal immigrant when, along with his friend, he was shot at least nine times during the Briggs Street robbery. Moreno survived; his friend did not. Now, Moreno, the accuser and key witness, has joined Garza, the accused accomplice, in telling the Chronicle that Cantu was never at the murder scene. "They put the blame on the wrong person," Moreno said. Cantu "was innocent. I am sure." Both men insist they have no reason to lie. Weaknesses in the system Garza has immunity from further prosecution in the robbery-murder case based on his 1985 plea deal. However, he said he is taking a personal risk because as a member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang, he also has pledged to uphold a code of silence. "I've never snitched on nobody in my life," Garza said. "You've got a 17-year-old who went to his grave for something he didn't do. I don't get anything out of it. I can't get Ruben back. His mom lost a son." The judge in Cantu's 1985 trial, Roy Barrera Jr., said he's shocked that no defense attorney ever re-interviewed Moreno or compelled Garza to testify during the eight years that Cantu's case moved through the appeals process as he sat on death row. In a recent interview with the Chronicle, Barrera said the case underscores weaknesses in the system, especially in the "riskiest cases," which rely heavily on eyewitness identification. "People do lie under oath, and people do get convicted on the basis of lies," Barrera said. "This case, like thousands of other cases in the system across the country, cry for a thorough examination of the process." Still, Barrera said he found it suspicious that Garza would speak out now despite having had "the responsibility and the opportunity and every reason for the number of years that his best friend stayed on death row." "In my opinion, he failed to do it because what he told you is not true," said Barrera, who is now a defense attorney. He did it "because he has nothing better to do and he wants to put everybody on a guilt trip." A month before Cantu's execution, Garza, who was incarcerated, did try to help Cantu, according to a 12-year-old letter obtained by the Chronicle. "This case with Ruben is real messed up," he wrote to Cantu's attorney. "Hope to hear from you real soon ... " A different teen? Cantu's former attorney, Nancy Barohn, said Cantu claimed innocence, but never told her Garza had information that could help him. And Garza's last-minute letter offered no details, she said. Yet Barohn, who represented Cantu for five years without pay, said she always believed the case against him was "dirty." "I found the whole thing to be hideous [~] just vile," she said. "It's one of the worst experiences in my life." Knowing now that there were witnesses who might have helped her attempt to exonerate him only makes it worse, she said. Ruben Cantu's father, Fidencio, who still lives in a tiny, rundown house near the murder scene, said the revelation comes too late to matter, but affirms what he has always believed about his son's death: "I think his friends killed him." Garza said he considered Cantu his best friend. Both struggled in school at South San Antonio High and spent their time on the streets. They bonded in some of the roughest teenage rites: hunting, playing video games, doing drugs, joining a gang and stealing cars. "Me and him would just do everything together. We were like bread and butter," Garza said. But on the day of the murder, Garza said, another neighborhood teen went with him to commit robbery. The other teen was once questioned as a suspect, but he denied any involvement. Interviewed by the Chronicle, that man, now 37, says he does not remember what he was doing the day of the murder, but insists he didn't kill anyone. The Chronicle is not naming him because he has never been charged in connection with the crime. The night of the slaying This is Garza's account. Garza said he first went to Cantu's house at 9:30 that night to see what he was doing, but Cantu's father told him he was gone. Instead, Garza hooked up with another friend of Cantu's, also 17, whom he knew slightly. He said the two talked about robbing two Mexicans who were sleeping that night in a house under construction on Briggs Street. Garza said they believed the men were drug dealers. "The idea was to knock the guys out and take their money," Garza said. The pair brought a .22-caliber rifle and a nightstick. Just before midnight, Garza opened a window in the house and they crawled through. Then both boys snuck into the front room where the two men were asleep on mattresses on the floor. Garza hit one of the men with his nightstick and both woke up. But after they got a wallet from the older one, Pedro Gomez, he began to fight back, reaching for a gun under one of the mattresses. "That's when the shooting started," Garza said. Garza said he watched the older boy shoot Gomez, 25, in the head and keep on firing. Then the shooter turned his rifle on Juan Moreno, fired nine more rounds, then picked up the .38-caliber revolver and fired more shots. "He just went crazy," Garza said. As they fled, Garza said he figured both men had died. But then he said he saw Moreno staggering out of the house behind them, bloody but alive. "This guy didn't want to die. God wasn't ready for him," Garza said. The two ran away, covered in blood, and returned to their separate houses to change. Garza said he threw his clothes in the trash. He said he doesn't know what happened to the rifle, which was never recovered. Picked up for questioning Quickly, police investigators focused on neighborhood teens, but Garza said he was shocked when police targeted Cantu, who had been away the day of the murder. Within