Jim Turpin : Is the Imperial Presidency the 'New Normal'? / 2

Photo by Jim Watson / AFP / Getty Images./ Foreign Policy.

The 'new normal'?
The Imperial Presidency / 2

“You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”
-- Talking Heads ("Once in a Lifetime")

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / March 7, 2013

Second in a two-part series.

In my previous installment of this article, I discussed how the codification of the Executive’s imperial power and America's one party political system have contributed to a deeply emboldened presidential authority.

But recent executive branch overreach is also propped up with a troubling combination of additional factors including:

• Assassination by star chamber
• Subjugated and 'craven' media

Assassination by star chamber

Star Chamber (n):

1. A 15th-century to 17th-century English court consisting of judges who were appointed by the Crown and sat in closed session on cases involving state security.
2. star chamber: A court or group that engages in secret, harsh, or arbitrary procedures.

The Department of Justice (DOJ), in an effort to codify extrajudicial killings in the “War on Terror” by the Executive branch had a “white paper” leaked earlier this week.

The contents and justification for killing U.S. citizens or foreign nationals are chilling and this was laid out by Glenn Greenwald in The Guardian:

The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with U.S. citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.

Since then, senior Obama officials including Attorney General Eric Holder and John Brennan, Obama's top terrorism adviser and his current nominee to lead the CIA, have explicitly argued that the president is and should be vested with this power. Meanwhile, a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president's power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title "disposition matrix."

This “disposition matrix” -- more commonly referred to as a “kill list” -- is done in complete secrecy by this administration with the aid of the CIA, the National Counterterrorism Center (NTC), and others in a “star chamber." This unaccountable and unmonitored group metes out justice that is death from above, without a shred of “due process” which has been the center of western legal principles and law since the Magna Carta.

More from Greenwald in The Guardian:

The president's underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the President -- at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as "Terror Tuesday" -- then chooses from "baseball cards" and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark. In fact, The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power.

With unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), also known as “drones” and having names like “Predator” and “Reaper," the destruction for those on the ground is both horrific and widespread.

Code Pink, a women-initiated grassroots peace and social justice movement working to end U.S.-funded wars and occupations and to challenge militarism globally, recently traveled to the tribal area in Pakistan to both discuss the impact with civilians and protest the use of drones.

Medea Benjamin, one of the founders of Code Pink, recently released her book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, an “extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who are ‘piloting’ these unmanned planes, who are the victims and what are the legal and moral implications.”

Code Pink also, as one of the few activist groups still holding the Obama administration accountable for the use of drones, disrupted the confirmation hearing of new CIA director James Brennan. Professed liberal Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein quickly removed Code Pink at the beginning of the proceedings.

Just as important, Stanford and NYU released a report last year, titled “Living Under Drones: Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians from U.S. Drone Practices in Pakistan." This report lays out evidence of terrorized populations living in fear 24 hours a day:

• “Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities.
• “The U.S. practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims.”
• “Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school.”

The efficacy of the entire drone program is highly suspect. The following is from the same report:

The number of "high-level" targets killed as a percentage of total casualties is extremely low -- estimated at just 2%.Furthermore, evidence suggests that U.S. strikes have facilitated recruitment to violent non-state armed groups, and motivated further violent attacks.

Subjugated and 'craven' media

The subject of waterboarding, remarkably, has been a topic in U.S. newspapers since the Phillipine Insurrection at the beginning of the 20th century, when U.S. soldiers were accused of torturing Filipino prisoners with the “water cure”:

A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment, published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.

The Kennedy School of Government published a study by a group of Harvard students in 2010, titled, “Torture at the Times: Waterboarding in the Media." The remarkable results of this study show evidence of no longer using the term “torture” in U.S. newspapers post 9/11, when these horrific acts are committed by U.S. armed forces.

Ironically, when these acts are committed by other countries, the term “torture” is used much more frequently.

One of the worst offenders was The New York Times:

The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.

In addition, the newspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture, while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.”

Furthermore, it was revealed this week that The New York Times and other newspapers bowed to this administration’s request to keep drone bases in Saudia Arabia secret and then later decided to publish the story on the eve of the Brennan-CIA confirmation hearings:

According to a reporter on the national security beat, The New York Times participated in an “informal arrangement” to keep secret a Saudi Arabian base for U.S. interests -- and then suddenly withdrew from that arrangement. A story posted on the paper’s Web site last night -- titled “Drone Strikes’ Dangers to Get Rare Moment in Public Eye“ -- summarizes the leak of a white paper on the Obama administration’s targeted killing program and tees up the Senate confirmation hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Maybe The New York Times' slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” should now be “All the News That’s Fit to Print…When It Makes Us More Money”

The nexus of all these contributing factors to empowering the executive branch is deeply troubling and seems insurmountable. It is rare that when power is given to those in authority, that it is later put aside.

“You may say to yourself, my God, what have I done?" -- Talking Heads ("Once in a Lifetime")

[Rag Blog contributor Jim Turpin is an Austin activist and writer who works with CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas. Read more articles by Tim Turpin on The Rag Blog.]

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Jim Turpin : Is the Imperial Presidency the 'New Normal'?

The Imperial Obama? Image from The Express Tribune.

The 'new normal'?
The Imperial Presidency

"Same as it ever was..."
-- Talking Heads ("Once in a Lifetime")

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / February 27, 2013

First of a two-part series.

Many presidents throughout our history, from revered to despised, have ignored the Constitution and taken on the mantle of imperial power. From Lincoln to FDR to Nixon, the examples are easily found.

In the ancient Roman world, the term imperium refers to the amount of power given to individuals of authority such as dictators or consuls and was frequently applied to generals with military power. The term “imperial” usually is linked to an empire or the concept of imperialism.

But how have we gotten to where we are today, where the president of the United States can detain or assassinate an American citizen without due process? Where American citizens are constantly monitored and personal information is subject to review? Where whistleblowers are now detained and prosecuted for exposing war crimes and corruption?

The development of the executive branch’s imperial power has its gnarled roots deep in American history. Frequently presidents have used it as an excuse during times of war, but this has not always been the case.

