THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BILL FISHER

By William Fisher

"America, in this young century, proclaims liberty throughout all the world, and to all the inhabitants thereof."

So spoke President George W. Bush in his second inaugural address last January, vowing to help build democratic institutions and strengthen civil society in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Yet today, the Bush administration is substantially reducing funding for the organizations that are traditionally mandated to transform the president's vision into reality.

In budget requests to Congress, funding for democracy promotion in Iraq has been limited. Some organizations ran out of funds in April; others are trying to make their resources last through the summer.

At risk are projects to teach Iraqis how to create and manage political parties, organize and run think tanks, human rights organizations, a free press, and trade unions.

The decline in funding is being attributed to ballooning security costs, which have already caused the Bush Administration to scale back its ambitious reconstruction programs designed to restore Iraq's infrastructure.

Administration officials admit they are requesting fewer dollars for traditional democracy-building programs, but contend that their efforts to help Iraqis to run more effective ministries also contribute to democracy.

At the beginning of the Iraq war, money was not a problem for the organizations traditionally involved in promoting democracy.

For example, soon after the fall of Baghdad, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), received $25 million to expand its Iraq programs, and eventually received a total of $71 million.

It distributed some of these funds to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), and its sister organization, the International Republican Institute (IRI), both affiliated with America's two main political parties.

Now the funding for both organizations has dried up. Their sole source of finance are special funds earmarked by Congress last year, as the result of an effort spearheaded by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat. The funds will be exhausted later this year.

"The solution to Iraq lies in the political process, and it's reckless for the White House to cut funds to strengthen democracy in Iraq at this time," Kennedy said.

The NED has received its final $3 million, but no further funding source has been identified. "It does feel like everybody's getting squeezed in this area," Barbara Haig, the endowment's vice president, told The Washington Post, adding, "There probably is a commitment to these programs in principle. I don't know how much commitment there is in specificity."

The Bush administration has included only $15 million for the two party institutes in next year's budget. The total for democracy promotion in Iraq for 2007 is $63 million, which would mean that most programs would have to be cut. Another $10 million for democracy promotion was included in the president's supplemental request to Congress. This is a tiny fraction of the ten of millions the US spends in Iraq each day.

Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, an advocacy group, called the situation "a travesty" and said she is "appalled" that more is not being done.

"This is the time to show that democracy promotion is more than holding an election. The US will be making a mistake if it "can't see fit to fund follow-up democracy promotion at this time," she said.

Mary Shaw of Amnesty International USA agrees. She told us, "U.S. support for democratic institutions in Iraq is crucial to the future of human rights in that country. More than three years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, conditions in that country are at a critical juncture, and the security of the Iraqi people hangs in the balance. The US owes it to the Iraqi people to provide the means to rebuild and strengthen not only their civil infrastructure but their societal infrastructure as well. Only then will Iraq be truly liberated."

But another view is expressed by Christopher J. Roederer, Associate Professor at the Florida Coastal School of Law. Prof. Roederer told us, "It is not wholly surprising that funding for democracy promotion in Iraq is dwindling. Democracy promotion was not the reason for invading Iraq, not even the stated reason for going into Iraq. Democracy promotion only came to the fore as a reason for invading Iraq after the invasion and after the 'weapons of mass destruction' justification and the 'connections to Al-Qaeda' justification had been discredited."

The White House and US aid agencies have declined to discuss the budget cuts.

However, the dramatic drop in support for democracy-building programs in Iraq may well signal a quiet Bush Administration decision that these types of programs cannot succeed given Iraq's current state of chaos.

Brian J. Foley, a professor at Florida Coastal School of Law, sums up the situation this way: "It looks as if the Administration has 'cut and run' on its alleged effort to bring democracy to Iraq -- though I don't think the Administration was ever serious about giving freedom to regular Iraqis. If so, there would be a referendum for Iraqis to vote on whether U.S. troops should leave -- the debate would not be limited to discussion among U.S. leaders. Creating a government would be an Iraqi initiative, not a US-controlled one. Unfortunately, after the unnecessary invasion and all of the unnecessary death, destruction, and disorder, and the failure to provide services such as electricity and water in a timely manner, U.S. leaders are probably now afraid to let the Iraqi people have any real control over their own country and destiny."