weeks, Cantu, Garza and the other teen were all separately picked up for questioning. Cantu and Garza refused to talk. But the other teen told police details about the murder that he claimed to know because Cantu had confessed only to him, according to police reports from 1984 and 1985. He later claimed he spoke only after officers pushed him and threatened to charge him with capital murder, according to a sworn statement and an interview. Despite that damaging statement, none of the three boys was arrested. For nearly three months, the investigation stalled. Then Cantu shot an off-duty police officer at a neighborhood bar on March 1, 1985. Detectives quickly arrested Cantu and reopened the murder investigation. Though the surviving victim, Moreno, had previously refused twice to identify Cantu, police finally obtained an identification and statement from him. Cantu was charged with capital murder. Within days, Moreno identified Garza, too. Right before his arrest, Garza, then 15, was questioned alone without a parent and initially said he "had been there at the scene but stayed outside" and "saw Ruben come running out of the house," a detective wrote. Garza said the account is fabricated: He admits he told police that he waited outside during the robbery, but says he never named Cantu or anyone else. A San Antonio Police Department spokesman refused to allow the detective involved to comment. But when prosecutors brought the case to trial, neither Garza nor the other teen was called to testify against Cantu. The state's capital murder case rested on the word of Moreno, a sympathetic and youthful witness who had barely survived his wounds. 'Running all my life' Cantu, by then 18, was condemned to death; David Garza went to adult prison, initially for six years. The other teen moved out of state. The third boy, who was an elementary school friend of Cantu's, recently moved back to San Antonio. He has always denied he had anything to do with the robbery and murder. His only criminal record appears to be a single misdemeanor domestic assault conviction. But when the Chronicle located him two decades later, he said that he remains afraid to talk about the crime and fears retribution from Cantu's older brothers, both of whom are in prison. "I've been running all my life. ... I can't stay in one place," he said. He has spent his adult life moving from place to place because he said Cantu's older brothers have repeatedly threatened him. Not convinced it was Cantu And though he still insists Cantu confessed to him, he also told the Chronicle that he was never convinced of Cantu's guilt. "I don't think he did do it," he said. A month before Cantu's execution in August 1993, Garza wrote directly to attorney Barohn, a former Missouri public defender who had never handled a capital case before she took on Cantu's appeals. "That witness could not have identify Ruben nor I," Garza wrote. "The cops told him it was us. Ruben was not even around." Barohn remembers that over the years Cantu himself also had repeatedly suggested that she go and visit Garza, whom he called his "alleged fall partner" in one letter. But Barohn said Garza didn't seem willing to tell the truth. His letter implied he was not ready at the time to admit to his own role in the murder, though he had already pleaded guilty to robbery. Barohn had no money to pay an investigator to go see Garza and she was worried about meeting myriad deadlines for appeals and a petition for clemency to go herself. As the date approached, Cantu and Barohn both took hope when Cantu's final appeal stalled for a while at the U.S. Supreme Court. Briefly, Cantu's case had become intertwined with the highly-publicized case of Houston's Gary Graham, also accused of murder at the age of 17. Graham, like Cantu, had also been convicted on eyewitness identification. His appeal, like Cantu's, attacked the reliability of such evidence, especially an identification made after a few seconds of contact during a night-time robbery. The Graham case also attacked the constitutionality of executing a juvenile - an argument that failed at the time. With support from civil rights groups and movie stars, Graham received legal breaks that extended his life until 2000, when he was finally executed. Cantu did not get that kind of time or attention. As the execution date neared, Garza waited for Cantu's lawyer to visit with increasing anxiety. Garza said at that point he had realized that the only way to save Cantu was to tell her everything. But that was something he said he could not trust to a letter. The only person Garza said he had ever previously confided in was Cantu himself. Garza said Cantu knew who really was involved, but was unwilling to betray friends. ``Me and Ruben (Cantu) had this oath that we would not snitch each other out. It was the honor that we had,'' explained Garza. Another friend, Eloy Gonzales described Cantu this way: ``He wouldn't rat on nobody. He wouldn't rat on his worst enemy. You were always told you don't rat on your friends. But for that. He should have ratted on somebody.'' Even on the last day of his life, Cantu held out hope that he would be saved some other way: alibi witnesses would come forward or the courts would accept a legal argument about his youth or about flaws in the eyewitness identification, his mother and his lawyer said. ``He would tell you: `I can't be executed because I'm innocent.' '' Garza said. Before the end came on August 24, 1993, Garza said he sent his friend one final letter - a homemade goodbye card that said: ``I'll see you on the other side. I wish it would have been different.'' Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle 2:56:18 PM    comment []