Abraham Lincoln famously suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War on April 27, 1861, in response to riots, local militia actions, and the threat that the border slave state of Maryland would secede from the Union. Habeas corpus (literally in Latin “you shall have the body [in court]”) is specifically detailed in the U.S. Constitution in Article I, Section 9: “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

A writ of habeas corpus is used to bring a prisoner or other detainee before the court to determine if the person's imprisonment or detention is lawful.

Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 over 70 years ago on February 19, 1942, which led to the forced internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans that lived on the west coast.

The U.S., citing national security interests, demanded that Japanese-Americans be interned without due process or, it would eventually turn out, any factual basis. Whole communities were rounded up and sent to camps, sometimes just clapboard shelters or converted horse stables, in arid deserts and barren fields in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Arkansas.

Nixon's paranoid presidency..

Richard M. Nixon’s deep paranoia over the civil rights and peace movement led to the continued use of the secret FBI program Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO), as a means to monitor, sabotage, and neutralize legitimate dissent across the country. COINTELPRO infiltrated the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the NAACP, the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the National Lawyer Guild, and many other groups and organizations.

But what drives today’s constitutional overreach by the Executive Office? Recent history points to a number of factors, including:

• Codification of the Executive’s Imperial Power
• America’s One Party System

Codification of the Executive Imperial Power

Within days of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. Congress responded by ramroding a number of open-ended laws that gave the Executive branch a blank check to wage war world-wide and indefinitely detain civilians at home and abroad.

Joanne Mariner of Justia.com neatly fits together the convoluted pieces of the Patriot Act, the Authorization of the Use of Military Force (AUMF), and the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which, though initiated by George W. Bush, is now fully promulgated by Barack Obama:

During the Bush years, despite massive public and press attention to the administration’s detention policies, Congress remained largely out of the picture. While the USA PATRIOT Act contained some provisions on detention, they were never put to use; the Bush administration preferred to create a detention system that was, it assumed, largely free of legal constraints and judicial oversight.

The military prison at Guantanamo and the CIA’s secret prison system were therefore created by executive fiat, without congressional input or restriction. When cases challenging Guantanamo and the military detention of U.S. citizens on U.S. soil got to court, however, the administration claimed that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), a joint resolution passed by Congress in September 2001, gave congressional approval for those detentions.

The AUMF, which authorizes the president to use “necessary and appropriate force” against those whom he determined “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the September 11 attacks, or who harbored such persons or groups, is silent on the issue of detention. A plurality of the U.S. Supreme Court agreed with the administration, nonetheless, that the power to detain is necessarily implied by the power to use military force.

The NDAA, which is renewed every year, also contains sections, according to Mariner, that are deeply troubling to human rights activists:

What is now known as Subtitle D of the NDAA -- the section on detention -- made its first appearance in March of this year (2011). Called the Detainee Security Act in the House, and the Military Detainee Procedures Improvement Act in the Senate, the bills, introduced by Representative Buck McKeon and Senator John McCain, respectively, were meant to shift counterterrorism responsibilities from law enforcement to the military.

The clear goal of the two bills was to require that suspected terrorists either be tried before military commissions or be held in indefinite detention without charge... every provision in subtitle D is objectionable from the standpoint of human rights and civil liberties. Among the controversial provisions are sections 1026, 1027 and 1028 of the bill, which restrict detainee transfers and releases from Guantanamo. But while human rights organizations are worried about these limitations, their gravest concerns pertain to sections 1021 and 1022.

Glenn Greenwald, while still at Salon, addresses Sections 1021 and 1022:

There are two separate indefinite military detention provisions in this bill. The first, Section 1021, authorizes indefinite detention for the broad definition of “covered persons” discussed above in the prior point. And that section does provide that “Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.” So that section contains a disclaimer regarding an intention to expand detention powers for U.S. citizens, but does so only for the powers vested by that specific section.

More important, the exclusion appears to extend only to U.S. citizens “captured or arrested in the United States” -- meaning that the powers of indefinite detention vested by that section apply to U.S. citizens captured anywhere abroad (there is some grammatical vagueness on this point, but at the very least, there is a viable argument that the detention power in this section applies to U.S. citizens captured abroad).

But the next section, Section 1022, is a different story. That section specifically deals with a smaller category of people than the broad group covered by 1021: namely, anyone whom the President determines is “a member of, or part of, al-Qaeda or an associated force” and “participated in the course of planning or carrying out an attack or attempted attack against the United States or its coalition partners.”

For those persons, section (a) not only authorizes, but requires (absent a Presidential waiver), that they be held “in military custody pending disposition under the law of war.” The section title is “Military Custody for Foreign Al Qaeda Terrorists,” but the definition of who it covers does not exclude U.S. citizens or include any requirement of foreignness.

That section -- 1022 -- does not contain the broad disclaimer regarding U.S. citizens that 1021 contains. Instead, it simply says that the requirement of military detention does not apply to U.S. citizens, but it does not exclude U.S. citizens from the authority, the option, to hold them in military custody.

The annual renewal of the NDAA by the Congress of the United States is a sad and deeply troubling testimony to how we empower an Executive branch that is ironically supposed to have their overreach limited by the very branch voting for this law.


America’s One Party System

John Kerry, Winter Soldier.

During the presidential election last fall, if I closed my eyes and listened to speeches on national security, there was basically no policy difference. Both parties called us the “Greatest nation on Earth” and tried to outdo the other with patriotic and nationalistic proclamations and slogans.

As pointed out by Mother Jones during coverage of the election for both party’s conventions, John Kerry (who coincidentally became our new Secretary of State in 2013) spouted, “Ask Osama bin Laden if he is better off now than he was four years ago."

The story went on:

...Democrats have adopted the kind of language that might have been derided as "cowboy rhetoric" four years ago. And Kerry wasn't the first or last speaker to invoke Bin Laden in Charlotte last week [in 2012]. Asking for four more years of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden intoned that "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive!" Eight years ago, Democrats trying to act tough on national security sounded like kids playing pretend; at times, this year's convention sounded like a Roman triumph.

Let’s remember, this is the same Lieutenant John Kerry who as a member of Vietnam Veteran’s Against the War (VVAW) spoke at Winter Soldier in 1971 in Washington, D.C., decrying militarism and war:

We are here in Washington also to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country, the question of racism, which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions also, the use of weapons, the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage in the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war, when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions, in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, the killing of prisoners, accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.

