Edward O. Wilson, father of sociobiology, sounds off on life, death, faith, free will, the “self”—and his beloved ants.

PT: You’ve said that ants have given you everything, and it’s to them you always return. What have they taught you?

EO:  One thing is that natural selection is brutal.  It is brutal to see strong, beautiful ant queens and males go forth and realize that they’re all going to be devastated, that one out of 10,000 queens will make it into the ground to start a new colony. Every little advantage that an organism has can make an enormous difference.  The other thing is that natural selection grinds exceedingly small.  Natural selection doesn’t allow for foul-ups in an ant colony any more than in a hunter-gatherer society.  Real biologists who actually do the research will tell you that they almost never find a phenomenon, no matter how odd or irrelevant it looks when they first see it, that doesn’t prove to serve a function.  The outcome itself may be due to small accidents of evolution.  And ants are very good for telling us about chemical communication.  For instance, one ant may use a heptanone and another may use a methylheptanone as an alarm substance.  What’s fascinating is that different species will not intermingle, even though they are so closely related that all that separates them is one isomer of one organic substance.  Their gene pools are isolated.

PT:  Are there ever accidental spinoffs of evolution?  Could there be some traits that really don’t seem to serve an obvious function, but persist anyway?

EO:   There are no accidental spinoffs, and there is very little probability that inferior traits will survive.   If you told an arm-chair theorist about the tiny differences in chemical communication in ants their inclination would be to say, “Well, it’s an accident, a spin-off.  Evolution is full of accidents.”  Not when you get down to the nitty-gritty and you find these tiny differences have a major function in separating species.  This is the way biology has unfolded through natural history.

PT:  But what if one particular variation had such a huge benefit that it generated a huge number of spinoffs and those survived?  Like the human brain.  The benefit you get from a brain like ours is so large that maybe it can pay for all the spinoffs because of the gain.  For instance, is the capacity to make music a spinoff?

EO: Some scientists suggest that music is an accidental spinoff of rhythmicity and speech.  But I feel music has a very important role in ritual activity and that being able to join in musical activity, along with dancing, could have been necessary at a very early stage of human culture.  It probably served then, as it does today, to bind the society together, and especially during rites of passage and reaffirmation of tribal communion.

PT:  But both accounts might be true.  It could have been an accidental spinoff, and then the system found a use for it.

EO: That’s entirely possible.  We don’t know where rhythm comes from but we do know it has great meaning for us.

PT: What was the big evolutionary trigger that produced the human brain?

EO:  That’s the mother of all questions.  The paleoanthropologists put a lot of emphasis on climate change.  I don’t believe that for a minute, because geological history is full of vast climactic changes, and large numbers of animal species that lived through them unchanged.  I think evolution came up with a fairly big animal, primates, with a fairly big brain, and then this animal somehow got on its hind legs.  And once it were erect, it had the freedom of hands.  It could carry things.  It could try out tools.  This was the takeoff point.  Nothing like that had ever happened before.  Climactic change could have speeded the process, but was not critical.

PT: What about dinosaurs?  They had hands.

EO:  We don’t know why they didn’t go the distance.  There was one line of dinosaurs that were big-bodied and big-brained, though not as neurally well-endowed as primates, and they had free hands, but they didn’t take off the way humans did.

PT:  Can you talk about taking big risks in science?  You’ve called it steering through the blue waters, and abandoning sigh of land.

EO:  You either hug the coast or you head for blue water.

PT: Did you start out hugging the coast?

EO: Very much.

PT: When did you shift?

EO:  It started in my twenties.  I wrote a very controversial paper showing that it’s almost impossible to define a geographic race.  If you define a race on skin color, you can do that neatly.  Red people here and white people there.  But if you throw in noses, you’ve got white people with short noses and long noses and then you throw in another trait and pretty soon you’ve got chaos.  I published that when I was 24, and at that pointed I’d genuine controversy and I liked it. Then when I wrote Sociobiology, I knew what it was like to be in blue water during a typhoon!

PT:  Did you develop your biggest ideas gradually, or did they hit all at once?

EO:  Each time, the whole thing came within minutes.  You’ve got the beginnings of a pattern in your mind and at first it doesn’t seem much out of the ordinary, and then you start expanding the implications.  And during the few minutes of expanding you sense that the idea may be important.  Those moments don’t happen very often in a career but they’re climactic and exhilarating.

PT:  In Consilience you said that our essential spiritual dilemma is that we evolved to accept one truth—God—and discovered another—evolution.

EO:  And the struggle for men’s souls in the 21st century will be to choose between the two.  The transcendentalist view was so powerfully advantageous in early paleolithic and agricultural societies.  And if there’s anything disagreeable about secular humanism, it’s that its bloodless.  Secular humanists can sit around and talk about their love of humanity, but it doesn’t stack up against a two-millenium-old funeral high mass.  I used a phrase called the evolutionary epic back in 1978 to try and convey the grandeur of biology, and it’s beginning to catch on.  A colleague of mine speaks of “the sacred depths of nature” to try and evoke that same reverence.

PT:  Scientists are trying to capture the awe that religion has, while theologians have had to move a long way from the communities that they’re supposed to represent to make theology consistent with science.

EO: Theology today is really two separate worlds.  There’s the world of the fundamentalists who have a set of absolute beliefs that do not need to be justified.  They’re armored against any logical argument or evidence, and if logic seems compelling, it’s the voice of the devil.  Then there is the theology of the searchers, the thinkers about the meaning of human existence, and they’re trying to accommodate pretty well-rounded views of how the real world works without surrendering the mystery of the Almighty and the need for communal liturgy.

PT:  You’ve said that the brain is really a kind of ever shifting network, a republic of responses to information.  And yet we walk around with a sense of a core self.  Isn’t that peculiar?

EO:  I’m aware of you, you’re aware of me.  There’s a sense of self.  But there is no transcendental center of the brain somewhere that is in control of the machinery, pulling the levers and possessed of the capacity to float free of our mortal coil when that moment comes.

 PT: But how does the brain even create that sense of self?

EO: You’ll hear the voice of the neurobiologist emerging from me on this.  It’s natural we feel there’s a self because of the body that we’re in. The brain is mapping the world.  Often that map is distorted, but it’s a map with constant immediate sensory input.  The brain is organized heavily around sensations coming from the body, and that is so intense, so much at the center of conscious experience, including all the input coming from our body, and so it’s seen as the principal protagonist.  That’s what the self is.

PT:  One of the most precious beliefs of the “self” is that it has free will.

EO:  A lot of philosophers and thinkers have believed that the human mind was not based in material reality.  They had a vague notion of angelic, transcendent activity that they never could define because, of course, they couldn’t translate it into any materialist terms and make sense.  That’s really the basis of the notion of free will, that there is a whole different faculty, probably true for human beings only, a truly human quality that helps lift us up above the animals, somewhere between here and the angels.

PT:  But when you talk about free will, you describe it only in the sense that the brain is so complex, so constantly bombarded with input, that it’s able to cascade in any direction at any time.  That’s freedom, but not self-determined free will.

EO:  There are really two meanings of free will.  One we all agree on is that you have your own mind, you make your own decisions, your soul is your own.  No matter what is done to you, that’s the one thing that cannot be surrended.  Of course, now we know that with the right pharmaceutical or biochemical manipulation, you can get people to shift moods, attitudes and maybe even beliefs.  So that view isn’t holding up quite so well anymore.  But let’s say that’s what we mean by free will.
 The other kind of free will stops people cold in their attempt at self-understanding.  We don’t know our own minds.  We don’t know all the processes inside and we can’t predict what kind of responses and decisions we’ll make.  And even if we believed we could, there is so much chaos in the mind brought about by tiny perturbations or external events.  Not even with a gigantic computer could we predict what any of us sitting at this table will do precisely one hour from now.

PT:  So we’re free like the weather.

EO: Or like the wind.  We will get up when we are ready to get up.  That will be our free will.  And we will go out that door and events will happen and we will think about them and make decisions that we can’t predict right now.  This thing we’re walking around in is not in complete control.  It could do marvelous things.  It could encounter disasters.

PT: A world where the brain gives rise to the mind is a world where when we die physically, we’re dead forever.  That’s one of the difficult truths of evolutionary biology.

EO:  We’ve all descended from a common ancestor, and our genes are moving on into future generations in very closely the same manner as they would if you as an individual were the particular conduit.  Looked at that way, you get a sense of near immortality from the human species.  Homo sapiens is 500,000 years old, give or take a hundred thousand years.  That’s a long time.  That’s virtual immortality as far as human beings are concerned.  If we last another half-million years, then that’s almost time out of mind, time beyond our personal imagining.  However, that notion of immortality is still part of a secularist world view.  That’s what humanism really is, you know, concentration on the continuity of the human spirit.