GM cutbacks portend tougher road ahead. The automaker has announced nine plant closings and layoffs for 30,000 workers. [Christian Science Monitor | Top Stories] 2:54:15 PM    comment []

Cenk Uygur: The Insurgents Will Wait Us Out No Matter What -- They Live There!. Donald Rumsfeld said this weekend that withdrawal plans send a message to the insurgents that if they wait us out, they can prevail. The Bush administration has said repeatedly that even talking about withdrawing will cause the insurgents to wait us out. Isn't it obvious that this rationale is devoid of any and all logic? The insurgents LIVE in Iraq. They're going to "wait us out" no matter what we do! U.S. commanders in the field have repeatedly said that over 90% the insurgents are local Iraqis. If we tell them that we are never going to leave, do you think that will make them fight less against us? And if we were to win the game of waiting them out, where would they go? Back home? They're already home! In their minds --whether you agree with them or not -- they are fighting for their homeland, their culture and their people. Over 80% of the people polled in Iraq say they want the American troops out of their country. Now, do you think those people are going to fight more or fight less if we tell them we will be staying indefinitely? Of course, they will fight harder if they think we are a permanent occupation. If we cannot even begin to discuss when we could withdraw from Iraq -- how can it be argued that we are not a permanent occupation? This whole thing is circular. They are fighting us because they think we are occupying their homeland. We say we will not stop occupying them until they stop fighting our occupation. So we can leave as soon as they stop fighting us to get us to leave. There's another easier way to get them to stop fighting us -- leave. Conservatives assume that means we cut and run and that the insurgents win. But if by winning they mean, the insurgents get to stay in Iraq, of course, they will win. How many times do I have to say this -- they live there! If we were fighting the Iraqis over some neutral territory, like Canada or Poland or Kuwait, then the test of wills would make some degree of sense. Then we could show them that we will not leave Canada before they do. But if we are fighting the Canadians in Canada, how could we ever hope to wait them out? I suppose, instead of leaving, they could bow their heads and accept our permanent occupation -- but is that what America wants to fight for? The insurgents (read Sunnis) eventually have to come to some understanding or deal with the Iraqi government (read Shiites and Kurds). The US forces occupying Iraq does not expedite this deal, it slows it down. The insurgents are not going to stop fighting the Iraqi government if they think it is a tool of the US occupation. Ultimately, we cannot control whether the insurgents strike a deal with the rest of Iraq. What we can control is whether they are fighting us. They will not stop fighting because they cannot leave. They have nowhere else to go. But we can end the fighting by terminating the indefinite occupation of Iraq and coming back to our homes. [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed] 2:10:18 PM    comment []

Rolling Stone: How 'psyops' sold Iraq war. Rolling Stone: How 'psyops' sold Iraq war [The Raw Story | A rational voice - Alternative news] 2:09:37 PM    comment []

'Mom's love,' other factors affect genes. 'Mom's love,' other factors affect genes [The Raw Story | A rational voice - Alternative news] 2:04:08 PM    comment []

Two peas in a pod.. “Vice President Cheney is scheduled to appear at a Dec. 5, Houston fundraiser on DeLay’s behalf,” CNN reports. [Think Progress] 1:36:45 PM    comment []

Bad horoscope prompts PM to ban reporters' questions. Read full story for latest details. [CNN.com] 1:35:59 PM    comment []

The Nation chronicles 'Bush's War on the Press,' while an essay in American Conservative explains why Iraq is not only Bush's but 'The Weekly Standard[base ']s War.' [Cursor.org] 12:14:52 PM    comment []