I would be curious to know if Kerry as the new Secretary of State remembers the importance of his testimony in 1971 and what his brothers at VVAW think of him now.

The same Mother Jones article deftly points out that:

Barack Obama has a plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, but neither candidate [Democratic or Republican] actually has a plan to end the war that started on September 11, 2001. Both parties accept that conflict as a permanent feature of American life. An American citizen in the U.S. is as likely to be killed by their own furniture as a Muslim terrorist, but fear of violent Islamic extremism has changed this country almost irrevocably.

But let’s compare... are the Democratic and Republican Party really just the same party on issues like national security?

ProPublica recently did a side-by-side comparison of Bush and Obama policies on the use of torture, surveillance, and detention and the results are not very surprising.

To Obama’s credit, CIA “black sites” (outsourced torture sites to foreign countries) and “enhanced interrogation techniques” (also known in the vernacular as “torture”) have been, as far as the American public is aware, discontinued and stopped by this administration.

But... Obama has continued the following policies started by Bush and ramped them up dramatically under his administration:

• Continued renewal of the Patriot Act;
• Wiretaps and data collection of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals;
• Continuation of Guantanamo prison as an indefinite detention center;
• Targeted killings (also known as “assassinations”) of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals without legal oversight;
• Significant increase of drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and possibly now in Mali, that have killed thousands of civilians;
• The use of military commissions to nullify the rights of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals in civilian court.

On issues of national security, America really remains a one-party system that use the “War on Terror” as an excuse to abrogate civil liberties of its’ citizenry.

“You may ask yourself, where does that highway lead to?” -- Talking Heads ("Once in a Lifetime")

In the second installment of this article, I will investigate the use of assassination by "Star Chamber” and how a subjugated and cravenly media has led us down the highway of a fearful nation with fewer and fewer civil liberties.

[Rag Blog contributor Jim Turpin is an Austin activist and writer who works with CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas. Read more articles by Tim Turpin on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Jim Turpin on the Myth of 'American Exceptionalism'

Jim Turpin, center, with Rag Radio's Tracey Schulz, left, and Thorne Dreyer in the KOOP studios, Austin, Texas, July 13, 2012.
Rag Radio interview:
Peace activist Jim Turpin
on the myth of 'American exceptionalism'

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / July 25, 2012

Peace Activist and writer Jim Turpin was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, July 13, 2012, on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas. Turpin discussed issues raised in his article, "The Myth of American Exceptionalism," published at The Rag Blog on July 6, 2012.

Listen to Thorne Dreyer's Rag Radio interview with Jim Turpin, here:


Rag Radio features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. The syndicated show is produced in the studios of KOOP-FM, Austin's cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station. It is broadcast live on KOOP and streamed live on the Internet, and is rebroadcast on WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA.

Jim Turpin, a native of Austin, Texas, who works in the field of public health, has a Bachelor of Science in Speech Communications from the University of Texas at Austin. He is a member of Code Pink/Austin and an associate member of Veterans for Peace. He also volunteers at Under the Hood Café & Outreach Center, the GI coffeehouse at Ft. Hood, Texas, and is a contributor to The Rag Blog.

In his Rag Blog article, Jim Turpin pointed out that the United States is number one in the world in military spending with troop presence in over 150 countries; has record levels of hunger, poverty and unemployment; has seen the rise of an Orwellian national security state; and has experienced "obscene accumulation of wealth by a corporate plutocracy" -- with record corporate profits while middle-class American families have "lost a staggering 39% of their net worth."

Turpin wrote that "America is indeed exceptional on many levels. We remain a country envied around the globe for our ability to create, think, and believe we can be a better place for all people. Maybe we only now are beginning to see that war, nationalism, wealth, and power are not the tools to make this happen."

Watch Jeff Zavala's video of Thorne Dreyer's Rag Radio interview with Jim Turpin:

Jim Turpin discussed the myth of "American exceptionalism" on Rag Radio, Friday, July 13, 2012. Video by Jeff Zavala of ZGraphics, who filmed the show live in the KOOP studios in Austin.
Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, 91.7-fM in Austin, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio: THIS FRIDAY, July 27, 2012, Actor, Musician & former Movement Lawyer Brady Coleman, with live performance by The Melancholy Ramblers. Brady will also be joined by Jim Simons in remembering the late Cam Cunningham of Austin's movement law commune.

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Jim Turpin : The Myth of 'American Exceptionalism'

Image from The America Issue. Inset image below from Reuters and The American.
Let me count the ways:  
The myth of 'American Exceptionalism'

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / July 6, 2012

“The position of the Americans is therefore quite exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic people will ever be placed in a similar one” -- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (1835)

[Jim Turpin discusses the issues raised in this article with Thorne Dreyer on Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin and streamed live on the web. Listen to the podcast of Dreyer's interview with Jim Turpin here.]

Though this early 19th century French political thinker extolled the Puritanical virtues and individualism of the newly born American government, there is no way he could have seen this being co-opted two centuries later as fervent nationalism by unscrupulous politicians of both political parties.

This belief in a “Puritan Americana” as qualitatively superior to the rest of the world, is frequently projected by many American politicians, including Ronald Reagan.

In his January 11, 1989 farewell speech he weaves his image of Americ

I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity.

This “shining city” reference is straight from John Winthrop’s sermon, "A Model of Christian Charity" (1630), on the voyage to the Massachusetts Bay Colony:

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.

Winthrop’s thesis is preparation of his Puritan brethren for a society based on charity and decent human behavior in a harsh and new environment.

Winthrop states:

There is a time when a Christian must sell all and give to the poor, as they did in the Apostles’ times. There is a time also when Christians (though they give not all yet) must give beyond their ability, as they of Macedonia (2 Cor. 8).

Reagan mentions none of this, and his administration was not known for charity to the needy, from the Savings & Loan debacle to the total lack of response to the AIDs crisis of the 1980’s.

But was Reagan right? Are we exceptional as a people and country? I would answer “yes” and here is how the United States should be considered “exceptional”:

• Massive U.S. military spending along with waging war and troop presence around the world
• Record levels of U.S. poverty, hunger and unemployment compared to other countries
• Increased power of the U.S. “national security state” that has gutted democratic principles
• Record profits by U.S. corporations with no returns to the American people

Massive U.S. military spending and worldwide troop presence

The United States remains the number one country in the world on military expenditure.