Hugo Santander: The Crisis of Atheism

"Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. Yet the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, with his characteristic impartiality, wrote in 1965 that such sacrifice had been already proclaimed eighteen centuries before: Saint Paul had already founded Christianity on the idea that Christ died for our sins."
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nietzsche had, in fact, launched his attacks against the religious institutions of his generation. These institutions, as the state, as the philosophical schools, constrained personal freedom. Notwithstanding, Nietzsche's interest in the gospels drove him to praise the Messiah: in one of his passages he confesses that his ideal man, or superman, was a combination of Jesus Christ and Napoleon Bonaparte. 
Nietzsche believed himself to be an atheist, but his atheism was social. In his personal life he was inspired by the divinity. 
Writing his poems Nietzsche replaces the Christian god for Dionysus, that is to say, for an anthropomorphic god. Nowadays, students of philosophy learn that after Nietzsche God has been replaced by man. But this happy discovery can be found in the New Testament as well. When the Jewish priests question Jesus of taking care of the sick on Sabbath, he replies, quoting the old testament, that all men are as gods. 
From a rational viewpoint, to discuss God's existence becomes a paradox. His negation implies his affirmation. This way of thinking comes out from the dialectic of Hegel, who, as all the philosophers of German Idealism, was likewise inspired by Heraclitus' fragments: life, as a flow, is a struggle of oppositions: mortality contains immortality. In the sphere of the Realpolitik the concept of divinity is ductile - it fits every mind, even against its will. The rise of radical Islam demonstrates the urgency to discover the definition that each society builds about divinity.
After the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, our civilisation has witnessed the fragmentation of religion: the clerical hierarchies lose power as the number of priests and ministers dwindles. Meanwhile atheism cannot find a secure ground. Religion proliferates in the Third World, a fact that seems to corroborate Schopenhauer's saying that the belief in an eternal and happy life is the main consolation of the poor. 
But his observation doesn't apply to the United States, the most prosperous country of the world, where, according to a Newsweek census, 89% of the people believe in a divine entity. England, France and Germany might be pointed out as the more secular countries of Europe: even so, the popularity of the Mother of God still dazzles materialistic intellectuals. France is the most visited country of the world, and its most visited city is not Paris, but Lourdes, where doctors have certified about one hundred inexplicable cures during the last one hundred thirty years. 
In order to preserve an objective outlook, the media avoids religious debate. This is replaced by superstition, a sort of improvised social creed. We are reminded that Friday the thirteenth is an unlucky day, that wise buildings eliminate the thirteenth floor, or that American presidents are cursed to be murdered every twenty years. In the same vein, some journalists idolise nature, attributing an omnipresent wisdom to it but, contrary to Spinoza and all the pantheist philosophers, they shun reflecting about the purpose of a wise, generous and self-sufficient nature.
The popularity of alternative spiritual fashions, such as Buddhism, the Cabala and the Hara-Krishna reveals a metaphysical crisis. There is a will to believe, flourishing together with a deep distrust against religious institutions. There was a time when inquisitors condemned anyone who disagreed with an institutionalised dogma. It was followed by a time when absolute and nationalistic regimes prosecuted those who professed any dogma. In both cases political authority attempted to manipulate man's metaphysical drive. Spiritual manifestations are common to all the cultures of the world, and are often disguised by an atheist or anti-religious facade. 
Atheism is founded in the denial of a creed and the search for a more consistent one as a praxis that prevents men against metaphysical stillness. Theism is its dialectical response. This process occurs at a personal, rather than at a social level. Through it the individual establishes his relationship with his generation and the universe. The divinity, in other words, is constructed in an ethical ground on the basis of a spiritual crisis. 
Miguel de Unamuno writes in The Tragic Sense of Life that to live without a proof of God's existence might be tragic, but endurable and even healthy. Albert Camus replies in 'The Myth of Sisyphus' that a life without God is not tragic, but repetitive. The European post-war man embraced existentialist philosophy with enthusiasm. Without a proof of immortality man could choose between a struggle against anguish or an active life of sexual excess, an option that Freud had already anticipated in Civilization and Its Discontents. Camus, as Kierkegaard, faced a path of existential despair. Jean Paul Sartre tipped towards sensuality. His fundamental work, Being and Nothingness, analyses though several chapters the virtues of sadomasochism. Camus and Sartre took distance from each other, particularly after the former advocated the Human Rights chart during the Algerian war. Sartre suspected, no without reason, that such chart articulated the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. 
The intellectuals of the French Revolution were all consummated disciples of Rousseau, who wrote The Social Contract and Emile in agreement with the ideology of the gospels. As a result of a mystical and anticlerical rapture, Robespierre, the true maker of the French Revolution, founded a secular Church months before his death. 
Sartre had discovered, as many other intellectuals of his generation, his creed in communism, until the horrors of Stalinism disappointed him. In one of his most famous conferences Sartre calls himself the father of atheist existentialism in France. The prophetic tone of his proclamation is one of the characteristic traits of philosophy ever since Parmenides: who accuses or defines God's wants, in fact, becoming God. Less messianic in his judgement, Immanuel Kant wrote that God was the Idea of the supreme good. His definition has been approved by theologians and sceptics alike. For a metaphysician such as Samuel Coleridge, God is an a-priori of our mind, whereas for 'archaeologists', such as Richard Leakey, God is a deformity of the mind.
Anthropological philosophy prescribes that each man lives in function of a horizon. Such horizon is, needless to point out, a euphemism of God. Who affirms that the modern god is science, accepts the existence of God. What he/ she discusses is God's definition. For the communists God was the proletarian; for the ecologists, Nature; for the Pharisees and the fanatics it was the pomp of the Church; for the capitalists it is money; for the Nazis, Husserl and Heidegger, the State; and for the anchorites, it is suffering. More precise, the book of Exodus identifies these horizons with idols that push men away from the Jewish God of the Ten Commandments. 
Darwin wrote that only the vigorous survive. His opinion reinforced the positivist thesis of Auguste Compte, the slow agony of six million of human beings under the rule of Nazi Germany and the cold destruction of two Japanese cities in 1945. The great merit of Jürgen Habermas' work has been the insertion of compassion within philosophy through communicative action. Habermas refutes pseudo-intellectuals who long for the breeding of a super-genetic man. Christian theology, on the other hand, struggles against the selfish purposes of modernism. 
The secular posture of the Western governments agrees with Christianity in terms of ideology. In 1929 Bertrand Russell, the philosophical consciousness of England, conceded importance to those men whose behaviour was inspired by the spirit. There are those who believe that:
... acts inspired by certain emotions are good, and those inspired by certain other emotions are bad. Mystics hold this view, and have accordingly a certain contempt for the letter of the law.
 The sufferings of Auschwitz and Jerusalem have proved to humankind that impiety is the path to self-destruction.
Buddha believed that happiness was possible by disengaging from goods and affections. His creed was based on resignation, and it might explain why the Eastern countries still approve the death penalty. The principal merit of Christianity has been to place ethics over religious rituals. Morality changes from one society to another according to political and economic factors, but the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth about unconditional love and forgiveness prevail over these changes. 
Before Gandhi demonstrated the power of non-violent revolution, Christianity's philosophy of forgiveness conquered the Roman Empire. Persecuted by the Caesars, the Christians declined vengeance and retaliation against their oppressors. Accused by Nero of destroying Rome by fire, their blood was spilt over the sand of the coliseum, for the entertainment and enjoyment of the mass. Contrary to Nero's wishes, the sacrificed victims displayed love and compassion towards their murderers. 
After two generations, their attitude turned a violent crowd into a pious Church. Forgiveness was also the ideology that appeased the cruelty of the barbarian hoards that scourged Italy during the coming centuries. Towards the end of the sixth century Pope Gregory asked his congregation to depose their arms and to sing in their churches and cathedrals. The melodies of the Gregorian chant preserved the unity of a civilisation on the brisk of destruction. 
Primitive warlike cultures praised vengeance and despised forgiveness. The true injustice is punishment, as the lethal injection or the bombing of the Gaza strip has shown. During his lifetime Jesus of Nazareth nursed the unbeloved, without discriminating amongst them for their faith, past, or ethnic background. This attitude has not only inspired philanthropist such as Albert Schweitzer and Mother Theresa,  it has become the backbone of Western sensitivity. 
We may ask ourselves what could be the Western sympathies if a Palestinian state acquires F-16s to bomb the Jewish population? Forgiveness defeats, as Desmond Tutu also proved to our generation in South Africa. This forgiveness must be first ideological and social. The supporters of Mr. Sharon enumerate the monstrosities perpetrated by the Palestinians in order to justify their vengeance. A radical Palestinian man will act alike, as a terrorist from Congo, from North Ireland or Colombia. The thirst for revenge prepares their self-destruction - blinded by hate, the avenger believes that his attack might harm his enemies, without wondering about his self-inflicted harm. His arrogance is emulated by the humbleness of the martyr, who dies forgiving. 
Paradoxically, Nietzsche saw in this passivity a force capable of defeating empires. Through several passages of his work, he denounces with anger the strategy of the martyrs, whom he called weak and cunning. Yet, beyond good and evil, human nature becomes closer to the martyr than to the warrior. Only a covetous mind admires the intrigues of Achilles and Napoleon. 
Struggle, rather than forgiveness, is the cause of the decline and fall of civilisations. Towards the beginning of the thirteenth century, when Genghis Khan intended to exterminate the Chinese, a Mandarin persuaded him that his people would submit to his service without hate. Genghis' decree was derogated. We may interpret the fall of the Soviet Union as an act of forgiveness. Gorbachev could start a war in order to hide his finances - instead, he opted for reconciliation. 
Our societies have accepted the Human Rights charter, but the greed of the very few procrastinates its full articulation. Today, as ever, the welfare of the minorities and the dominant are discussed in peace processes in Colombia, the Middle East, Angola, North Ireland and Chiapas. 
Yet the conditions for a successful dialogue are just two: forgiveness and love."

John Kaminski: Fortune & Men's Eyes: Does the objective truth really exist or is human civilization a colossal collection of lies?

