An Appeal to Presidential Nominee Barack Obama
Nick Egnatz | NW Indiana Veterans For Peace

While I am certainly not looking forward to a John McCain Administration, I have serious reservations that a Barack Obama Administration will offer the fundamental change necessary to end the concept of American Empire and Exceptionalism. Said concept is rooted in the belief that God somehow has showered the United States with additional blessings that other nations have not received and that U.S., as the savior of the world, has the duty and right to project our military and economic might across the globe as we see fit, without regard to international law or common morality.

Obama has recently said that we need to redeploy our troops from Iraq so that we can send more of them to Afghanistan and better concentrate
on the 'War on Terror.'

By Dave Lindorff

One of the sorrier legacies of eight years of Bush and Cheney in the White House has been the conflation of the terms “National Security” and “Foreign Policy” by both Republicans and Democrats.

Granted that the history of US foreign policy in the world has been heavily larded with wars, many of them at America’s instigation. It is nonetheless true that foreign policy is much bigger and more far reaching than just what has come to be known as “national security” issues.

In Bush-speak, national security come to mean having big guns, lots of heavily armed troops, cruise missiles, nuclear weapons, naval armadas and a bully’s willingness to use these weapons on a whim, with no thought of consequences.

Torture As Official Israeli Policy
by Stephen Lendman

The UN Convention against Torture defines the practice as:

"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain and suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity...."

The US and Israel are the only two modern states that legally sanction torture. An earlier article covered America. This one deals with the Jewish state, but let there be no doubt:

No water or toilets at Freedom Cage
IHT.com

The vast unused Freedom Cage for protesters at the Pepsi Center has no water or toilets in apparent violation of a federal judge’s order.

The Secret Service and other government officials also had assured the judge that most delegates would be walking past the protest area on their way to the convention, but none do, said Mark Silverstein, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union.

In fact, the protest area, now known as the Freedom Cage, is so remote and disengaged from the convention that few protesters are using it.

But those who do have to leave in search of water or toilets.

Bush steps up fight over US congressional authority
IHT.com

The Bush administration is raising the stakes in a court fight that could change the balance of power between the White House and the U.S. Congress.

Justice Department lawyers said Wednesday that they will soon ask a federal appeals court not to force the president's top advisers to comply with congressional subpoenas next month. President George W. Bush argues Congress does not have the authority to demand information from his aides.

U.S. District Judge John Bates strongly rejected that stance last month, ordering former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify and White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten to turn over documents related to the firing of federal prosecutors.

"Shallow Throat": McCain Is a "Catastrophe Waiting to Happen"
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers

The race between McCain and Obama is tighter than one would think should be the case. I needed some help in figuring out why, so I got a coded message to "Shallow Throat "-- the high-ranking GOP mole in the Bush Administration with whom I've consulted often.** We met under some shade trees at a public park in Alexandria.

"I'm confused by what's going on," I said to Shallow Throat, who was wearing a new wig and wraparounds. "Obama should be wiping the floor with McSame, but the race reminds me too much of 2000 and 2004: so close that Rove and his minions could once again steal it."

Sibel Edmonds Case: FBI Files "Formal Complaint" With Sunday Times
Last week, Scott Horton interviewed (audio) investigative journalist Joe Lauria. Lauria was one of the co-authors of the three-part (1, 2, 3) series on the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds for the UK's Sunday Times.

Is Obama’s “New Energy for America” Plan Change We Can Believe in?
By Ted Glick

On August 4th the Barack Obama Presidential campaign released a comprehensive program for reform of the U.S. energy system. In the words of Obama supporter and climate blogger and author Joe Romm, it was “easily the best energy plan ever put forward by a nominee of either party.” The critical question, however, is this: is it an energy plan that will actually do the job of giving U.S. leadership to the world in a way which gives us a decent chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change?

ON IMPEACHMENT AT HOME AND ABROAD
Herbert J. Hoffman, Independent Candidate for the U.S. Senate [Maine] | www.HoffmanForSenate.us

I see a parallel here in the United States to what has recently happened in Pakistan.