In 2010, the U.S. spent $698 billion dollars on its military, as much as the top 15 other countries combined (including China, the U.K., France, and Russia) or 43% of the total world share of military spending. Though the U.S accounts for about 5% of the world’s population, we now account for almost 50% of the military spending.

The United States has military presence in over 150 countries around the world including such countries as Japan, Germany, and South Korea, from wars and conflicts that were concluded over 60 years ago.

Our very presence is an imperial footprint that both is symbolic for the occupied and has real life and death consequences for civilians.

In December of 2011, the President after almost nine years of occupation and unilateral war, finally withdrew all combat troops from Iraq and left a huge force of corporate mercenaries behind as proxy military.

What he did not mention to the American people was the massive economic toll that both wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have inflicted upon the American taxpayer.

According to the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University, Cost of War (2011), the costs of these two conflicts since 2001 are in the trillions.

Estimates for total dollars spent or projected to be spent ranges from $3.2 to 4.0 trillion and include:

• $1.31 trillion dollars for the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan
• $652.4 billion on additional “base funds” (overage for defense projects)
• $185.4 billion on interest from borrowing monies from foreign countries
• $74.2 billion in “foreign assistance” to the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan
• $400 billion on “homeland security” since initiating the “War on Terror”
• $32 billion for more than a million veterans on medical and disability benefits
• $1 trillion projected costs to veterans for medical/disability in the next 40 years. Does spending on war create jobs and if so how many?

Per the Cost of War report:

Wars in general stimulate demand for various outputs such as aircraft, ammunition, and uniforms.

Approximately 8.3 jobs are created by every $1 million in military spending... In fact, public funds would have created more jobs in the past decade if they had been invested in such industries or sectors as home weatherization, construction, healthcare, or education.

A million dollars of spending would create 15.5 jobs in public education, 14.3 jobs in healthcare, 12 jobs in home weatherization, or about the same number of jobs in various renewable energy technologies. A million dollars spent on construction (residential and non-residential structures) creates 11.1 direct and indirect jobs.

Record levels of U.S. poverty, hunger, and unemployment

The U.S Census Bureau reported in September 2011 that:

The nation's official poverty rate in 2010 was 15.1 percent, up from 14.3 percent in 2009 -- the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate. There were 46.2 million people in poverty in 2010, up from 43.6 million in 2009 -- the fourth consecutive annual increase and the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published.

Additionally, 20.5 million Americans live in extreme poverty. This means their family’s cash income is less than half of the poverty line, or about $10,000 a year for a family of four.

Poverty can be defined and measured many different ways, which makes global comparison difficult, and can be based on GDP per capita, “poverty lines” based on gross salary, “purchasing parity power” and other measures.

The Economist recently detailed the measurement differences:

Poverty means different things in different countries. In Europe, the poor are those whose income falls below 60% of the median. Britain uses three measures: one relative, one absolute and a broader indicator of material deprivation, such as whether a child can celebrate his birthday. The concept of poverty becomes even more slippery when attempting international comparisons. The United Nations’ “human-development index” assesses countries across a range of indicators, such as schooling and life expectancy.

Using the United Nations’ “human-development index” (HDI) in the U.N.’s Human Development Report 2011, the United States ranks 4th behind Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands. This compares more favorably to the countries we recently have occupied (Iraq at 132 and Afghanistan at 172).

Though the United States HDI rating appears positive, the fact that over 46 million Americans live in poverty doesn’t help those struggling daily to survive in our country.

With poverty, inevitably comes hunger, and in one of the richest countries in the world, the United States has appalling hunger statistics. The governmental term for hunger is “food insecurity” and “very low food security” and the USDA in 2010 published remarkable hunger statistics including:

• In 2010, 48.8 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 32.6 million adults and 16.2 million children.
• In 2010, 14.5 percent of households (17.2 million households) were food insecure.
• In 2010, 5.4 percent of households (6.4 million households) experienced very low food security.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nine states exhibited statistically significant higher household food insecurity rates than the U.S. national average 2008-2010:

Texas ranks second worst after Mississippi…

• United States      14.6%
• Mississippi         19.4%
• Texas                   18.8%
• Arkansas             18.6%
• Alabama              17.3%
• Georgia               16.9%
• Ohio                    16.4%
• Florida                16.1%
• California           15.9%
• North Carolina   15.7%

Along with hunger comes the availability of fresh and healthy foods to the citizens of the United States, especially to low income families struggling to feed their families. A new USDA website “Food Desert Locator” indicates 10% of American families live in a “food desert”. A “food desert” is defined as any census area where at least 20% of inhabitants are below the poverty line and 33% live more than a mile from a supermarket. This means you are both poor and have little or no access to fresh and healthy food.

Unemployment remains a staggering statistic in the post 2008 recession and economic collapse for the citizens of the United States.

The most recent U.S. Bureau of Labor & Statistics report from May 4, 2012 details:

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.5 percent), adult women (7.4 percent), teenagers (24.9 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and Hispanics (10.3 percent) showed little or no change in April, while the rate for blacks (13.0 percent) declined over the month…The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.1 million in April. These individuals made up 41.3 percent of the unemployed.

Bottom line from this report is, long term unemployment (for 27 weeks or more) for everyone is common and especially bad if you are Black (13.0%) or Hispanic (10.3%)... sadly, even returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan have a 9.0% unemployment rate for men and 9.9% rate for women. Welcome home veterans...


Rise of the U.S. national security state

As I have seen written on many protest banners lately, “Orwell’s 1984 was meant to be a warning, not an instruction manual.”

The United States since 9/11 has created a massive bureaucratic and basically unaccountable national security apparatus that not only is costing billions of dollars, but has unfettered access to information about the American public, that even 10 years ago would have seemed unimaginable. It has grown exponentially in the last 10 years and seems almost unstoppable.

The rise of this security apparatus seems to benefit one American institution: corporations.

The Washington Post in 2010, spent two years researching this topic in a series of articles called "Top Secret America," including an attempt at listing corporations based on type of work, which shows hundreds of companies being paid billions of dollars for this clandestine work. There remains no one source that can firmly account how much is spent annually in this area.