". . .Is it possible to achieve honesty in this world of ours, this material cornucopia where deep in the reflexive crannies of people's behavioral habits, goodness is measured by beauty and worth by wealth? Where the truly decent people go wanting and see their lives destroyed because they are unwilling to consign their souls to moneymaking schemes that cheat others?. . .
The billions of people killed over the millenia since Oannes first crawled out of the sea and started organized civilization somewhere in what is now Iraq (according to the historian Berossus) has all been about money, as our decision now to endorse the same slimy show in the same strife-torn place is most certainly about cold hard cash.
Money, that root of all evil, both keeps us alive and keeps us from being human. Unless being human means a lot less than I thought it always did.
One thing is certain: honesty is an impediment to making money. Just ask a banker, who fiddles with his derivatives income statement as he smiles at you and says everything is just dandy, as long as you have collateral. Just ask any of the principal honest news gatherers and principled journalists on the web, who try to tell the truth without ulterior motive. None of them has any money. That's probably the biggest reason the real story about 9/11 isn't more widely known. The people with money don't want it known, for one reason or another. And the people who do want it known don't have the money to adequately publicize it, especially since so many of those in the media with money are dependent on cashflow from those who have some reason not to want the story to come out. It is the story of human history, I think.
When that choice inevitably confronts us, we choose survival and luxury over sharing and compassion. Who can blame us? There is always the handy excuse that it's simply too difficult to attempt to do both. Let those starving fellows go. There are simply too many people on the planet.
That's the real history. What gets regurgitated to us through our history books is really quite different.
I've been struck dumb recently reading a book about the history of our so-called Founding Fathers and their creation of our so-called Constitution. They sound like a bunch of savage neocons. Democracy was the farthest thing from their mind. Property ownership was everything. For purposes of tallying population to proportionalize states' shares of federal largesse, they counted black people as three-fifths of a person.
And if you think the 2000 election in Florida exuded the stench of a back-country latrine, you should check out how they ramrodded a Constitution past a mostly illiterate electorate in 1776. Just like the way they do politics today: by bribing the wavering opposition, fast-talking the rest, and rigging the vote. And of course promising those who oppose the idea that they will have an opportunity to make changes "down the road." Ah, the ubiquitous promise of tomorrow.
That's where the Bill of Rights came from, you know. As a reluctant afterthought to the original Constitution, a concession to those with consciences after the baronial landowners had set the whole deal up to assure the dominance of merchants and landowners over the common folk. And it has been the same kind of rigged deal ever since, as you can clearly see by the nature of public participation today. It takes more than a few million just to get into the game, just like it was way back when.
That's why I get a little sad, a little nervous, when Patriot types rise up and say, "We have to return to our Constitutional principles." Because it wasn't so good a deal to begin with. The seeds of empire were sown, and the rest is bloody history.
And honesty? Allegiance to a noble ideal? They teach us in school to put our hands on our hearts and promise to kill anybody who gets in the way of the big red, white, and blue machine. We never really know what they're talking about, but we think it's good and do what they say. Only later, very much later, do we understand the devil's bargain we have made. We will kill whomever we choose to get whatever we want. And from this feral promise, the faithful grow teary-eyed over American patriotism.
This is about the distance toward enlightenment that any civilization has ever traveled. And today we sit squarely in this location, watching the blood-drenched boys brought home in secrecy, and the flag-waving mothers with brave but glazed eyes waxing eloquently hollow about patriotism and the sainted Founding Fathers.
But when the tears are dried, and the expendable chess pieces laid to rest, the eternal question remains: shall we be honest, or shall we eat well? . . ."

Foreign Policy in Focus: Stephen Zunes: The Influence of the Christian Right on U.S. Middle East Policy

"In recent years a politicized and right-wing Protestant fundamentalist movement has emerged as a major factor in U.S. support for the policies of the rightist Likud government in Israel. To understand this influence, it is important to recognize that the rise of the religious right as a political force in the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon that emerged as part of a calculated strategy by leading right-wingers in the Republican Party who—while not fundamentalist Christians themselves—recognized the need to enlist the support of this key segment of the American population in order to achieve political power.
Traditionally, American fundamentalist Protestants were not particularly active in national politics, long seen as worldly and corrupt. This changed in the late 1970s as part of a calculated effort by conservative Republican operatives who recognized that as long as the Republican Party was primarily identified with militaristic foreign policies and economic proposals that favored the wealthy, it would remain a minority party. Over the previous five decades, Republicans had won only four out of 12 presidential elections and had controlled Congress for only two of its 24 sessions.
By mobilizing rightist religious leaders and adopting conservative positions on highly-charged social issues such as women’s rights, abortion, sex education, and homosexuality, Republican strategists were able to bring millions of fundamentalist Christians—who as a result of their lower-than-average income were not otherwise inclined to vote Republican—into their party. Through such organizations as the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, the GOP promoted a right-wing political agenda through radio and television broadcasts as well as from the pulpit. Since capturing this pivotal constituency, Republicans have won four out of six presidential races, have dominated the Senate for seven out of 12 sessions, and have controlled the House of Representatives for the past decade.
As a result of being politically wooed, those who identify with the religious right are now more likely than the average American to vote and to be politically active. The Christian Right constitutes nearly one out of seven American voters and determines the agenda of the Republican Party in about half of the states, particularly in the South and Midwest. A top Republican staffer noted: “Christian conservatives have proved to be the political base for most Republicans. Many of these guys, especially the leadership, are real believers in this stuff, and so are their constituents.”

The Movement Takes Office

The Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State recently quipped: “The good news is that the Christian Coalition is fundamentally collapsing. The bad news is that the people who ran it are all in the government.” He noted, for example, that when he goes to the Justice Department, he keeps seeing lawyers formerly employed by prominent right-wing fundamentalist preacher Pat Robertson.
As the Washington Post observed, “For the first time since religious conservatives became a modern political movement, the president of the United States has become the movement’s de facto leader.” Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed marked the triumph by chortling, “You’re no longer throwing rocks at the building; you’re in the building.” He added that God “knew George Bush had the ability to lead in this compelling way.”
American liberals have long supported Israel as a refuge for persecuted Jews and have championed the country’s democratic institutions (for its Jewish citizens). Historically these liberals, bolstered by the disproportionate political influence of Zionist Jews within the party, prompted Democrats to adopt a hard line toward Palestinians and other Arabs. Though more hawkish on most foreign policy issues, Republicans traditionally took a somewhat more moderate stance partly due to the party’s ties to the oil industry and in part because of GOP concern that too much support for Israel could lead Arab nationalists toward a pro-Soviet or—in more recent years—a pro-Islamist orientation. But this alignment has shifted, thanks to the influence of the Christian Right. Though Christian fundamentalist support for Israel dates back many years, only recently has it become one of the movement’s major issues.
As a result of renewed fundamentalist interest in Israel and in recognition of the movement’s political influence, American Jews are less reluctant to team up with the Christian Right. Fundamentalist leader Gary Bauer, for example, now receives frequent invitations to address mainstream Jewish organizations, which would have been hesitant toward the movement prior to the Bush presidency. This is partly a phenomenon of demographics: Jews constitute only 3 percent of the U.S. population, and barely half of them support the current Israeli government.
The Israelis also recognize the Christian Right’s political clout. Since 2001, Bauer has met with several Israeli Cabinet members and with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Former Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu noted, “We have no greater friends and allies” than right-wing American Christians.
It used to be that Republican administrations had the ability to withstand pressure from Zionist lobbying groups when it was deemed important for American interests. For example, the Eisenhower administration pressured Israel during the Suez Crisis of 1956, the Reagan administration sold AWACS-equipped planes to Saudi Arabia in 1981, and the first Bush administration delayed a $10 billion loan guarantee for Israel to await the outcome of the pivotal 1992 Israeli election.
With the growing influence of the Christian Right, however, such detachment is no longer as easily achieved. For the first time, the Republican Party has a significant pro-Israel constituency of its own that it cannot ignore. Top White House officials, including Elliott Abrams, director of the National Security Council on Near East and North African Affairs, have regular and often lengthy meetings with representatives of the Christian Right. As one leading Republican put it: “They are very vocal and have shifted the center of gravity toward Israel and against concessions. It colors the environment in which decisions are being made.” Indeed, the degree of the Bush administration’s support for Prime Minister Sharon has surprised even the most hard-line Zionist Jews.

Rising Power of Christian Zionists

It appears, then, that right-wing Christian Zionists are, at this point, more significant in the formulation of U.S. policy toward Israel than are Jewish Zionists, as illustrated by three recent incidents.

* After the Bush administration’s initial condemnation of the attempted assassination of militant Palestinian Islamist Abdel Aziz Rantisi in June 2003, the Christian Right mobilized its constituents to send thousands of e-mails to the White House protesting the criticism. A key element in these e-mails was the threat that if such pressure continued to be placed upon Israel, the Christian Right would stay home on Election Day. Within 24 hours, there was a notable change in tone by the president. Indeed, when Rantisi fell victim to a successful Israeli assassination in April 2004, the administration—as it did with the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin the previous month—largely defended the Israeli action.

* When the Bush administration insisted that Israel stop its April 2002 military offensive in the West Bank, the White House received over 100,000 e-mails from Christian conservatives in protest of its criticism. Almost immediately, President Bush came to Israel’s defense. Over the objections of the State Department, the Republican-led Congress adopted resolutions supporting Israel’s actions and blaming the violence exclusively on the Palestinians.

* When President Bush announced his support for the Road Map for Middle East peace, the White House received more than 50,000 postcards over the next two weeks from Christian conservatives opposing any plan that called for the establishment of a Palestinian state. The administration quickly backpedaled, and the once-highly touted Road Map essentially died.