By William Fisher

“My name is Duffy. Sergeant Duffy to you. I’m going to be your drill sergeant. My job here is to make you college types and Jewboys into real soldiers.”

Such was my introduction to the army and to the man who would supervise my basic training after I was drafted into military service the Korean War in 1950.

The differences between Sergeant Duffy and me are too numerous to enumerate here. But one of them was that the Sergeant was drunk most of the time. Another was that, like all draftees during this period, I was a member of something called the Army of the U.S. – the A.U.S. The A.U.S. consisted of temporary soldiers – draftees like me -- while Duffy belonged to the U.S. Army, otherwise known as the Regular Army.

As we were to learn, Duffy was not some aberration. In the years between the two Great Wars, the regular army was filled with racists and bigots. They were mostly non-commissioned officers, but their views were known to many and shared by some officers all the way to the top of the chain of command.

The couple of hundred men drafted with me somehow included a disproportionate number of people with college degrees and about a dozen Jews. But we came from lots of different places, backgrounds, and religions – and we were virtually unanimous in our view that Sergeant Duffy was in the regular Army because he’d be unable to make it in the world outside the military.

Over the next two years, my fellow draftees and I served as members of a military police company at Governors Island, New York, the headquarters of the First Army. One of the saddest things we learned there was just how ubiquitous the Sergeant Duffys were.

President Truman had only recently desegregated the U.S. Armed Forces, and we felt the intense resentment of that action in our MP station. There still weren’t many African-American soldiers stationed on Governors Island, but there were some. And our Desk Sergeant could always be counted on to single them out for arrest and extended detention for even the smallest infraction.

But that was then and now is now. After the Korean War, my fellow draftees and I were discharged, and most of us wanted to forget our military service as quickly as possible. And I think most of us came to believe that, while in the period between the two Great Wars, the military may have been filled with racists, anti-Semites and other miscreants, today’s military would simply not allow the uniform to be dishonored by allowing the Sergeant Duffys of the world to wear it.

Now, thanks to a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), we learn how wrong we were.

SPLC’s David Holthouse reminds us that ten years ago the Pentagon toughened policies on extremist activities by active duty personnel, a move that came in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing by decorated Gulf War combat veteran Timothy McVeigh and the murder of a black couple by members of a skinhead gang in the elite 82nd Airborne Division.

Today, he reports, “large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists continue to infiltrate the ranks of the world's best-trained, best-equipped fighting force. Military recruiters and base commanders, under intense pressure from the war in Iraq to fill the ranks, often look the other way.”

According to Department of Defense investigator Scott Barfield, neo-Nazis "stretch across all branches of service, they are linking up across the branches once they're inside, and they are hard-core. We've got Aryan Nations graffiti in Baghdad," he added. "That's a problem."

Under pressure to meet wartime manpower goals, the U.S. military has relaxed standards designed to weed out racist extremists. Large numbers of potentially violent neo-Nazis, skinheads, and other white supremacists are now learning the art of warfare in the armed forces, Holthouse reports.

He reminds us that back in 1996, following a decade-long rash of cases where extremists in the military were caught diverting huge arsenals of stolen firearms and explosives to neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations, conducting guerilla training for paramilitary racist militias, and murdering non-white civilians, the Pentagon finally launched a massive investigation and crackdown. One general ordered all 19,000 soldiers at Fort Lewis, Wash., strip-searched for extremist tattoos.

Now, with the country at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the military under increasingly intense pressure to maintain enlistment numbers, weeding out extremists is less of a priority.

"Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members," said Barfield.

"Last year, for the first time, they didn't make their recruiting goals. They don't want to start making a big deal again about neo-Nazis in the military, because then parents who are already worried about their kids signing up and dying in Iraq are going to be even more reluctant about their kids enlisting if they feel they'll be exposed to gangs and white supremacists."

Barfield, who is based at Fort Lewis, said he has identified and submitted evidence on 320 extremists there in the past year. "Only two have been discharged," he said.