Some of this report’s findings include:

• Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
• An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
• In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings -- about 17 million square feet of space.
• Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
• Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year -- a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Beyond the enormous cost of these entrenched institutions, what is the effect to the constitutional principles of this country? Have we as a nation given over the rights expressed so eloquently in the Constitution and Bill of Rights, so that we can be “safe”?

From the new laws that allow indefinite detention and assassination of American citizens without trial, to the use of electronic surveillance and “non-military” application of drones in the United States, many legal and constitutional scholars now fear the worst has come to pass.


Record profits by U.S. corporations

While worker’s wages and net wealth have dropped precipitously since 2008, calculations for 2010 show that corporate profits account for 14% of the total national income, the largest rise since 1942, “when the need for war materials filled the order books of companies at the same time the government imposed wage and price controls, holding down the costs companies had to pay."

Bottom line, companies are making massive profits at a time when most Americans have lost huge portions of their net accrued wealth.

The Federal Reserve released its “Survey of Consumer Finances” report this last June 2012 and the report details that middle class American families lost a staggering 39% of their net worth -- from $126,400 to $77,300 -- putting them roughly on par with their worth in 1992... a 20-year loss of net worth that sent what remains of the “middle class” reeling. The majority of this impact was a result of the housing crisis and recession that began in 2008.

So if the middle class was sucker-punched by the economy, how have corporate CEOs fared during this time period? Have they tightened their belts like the rest of us? Well... no.

The head of a typical public company made $9.6 million in 2011, according to an analysis by The Associated Press using data from Equilar, an executive-pay research firm.

That was up more than 6 percent from the previous year, and marks the second year in a row of increases. The figure is also the highest since the AP began tracking executive compensation in 2006.

The typical American worker would have to labor for 244 years to make what the typical boss of a big public company makes in one. The median pay for U.S. workers was about $39,300 last year. That was up 1 percent from the year before, not enough to keep pace with inflation.

This obscene accumulation of wealth by a corporate plutocracy was one of the driving forces behind Occupy Wall Street (OWS) in September 2011, one of the most creative activist movements in decades.

In OWS’ “Principles of Solidarity,” they state: “We are daring to imagine a new socio-political and economic alternative that offers greater possibility of equality.”

OWS, though belittled by both conservative and progressive pundits, put forth the following points of unity:

• Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy;
• Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
• Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;
• Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
• Redefining how labor is valued;
• The sanctity of individual privacy;
• The belief that education is human right; and
• Making technologies, knowledge, and culture open to all to freely access, create, modify, and distribute.

America is indeed exceptional on many levels. We remain a country envied around the globe for our ability to create, think, and believe we can be a better place for all people. Maybe we only now are beginning to see that war, nationalism, wealth, and power are not the tools to make this happen.

[Rag Blog contributor Jim Turpin is a native Austinite and member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.]

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Jim Turpin : Is the United States a 'Banana Republic'?

Image from polisci.wisc.edu.
Lookout, O. Henry!
How did the United States
become a 'banana republic'?

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / February 1, 2011

ba•nan•a re•pub•lic (noun) A small country that is economically dependent on a single export commodity or on outside help, and is typically governed by a dictator or the armed forces.

“Banana republic” was first used by author William Sydney Porter (“O. Henry”) in Cabbages and Kings (1904) while residing in Honduras after hiding out for allegedly embezzling funds from the First National Bank of Austin in 1894.

“This is America, not a banana republic.” -- Vincent Bugliosi

Well... I hate to break it to the esteemed lawyer above, but the United States is a banana republic and here’s why:

• Unmitigated torture and detention of U.S. citizens & foreign nationals
• Extrajudicial assassinations of U.S. citizenry by strong man in charge
• Unlimited spying on citizenry & seizure of property
• Control of majority of economic resources by wealthy elites
• Massive indebtedness to foreign powers and funding war

Unmitigated torture and detention of US citizens & foreign nationals:

As part of the “War on Terror," the Obama administration continues the draconian national security “policies” of George W. Bush. These include indefinite detention at CIA “black sites” and at Guantanamo, “evidence” produced through torture, post acquittal “detention power," and military commissions or tribunals with severely limited “due process." This list barely touches the full complement of tools used by our government to flout the rule of law.

Key among these is the use of torture and detention for both U.S. citizens and foreign nationals. The abuses at Guantanamo and other “black sites” are well known: water boarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions, humiliation, and degradation. But what is not as well known is that this has happened to U.S. citizens and the “evidence” produced is admissible in military commissions.

In 2006, the Congress passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA)
which allows

procedures deviating from the traditional rules of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). Among other shortcomings, the MCA rejects the right to a speedy trial, allows a trial to continue in the absence of the accused, delegates the procedure for appointing military judges to the discretion of the Secretary of Defense, allows for the introduction of coerced evidence at hearings, permits the introduction of hearsay and evidence obtained without a warrant, and denies the accused full access to exculpatory evidence.

Canadian Omar Khadr was 15 years old when picked up and accused by the U.S. government of planting roadside bombs and killing a U.S. soldier with a grenade in Afghanistan in 2002.

Defense lawyers want the military judge, Army Col. Patrick Parrish, to exclude any confessions Khadr made to U.S. interrogators following his capture, wounded and near dead, on grounds of either coercion or torture. Prosecutors seek to use statements Khadr made to his captors at age 15 and 16 at his upcoming trial...

Critics cast his trial as the first of a so-called "child soldier" in modern Western history. They argue that Khadr should have been given special treatment, including rehabilitation, and not shipped from Afghanistan to the prison camps where he was held for year as an alleged teen terrorist among adult "enemy combatants."

He still remains untried after nine years at Guantanamo and will likely never be tried or released.

U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was arrested in 2002 for providing “material support to terrorism” and for training in the use of radiologic weapons in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in 2001 and early 2002. He was then deemed an “enemy combatant” and held in a military brig in South Carolina without notice to family or attorney. Padilla was held for five years and alleges torture including sensory and sleep deprivation, stress positions, and the administration of the hallucinogenic drugs LSD and PCP. Padilla was convicted in 2007 and is serving a 17-year sentence.


