Götterdämmerung Now
by Richard Heinberg
MuseLetter 144 / March, 2004

Portions of this essay are excerpted from the forthcoming book,
Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World
(New Society, June 2004), by Richard Heinberg

Richard Heinberg is the author of The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society, 2003); he is a journalist, educator, editor, lecturer, and a Core Faculty member of New College of California, where he teaches courses on "Energy and Society" and "Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community". His essays and articles have appeared in many journals including The Futurist, Earth Island Journal, Wild Matters, Alternative Press Review, and The Sun.

With the publication of recent books by former White House terrorism advisor Richard Clarke (Against All Enemies) and former Republican strategist Kevin Phillips (American Dynasty), and with revelations from former Treasure Secretary Paul O'Neill (in The Price of Loyalty, by Ron Suskind), the current administration appears to be uncomfortably on the defensive. Attacks from the left are to be expected and can be shrugged off relatively lightly; but the defection of insiders capable of lifting the shroud of secrecy surrounding White House deals and decisions poses a real problem. Add to this the boggling revelations in Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud, and the potential for a meltdown of the still-formidable Bush political machine starts to look possible — perhaps even inevitable.

Of course, incompetence and corruption are hardly the monopoly of the Republican Party. Moreover, I hold out little hope that either the Democrats or the Greens could actually do much at this point to avert the impending collapse of the American Empire. To my mind, however, the crowd currently in charge of US policy is guilty of more than the usual levels of incompetence and corruption. I believe that the neoconservatives now in power are extraordinarily dangerous people by any historical measure. In four short years, Bush, Cheney, and company have managed to do the following:

1.  Steal an election.

The means by which Bush and Cheney gained office were profoundly subversive of the democratic process. Florida, under the direction of governor Jeb Bush, had illegally purged its voter rolls of thousands of eligible voters, most of them Democrats. At the time the vote count was halted by a highly politicized decision of the US Supreme Court, Bush was ahead by a mere 300 votes. Had the election been conducted legally, there is no doubt that Al Gore, who led by half a million votes nationwide, would have become president.1

2.  Place criminals and human rights violators in prominent policy-making positions.

As a result of former President Reagan's Contra war against Nicaragua, the United States became the first country in history to be convicted of international terrorism in a world court tribunal and to be condemned by the United Nations. Several key Reagan administration officials were indicted or tried in connection with the massive human rights violations that occurred in Central America during the Contra war. In the early months of the G. W. Bush presidency, several of these officials were given prominent new jobs: Elliott Abrams, who was convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal, was appointed National Security Council (NSC) Special Advisor on Democracy, Human Rights, and International Operations. John Poindexter, the mastermind behind the Iran-Contra scam (guns for hostages), had been found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and destruction of evidence; he was made Director of the Information Awareness Office (IAO), a new agency "to counter attacks on the US." John Negroponte, whom rights groups charge with covering up political killings and purging information from embassy human rights reports that implicated the military and CIA in disappearances of civilians, became US ambassador to the UN. Other criminals and purported human-rights violators appointed to high posts included Roger Noriega, John Maistro, and Otto Reich.2

3.  Facilitate a terrorist attack on the US in order to consolidate political power.

After spending countless hours sifting the evidence, I find the conclusion inescapable: persons within the US government had clear foreknowledge of the attacks, and efforts to prevent those attacks were systematically thwarted on orders from higher levels. Moreover, the collapse of the three buildings in New York has been inadequately explained. Many warnings had been received by the US government that a terrorist attack would occur in the week of September 9 — some specifying that commercial airliners would be hijacked and that the World Trade Center and Pentagon would be targeted. Then, after the hijackings occurred, no fighter jets were dispatched to intercept the airliners, despite the fact that there was plenty of time for this to have occurred, and that it is standard procedure. There are many other serious holes in the official version of the events, too numerous to discuss here. Finally, the administration has engaged in public — and largely successful — efforts to prevent or limit any serious inquiry into the 9/11 attacks (the recent public hearings of the 9/11 Commission went to great pains to avoid nearly all of the serious questions that independent researchers have been asking for many months, and members of the commission have numerous and obvious conflicts of interest). In short, lines of evidence point to foreknowledge, complicity, and cover-up at the top levels of government. These are extraordinary assertions, and they require extraordinary evidence to support them. The detailed presentation and discussion of that evidence is beyond the scope of this article; however, I have appended print and online resources. See especially David Ray Griffin's excellent book, The New Pearl Harbor (Interlink), which has just been released.3