Barfield and other Department of Defense investigators said they recently uncovered an online network of 57 neo-Nazis who are active duty Army and Marines personnel spread across five military installations in five states -- Fort Lewis; Fort Bragg, N.C.; Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Stewart, Ga.; and Camp Pendleton, Calif. "They're communicating with each other about weapons, about recruiting, about keeping their identities secret, about organizing within the military," Barfield said. "Several of these individuals have since been deployed to combat missions in Iraq."

Every year, the Army's Criminal Investigation Division conducts a threat assessment of extremist and gang activity among army personnel. "Every year, they come back with 'minimal activity,' which is inaccurate," said Barfield. "It's not epidemic, but there's plenty of evidence we're talking numbers well into the thousands, just in the Army."

Last July, the white supremacist website “Stormfront” hosted a discussion on "Joining the Military."

In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, SPLC President Richard Cohen urged DOD to adopt a zero-tolerance policy regarding racist extremism among members of the U.S. military.

"Because hate group membership and extremist activity are antithetical to the values and mission of our armed forces, we urge you to adopt a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to white supremacy in the military and to take all necessary steps to ensure that the policy is rigorously enforced," Cohen wrote.

"Neo-Nazi groups and other extremists are joining the military in large numbers so they can get the best training in the world on weapons, combat tactics and explosives," said Mark Potok, director of SPLC's Intelligence Project.

"We should consider this a major security threat, because these people are motivated by an ideology that calls for race war and revolution,” he said, adding. “Any one of them could turn out to be the next Timothy McVeigh."

Or Sergeant Duffy.

By William Fisher

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision canceling the blank check President Bush gave himself, the Bush Administration may finally forced into trying to get Congress to pass legislation establishing a Constitutional way to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial – or free them.

But it may also find itself having to deal with another huge headache: the prisoners we don’t know about.

These are the people held at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, and in the CIA’s so-called “black sites” in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

The Pentagon chose Guantanamo because they thought it was a law-free zone beyond the reach of the US justice system, and they now know that is unacceptable. And that, according to the Court’s decision, means they were also wrong about prisoners they now hold in other overseas locations.

As long as prisoners are under US control, they are subject to the same protections as the Supreme Court has now said must be afforded to those at GITMO.

The Supreme Court ruled that the military tribunals set up by President Bush were unlawful because Congress hadn't expressly authorized the Administration to establish them. The justices also said the tribunals violate the 1949 Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of war prisoners and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which guarantees such protections as the right to be present at trial. Lawyers for detainees said this may allow all of the 450 inmates held at Guantanamo access to federal courts, which until now have refused to hear their cases.

But the Supreme Court has now made the issue a lot broader than Guantanamo. US military and intelligence services continue to carry out interrogations in other locations, including at the US base at Bagram, Afghanistan, where, according to news sources, "interrogators are sometimes able to use more aggressive and creative tactics in questioning detainees than their counterparts at Guantanamo Bay can employ."

If human rights groups can be believed, there are some 500 people held at Bagram alone. As far as we know, these prisoners have been designated as “enemy combatants” and some have been held for as long as three or four years without access to lawyers, no information about the charges against them, and only hit-and-miss reviews of their status.

Even after New York Times reporters Tim Golden and Eric Schmitt first exposed Bagram, the subject has received virtually no public attention.

Golden and Schmitt wrote, ““Some administration officials acknowledge that the situation at Bagram has increasingly come to resemble the legal void that led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling in June 2004 affirming the right of prisoners at Guantánamo to challenge their detention in United States courts.”

They added, “Bagram has operated in rigorous secrecy since it opened in 2002. It bars outside visitors except for the international Red Cross and refuses to make public the names of those held there…From the accounts of former detainees, military officials and soldiers who served there, a picture emerges of a place that is in many ways rougher and more bleak than its Cuban counterpart. Men are held by the dozen in large wire cages, the detainees and military sources said, sleeping on the floor on foam mats and, until about a year ago, often using plastic buckets for latrines. Before recent renovations, they rarely saw daylight except for brief visits to a small exercise yard.”

The Times reported that the detainee population at Bagram rose from about 100 prisoners at the start of 2004 to as many as 600 at times last year, according to military figures. The increase was in part the result of a Bush administration decision to shut off the flow of detainees into Guantánamo after the Supreme Court ruled that those prisoners had some basic due-process rights under United States law.