The Los Angeles Times investigates 'How U.S. Fell Under the Spell' of the Iraqi defector code-named Curveball -- "the chief source of inaccurate prewar U.S. accusations that Baghdad had biological weapons." [Cursor.org] 11:37:03 AM    comment []

In an op-ed, former senator Bob Graham lays out 'What I Knew Before the Invasion,' which led him to "apply caveat emptor" and vote against giving the president authority to go to war against Iraq. [Cursor.org] 11:35:30 AM    comment []

Published on Monday, November 21, 2005 by Reuters U.S. Troops Fired on Baghdad Civilians: Reports by Faris al-Mehdawi BAQUBA, Iraq - Witnesses and the Iraqi police said U.S. troops opened fire on a crowded minibus north of Baghdad on Monday, killing five members of the same family, including two children, and wounding four others. The U.S. military said it was looking into the incident but did not confirm its involvement or provide any other details. One of the survivors told Reuters the family was traveling from Balad, a town about 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, to the nearby city of Baquba for a funeral when they were shot at by a U.S. patrol as it approached them on the road. "As we tried to move over to one side to let them pass, they opened fire," one of the survivors said. None of them would provide their names but said the family was headed by Mohammed Kamel. They said the incident occurred at around 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) just outside Baquba. Major Hussein Ali of the Iraqi police said the minivan the family was traveling in was taken away by U.S. forces shortly afterwards. Police and the surviving family members said five people were killed, including two young children. Reuters television footage showed the dead children in a morgue in Baquba and relatives kissing another dead body on a morgue trolley. "They are all children. They are not terrorists," shouted one relative. "Look at the children," he said as a morgue official carried a small dead child into a refrigeration room. "We felt bullets hitting the car from behind and from in front," said another survivor with blood running from a wound to his head and splattered on his shirt. "Heads were blown off. One child had his hand shot off," he said. Of those wounded, two were women and one was another child, the survivors said. U.S. troops are frequently accused by Iraqis of shooting at civilian vehicles at checkpoints and roadblocks. At the same time, U.S. troops are attacked every day by car bombers in civilian vehicles who race at U.S. patrols or roadblocks. The U.S. military says it does everything it can to ensure it does not fire on civilians, although it has also admitted in the past to accidentally killing civilians at roadblocks. To avoid the possibility of being fired on, most Iraqis pull over to the side of the road when U.S. convoys approach. The convoys generally travel with signs in Arabic telling people to stay back or away and warning them that deadly force will be used if they get too close. © Reuters 2005 10:14:59 AM    comment []