Theological Influences: Good Versus Evil

Messianic theology is centered around the belief in a hegemonic Israel as a necessary precursor to the second coming of Christ. Although this doctrine is certainly an important part of the Christian Right’s support of a militaristic and expansionist Jewish state, fundamentalist Christian Zionism in America ascribes to an even more dangerous dogma: that of Manichaeism, the belief that reality is divided into absolute good and absolute evil.
The day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush declared, “This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil, but good will prevail.” America was targeted—according to President Bush—not on account of U.S. support for Arab dictatorships, the large U.S. military presence in the Middle East, U.S. backing of the Israeli occupation, or the humanitarian consequences of U.S. policy toward Iraq but simply because they “hate our freedom.” Despite the Gospels’ insistence that the line separating good and evil does not run between nations but rather within each person, President Bush cited Christological texts to support his war aims in the Middle East, declaring, “And the light [America] has shown in the darkness [the enemies of America], and the darkness will not overcome it [American shall conquer its enemies].”
Even more disturbingly, Bush has stated repeatedly that he was “called” by God to run for president. Veteran journalist Bob Woodward noted, “The President was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God’s Master Plan,” wherein he promised, in his own words, “to export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of this great country and rid the world of evil.” In short, President Bush believes that he has accepted the responsibility of leading the free world as part of God’s plan. He even told then-Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas that “God told me to strike al-Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did.” Iraq has become the new Babylon, and the “war on terrorism” has succeeded the Cold War with the Soviet Union as the quintessential battle between good and evil.

Cultural Affinities

The esprit that many Americans have with Israel is rooted in a common historical mission. Each country was settled in part by victims fleeing religious persecution who fashioned a new nation rooted in high ideals with a political system based upon relatively progressive and democratic institutions. And both peoples established their new nations through the oppression, massacre, and dislocation of indigenous populations. Like many Israelis, Americans often confuse genuine religious faith with nationalist ideology.
John Winthrop, the influential 17th century Puritan theologian, saw America as the “City on the Hill” (Zion) and “a light upon nations.” In effect, there is a kind of American Zionism assuming a divinely inspired singularity that excuses what would otherwise be considered unacceptable behavior. Just as Winthrop defended the slaughter of the indigenous Pequot peoples of colonial Massachusetts as part of a divine plan, 19th century theologians defended America’s westward expansion as “manifest destiny” and the will of God. Such theologically rooted aggrandizement did not stop at the Pacific Ocean: the invasion of the Philippines in the 1890s was justified by President William McKinley and others as part of an effort to “uplift” and “Christianize” the natives, ignoring the fact that the Filipinos (who by that time had nearly rid the country of Spanish colonialists and had established the first democratic constitution in Asia) were already over 90 percent Christian.
Similarly, today—in the eyes of the Christian Right—the Bush Doctrine and the expansion of American military and economic power is all part of a divine plan. For example, in their 2003 Christmas card, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne included the quote, “And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”
But is such thinking normative in the United States? Polls show that the ideological gap between Christian conservatives and other Americans regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the “war on terrorism” is even higher than the ideological gap between Christian conservatives and other Americans regarding Israel and Palestine.
In many respects, much of the American right may be at least as concerned about how Israel can help the United States as about how the United States can help Israel. Due to the anti-Semitism inherent in much of Christian Zionist theology, it has long been recognized that U.S. fundamentalist support for Israel does not stem from a concern for the Jewish people per se but rather from a desire to leverage Jewish jingoism to hasten the Second Coming of Christ. Such opportunism is also true of those who—for theological or other reasons—seek to advance the American Empire in the Middle East. And though a strong case can be made that U.S. support for the Israeli occupation ultimately hurts U.S. interests, there remains a widely held perception that Israel is an important asset to American strategic objectives in the Middle East and beyond.

Strategic Calculation Trumps Ethno-Religious Card

Ultimately, Washington’s championing of Israel—like its approval of other repressive governments—is part of a strategic calculation rather than simply ethnic politics. When a choice must be made, geopolitical considerations outweigh ethnic loyalties. For example, for nearly a quarter of century, the United States supported the brutal occupation of East Timor by Indonesia and to this day supports the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, despite the absence of powerful Indonesian-American or Moroccan-American ethnic lobbying forces. The United States was able to get away with its support for occupations by Indonesia and Morocco due to their relative obscurity. This is certainly not the case with Israel and Palestine. (Interestingly, even though the East Timor situation involved a predominantly Muslim country conquering, occupying, and terrorizing a predominantly Christian country, virtually no protests arose from the Islamaphobic Christian Right.)
The Christian Right has long been a favorite target for the Democratic Party, particularly its liberal wing, since most Americans are profoundly disturbed by fundamentalists of any kind influencing policies of a government with a centuries-old tradition of separating church and state. Yet the positions of most liberal Democrats in Congress regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are far closer to those of the reactionary Christian Coalition than to those of the moderate National Council of Churches, far closer to the rightist Rev. Pat Robertson than to the leftist Rev. William Sloan Coffin, far closer to the ultraconservative Moral Majority than to the liberal Churches for Middle East Peace, and far closer to the fundamentalist Southern Baptist Convention than to any of the mainline Protestant churches. Rather than accusing these erstwhile liberals of being captives of the Jewish lobby—a charge that inevitably leads to the countercharge of anti-Semitism—those who support justice for the Palestinians should instead reproach congressional Democrats for falling captive to the Christian Right. Such a rebuke would be no less accurate and would likely enhance the ability of those who support peace, justice, and the rule of law to highlight the profound immorality of congressional sanction for the Israeli occupation.
Those who support justice for the Palestinians—or even simply the enforcement of basic international humanitarian law—must go beyond raising awareness of the issue to directly confronting those whose acquiescence facilitates current repressive attitudes. It will not be possible to counter the influence of the Christian Right in shaping American policies in the Middle East as long as otherwise-socially conscious Christian legislators and other progressive-minded elected officials are beholden to fundamentalist voting pressures. It is unlikely that these Democrats and moderate Republicans will change, however, until liberal-to-mainline churches mobilize their resources toward demanding justice as strongly as right-wing fundamentalists have mobilized their resources in support of repression."

Chris Floyd: Global Eye

". . .Last week saw a flurry of stories (largely ignored, naturally) indicating that the pervasive corruption of America's colonial enterprise has risen to new heights. Reports by scrupulously nonpartisan institutions, including Christian Aid and the General Accounting Office, the independent investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, revealed that in the final weeks of its "formal" occupation of Iraq -- before handing over nominal control of the client state to CIA-backed terrorist leader and ex-Baathist enforcer Iyad Allawi -- the Bush Regime plunged into an orgy of graft that stripped Iraq's treasury bare. Most of this loot was divvied up in no-bid contracts to Regime lardbuckets like Halliburton -- but up to $3 billion of it simply "disappeared" into pockets yet unknown, The Baltimore Sun reports.
Like their Baathist predecessors, the Bushist overlords were given control of the UN-established Development Fund, which was supposed to guarantee that Iraq's oil revenues were spent on the needs of the Iraqi people. But like Saddam Hussein, Bush instead used the fund as a barrel of personal pork to reward cronies and buy local political support with bribes. By the time Bush viceroy Paul Bremer made his hugger-mugger handover of "sovereignty" to CIA man Allawi, there was less than $1 billion left in the $20 billion fund -- with more than $6 billion of this siphoned off in just the last two months of direct U.S. rule, The Guardian reports.
Where did it all go? Half went to "Iraqi ministries" staffed with local frontmen like Allawi and his cousin, convicted fraudster and intelligence forger Ahmad Chalabi, and with Bush partisans from back home, many of them young right-wing zealots with no administrative experience whatsoever. Another chunk went to military units for use in rebuilding buildings they'd blasted down, paying compensation to the families of innocent people they'd killed, and buying intelligence and informants to help meet Bushist quotas for filling the torturous interrogation rooms in Abu Ghraib and its gulag satellites -- where the Red Cross says up to 90 percent of all the captives were innocent. Money well spent, obviously.
The rest of the fund was given to Halliburton and friends for "reconstruction" -- usually in noncompetitive contracts doled out by Bremer and his handpicked "Iraqi Governing Council" without any independent review, the GAO reports. Almost all of the $20 billion fund was oil revenue -- a nationalized resource belonging solely to the Iraqi people. And except for some chump change left behind for the CIA terrorist, it's all gone now.
But the scam gets even sweeter. During the 14 months of direct rule, Bush -- an old oilman -- somehow failed to have the Iraqi oil under his charge properly metered. That means there was simply no way on Earth to keep legitimate accounts on the oil revenue that was supposed to go into the Development Fund. Trying to make some sense of these well-cooked books, Christian Aid and international auditors compared the best production and pricing figures available from oil industry experts -- and found a discrepancy of between $1.8 billion and $3 billion from the Bushists' claims of total oil revenues given to the fund.
We told you it was sweet: You get control of Iraq's oil money and dish it out to your cronies and collaborators until it's all gone -- while setting aside a few secret billions for yourself that no one can ever trace. It's the same operation that Hussein ran. He's accused of skimming $4.4 billion from the Development Fund while he was in power -- but that took him years. Bush almost matched him in just 14 months. As the Iraqis say of the occupation: "The pupil has gone; the master has arrived."
Indeed. Halliburton, under Cheney, once did a paltry $23 million in backdoor business with Hussein; now, cutting out the middleman (and more than 10,000 innocent lives, as well), the company has $18 billion in Iraqi war contracts, thanks to its White House rainmakers. And no doubt that $3 billion unmetered skim will be bankrolling some fancy Houston mansions and choice Texas scrub brush in the years to come. . . ."