A number of detainees are known to have died in US custody in Afghanistan. American military investigations have determined that homicide was the cause of death in four of them. The cause of death of the others remains undetermined. Nor is it known how many others may have died in US-controlled military camps in other Afghan areas where conflict was taking place, known as Forward Operating Bases.

Bagram has often been described by the US military as a temporary “screening center” from which some detainees would be released and others transferred to Guantanamo. But as Guantanamo. became a lightning rod for worldwide criticism of Bush Administration detention policies, transfers to Cuba were cancelled.

In recent months, there have been increasing press reports describing physical and psychological mistreatment of those who are being interrogated.

In contrast to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where military lawyers, news reporters and the Red Cross received occasional access to monitor prisoner conditions and treatment, the CIA's overseas interrogation facilities are off-limits to outsiders, and often even to other government agencies.

In addition to Bagram, prisoners from Afghanistan and other countries were believed to be detained at two other facilities in Afghanistan -- "the Salt Pit" in Kabul and "the Discotheque," north of Kabul. With these two facilities now closed, Bagram has become the main detention site.

In addition, the US is believed to house detainees in what Dana Priest of The Washington Post described as the CIA’s “black sites,” and on Diego Garcia, an Indian Ocean island leased by the US from Britain.

The hundreds of detainees currently held in these US-controlled facilities have no recourse to human rights safeguards such as the right to challenge their arrest or detention. Some have been detained without charge or trial for extended periods, without access to lawyers or relatives.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has been able to visit detainees in Bagram, but not in other unacknowledged places of detention.

US military commanders in Afghanistan have also refused to let a United Nations’ human rights investigator visit ‘secret’ American prisons there or interview detainees, despite widespread reports of abusive practices, including torture.

The Egyptian-born UN official, Cherif Bassiouni, issued a report critical of US and other Coalition human rights abuses. Shortly after that, the UN eliminated his position, reportedly under pressure from Washington to change his mandate to remove investigation of the US military.

The indefinite, incommunicado or virtually incommunicado, and arbitrary detention of these people may in itself amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and leaves them at risk of further ill-treatment and torture during interrogations.

In all these locations, the CIA and its intelligence service allies are free from the scrutiny of military lawyers steeped in the international laws of war, and thus have the leeway to exert physically and psychologically aggressive techniques, according to national security officials and US and European intelligence officers.

"Stress and duress" techniques reportedly described by US national security officers include keeping prisoners standing or kneeling for hours in black hoods; binding them in awkward, painful positions; depriving them of sleep with 24-hour lights; subjecting them to loud noises; "softening up" by beating; throwing them blindfolded into walls; and depriving wounded prisoners of adequate pain control
medicines.

Brad Adams, Asia Director for Human Rights Watch, says, the US “appears to want to sweep human rights problems in Afghanistan under the carpet." The Supreme Court has now ruled that unacceptable.

In the Supreme Court decision, one of the justices in the majority, Stephen Breyer, said, "Nothing prevents the president from returning to Congress to seek the authority he believes necessary.''

So the Administration and Congress will have to act, though precisely how they will act is unclear. There is always a possibility that the White House may persuade Congress to craft a law that makes just enough changes in US detention policies to satisfy the Supreme Court’s decision, but which largely endorses what the President has been doing all along.

That is also how Congress may deal with the “warrantless wiretaps” carried out by the National Security Agency. It may simply change FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to legalize what the Administration is already doing.

This approach may allow an election-year Congress to crow about reclaiming its rightful power as one of the three coequal branches of our Government, and restored the checks and balances the framers of the Constitution considered so important.

But it will do nothing to force Congress to exercise the rigorous oversight the framers had in mind. Bashing “activist judges” is a lot easier.

We can live in hope, but meaningful oversight is unlikely to happen as long as one political party controls the White House and both houses of Congress.

By William Fisher

President Bush and Vice President Cheney were apoplectic. Publication of the details of U.S. Government surveillance of the SWIFT money-transfer program were “disgraceful,” a threat to national security.