Extrajudicial assassinations of U.S. citizenry by strong man in charge

Though this program existed long before the Obama administration, the ordered assassinations of U.S. citizens by the executive branch due to an “unspecified threat” seems beyond the pale for most Americans and citizens of the world.

The ACLU recently stated:

It is alarming to hear that the Obama administration is asserting that the president can authorize the assassination of Americans abroad, even if they are far from any battlefield and may have never taken up arms against the U.S., but have only been deemed to constitute an unspecified "threat."

This is the most recent consequence of a troublingly overbroad interpretation of Congress's 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force. This sweeping interpretation envisions a war that knows no borders or definable time limits and targets an enemy that the government has refused to define in public. This policy is particularly troubling since it targets U.S. citizens, who retain their constitutional right to due process even when abroad.

Glenn Greenwald in Salon also noted that

I actually can't believe that there is even a "debate" over whether an American President -- without a shred of due process or oversight -- has the power to compile hit lists of American citizens whom he orders the CIA to kill far away from any battlefield. The notion that the President has such an unconstrained, unchecked power is such a blatant distortion of everything our political system is supposed to be -- such a pure embodiment of the very definition of tyrannical power -- that, no matter how many times I see it, it's still hard for me to believe there are people willing to expressly defend it.

The citizen in question is Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen born in New Mexico in 1971 and a Muslim cleric accused of orchestrating terror attacks from Yemen. In December 2010 a federal judge dismissed a challenge to the Obama administration's targeted-killing program, meaning the U.S. can continue to go after a Yemeni-American cleric whom it blames for terrorist plots.

The case, brought by the father of cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, raised difficult questions about the breadth of U.S. executive power, but U.S. District Judge John Bates said he couldn't answer them as the father lacked legal standing to bring the case. The "serious issues regarding the merits of the alleged authorization of the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen overseas must await another day or another (non-judicial) forum."

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) tried in August of 2010 to pass a bill that prohibits extrajudicial assassinations, but failed to get enough votes. The Congressman stated: “The U.S. government cannot act as judge, jury, and executioner."


Unlimited spying on citizenry and seizure of property

As a response to Richard Nixon’s propensity to spy on political and activist groups which blatantly violated the Fourth Amendment (unreasonable search and seizure), the Carter administration passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in 1978. The act was created to provide judicial and Congressional oversight of the government's covert surveillance activities of foreign entities and individuals in the United States, while maintaining the secrecy needed to protect national security.

It allowed surveillance, without court order, within the United States for up to one year unless the "surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party." If a United States person is involved, judicial authorization was required within 72 hours after surveillance begins.

In the period 1979-2006 a total of 22,990 applications for warrants were made to the Court of which 22,985 were approved (sometimes with modifications; or with the splitting up, or combining together, of warrants for legal purposes), and only five were definitively rejected.

This means that only .02% of submitted governmental FISA requests were denied by the court.

Even with this governmental “rubber stamp” to spy on U.S. citizens, the Bush administration and its’ national security measures went beyond the confines of FISA authorization and allowed the National Security Administration (NSA) to track the international phone calls and e-mails of hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans without use of the court. The FISA Amendment Act of 2008 was passed (and fully supported by then Senator Obama) and as the ACLU pointed out,

...the law meant to “update” FISA instead gutted the original law by eviscerating the role of the judicial oversight in government surveillance. The law also gave sweeping immunity to the telecommunications companies that aided the Bush administration’s unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping program by handing over access to our communications without a warrant.

With the recent release of Wikileaks documents, seizure of property is now also the rule when U.S. citizens return from traveling abroad. Salon magazine recently discussed this very issue and the legal ramifications:

For those who regularly write and read about civil liberties abuses, it's sometimes easy to lose perspective of just how extreme and outrageous certain erosions are. One becomes inured to them, and even severe incursions start to seem ordinary.

Such was the case, at least for me, with Homeland Security's practice of detaining American citizens upon their re-entry into the country, and as part of that detention, literally seizing their electronic products -- laptops, cellphones, Blackberries and the like -- copying and storing the data, and keeping that property for months on end, sometimes never returning it.

Worse, all of this is done not only without a warrant, probable cause or any oversight, but even without reasonable suspicion that the person is involved in any crime. It's completely standard-less, arbitrary, and unconstrained. There's no law authorizing this power nor any judicial or Congressional body overseeing or regulating what DHS is doing.

Control of majority of economic resources by wealthy elites

Wealth inequality and plutocracy may now be at the highest point in U. S. history. Corporations are making huge profits and the recent passage of the tax bill in December heavily favors the top earning elite. With best ever fourth-quarter 2010 corporate profits from Apple ($.4.31 billion), Intel ($3.4 billion), along with many others including the financial institutions bailed out by tax payers including JP Morgan who

reported a 48 percent increase in profits over 2009 and a 47 percent increase for the fourth quarter of 2010 over the same period the previous year. JP Morgan netted a profit for the year of $17.4 billion, a figure equivalent to the gross domestic product of Bolivia

The plutocrats of this country are not just doing well, they are exceeding levels not seen since the wealth gap that was created right before the Great Depression.

In 1928, the top 0.01% of U.S. families averaged 892 times more income than families in the bottom 90%. By contrast, in 2006 the top 0.01 percent averaged 976 more income than America’s bottom 90 percent.

Inversely with wealth increasing, tax rates have plummeted for the rich. Taxpayers making more than $1 million in 1944 paid 65% of their total income in taxes. In 2005, those making $1 million faced a top marginal rate of 35% or 23% of their income in federal taxes.

Let’s not forget that the Obama administration, with a majority in both the House and Senate, caved to the Republican party in December 2010 by continuing the ruinous Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. He helped ramrod a tax cut for the uber-rich that added $900 billion to the over $14 trillion U.S. national debt. This was not well received by some Democrats, but passed anyway and was hailed as bipartisan cooperation.

Congratulations. Each man, woman and child in the U.S now owes around $45,000 to eliminate the national debt. Go ahead and add that to your mortgage, credit card, and college debt which exceeds annual disposal income by 122.5%. In other words, you are enslaved permanently to massive debt.

But who has done well in the last 15 years? Well, if you are a CEO, your pay has increased +298.2%, while production workers have had a +4.3% increase and federal workers have had their pay fall by -9.3%. But don’t worry, corporations have had a +106.7% profit increase since 1990. Go figure.