Molly Ivins: Warning: Frank Luntz arms Bush with 'framing' devices to court the womens' vote -- Bush's anti-woman record be damned

Last week on PBS's "NOW With Bill Moyers," there was a long interview with Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster and message-meister. Luntz recently advised Republicans to explain "the policy of pre-emption and the war in Iraq" by recommending that "no speech about ... Iraq should begin without a reference to 9-11." This would be despite the fact that the 9-11 Commission concluded Iraq has no connection to 9-11. Now you know why the administration continues to make this nonexistent connection.
Luntz described his methods with appealing pride. His job is to "set the context" and "frame the debate," which he learns how to do through focus groups, polls and dial sessions. But he kept drawing the line at the word "manipulation." No, no, he doesn't manipulate people, he insisted, he merely gives them a context for the message, he merely discovers what it is they want to hear and how best to say it to them.
I'm listening to all this because this is what the shrewdies in Washington pay attention to -- you can't hardly be a political writer anymore without sources on linguistics, semiotics, message control and all this good business. It dates you something awful if you do old-fashioned stuff, like call politicos to find out how it's going.
Luntz has discovered that the 4 percent of Americans who still have not made up their minds about this election to tend to be working women, younger, new mothers and fairly low-wage earners. I was pleased to hear Luntz explain how he'd uncovered the most interesting thing about these women. By dint of clever professional questioning, Luntz had come to notice that what the women seem to feel they need more than anything else is... time. I was staggered, since I and every other woman journalist I know have been saying this for only the last 20 or 30 years.
Yes, said, Luntz informed us, working women are feeling incredibly pressured, between home, job, aging parents, demanding kids, etc. Their lives are just a-jangle with demands, and not enough time to fill them. Now here, explains Luntz, is where he comes in.
"You have to empathize," he said. "The very first thing you have to do, it's not about issues, it's about empathy. They have to know that you care, that you understand them, that you understand the frustrations." Say a candidate of his -- say George W. Bush -- is at a town hall meeting. He'd say, "'Now I want to talk to the ladies in the room' ... 'the women in the room' is how I would put it ... and you say: 'Well, I'm gonna throw this out. I want you tell me if I'm right or not. Ladies here, I'd say that your lack of free time is one of the greatest challenges.' And they'll all sit there, and they'll raise their hands, and they'll all nod yes. At that moment, you have bonded with those women."
Which is all well and good, except then I'm trying to envision what George W. Bush says to them next. The National Women's Law Center released a study in April, called "Slip Sliding Away," on the erosion of women's rights. It found, under Bush:

* The Labor Department has refused to use tools at its disposal to identify violations of equal pay laws.
* Labor repealed regulations that allowed paid family leave to be made available through state unemployment funds. Now it's unpaid leave only.
* Labor has proposed new regulations that deprive millions of workers of the right to overtime pay -- and even gives tips to employers on how to avoid paying overtime when the law still requires it.
* The Department of Justice has weakened the enforcement of laws against job discrimination and abandoned pending sex discrimination cases.

Among the Bush budget cuts affecting the lives of millions of women are cuts in Head Start and other early childhood education programs, after-school programs, K-12 education, housing subsidies, child care, career education, services for victims of domestic violence, the nutrition program for women, infants and children (WIC) and Pell grants to help pay for college.
All in all, it's kind of hard to see how Bush could convince "the ladies" that he has helped take stress out of their lives. Unless, of course, the lady is married to a guy who makes $1 million a year -- then she'd have $92,000 extra a year to spend from the Bush tax cuts.
Here's my problem. This is the record -- this is what's being done to women's lives. But it's so passé, you see, to write about it. No linguistics, no empathy, no putting it in context. Just the record. No one does that kind of journalism anymore. How embarrassing."

Must read: Sibel Edmonds, in her own words: Our Broken System

"On Tuesday, July 6, 2004, Judge Reggie Walton made a decision and ruled on my case. Under his ruling, I, an American citizen, am not entitled to pursue my 1st and 5th Amendment rights guaranteed under the Constitution of the United States. The vague reasoning cited, without any explanation, is to protect "certain diplomatic relations for national security." Judge Walton reached this decision after sitting on this case with no activity for almost two years. He arrived at this decision without allowing my attorney and I any due process: NO status hearing, NO briefings, NO oral argument, and NO discovery. He made his decision after allowing the government attorneys to present their case to him, privately, in camera, ex parte; we were not allowed to participate in these cozy sessions. Is this the American system of justice we believe in? Is this the due process we read about in our civics 101 courses? Is this the judicial branch of our government that is supposed to be separate from the other two branches in order to protect the people's rights and freedom?
This court decision by itself would have been appalling and alarming enough, but in light of all other actions taken against my case for the past two years it demonstrates a broken system, a system abused and corrupted by the current executive, a system badly in need of repair.
Under this broken system the attorney general of the United States is being allowed to illegally gag the United States Congress regarding my case. And even worse, the United States Congress is readily complying with this illegal gag.
Under this broken system the attorney general of the United States is being allowed to hinder ongoing investigations such as those of the 9/11 Commission and the DOJ-Inspector General.
Under this broken system the Attorney General of the United States is getting away with interfering and tampering with pending cases under the judicial process, such as my court cases and the lawsuit by the 9/11 victim families.
John Ashcroft's relentless fight against me, my information, and my case, on various fronts, from the Congress to the courts, and from the 9/11 Commission to the Inspector General's Office, has been taking place under his attempt at a vague justification titled "Protecting Certain Foreign and Diplomatic Relations for National Security."
On September 11, 2001, 3,000 lives were lost. Yet this administration has hindered all past and on going investigations into the causes of that horrific day for the sake of this vague notion of protecting "certain diplomatic and foreign relations."
As a result of the attack on 9/11, many thousands lost their loved ones and had their lives changed forever. Yet, this administration knowingly and intentionally let many directly or indirectly involved in that terrorist act go free – untouched and uninvestigated – by simply citing "protection of certain foreign and diplomatic relations for national security."
Today, we are told that we are still under the threat of terrorists, and remain under various colors of the color-coded threat system invented and promoted by this administration. Yet, this same administration is relentlessly preventing any real investigations into finding out the facts, the real facts, regarding acts, semi-legit organizations, and people, involved in plots against this country and its people – under their sorry excuse of "protecting certain foreign and diplomatic relations."
Isn't it time to ask what diplomatic or foreign relations they keep referring to?
Isn't it fair to demand that they should let the people know what kind of foreign relations are worth 3,000 lives lost?
Isn't it this administration's obligation to justify these costs in lives and in our national security for the sake of maintaining certain foreign relations that benefit only the few?
Just take notice of the means this administration has used in my case alone to accomplish covering up and protecting those "foreign relations," and to dodge any accountability themselves: illegal reclassifications, secrecy, gagging congressional inquiries, blocking court proceedings, stopping investigations, invoking the rarely invoked State Secret Privilege, asserting national security.
It is apparent that this administration confidently expects the American people to sign blank checks unquestioningly. It is obvious that they believe they are entitled to unchecked power, unlimited authority, and unquestioning citizens' support. To them, our Bill of Rights under the Constitution is nothing more than an inconvenient roadblock to overcome; our American system of checks and balances can be bypassed by overusing national security; and people's dissent is a problem that can be diverted away by a culture of fear and complete submission to government authority.
As I have stated many times previously, I will continue this fight, since in taking my citizenship oath I pledged that I would support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Therefore, as an American citizen, I have the right and the obligation to defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against John Ashcroft's assaults."

Indianapolis Star: Helen Thomas tells Indy journalists Bush administration and media ignore truth.

"Hearst News Service columnist Helen Thomas has unambiguous feelings about the Bush administration.
"This government lies," she said Wednesday to editors, reporters and interns from The Indianapolis Star.
As for the Bush administration's claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, one of the key arguments for going to war against Saddam Hussein, Thomas had one word: "Baloney."
"I think we have a government that absolutely is ignoring the truth and a press that is ignoring the truth," she said during a luncheon at the Downtown Radisson Hotel.
Thomas, 83, who worked for United Press International for 57 years as a correspondent and White House bureau chief, began covering the Oval Office during the Kennedy administration.
The columnist said she thinks the press today is doing a terrible job covering the presidency -- worse than she ever has seen.
"I really think that reporters for two, three months after 9/11 -- everyone was afraid to ask their question," Thomas said. "They would not ask any question that would appear to be unpatriotic."
This reticent culture continued into the war in Iraq, where reporters feared questions would be perceived as jeopardizing American troops, Thomas said.
"I think she's absolutely right -- dead on," said James W. Brown, executive associate dean of the Indiana University School of Journalism at IUPUI. "The evidence is there -- the Bush administration lies, lies, lies.". . ."

Must read: Justin Raimondo: Neocon Coup at CIA? It will be if John Lehman takes over