Congressman Peter King suggested that The New York Times – though it was only one of the newspapers to run this story – be charged with treason. Oh, my!

Facts did nothing to quell this press-bashing frenzy. The facts are that the SWIFT program has been reported by numerous media outlets for the past several years.

According to Roger Cressey, a senior White House counter-terrorism official until 2003, “There have been public references to SWIFT before. The White House is overreaching," Cressey told the Boston Globe, when the administration suggests the Times committed ``a crime against the war on terror. It has been in the public domain before."

And if the terrorists were clever enough to hijack four airplanes, surely they would have long since figured out that their money trails were being watched. And would have found less formal financial laundries to carry out their evil venture capitalism.

But for the Bush Administration, the SWIFT story presented a wonderful way to change the subject. From Iraq, where things aren’t going so well. From the Supreme Court, which cancelled the President’s blank check. From immigration, where the President’s tanking poll numbers finally gave our supine House of Representatives the spine to resist the more comprehensive approach proposed by their own party’s Senate colleagues. From rising gasoline prices. From post-Katrina chaos. From our problems with Iran and North Korea, and the Administration’s continuing failure to devote serious resources to the never-ending Israeli-Palestinian issue.

Attacking the messenger is a tried and true Washington tactic. Especially when the messenger is the press.

Democrats didn’t exactly call for Bill Keller’s head, but neither did they distinguish themselves for the political courage to defend the First Amendment.

But the money trail story apparently has legs. Comes now news from the AP that money transfer agencies like Western Union have delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed.

The AP reports that Western Union Financial Services, Inc., an American company based in Colorado, said its clerks simply are following U.S. Treasury Department guidelines that aim to scrutinize cash flows for terrorist links. Most of the flagged transactions are delayed a few hours. Some are blocked entirely.

"The Treasury program interferes with even the most innocent transactions," said the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, in Washington. "Just because Ahmed is a common name on (the government’s) list, everyone with that name is suddenly stuck."

CAIR spokesman Corey Saylor said Treasury needs to reform its rules.

Treasury’s aggressive approach dates from 9/11, and Western Union's caution is not surprising. September 11th hijacker Mohammed Atta sent money from two Western Union agencies in Maryland before boarding the plane he helped crash into New York's World Trade Center.

But a Western Union branch manager told the AP he was forced to obey U.S. rules that he and others consider too broad.

"Mohammed and Ahmed have become problematic names because they are so common on the list of terrorists," said Nixon Baby, who runs a Western Union franchise in a Dubai neighborhood packed with South Asian businesses.

"These are regulations that Western Union is required to obey. We do not have any control," he added.

But critics of the program say it is far too broad, the AP reports. “The number of people inconvenienced in the United Arab Emirates alone, which closely cooperates with U.S. counter-terror operations, is thought to be significant. One Western Union clerk said about 300 money transfers from a single Dubai franchise were blocked or delayed each day — none of which ever turned up a terrorist link.”

In Washington, a U.S. Treasury spokeswoman said foreign banks have used the department's list of terrorist names to freeze $150 million in assets since it was released after Sept. 11. The terrorist list, which is available on the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control Website, contains hundreds of people named Mohammed.

"Every Mohammed is a terrorist now?" asked a Western Union customer whose money transfer was blocked.

Critics of the Treasury guidelines say they are sending more people to informal money transfer networks called "hundis" or "hawalas" that circumvent government and bank scrutiny, the AP reports. Hawala networks are known to have been used by gangsters and terrorists.

The Administration cannot be faulted for trying to follow the financial trails of people bent on destroying us, whether they are charitable organizations or money transfer companies like SWIFT and Western Union.

The question is whether broad-brush surveillance cloaked in secrecy is the most effective way to achieve this goal without writing the government another blank check.

We know the government’s counter-terrorism people are working hard. But are they working smart?

BY William Fisher

Last March, Congress passed legislation requiring Justice Department officials to give them reports by certain dates on how the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers.

But when President George W. Bush signed the measure into law, he added a "signing statement." The statement said the president can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations.

Late last year, Congress approved legislation declaring that U.S. interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

But President Bush's signing statement said the president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.