Massive indebtedness to foreign powers and funding war

You don’t have to be a math genius to figure out that huge tax cuts along with a massive increase in spending causes a huge national deficit and federal debt. The majority of U.S. debt is held by foreign countries via U.S. Treasury bonds. These bonds are held primarily by Asian countries (China, $907 billion, and Japan, $877 billion) but also by other foreign powers including the United Kingdom ($477 billion) and oil exporting countries ($214 billion).

This has caused concern that these controlling foreign entities may have not only economic but also political control of the United States policies with vast control of our national debt.

So where are your tax dollars going? 54% of federal tax dollars go to military spending (36% to current military operations to the tune of $965 billion and 18% or $484 billion for past military spending including vet benefits and interest on national debt borrowing). The government typically “cooks the books” and underestimates military spending by including trust funds (i.e. Social Security) and the expenses of past military spending as not distinguished from non-military spending.

It seems that one major export we have for the world is endless war. To date, the total cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is $1.26 trillion. This obscene amount has been approved over and over again, by both Democrats and Republicans since 2001, including the $33 billion war supplemental in August 2010. This war is bought and paid for by both parties.

Nobel economic laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz predicted that by the time the U.S. leaves these two conflicts we will have spent over $3 trillion and we may well exceed this amount when factoring in the national debt, the current economic crisis and the rising cost of oil.

So the question remains… are we now the mythical “banana republic” Anchuria that O. Henry created in Cabbages and Kings?

At that time we had a treaty with about every foreign country except Belgium and that banana republic, Anchuria...

It seems to me we don’t even rate with Anchuria... or Belgium for that matter.

[Jim Turpin is a native Austinite and member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.]

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Jim Turpin : Military Suicides, PTSD at All-Time High

Under the Hood Café near Ft. Hood in Killeen Texas is a place where active duty GIs and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan can discuss the debilitating effects of war. Photo from Under the Hood / Flickr.
Texas' Fort Hood sets the pace:
PTSD and suicides in the military
are at an all-time high

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / October 27, 2010

KILLEEN, Texas -- Even with the spin from the current administration that the “war is over” in Iraq, it is well known that 50,000 combat-ready troops remain in the country. Add to that a recent deployment of 2,000 troops from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment from Fort Hood in Texas. At present almost 100,000 troops remain in Afghanistan.

With the total number of U.S. military personnel cycling through both Afghanistan and Iraq at almost 1.8 million, and with the RAND corporation estimating that 18% have PTSD (which is deemed low by some experts), this would put the returning numbers with PTSD at 324,000.

A recent article in The New York Times confirms what the organizers of the Killeen-based GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café have been battling at Fort Hood for the last year and a half: suicides are at the highest point since 2008, with 14 confirmed suicides since the beginning of 2010. In one recent weekend, there were three suicides and one murder-suicide at Fort Hood.

With the population at Fort Hood ranging from 46,000 to 50,000 soldiers at any given time, the rate of suicide is four times the national average, based on Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates of 11.5 suicides per 100,000 people.

The repeated deployment of military personnel who suffer from both physical and psychological wounds has led to these all-time high suicide rates. A recent article in the American Journal of Public Health studied 2,500 New Jersey National Guardsmen and determined “deployed soldiers were more than three times as likely as soldiers with no previous deployments to screen positive for post traumatic stress disorder.”

Despite these staggering statistics, the Fort Hood command continues to find ways to deny soldiers their right to receive necessary mental health services. Several soldiers have come forward recently with reports of harassment, undue punishment, and interference when seeking these necessary services.

A number of examples include:

• The imprisonment of SPC. Eric Jasinski in March 2010. Jasinski, who was suffering from PTSD, refused redeployment to Iraq based on this condition. It was feared that Jasinski's confinement could interfere with his ability to receive his prescribed medications. Eric's attorney James Branum stated, "He was seeing a psychiatrist for his condition and prescribed Zoloft for depression and Trazadone to get to sleep, and they handed him his gun and told him to go back to Iraq."


• The deployment of 50 soldiers from Ft. Hood with physical (knee, back, and shoulder issues due to bomb blasts) and psychological (PTSD/TBI) issues in June 2010 to the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin, California. Combat training for those soldiers with verified PTSD and other anxiety disorders runs counterintuitive to generally accepted psychiatric practices.


• Recent reports from soldiers at Ft. Hood suffering from PTSD and substance abuse who are being given extra work loads or are being kept from dealing with additional personal crises at home. Issues they are confronted with include being given medication only (instead of counseling) or being ignored by the chain of command when they request assistance.

Veteran deaths also surge after discharge from the military and are often the result of vehicle accidents, motorcycle crashes, drug overdoses, or other causes. An article this month in The New York Times discusses the huge number of veteran deaths attributed to destructive, risky, and lethal behaviors:

“The data show that veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan were two and a half times as likely to commit suicide as Californians of the same age with no military service. They were twice as likely to die in a vehicle accident and five and a half times as likely to die in a motorcycle accident. These numbers are truly alarming and should wake up the whole country,” said United States Representative Bob Filner, Democrat of San Diego, who is the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

“They show a failure of our policy.”

The Under the Hood Café and Outreach Center, the GI coffeehouse located near Ft. Hood, Texas, the largest military base in the U.S., offers GIs a free speech zone. It provides a non-military environment that allows active duty GIs and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan to discuss the debilitating effects of war. Under the Hood offers free referrals for medical and psychological services and legal assistance for those soldiers who are resisting redeployment to war zones.

To benefit its ongoing efforts in support of GIs, veterans, and military families, Under the Hood is having a “Hoodstock Flashback” concert (see graphic below) on Sunday, November 14, from 6-11 p.m. at Jovita’s in Austin. Admission is $10 at the door and includes such artists as Barbara K, Karen Abrahams, Will T. Massey, and Richard Bowden.

[Jim Turpin is a native Austinite and member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Café at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.]

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Jim Turpin : Assassinations, Anyone?

Image from Assassins / IMFDB.
Due process and special ops:
Assassinations, anyone?

By Jim Turpin / The Rag Blog / August 25, 2010

Every American citizen has heard the legal phrase “due process of law," but do you really know what that means?

The Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

The Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause has two aspects: procedural and substantive. Procedural due process is concerned with the process by which legal proceedings are conducted. It requires that all persons who will be materially affected by a legal proceeding receive notice of its time, place, and subject matter so that they will have an adequate opportunity to prepare. It also requires that legal proceedings be conducted in a fair manner by an impartial judge who will allow the interested parties to present fully their complaints, grievances, and defenses. The Due Process Clause governs civil, criminal, and administrative proceedings from the pretrial stage through final appeal, and proceedings that produce arbitrary or capricious results will be overturned as unconstitutional.

It surfaced earlier this year that our President (a former constitutional professor of law and senior lecturer at the University of Chicago) is now authorizing, without Congressional consent, and against constitutional authority, assassinations of U.S. citizens abroad. Dana Priest in the Washington Post reported:

As part of the operations, Obama approved a Dec. 24 (2009) strike against a compound where a U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Aulaqi, was thought to be meeting with other regional al-Qaeda leaders. Although he was not the focus of the strike and was not killed, he has since been added to a shortlist of U.S. citizens specifically targeted for killing or capture by the JSOC, military officials said...

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, "it doesn't really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them," a senior administration official said. "They are then part of the enemy.

Both the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) maintain lists of individuals, called "High Value Targets" and "High Value Individuals," whom they seek to kill or capture. The JSOC list includes three Americans, including Aulaqi, whose name was added late last year.

Interestingly, during George W. Bush’s reign, there was intense and heated debated over the indefinite detention and torture of “high value individuals” at Black Ops sites across the world (Bagram Air Force Base, Syria, Egypt, etc.). Even Obama criticized the Bush administration during the presidential race and then promised to close Guantanamo after taking office. This has not happened and most likely never will, even though intelligence shows that Guantanamo remains a recruiting tool, used by extremists around the world.

There have been a number of reports that show the complete innocence of these accused “terrorists” whether U.S. citizens or not:

"There are still innocent people there (Guantanamo)," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years..." Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."

Glenn Greenwald in Salon (1/27/2010) wrote:

Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations... That's why we have what are called "trials" -- or at least some process -- before we assume that government accusations are true and then mete out punishment accordingly.

But now, there seems to be little or no discussion over the assassination of U.S. citizens for their alleged ties to “terrorist organizations."

The only recent outcry has been from Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) who introduced a bill (HR 6010) titled: "To prohibit the extrajudicial killing of United States citizens, and for other purposes."

Democratic Congressman Kucinich's draft bill H.R. 6010 states in part, "No one, including the president, may instruct a person acting within the scope of employment with the United States Government or an agent acting on behalf of the United States Government to engage in, or conspire to engage in, the extrajudicial killing of a United States citizen... As Kucinich points out, "The US government cannot act as judge, jury, and executioner."

So the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) along with the CIA seems to be carrying out these “extrajudicial” (outside of the law) assassinations all over the world.

Who or what is JSOC?

The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) is a component command of the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) and is charged to study special operations requirements and techniques to ensure interoperability and equipment standardization, plan and conduct special operations exercises and training, and develop Joint Special Operations Tactics.

In March 2009, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh described JSOC as "a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently... They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office... Congress has no oversight of it.

A few months later, when it was reported that General Stanley McChrystal would be taking over command of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, journalist Gareth Porter noted that McChrystal had been commander of JSOC from April 2003 to August 2008 and commented that his "long specialisation in counter-terrorism operations suggests an officer who is likely to have more interest in targeted killings than in the kind of politically sensitive counterinsurgency programmes that the Obama administration has said it intends to carry out."

So JSOC is the assassination squad for U.S. citizens or other “high value targets” of interest.

But does the United States train others to do assassinations by proxy? In other words, do the dirty work of eliminating leaders, politicians, social movements or others that are in direct conflict with our “national interest” or “sphere of influence."

The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) (formerly known as the School of the Americas (“SOA”), is a United States Department of Defense facility at Ft. Benning, Georgia. This benign sounding “school” or “institute,” established in 1946, has been responsible for training more than 61,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen who have been responsible for some of the most heinous human rights abuses in the 20th century.

From 1946-2001, such infamous dictators (that the U.S. propped up and supported) as Manuel Noriega (Panama) and Augusto Pinochet (Chile) and many others had soldiers and police trained at the SOA. The brutal tactics of “counterinsurgency” taught at the SOA included torture, indefinite detention and extrajudicial killings.

“The U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA) used training materials that condoned executions of guerillas, extortion, physical abuse, coercion, and false imprisonment" asserts an Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB) Report issued June 28, 1996, in Washington, DC. The IOB, a four-person, independent board created three years ago(1993) by President Clinton, is charged with investigating excesses and abuses by the US intelligence community.

The term “death squads” is closely associated with the training received at the SOA. Many of the countries (Chile, Bolivia, etc.) that formerly sent soldiers for training, now have refused this offer from the United States.

To counter the operations at WHINSEC (the new and “improved” name as of 2001), the “School of Americas Watch" was founded by Mary Knoll Father Roy Bourgeois and a small group of supporters in 1990 to protest the training of mainly Latin American military officers at the School of Americas. Most notably, SOA Watch conducts a vigil each November at the site of the academy, located on the grounds of Fort Benning, a U.S. Army military base near Columbus, Georgia, in protest over myriad human rights abuses committed by graduates of the academy.

So are “extrajudicial” killings (code for assassinations) OK with the American people? Most would most likely answer “NO," but what can you do to stop these abuses by the U.S. government?

A first step is to call or email your congressional representative and insist that they support Rep. Kucinich’s bill (HR 6010) to stop “extrajudicial” killings of U.S. citizens.

Ironically, Abraham Lincoln signed General Order 100 in Section IX entitled “Assassinations” in April 1863 that stated:

The law of war does not allow proclaiming either an individual belonging to the hostile army, or a citizen, or a subject of the hostile government, an outlaw, who may be slain without trial by any captor, any more than the modern law of peace allows such intentional outlawry; on the contrary, it abhors such outrage. The sternest retaliation should follow the murder committed in consequence of such proclamation, made by whatever authority. Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism.

[Jim Turpin is a native Austinite and member of CodePink Austin. He also volunteers for the GI coffeehouse Under the Hood Cafe at Ft. Hood in Killeen, Texas.]

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