"All this folderol about how the neoconservative moment is over, and the War Party totally discredited, is just so much wishful thinking, as the prospect of John F. Lehman's nomination as CIA chief makes all too clear. Rumor has it that Porter Goss is out – too partisan – and Lehman is leading the pack. If so, this is a testament to the neocons' bureaucratic staying power.
Formerly an investment banker with Paine Webber, Inc., Lehman was President of the Abington Corporation, (1977-81), a lobbying and consulting firm, a staff member of the National Security Council under Henry Kissinger, and deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He has been associated with the neoconservative network in Washington since the good old days of Iran-Contra. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan appointed Lehman Secretary of the Navy: he served until 1987. In 1983, a mysterious package of documents arrived at the New York Times, a fortuitous delivery that led to a piece by reporter Jeff Gerth in which Lehman, along with Richard Perle, was accused of accepting payments from Israeli arms dealers Shlomo Zabludowicz and his son, Chaim Zabludowicz, who were Perle's clients in 1980. They paid $90,000 to Abington Corporation: Perle kept $50,000, while Abington got the rest.
Lehman blamed his wife: Perle said he did the work for the Zabludowicz clan before he was employed by the government. Whatever.
In any case, as per the custom in Washington, Lehman and Perle survived the scandal, as neocons always do, and lived to fight another day.
Lehman's most recent position has been as a member of the 9/11 Commission, where he excoriated Richard Clarke for writing a book, and went on Meet the Press declaring that a prominent member of Saddam's militia had been identified as a member of Al Qaeda, confusing two different Arab names in the process and getting it thoroughly wrong. The Washington Post pointed out the discrepancy to Lehman, who brushed it aside, claiming it really made no difference: he stood by his claim.
Oh well, whatever….
In the early 90's, Lehman joined up with the Committee on U.S. Interests in the Middle East, a neocon front group organized by Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams and Douglas J. Feith, and headed up by Frank Gaffney. The Committee lobbied for more U.S. tax dollars for Israel, and, among other activities, in 1992 bought a full-page ad in the New York Times viciously denouncing President George H. W. Bush as an appeaser for pressuring then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir to open negotiations that eventually led to the Oslo process:
"As friendly as the United States is with many Arab states, when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict, the United States must be squarely on the side of the Israelis."
The principal founders and sponsors of the Committee, which broke with Dubya's dad over this issue, are now in charge of U.S. foreign policy, and of the last two holdouts – the Department of State and the CIA – it looks like they're about to take Langley.
Although long associated with the War Party through his connections to Ball Aerospace Technologies – a major manufacturer of NASA and Pentagon satellites – and the board of the Center for Security Policy, a neoconservative redoubt, Lehman seems to be trying to distance himself from the neocons and their foreign policy views now that he's up for the CIA post. However, his record speaks for itself.
He has long exhibited a Laurie Mylroie-like obsession with Iraq, claiming, for instance, that Saddam was behind the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. The bombing, as it turned out, was the work of al-Qaeda, and had nothing whatsoever to do with Iraq. A few days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks Lehman signed an open letter calling on the President to attack Iraq.
Keping in mind his demonstrated inability to keep Arabic names straight, do we really want to appoint to the CIA's top post a man so often proved wrong?
The bureaucratic brawl that took place between the CIA and the Pentagon in the prelude to war is now being resumed with new ferocity: the latter's policies may be discredited, and Iraq may be in ruins, along with the alleged "liberation," but just because they're losing the war on the overseas front doesn't mean the neocons can't ultimately carry the day in Washington.
Former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, and the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris, along with a whole raft of former U.S. diplomats and government officials, have been on the offensive lately, targeting the neocons as duplicitous seducers who had their way with us and then left American soldiers and taxpayers with the burden of a costly occupation. The Lehman boomlet shows, however, that, far from being on the run, the neocons are counterattacking.
The question now is: will the White House wait until after November to make the CIA appointment? By then, of course, it may be too late. This is a purely political calculation for the Republicans, but it seems to me they are in a position to act boldly. After all, the White House can always accuse the Democrats of making a partisan political issue out of a vital matter of national security if they raise a fuss.
Politics may prevent the Democrats from raising a proper ruckus, yet they'll no doubt be shocked – shocked! – if CIA Director John Lehman, in probing the source of our pre-war "intelligence failure," goes easy on his own brother. But don't say I didn't warn you…."

Dartmouth News: Investigating digital images: What's real and what's phony?

" "Seeing is no longer believing. Actually, what you see is largely irrelevant," says Dartmouth Professor Hany Farid. He is referring to the digital images that appear everywhere: in newspapers, on Web sites, in advertising, and in business materials, for example.
Farid and Dartmouth graduate student Alin Popescu have developed a mathematical technique to tell the difference between a "real" image and one that's been fiddled with. Consider a photo of two competing CEOs talking over a document labeled "confidential - merger," or a photo of Saddam Hussein shaking hands with Osama bin Laden. The Dartmouth algorithm, presented recently at the 6th International Workshop on Information Hiding, in Toronto, Canada, can determine if someone has manipulated the photos, like blending two photos into one, or adding or taking away objects or people in an image.
"Commercially available software makes it easy to alter digital photos," says Farid, an Associate Professor of Computer Science. "Sometimes this seemingly harmless talent is used to influence public opinion and trust, especially when altered photos are used in news reports. . . .
A digital image is a collection of pixels or dots, and each pixel contains numbers that correspond to a color or brightness value. When marrying two images to make one convincing composite, you have to alter pixels. They have to be stretched, shaded, twisted, and otherwise changed. The end result is, more often than not, a realistic, believable image.
"With today's technology, it's not easy to look at an image these days and decide if it's real or not," says Farid. "We look, however, at the underlying code of the image for clues of tampering."
Farid's algorithm looks for the evidence inevitably left behind after image tinkering. Statistical clues lurk in all digital images, and the ones that have been tampered with contain altered statistics.
"Natural digital photographs aren't random," he says. "In the same way that placing a monkey in front of a typewriter is unlikely to produce a play by Shakespeare, a random set of pixels thrown on a page is unlikely to yield a natural image. It means that there are underlying statistics and regularities in naturally occurring images."
Farid and his students have built a statistical model that captures the mathematical regularities inherent in natural images. Because these statistics fundamentally change when images are altered, the model can be used to detect digital tampering. . . ."

MediaCorp News: China warns Rice it won't 'sit idle' if US backs Taiwan independence

"China's military strongman Jiang Zemin told visiting US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice China would not "sit idle" if foreign forces supported Taiwan independence.
"If Taiwan authorities are determined to pursue Taiwan independence; if foreign forces interfere and support this, we would definitely not sit idle without doing anything," Jiang was paraphrased on Chinese state-run television station CCTV as saying.
The aging but still powerful former president's veiled warnings against US military intervention if Taiwan formally declares independence and China attacks the island came amid increasing tension between Beijing and Taipei.
The recent re-election of pro-independence Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian has fueled fears in Beijing that Chen may be moving toward a formal split in his second term.
Beijing hopes Washington will curb any such moves by Chen.
Jiang told Rice Taiwan was the "most sensitive" issue in Sino-US relations and expressed dismay with Washington's recent handling of Taiwan matters.
"The US side's recent series of actions, especially plans to sell arms to Taiwan made Chinese people feel seriously concerned and dissatisfied," said Jiang, chairman of the Central Military Commission.
He said while China prefers to settle the Taiwan issue peacefully, it "will definitely not tolerate Taiwan independence.". . ."

From the archives: Cato Institute: Does U.S. Intervention Overseas Breed Terrorism? The Historical Record

Executive Summary

"According to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, terrorism is the most important threat the United States and the world face as the 21st century begins. High-level U.S. officials have acknowledged that terrorists are now more likely to be able to obtain and use nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons than ever before. Yet most attention has been focused on combating terrorism by deterring and disrupting it beforehand and retaliating against it after the fact. Less attention has been paid to what motivates terrorists to launch attacks. According to the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, a strong correlation exists between U.S. involvement in international situations and an increase in terrorist attacks against the United States. President Clinton has also acknowledged that link. The board, however, has provided no empirical data to support its conclusion. This paper fills that gap by citing many examples of terrorist attacks on the United States in retaliation for U.S. intervention overseas. The numerous incidents cataloged suggest that the United States could reduce the chances of such devastating--and potentially cata-strophic--terrorist attacks by adopting a policy of military restraint overseas."

(click title for full report pdf)

From the archives: Chalmers Johnson: America's Empire of Bases

"As distinct from other peoples, most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, our citizens are often ignorant of the fact that our garrisons encircle the planet. This vast network of American bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire -- an empire of bases with its own geography not likely to be taught in any high school geography class. Without grasping the dimensions of this globe-girdling Baseworld, one can't begin to understand the size and nature of our imperial aspirations or the degree to which a new kind of militarism is undermining our constitutional order.
Our military deploys well over half a million soldiers, spies, technicians, teachers, dependents, and civilian contractors in other nations. To dominate the oceans and seas of the world, we are creating some thirteen naval task forces built around aircraft carriers whose names sum up our martial heritage -- Kitty Hawk, Constellation, Enterprise, John F. Kennedy, Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, John C. Stennis, Harry S. Truman, and Ronald Reagan. We operate numerous secret bases outside our territory to monitor what the people of the world, including our own citizens, are saying, faxing, or e-mailing to one another.
Our installations abroad bring profits to civilian industries, which design and manufacture weapons for the armed forces or, like the now well-publicized Kellogg, Brown & Root company, a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation of Houston, undertake contract services to build and maintain our far-flung outposts. One task of such contractors is to keep uniformed members of the imperium housed in comfortable quarters, well fed, amused, and supplied with enjoyable, affordable vacation facilities. Whole sectors of the American economy have come to rely on the military for sales. On the eve of our second war on Iraq, for example, while the Defense Department was ordering up an extra ration of cruise missiles and depleted-uranium armor-piercing tank shells, it also acquired 273,000 bottles of Native Tan sunblock, almost triple its 1999 order and undoubtedly a boon to the supplier, Control Supply Company of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and its subcontractor, Sun Fun Products of Daytona Beach, Florida.

At Least Seven Hundred Foreign Bases

It's not easy to assess the size or exact value of our empire of bases. Official records on these subjects are misleading, although instructive. According to the Defense Department's annual "Base Structure Report" for fiscal year 2003, which itemizes foreign and domestic U.S. military real estate, the Pentagon currently owns or rents 702 overseas bases in about 130 countries and HAS another 6,000 bases in the United States and its territories. Pentagon bureaucrats calculate that it would require at least $113.2 billion to replace just the foreign bases -- surely far too low a figure but still larger than the gross domestic product of most countries -- and an estimated $591,519.8 million to replace all of them. The military high command deploys to our overseas bases some 253,288 uniformed personnel, plus an equal number of dependents and Department of Defense civilian officials, and employs an additional 44,446 locally hired foreigners. The Pentagon claims that these bases contain 44,870 barracks, hangars, hospitals, and other buildings, which it owns, and that it leases 4,844 more.
These numbers, although staggeringly large, do not begin to cover all the actual bases we occupy globally. The 2003 Base Status Report fails to mention, for instance, any garrisons in Kosovo -- even though it is the site of the huge Camp Bondsteel, built in 1999 and maintained ever since by Kellogg, Brown & Root. The Report similarly omits bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan, although the U.S. military has established colossal base structures throughout the so-called arc of instability in the two-and-a-half years since 9/11. . . ."

