Author: James Bovard

The chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein says that Saddam was “no dictator.”

This is hilarious. The Bush administration helps arrange a show trial. And they can’t even get the story line straight in a kangaroo court.

The chief prosecutor complained that the judge has allowed “defendants to go too far, with unacceptable expressions and words.”

One presumes that the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld will make sure the same problem doesn’t happen with the pending tribunals at Guantanamo.

Maybe Bush can arrange to have the same judge in case he is ever put on trial.

[Comment here]

The Globalist website posted an article of mine on how the media and intellectuals subvert American democracy.  Here’s the lead of the piece –

Why is it that in the United States, the vast majority of government abuses and failures either never show up on the  intellectual radar screen, or are merely one or two blips — and then forever gone?

One reason is that many intellectuals have long disdained the specific details of government policies.

The more coercive government becomes, the more tactless it is to admit that government coerces. Looking at the actual details of government policy is left to the auditors and accountants, the congressional staffers — or perhaps the interns.

The politically correct attitude looks beyond the government’s past failings and current botches — and focuses instead on the idea of government……..

Full text of the article is at the Globalist website  and on my blog  – http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/09/11/how-the-us-media-helps-subvert-us-democracy/ = where comments & condemnations are always welcome
 

The Future of Freedom Foundation today posted online the full text of my Freedom Daily article on “Killing in the Name of Democracy.”

The parallels between the rhetoric of Presidents McKinley, Wilson, and others  and Bush’s recent doggerel is stunning.  America has been commiting righteous slaughter in the name of democracy for far longer than most people realize.

Here’s the lead & finish of the piece (which is largely an excerpt from Attention Deficit Democracy):

President George W. Bush perpetually invokes the goal of spreading democracy to sanctify his foreign policy. Unfortunately, he is only the latest in a string of presidents who cloaked aggression in idealistic rhetoric. Killing in the name of democracy has a long and sordid history. …

The greatest gift the United States could give the world is an example that serves as a shining city on a hill. As University of Pennsylvania professor Walter McDougall observed, “The best way to promote our institutions and values abroad is to strengthen them at home.” But there is scant glory for politicians in restraining their urge to “save humanity.” The ignorance of the average American has provided no check on “run amok” politicians and bureaucrats.    ****

Full text of the piece is at http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/08/30/bush-killing-in-the-name-of-democracy/  where comments & condemnations are welcome
 

The Los Angeles Times ran a piece of mine today that advocates using the same coercive interrogation methods on congressmen that Congress approve for Bush’s military tribunals.

Full text of the piece is at the LATimes here (registration required?) and at my website here.

Comments welcome at http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/08/27/how-to-pry-the-truth-out-of-congressmen/

Federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor declared in a ruling today: “We must first note that the Office of the Chief Executive has itself been created, with its powers, by the Constitution. There are no hereditary Kings in America and no power not created by the Constitution. So all ‘inherent power’ must derive from that Constitution.”

The Justice Department is outraged by the ruling and is racing to appeal it.

I have not yet seen any briefs or other notices that the Justice Department has filed on the decision.   I would expect that they would not make a big deal out of the ‘hereditary king’ aspect of the ruling.  Instead, they will challenge the judge’s decision that Bush’s illegal warrantless NSA wiretaps are illegal and unconstitutional.

The judge noted: “The Government appears to argue here that …. because the President is designated Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, he has been granted the inherent power to violate not only the laws of the Congress but the First and Fourth Amendments of the Constitution, itself.”

I presume that conservative activists are busy at this moment seeking evidence that this judge has received kickbacks from suspect Muslim charities.  Why else would a judge issue such a reactionary ruling?  [[Comments & denunciations on this topic are welcome at http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/08/17/justice-dept-appeals-ruling-on-no-heridatary-kings/

Today’s New York Times reveals that George W. Bush is deeply disappointed that the Iraqi people have “not shown greater support for the American mission.”

One person who attended a meeting of Bush’s “war cabinet” on Monday commented on Bush’s reaction: “I sensed a frustration with the lack of progress on the bigger picture of Iraq generally — that we continue to lose a lot of lives, it continues to sap our budget. The president wants the people in Iraq to get more on board to bring success.”

I recall those halcyon days of early 2001, when neoconservative whiz kid David Brooks gurgled about how wonderful it would be to have a president who had a Masters of Business Administration – and from Harvard, no less.  Bush’s reaction to Iraq is vintage MBA: If only these people would get “on board”…

One professor who attended (and who is getting money from the U.S. State Department) said that Bush expressed the view that “the Shia-led government needs to clearly and publicly express the same appreciation for United States efforts and sacrifices as they do in private.”

Perhaps Bush believes that America’s problems in Iraq would be solved if there more Iraqi government officials were assassinated.

Bush was apparently especially upset that a recent rally in support of Hezbollah in Baghdad drew 10,000 people.  One person at the meeting commented that Bush “was frustrated about why 10,000 Shiites would go into the streets and demonstrate against the United States.”

Maybe Bush was confounded that Iraqis are too stupid to recognize that America’s ally, Israel, was using U.S. bombs to kill Lebanese civilians solely in the cause of Bush’s “forward strategy of freedom.”

In unrelated news elsewhere in today’s NY Times, the civilian death toll in Iraq in July  set a record and experts fear that “the country is already embroiled in a civil war.”

[Comments & denunciations of this post are welcome at http://jimbovard.com/blog/2006/08/16/bush-betrayed-by-iraqi-ingrates/