These are but two examples of more than 100 signing statements containing over 500 constitutional challenges President Bush has added to new laws passed by the Congress - many times more than any of his predecessors.

While he has never vetoed a law, many Constitutional scholars say the President is, in effect, exercising a "line item veto" by giving himself authority to waive parts of laws he doesn't like.

The practice has infuriated members of Congress in both parties because it threatens to diminish their power. They consider it an assault on the notion that the Constitution establishes America's three branches of government - legislative, judicial, and executive - as co-equal.

Further fuelling Congressional anger is Bush's defense of his National Security Agency (NSA) "domestic eavesdropping" program, in which the president claimed he could ignore a 1978 law prohibiting wiretaps of U.S. citizens without "probable cause" and a warrant issued by a court.

The NSA program was revealed by the New York Times in (date). Since then, newspapers have disclosed other secret programs, including amassing millions of domestic phone call records and examining perhaps thousands of financial transactions in an effort to track and interrupt possible terrorist activity.

A member of Bush's own party, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, opened hearings on the subject this week. He said, "The real issue here is whether the president can cherry-pick what he likes."

And the senior Democrat on the committee, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, said, "The president hasn't vetoed any bills, but basically he has done a personal veto. He has said which laws he will not follow and ... put himself above the law, even the same law he has signed."

The hearing is part of a continuing effort by many in Congress to reclaim authority that they say the president has usurped as he has expanded the power of the executive branch.

Bush claims that the Constitution gives the executive branch of government "inherent power" to do "whatever it takes" to protect the people of the United States.

Testifying at the Judiciary Committee hearing on behalf of the Bush Administration, Michelle Boardman, deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the US Department of Justice, said that signing statements serve a "legitimate and important function" and are not an abuse of power.

"Congress should not fear signing statements, but welcome the openness they provide," she said. "The president must execute the law faithfully, but the Constitution is the highest law of the land. If the Constitution and the law conflict, the president must choose," she said.

But many Constitutional scholars disagree.

Among them is Barbara Olshansky, Director Counsel of the Global Justice Initiative at the Center for Constitutional Rights, a prominent advocacy group. She told IPS, "I think it is hard evidence of (Bush's) continued aggressive arrogation of power. It is a blatant attempt to expand power by pulling the rug out from under Congress each time it passes a bill that he dislikes."

She added, "Many of the laws that Bush has decided to bypass or overwrite by this method involve the military, where he once again invokes the idea that as Commander in Chief he can ignore any law that seeks to regulate the military.

Another opposition view came from Prof. Edward Herman of the University of Pennsylvania, who told IPS, "The brazenness of Bush's use of this practice is remarkable. But even more remarkable is the fact that this de facto further nullification of congressional authority fails to elicit sustained criticism and outrage. It is part of a step-by-step abrogation of constitutional government, and it is swallowed by the flag-wavers and normalized. We are in deep trouble!"

Signing statements are not new - their use started with the fifth U.S. President, James Monroe (1817-1825), and from that time they were used sparingly and mostly for rhetorical purposes. Until Ronald Reagan became President in 1980, only 75 statements had been issued. Reagan and his successors, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, made 247 signing statements between them.

But President Bush has taken the practice to a new level, attracting criticism both for the number of statements he has issued as well as for his apparent attempts to nullify any legal restrictions on his actions

Democratic members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate are viewing President Bush's signing statements as a dangerous over-reach of presidential power - and a campaign issue for the congressional elections in November.

Last week House Democrats introduced a resolution requiring the president to notify Congress if the president "makes a determination to ignore a duly enacted provision of law."

And Senator Edward M. Kennedy, known as the "lion" of the Senate, declared, "For far too long, Congress has stood by and watched while President Bush has slowly expanded the unilateral powers of the presidency at the expense of the rest of the government and the people," said Senator Kennedy at this week's hearing.

The U.S. legal community is also concerned. Earlier this month, the American Bar Association's Board of Directors formed a Task Force on Presidential Signing Statements and the Separation of Powers Doctrine to review the use of signing statements and whether or not this use is consistent with the U.S. Constitution.