Published on Sunday, November 20, 2005 by The Nation The Champ Meets the Chump by Dave Zirin The presidency of George W. Bush is collapsing under the weight of its own incompetence. The polls speak for themselves--only 35 percent of us approve of his job performance. Fifty-six percent--including one in four Republicans--say the war in Iraq was not worth fighting, and more than half believe Bush intentionally misled the country to bring the United States into war. The response from the White House has been grimly predictable: Admit no mistakes and spin, slash or burn your critics. On Monday Bush seethed, "Only one person manipulated evidence and misled the world--and that person was Saddam Hussein." (Funny, I didn't know we were being "led" by Saddam Hussein.) Bush went on to accuse opponents of rewriting the past. But this Administration, which has redefined the word "Orwellian" for a new generation, respects history about as much as it respects the Geneva Conventions. In fact, they seem to relish assaulting and rewriting history for sheer sport. This was seen quite clearly on November 9, when Bush hung a medal around the slack, immobile neck of former heavyweight boxing champion--and the most famous war resister in US history--Muhammad Ali. Ali was one of a bevy of recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony. Bush, while Karl Rove and Donald Rumsfeld chuckled behind him, said, "Only a few athletes are ever known as the greatest in their sport, or in their time. But when you say, 'The Greatest of All Time' is in the room, everyone knows who you mean. It's quite a claim to make, but as Muhammad Ali once said, 'It's not bragging if you can back it up.' And this man backed it up.... The real mystery, I guess, is how he stayed so pretty. [Laughter.] It probably had to do with his beautiful soul. He was a fierce fighter and he's a man of peace." As I watched a video of the ceremony posted on the White House website, it was heartbreaking to see Bush, a chicken-hearted man of empire, bathe himself in Ali's glow and rhapsodize about "peace." To see the once-indomitable Ali, besieged by Parkinsons and dementia, eyes filmed over, hands shaking, led around by a self-described "war President" felt horrifying. About the only thing Bush and Ali have in common is that they both moved mountains to stay out of Vietnam. The difference, of course, was while Ali sacrificed his title and risked years in federal prison, Bush joined the country club otherwise known as the Texas National Guard, showing up for duty every time he had a dentist appointment. But the Champ still had one last rope-a-dope up his sleeve. As a playful Bush moved in front of Ali, he apparently thought it would be cute to put up his fists in a boxing stance. Ali leaned back and made a circular motion around his temple, as if the President must be crazy to want to tangle with him even now. This moment recalled the Ali who was never so beloved, so cuddly, so harmless. This was a fleeting glimpse of the Ali who once was able to say things that would have made John Ashcroft demand a federally funded exorcism. This was the Ali who said, "I ain't no Christian. I can't be when I see all the colored people fighting for forced integration get blown up. They get hit by the stones and chewed by dogs and then these crackers blow up a Negro church.... People are always telling me what a good example I would be if I just wasn't Muslim. I've heard over and over why couldn't I just be more like Joe Louis and Sugar Ray [Robinson]. Well, they are gone and the black man's condition is just the same, ain't it? We're still catching hell." Back then, Ali could level criticism about an ill-advised, unfair war: "Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I'm not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.... If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people, they wouldn't have to draft me, I'd join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I'll go to jail, so what? We've been in jail for 400 years." If Ali had said things like that today about our current war, it would have earned him not not a medal but a one-way trip to Gitmo. As the great poet Sonia Sanchez remembered Ali's golden era, "It's hard now to relay the emotion of that time. This was still a time when hardly any well-known people were resisting the draft. It was a war that was disproportionately killing young black brothers, and here was this beautiful, funny poetical young man standing up and saying no! Imagine it for a moment! The heavyweight champion, a magical man, taking his fight out of the ring and into the arena of politics and standing firm. The message was sent!" Perhaps a far more fitting and true tribute to Ali was on display at an antiwar demonstration last month, where an older woman of African descent held up a sign that read simply, "No Iraqi ever left me to die on a roof." This was a direct reference to a quote attributed to Ali that "no Vietnamese ever called me 'nigger.' " Both statements in a few short words encompass both the anger and internationalism so needed today. These are statements not of pacifism but of the struggle to end war. This is the Ali that they can never bury--not even under the pall of devastating illness and a mountain of cheap medals. Dave Zirin is the author of What's My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States (Haymarket). Copyright © 2005 The Nation 10:12:51 AM    comment []

White House Flip-Flops on Murtha. First, Murtha was taking a “baffling” position only accepted by “the extreme liberal wing.” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, 11/18/05: [I]t is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. The eve of an historic democratic election in Iraq is not the time to surrender to the terrorists. After seeing his statement, we remain baffled — nowhere does he explain how retreating from Iraq makes America safer. Now, he’s taking a “clear stand” in a “legitimate discussion.” Vice President Cheney, 11/21/05: Recently my friend Jack Murtha called for a complete withdraw of our troops in Iraq. I disagree with Jack and believe his proposal would not serve the best interest of this nation. He’s a good man, a marine, a patriot and he’s taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion. [Think Progress] 9:56:30 AM    comment []

Cheney: If U.S. Troops Come Home, Osama Bin Laden Will Rule Iraq. Vice President Cheney, a few minutes ago at the American Enterprise Institute made a striking claim: Those who advocate a sudden withdraw from Iraq should answer a couple simple questions. Would the United States and other free nations be better off or worse off with Zarqawi, Bin Laden and Zawahiri in control Iraq? Would we be safer or less safe with Iraq ruled by men intent upon the destruction of our country. Cheney didn’t provide any evidence supporting his claim. The suggestion is that if the U.S. leaves, Iraqi forces would be completely incapable. Yesterday on ABC, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said people who doubted the capabilities of Iraqi security forces were “flat wrong”: People who denigrate their competence and capability are flat wrong. They’re making a mistake. They either don’t understand the situation or they’re trying to confuse it, but the Iraqi security forces are well respected by the Iraqi people. They’re doing a very good job. So Cheney either doesn’t understand the situation or is trying to confuse it. Take your pick. [Think Progress] 9:55:45 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Patricia Thurston.