(click title for full report)

NY Times: Pentagon: Bush military record accidentally destroyed

"Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.
It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm.
No backup paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25.
The destroyed records cover three months of a period in 1972 and 1973 when Bush's claims of service in Alabama are in question. . . .
There was no mention of the loss, for example, when White House officials released hundreds of pages of the president's military records last February in an effort to stem Democratic charges that he was "AWOL" for a time during his commitment to fly at home in the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.
The disclosure that the payroll records had been destroyed came in a letter signed by C.Y. Talbott, chief of the Pentagon's Freedom of Information Office."

Greg Palast: Bush and Republicans should give up ill-gotten Lay loot that bought the White House

". . .Ken Lay and his Enron team are the Number One political career donors to George W. Bush. Mr. Lay and his Mrs., with no money to pay back bilked creditors, still managed to personally put up $100,000 for George's inaugural Ball plus $793,110 for personal donations to Republicans. Lay's Enron team dropped $4.2 million into the party that let Enron party.
OK now, Mr. President, give it back -- the millions stuffed in the pockets of the Republican campaign kitty stolen from Enron retirees.
And what else did Ken Lay buy with the money stolen from California electricity customers? Answer: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Just before George Bush moved to Washington, Kenny-Boy handed his hand-picked president-to-be the name of the man Ken wanted as Chairman of the commission charged with investigating Enron's thievery. In a heartbeat, George Bush appointed Ken's boy, Pat Wood.
Think about that: the criminal gets to pick the police chief. Well, George, give it back. Dump Wood and end the de-criminalization of electricity price-gouging that you and Cheney and Wood laughably call "de-regulation." Give us back the government Lay bought with crime cash.
And while we're gathering up the ill-gotten loot, let's stop by Brother Jeb's. The Governor of Florida picked up a cool $2 million from a Houston fundraiser at the home of Enron's former president long AFTER the company went bankrupt. Enron, not incidentally, obtained half a billion of Florida state pension money -- which has now disappeared down the Enron rat-hole.
And Mr. Vice-President, don't you also have something to give back? In secret meetings with Dick Cheney in the Veep's bunker prior to the inauguration and after, you let Ken and his cohorts secretly draft the nation's energy plan -- taking a short break to eye oilfield maps of Iraq. Let us remember that the President's sticky-fingered brothers Neil and Marvin were on Enron's payroll, hired to sell pipelines to the Saudis. The Saudis didn't bite, but maybe a captive Iraq would be more pliant. . . ."

New Statesman: Palestine - Who are the Palestinians?

"People tend to see the Palestinians through the lens of their chosen stereotype. For many westerners, they arrived on the scene violently, as "terrorists": hijacking aeroplanes, killing Israeli athletes at the Olympics, causing havoc in league with other unsavoury groups. For the Arab world, and for many recent ex-colonies, they were a people who had been turned into refugees and freedom fighters by a new strain of old colonialism.
In the first intifada in the late 1980s, their cause became synonymous with that of a child facing the might of the Israeli army, with nothing in his or her hands except stones. In the second, and current, intifada, the child has become a suicide bomber, exploding amid the slaughter of innocents, with nothing in his or her heart except a despairing desire for vengeance. And overarching the Palestinian people is the iconic, troubling figure of their unchallenged leader, Yasser Arafat: vowing peace with a pistol strapped to his waist, wearing a keffiyeh shaped in the map of his people, stretching from the Jordan to the Mediterranean.
The Palestinians have all these faces - and many, many more. They are a cause, a history, a nation and a land. But who are they? What makes them a people? And why has the simple justice of their case - that of an exiled people's quest for a homeland - become enmeshed in the most protracted, implacable and dangerous conflict of our time? . . ."

(click title for full article)

Greg Guma: Privatizing War

"The use of mercenaries was once a dirty, little secret most governments were loath to acknowledge. But today they're called private military contractors and perform almost every function essential to military operations. The Financial Times has labeled this trend the "creeping privatization of the business of war."
During the first Gulf War, about two percent of U.S. military personnel were private workers. As of 2003, it had reached 10 percent. The Pentagon employs more than 700,000 private contractors, and at least $33 billion of the $416 billion in military spending overwhelmingly approved by the Senate last week will go to PMCs.
In Iraq, these companies supply more trainers and security forces than all remaining members of the "coalition of the willing" except the United States. Approximately 15,000 civilian security guards are stationed there, at least 6,000 of them armed. Some contractors maintain sophisticated weapons systems that used to be handled by the army. More than $20 billion -- almost a third of the Army's budget for Iraq and Afghanistan -- goes to contractors. . . ."

Conspiracy, incompetence, or coincidence? John Kaminski: Buried Beneath An Avalanche Of Lies: Chronicle Of A Battle For The Truth

"I remember the day when the Berlin Wall fell and everybody immediately started talking about a Peace Dividend, money that would be diverted from making weapons and invested in social improvements. And I remember that bright and hopeful turn of the millennium into the two thousands, when eager optimists predicted that a new kind of humane society would sweep the earth to make wars obsolete and living sweet. Neither, of course, has come to pass. Or will anytime soon.  
Instead, the new millennium has brought with it a return to unapologetic barbarism, in which the human aspirations of compassion and understanding have been crushed in the maw of raw power. Instead of leaping ahead into a new 21st century of enlightenment, the human species has apparently decided to lurch backwards into the 19th century, where the only things that really matter are the size of your guns and your bank account.
Where the outstretched hand of those in need is greeted with a bullet to the face, accompanied by some smug justification about survival of the Chosen few. No, this is not what I call evolution.
The events of September 11, 2001 changed the tone of civilized society, perhaps forever. As people around the globe poured out admiring sympathy for the victims of the atrocity in New York, the leaders of the U.S. embarked on a fateful course: to start shooting at the rest of the world until everybody everywhere fell into line in submissive gestures of terrified subservience. . . .
I am reminded of that Russian proverb, "When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
You are now the nail.
The truth of 9/11 lies buried beneath an avalanche of lies, just like the souls of those unsuspecting passengers on routine domestic airline flights and those ordinary folks who trudged off to work that day to the Twin Towers lie buried forever in that smoldering heap of uninvestigated rubble. And just like the futures of you and me lie buried [in] an endless heap of fake terror alerts, anthrax scares, police state laws, and self-righteous fabrications of dark-skinned terrorists lurking demonically on every streetcorner in America."

(click title for full commentary)

World Net Daily: Bilderberg 'performance' key to Edwards VP pick

"Sen. John Edwards' standout "performance" at the super-secret Bilderberg meeting in Italy last month may have been a key reason for his selection as John Kerry's vice presidential running mate, according to the New York Times.
The 50th anniversary conference of the elite group – which many believe conspires semi-annually to foster global government – met June 3 through June 6 in Stresa, Italy, at the Grand Hotel des Iles Borromees. . . .
According to a report in yesterday's New York Times by Jody Wilgoren, analyzing why Kerry chose Edwards over the other 24 serious contenders for the No. 2 spot:

Several people pointed to the secretive and exclusive Bilderberg conference of some 120 people that this year drew the likes of Henry A. Kissinger, Melinda Gates and Richard A. Perle to Stresa, Italy, in early June, as helping win Mr. Kerry's heart. Mr. Edwards spoke so well in a debate on American politics with the Republican Ralph Reed that participants broke Bilderberg rules to clap before the end of the session. Beforehand, Mr. Edwards traveled to Brussels to meet with NATO officials, brandishing his foreign-policy credentials.
"His performance at Bilderberg was important," said a friend of Mr. Kerry who was there. "He reported back directly to Kerry. There were other reports on his performance. Whether they reported directly or indirectly, I have no doubt the word got back to Mr. Kerry about how well he did."

Since 1953, the Bilderberg group has convened government, business, academic and journalistic representatives from the U.S., Canada and Europe with the express purpose of exploring the future of the North Atlantic community.
According to sources that have penetrated the high-security meetings in the past, the Bilderberg meetings emphasize a globalist agenda and promote the idea that the notion of national sovereignty is antiquated and regressive. . . . "

From the rumor mill: TBR News: In-House Memos on Television And Print Media News Presentations

"During the middle of March, 2003, tbrnews received an email from a man who claimed to be a mid-level executive with a major American television network. He stated in this, and subsequent, emails that he was in possession of “thousands” of pages of in-house memos sent from his corporate headquarters in New York City to the head of the network’s television news department. He went on to say that these memos set forth directives about what material was, and was not, to be aired on the various outlets of the network. . . .

Walter Storch

(July 1, 2004) This is going to be the most vicious Presidential election campaign on record and potentially the most dangerous. Bush’s actions have politically polarized the American electorate and Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary has made a bad situation for Bush far worse. We can see why the Mickey Mouse boys were terrified to touch this. They are very vulnerable and an infuriated Bush gang would take out their revenge on them for such a film. The danger lies in what probable actions Bush might take to swing the election that now is moving strongly against him. He is appealing to far right Christian groups, something that is sure to outrage more centrists and moderate religious groups. When these groups get the bit in their teeth, they become very vocal and often very vicious. More important, however, is the distinct possibility that Bush will start another military adventure, just before the election. Rumor at high levels has it that he will declare a state of emergency, based on faked reports, that North Korea and/or Iran are about to launch nuclear strikes against the American homeland and that he has ordered counterstrikes to defend this country. There are a significant number of Americans who would go for this. Hell, there are many Americans that believe Hussein controlled Al Quaeda, that the WTC was blown up by CIA missiles or plasmoid clouds or that Bush has helped the American economy instead of absolutely destroying its future growth. Unfortunately, both of these countries do have the Bomb and both are capable of retaliation or, worse, preemptive strikes against our troops in South Korea, Iraq or even Japan. Between Israel beating the drums for a US attack on Iran and Syria and Bush’s toppling pole numbers, most of us are now seriously afraid of some Godawful adventure on the part of the ‘Mission Accomplished’ lad."