Bush's signing statements have covered a wide variety of subjects, ranging from the ability of military lawyers to give independent legal advice to their commanders to timely transmission of government-funded scientific information to Congress to rules for firing a government employee whistle-blower who tells Congress about possible wrongdoing.

But until President Bush's signing statement on the anti-torture legislation, the subject went virtually unreported by the U.S. press. According to Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University public administration professor who is an authority signing statements, "I think one of the important things here is for reporters to apply their journalistic instincts to this story."

Cooper concludes that the Bush White House "has very effectively expanded the scope and character of the signing statement not only to address specific provisions of legislation that the White House wishes to nullify, but also in an effort to significantly reposition and strengthen the powers of the presidency relative to the Congress."

Khaled Batarfi is a senior editor at Al Madina, an Arabic-language newspaper in Jedda, and who also writes a weekly column for Arab News, an English-language paper in the city. He earned a doctoral degree at the University of Oregon. His article is reprinted with permission.

By Dr. Khaled Batarfi

Lila is the daughter of a brand-name family. This is important in the marriage market, but she has other important qualifications too. She is beautiful, smart, cute and moderately religious. In the beauty section, she is golden dark, tall with thick, long, flowing hair. In school, she had always been top of her class. Her friends and family love her for her good nature, optimism and sense of humor. She never misses a prayer or a religious duty, and lives a modern life with sophisticated attitude. In short, she is a poster-wife.

Her first shocking lesson came at an early age. The family promised to send her to medical school if she achieved A+ grade in high school. She did, but they changed their mind. That was her life’s dream and it was brutally shattered. Instead of becoming a heart surgeon, as she hoped, she is now a high school teacher. Why? Because this is a job where she doesn’t have to mix with men!

Later, there were more shocking lessons. Her suitors were turned away, one after another. Reasons varied, but mostly it was about their social and economic class. Since she inherited a fortune from her father and has a good salary, her brothers suspected that any man with lesser fortunes was after her money.

By the time the “right” suitor arrived, they had already soaked most of her savings. With promises of profitable investment and wiser management they divided her inheritance as well as that of their mother and sisters among themselves. If persuasion didn’t work, they applied social pressure. A woman who refuses to accommodate her own sons and brothers is called names and denied peace of mind.
Finally, they agreed to a suitor. She wasn’t given enough time to check him out, let alone love him. He turned out to have no merits except coming from a brand-name family. He has a shallow, childish personality, who lets his mother run all his affairs and make all his decisions. She couldn’t communicate or meet at any intellectual or emotional level with him from day one.

No one understood her reasons to demand divorce. Her family, tribe, the court and the whole community were against her. As long as he provides for her, and doesn’t mistreat her physically, there were no acceptable legal, logical or social grounds for divorce. She was lucky, because her husband gave up on her, and his mother agreed. They demanded compensations and got them. Gladly, she paid them back the dowry, gifts, jewelry, and whatever cost them for the wedding party and other events.
After divorce, she was socially punished for her rebellion. Her male guardians still wouldn’t accept suitors of lesser class. Suitable ones wouldn’t marry a divorced woman with rebellious attitude. And she wouldn’t accept silly, shallow, old and expired men just because they happen to come from the right tribe.

Now in her mid-thirties, her chances and choices are increasingly limited. The few suitors who trickle now are mostly in their fifties and sixties with wives and kids. In this range they are usually too traditional for her taste. Some are looking for self-financing, salary-earning wives. Others want to escape busy wives and noisy kids to spend some time every now and then with a young, light and lonely woman. Who needs that?

Lila is still waiting. There are many like her — some in a worse situation than hers. At least, Lila can work — a good investment of energy and time. She can go on the net and communicate with people like me. But others I know are not permitted even to leave home, unless really necessary. More decided to accept the hell they know, rather than try the terrible life of the divorced. Then, there is the problem of kids. Mothers have to stay the course with unpleasant husbands and continue to lead unhappy lives so their children won’t be taken away from them.

A lot has to be reviewed, changed and improved: Laws, rules and customs. Islam gave women their due rights and traditions took them away. Since we claim to be Muslims, we should abide by Islamic rules and follow the noble example set by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).