President Pervaz Musharaff of Pakistan on August 18 tendered his resignation in an announcement released just hours before the Pakistani Parliament was to have launched impeachment proceedings against him. Thus, a military dictator removed himself from power. One might observe: How simple – if the goods are there, just the threat of exposure and trial is a sufficient motivator to resign.

By Dave Lindorff

I was a speaker last night at an anti-war event sponsored by the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County, Progressive Democrats of America and Democrats For America in Lincroft, NJ, near the shore. It was a great group of activist Americans who want to see this country end the Iraq War, turn away from war as a primary instrument of policy, and start dealing with the pressing human needs of the country and the world.

Yet even in this group of committed people, one woman stood up during the question-and-answer session and said, “I want to get involved in writing emails to members of Congress urging them to cut off funding for the war and other things, but if I do that won’t I end up getting put on a `watch list’” or something?”

Pelosi to protesters: "Can we drill your brains?"
By Ryan Grim | Politico.com

House Democratic leaders and protesters waving McCain signs had a war of words Tuesday at a press event outside an old train station. The demonstrators interrupted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with chants of “Drill here! Drill now!”

Pelosi paused and asked the group, “Right here?”

Seeming to enjoy the back and forth, she followed with another question: “Can we drill your brains?”

She went on to refer to the protesters, who continued to chant sporadically, as “handmaidens of Big Oil.” Arguing that increased offshore drilling would reduce gas prices by only a couple of pennies a decade from now, she referred to the demonstrators as the “2-cents-in-10-years-crowd.”

Harriet Miers Must Testify, Judge Says
Rejects White House Motion to Stay Subpoena
By Emma Schwartz | ABCNews.com

A federal judge denied the White House's last-ditch attempt to block a former aide from testifying before Congress as part of the investigation into the U.S. Attorney scandal.

Today's ruling by Judge John Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is expected to pave the way for former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, who returned to her old law firm in Texas, to testify before Congress in the coming months. It also urges the White House to turn over documents subpoenaed from former chief of staff Joshua Bolten.

"If the government is trying to run out the clock on the 110th Congress, today's decision suggests that Judge Bates won't let them," said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at American University.

Rep. John Conyers, Jr., D-Mich., chair of the House Judiciary Committee, praised the decision and pledged to schedule a hearing for Miers shortly.

"I am heartened that Judge Bates recognized that the public interest in this matter is best served by the furtherance of the Committee's investigation," he said in a statement.

by Linda Milazzo

IS THIS WHAT DEMOCRACY REALLY LOOKS LIKE?!

Al-Qaida Suspect's U.S. Son Held
UPI.com

U.S. officials say the 11-year-old American son of a suspected Pakistani militant is being held by authorities in Afghanistan.

Assfia Siddiqui's son, Ahmed, is a U.S. citizen by birth and has been in Afghan custody since July when his mother was arrested after a shootout with Afghan police in Ghanzi, the Washington Post (NYSE:WPO) said Tuesday.

Siddiqui, a neuroscientist who had been sought as a suspected al-Qaida operative since 2003, is currently lodged in a U.S. federal prison.

Her disappearance five years ago sparked accusations that she had been kidnapped in Pakistan by the CIA.

Tomgram: Nick Turse, The Future of Death at the Pentagon

[Note for TomDispatch Readers This is the second post in a pre-Labor Day "best of TomDispatch" series. The first was Chalmers Johnson's 2005 "Smash of Civilizations." Now, we backpeddle another year to 2004 and reconsider the Pentagon's ceaseless efforts to dream up and build ever more effective, ever more invasive and destructive weaponry not just for 2010, but for 2020, 2030, 2040, and beyond. The new model car or the next version of the iPhone has nothing on the Pentagon, which fully expects to roll out the next version of destruction until Hell freezes over. This makes TomDispatch Associate Editor Nick Turse's 2004 piece -- in those distant days he still signed his posts "Nicholas" -- on ways the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was planning to weaponize the wild kingdom as shiny new as tomorrow's HDTVs.