Guardian: The lie that killed my son: When Lila Lipscomb's son died in action, her faith in the American way was shattered.

". . .The power of Lipscomb's story lies in the sharpness of the U-turn she made and her eloquence in speaking about it. Initially, she supported the war, on the assumption that the government knew best. But just two weeks into the conflict her 26-year-old son, a sergeant in the US army, was shot down while serving as a door gunner in a Black Hawk helicopter. Five other soldiers died with him. A week or so later she received his last letter, in which he told her he thought Bush had lost the plot and that they shouldn't be in Iraq, that the whole thing was folly. Moore got wind of it when Lipscomb and her family were featured in Newsweek magazine and he flew to Flint, his hometown, for a meeting.
"Michael Moore said he'd already been around America interviewing all different types of people [for the film]. It was the most incredible experience; he was sitting in our living room and all of a sudden, during the talking and sharing, a tear fell from his eye. His producer said afterwards, 'Michael found it, he found it, he found what the movie was going to be about!'"
Lipscomb should by rights have been suspicious of Moore. She is a Democrat, but a conservative one. She is, or at least was, deeply conformist and even now if the draft was enforced, wouldn't urge desertion, because that would be breaking the law. "I instilled in my children, as it was instilled in me that, regardless of who is elected the president of the United States of America, it is the position that you honour. It doesn't matter if they are Republican or Democrat. Boy, what an awakening."
She had seen Moore's first film, Roger and Me, a documentary about the devastating closure of Flint's General Motors plant, and been impressed. When he asked her to participate in Fahrenheit 9/11 she went away and watched his last film, Bowling for Columbine. This also, she thought, had merit. But she had other reasons for taking part; chiefly guilt, for not having spoken up sooner, for having, she says, been complacent and gullible enough to believe Bush's arguments for war. . . ."

Bennington Banner: When numbers don't add up, cover up

"President George W. Bush & Co. are in the clear for its Enron-style accounting of the actual costs of the new Medicare law, which administration officials told Congress would cost $100 biliion less than it actually does.
A report made public Tuesday says Bush & Co. did use aggressive tactics from withholding the real figures from Congress but in the end, it is the administration's right to control the flow of information.
But do we have reason to mistrust the "impartial" findings. The report was conducted by the Health and Human Services Department and what could be less impartial than a report issued by a federal agency run by the administration its investigating?
Maybe in today's world of up-is-down, fact-is-fiction, right-is-wrong, nothing is more credible than when the feds investigate themselves on serious matters.
Like how the military is investigating its role in torture; and how the attorney general investigates his boss on leaked memos; and Cheney hires Halliburton; and the justice department issues reports finding the Patriot Act perfectly in accord with protection of freedoms.
Who can forget the upside-down-world of the name game from Bush & Co.? There's the Patriot Act that stifles the ultimate patriotic document the Bill of Rights; No Child Left Behind Law that tosses students from the moving yellow buses; Clean Air initiatives that loosen regulations on pollution in air; Healthy Forests initiatives that say chopping down trees is good for the trees.
Yes, the internal investigation is just the type of nonsense we have come to demand of our president. There is no reason to think his administration would have done honest accounting or used anything but fuzzy math to determine the bill it serves to the public. . . ."

NY Times: Initial intelligence report avoids focus on White House

"Under a deal struck between Republicans and Democrats, a Senate intelligence committee report that is highly critical of prewar intelligence on Iraq will sidestep the question of how the Bush administration used that information to make the case for war, congressional officials said Wednesday.
That politically explosive issue is to be the focus of a second stage of the Senate inquiry, to be completed later. But the initial report, to be released on Friday and approved by the panel in a unanimous vote, focuses on misjudgments by intelligence agencies, not the White House, in assessments about Iraq, illicit weapons and Al Qaeda that the Bush administration used as a rationale to war.
The effect may be to provide an opening for President George W. Bush and his allies to deflect responsibility for what appear to have been exaggerated prewar assessments about the threat posed by Iraq, by portraying them as the fault of the Central Intelligence Agency and its outgoing director, George Tenet, rather than of Bush and his top aides.
Still, Democrats will try to focus attention on the issue by releasing as many as a half-dozen "additional views" to supplement the bipartisan report.
"How the administration used the intelligence was very troubling," Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said in an interview this week. "They took a flawed set of intelligence reports and converted it into a rationale for going to war."
The plan to release the "Report on Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq" was announced on Wednesday by the committee after the CIA agreed that a large majority of the report could be made public, congressional officials said. . . ."

Capitol Hill Blue: Angry Bush Walks Out on Media, Refuses to Answer Questions About Relationship With Ken Lay

"A clearly-rattled President George W. Bush walked out of a media briefing Thursday, refusing to answer questions about his close relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth Lay, a campaign benefactor Bush nicknamed "Kenny Boy" when the two were up-and-comers in Texas.
The President, visibly upset, stomped off the stage when reporters pressed him about his relationship with Lay and left White House press secretary Scott McClellan to deal with the questions.
It has been "quite some time" since Bush and Lay talked with each other, McClellan said Thursday, brushing off questions about whether the two were friends.
"He was a supporter in the past and he's someone that I would also point out has certainly supported Democrats and Republicans in the past," McClellan said.
Lay clearly favored the GOP. He and his wife, Linda, donated $882,580 to federal candidates from 1989-2001, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. All but $86,470 went to Republicans. . . ."

Capitol Hill Blue: Cheney Faces Criminal Indictments; Other Illegal Actions Raise Warning Flags at White House

"Vice President Dick Cheney faces criminal indictments for illegal activities while CEO of energy giant Halliburton and also illegally intervened to secure a $7 billion no-bid contract for his former employer after his election to office, an analysis by the White House counsel’s office concludes.
The Vice President is currently under investigation by French authorities for bribery, money laundering and misuse of corporate assets while at Halliburton and also faces a U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission probe of a $180 million "slush fund" that may have been used to pay bribes.
Although the White House Counsel analysis is not available to the public because of the secrecy of “attorney-client privilege,” it has generated speculation among senior White House aides who suggest the Vice President should step down as President George W. Bush’s running mate for the November Presidential elections. Such talk has increased in GOP circles lately with former New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato Wednesday calling on Bush to dump Cheney.
Those who have read the analysis say it presents a “devastating” case against the Vice President and concludes Cheney has violated both the “spirit and intent” of federal laws on conflict of interest.
Even worse, Cheney faces indictment by a French court on charges of bribery, money laundering and misuse of corporate assets because of fraud associated with the construction of a $6 billion petrochemical plant built by Halliburton in Nigeria in partnership with Technip, one of France’s largest petrochemical engineering companies.
Cheney is under investigation by Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke, one of France’s famous investigating magistrates. Ruymbeke is a legend in legal circles because of his investigation into French campaign scandals in the 1990s, resulting in multiple indictments and convictions of top officials.
Because of Ruymbeke’s work on the case, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has opened an investigation into a $180 million “slush fund” that the French judge says was used to pay bribes.
London Lawyer Jeffrey Tesler, a consultant to Halliburton, admitted under oath in May that he made payments from the fund to Albert “Jack” Stanley, president of Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root and a longtime friend and associate of Cheney.  The payments, Tesler said, were personally approved by Cheney, who headed Halliburton at the time.
Although Cheney left his position at Halliburton before becoming Vice President, his financial disclosure statements show he continues to receive dividends from stock as well as deferred compensation from the company. . . ."

Center for American Progress: Investigating Halliburton

List includes:

Bribing Foreign Officials
Evading U.S. Law, Doing Business With Terrorist Nations
Price-Gouging American Taxpayers

(click title for details)

Update: Christian Aid: Fuelling suspicion: the coalition and Iraq's oil billions

"The US-controlled coalition in Baghdad is handing over power to an Iraqi government without having properly accounted for what it has done with some $20 billion of Iraq's own money, says a new report published by Christian Aid."

(click title for full report)

"An audit, reportedly critical, of the coalition's handling of Iraqi revenues is not going to be delivered until mid-July - after the coalition has ceased to exist.
Christian Aid believes this situation is in flagrant breach of the UN Security Council resolution that gave control of Iraq's oil revenues and other Iraqi funds to the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).
'For the entire year that the CPA has been in power in Iraq, it has been impossible to tell with any accuracy what the CPA has been doing with Iraq's money,' said Helen Collinson, head of policy at Christian Aid.
Resolution 1483 of May 2003 said that Iraq's oil revenues should be paid into the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), that this money should be spent in the interests of the Iraqi people, and be independently audited. But it took until April 2004 to appoint an auditor - leaving only a matter of weeks to go through the books.
Early reports of the audit indicate strong criticisms of the CPA's handling of Iraq's money. But the CPA is not going to be around to be held accountable.
In the run-up to the handover, nearly $2 billion of Iraq's money has been hastily allocated. The new Iraqi government will be committed to these spending decisions.
The lack of anything more than basic information about the CPA's spending of Iraq's funds is in stark contrast to the information on the US$18.4 billion of US taxpayers' money that is also being spent in Iraq. No less than four separate audits of the US funds are underway.
All this sets a very bad precedent for the incoming Iraqi government. 'Too many oil-rich countries go down the road of unaccountable government, riches for the few, and poverty for the many. Iraq can avoid this route, but only by ensuring transparency,' said Ms Collinson. . . ."