By William Fisher

If you’re into black humor, you might find it amusing that two of the countries with some of the world’s worst human rights records are making international propaganda hay out of America’s performance in prisoner abuse and civil liberties.

For example, Saudi Arabia’s Arab News, the largest English language newspaper in the Middle East, weighed in on the arrest of the seven Miami men accused of conspiring to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.

In an editorial, the newspaper uses the arrests to observe that, post 9/11, “Many Americans may overlook the increasingly draconian security measures being applied in their own backyard as part of the war against terrorism.”

The paper asks: “Will history record that Osama Bin Laden succeeded after all against his real enemies — liberty and freedom?”

The editorial laments the “ugly and uncompromising authoritarian tendencies” unleashed by the shock of 9/11, noting that in “normal times” these tendencies would be fiercely resisted by many in “The Land of the Free.”

It adds, “Among 70 new measures just announced by the White House is a new domestic spy service within the FBI. Why should such an organization be necessary in addition to the FBI itself, the communications work of the NSA, the Secret Service, the Justice Department and peripherally, the work of the CIA? It has also emerged that throughout the US, financial dealings are being monitored extensively in the hope of tracking the movement of terrorist funds. It is also thought that e-mail and telephone calls are now being widely tapped.”

It then asks two questions: “Who can be sure (these actions) will be discarded when Bin Laden is dead and the scourge of Al-Qaeda finally destroyed?” and whether the Bush administration “can be trusted with such sweeping powers?”

These questions don’t sound at all unfamiliar. I’ve asked them of our government countless times. But look at which pot is calling the kettle black.

Saudi Arabia, now a member of the UN’s new Human Rights Council, has one of the most repressive regimes on earth. Its jails are filled with dissidents. Evidence of death and torture in detention is widespread – the U.S. military is reluctant to repatriate Guantanamo’s Saudi prisoners for fear that they’ll be tortured. The desert kingdom is used as a stop on the itinerary of the CIA’s rendition excursions. Saudi women are treated as third-class citizens or worse. Saudi school textbooks are filled with anti-West and anti-Semitic hate. Hundreds of websites are blocked by massive use of some of IT’s most sophisticated technology. There is no freedom of religion, press, assembly, or much of anything else.

It is worth noting that the Desert Kingdom is also the country that supplies about 15 per cent of our imported energy and one that is routinely hailed by the Bush Administration as our stalwart partner in the “Global War on Terrorism.”

The Arab News editorial obviously wasn’t meant for a domestic Saudi audience. Rather, it was written for the English-speaking expats who live in the Middle East and at the West’s mainstream press, which often quotes editorials from foreign papers.

The second piece of hypocrisy is even arguably even more bizarre. It comes from another bastion of liberty, Iran, a theocracy where the people elect a president but where the mullahs call all the shots worth calling.

As in Saudi Arabia, sounding off against the government can be harmful to your health. Very harmful. Iranian jails are filled with dissidents ranging from renowned scholars and intellectuals to bloggers. Human rights organizations have repeatedly produced evidence of torture in these jails. Iran executes children and women accused of adultery. Its God Squad – the religious police – are hated and feared. Iran even removed Nobel prizewinner Sherin Ebadi from the bench because it said women were not fit to serve as judges.

So it has to be with a tad of skepticism that we assess Iran’s outrage at America’s “shameful human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay.”

According to the official Iranian news service, the IRNA, “the so-called advocate of human rights, the U.S. administration, violated human rights of several hundred individuals suspected of involvement in terrorism since its occupation of Afghanistan in 2002 when it built Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

Quoting reports from Amnesty International and other human rights groups – bodies that can’t get access to Iranian jails – the IRNA writes that “The situation in the detention camp and the arbitrary detention of the suspects have led to international criticism. ..And the question is whether the U.S. administration which introduces itself as advocate of human rights and democracy honors its commitments to those principles?”

Well, lots of Americans and real democrats from many other countries are asking the same questions. And getting the same non-answers and disinformation from the Bush Administration.

So why not Saudi Arabia and Iran?

Because they’re not democrats. Not even close. They haven’t earned their bones speaking truth to power. They haven’t earned the right to criticize the U.S.

They’re faux democrats crying crocodile tears.