4.  Lie to the American people and the world in order to justify the illegal invasion of a sovereign nation.

Again and again, the administration cited Iraq's continued possession of weapons of mass destruction as the reason for the invasion. Iraq permitted UN weapons inspectors back into the country in the waning months of 2002, but this step was deemed insufficient, so great and immediate was the threat from that country's alleged nuclear weapons and remote-controlled delivery systems. As of this writing, it is abundantly clear that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that administration officials knew this but deliberately concocted "evidence" with which to sell the invasion to the gullible American public.4

5.  Undermine the system of international law by proclaiming the validity of a policy of pre-emptive attack.

We have yet to see the ultimate fallout from this brazen action. The neoconservatives in charge of American foreign policy have essentially put forward the view that the US is above international law. The Bush administration has refused to join the World Court and has undermined existing conventions on nuclear missiles. The unprovoked invasion of one sovereign nation by another (of Iraq by the US and Britain) is a direct violation of the UN Charter; indeed, it is exactly the sort of behavior the UN was established to prevent. In addition, the United States' actions with regard to prisoners held at Camp Delta at the Guantanamo Bay naval station have directly violated the Geneva Conventions: the prisoners are being held as "unlawful combatants," a term with no meaning in international law. By asserting unique rights, immunities, and privileges, the US has alienated the rest of the international community. Eventually, such behavior will cause other nations to form political and military alliances to oppose US hegemony. While the US has the military capability of defeating nearly any individual foe, it cannot subdue the rest of the world working in concert. And economically America is in a far weaker position than it is militarily: if only a few key nations were to cease supporting US trade deficits and government borrowing, the results would be catastrophic. Unilateralism sets the stage for a battle that America cannot win; indeed, it is one that the entire world is certain to lose.

6.  Use weapons that kill indiscriminately — i.e., "weapons of mass destruction" — in the invasions of both Afghanistan and Iraq.

While time has shown that Saddam Hussein did not possess banned weapons, the Americans and British did possess indiscriminately lethal and possibly illegal weapons, and proceeded to use them — as they had done in the 1991 Gulf War and (with other NATO forces) in the former Yugoslavia. The UN has sought to ban depleted uranium munitions and cluster bombs (the US has objected), and a recent UN report stated that these weapons breach several international conventions.5  Some allege that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis, and tens of thousands of American soldiers, have been sickened or killed by DU weapons, which disperse radioactive particles throughout the battlefield landscape. Each M1 tank round consists of 10 pounds of uranium 238, which vaporizes into a highly toxic aerosol upon impact. Much of Iraq is now covered with tons of the stuff. Major Doug Rokke of the US Army, who was assigned by the Army in 1990 to assess the health effects of DU ammunition, told a Palo Alto audience in April 2003 that "When I did their research, [I found out] that you can't use [DU munitions] because you can't clean up and you can't do the medical." According to Rokke, the effects of DU on American soldiers themselves have been horrific (so much for supporting our troops); but for the land and people of the nations we are "liberating," DU carries far longer-term consequences: soil and water are poisoned virtually forever. In May, 2003 a Christian Science Monitor correspondent took a Geiger counter to areas of Baghdad that had been subjected to heavy shelling by US troops and found radiation levels 1,000 to 1,900 times higher than normal. To be fair, it should be emphasized that DU munitions had been deployed prior to the advent of the Bush administration; however, these weapons' continued and expanded use (between 1,100 and 2,200 tons used during the 2003 invasion of Iraq versus 300 tons in the 1991 Gulf War and 10 tons during the bombing of Serbia in 1999) in a war fought ostensibly to prevent another nation from using banned weapons is a bitter irony.6

7.  Subvert the US Constitution.

Since 9/11/2001 the Bush administration, the US Justice Department, and the Congress have enacted a series of Executive Orders, regulations, and laws that have seriously undermined civil liberties and the checks and balances that are essential to the structure of democratic government. The framers of the US Constitution sought to prevent any one branch of government from accumulating excessive power. By using Executive Orders and emergency interim agency regulations as standard tools to combat terrorism, the Executive branch has chosen methods largely outside the purview of both the legislature and the judiciary. Many of these Executive Orders and agency regulations violate the US Constitution and the laws of the United States, as well as international and humanitarian law. In addition, these actions have been shrouded in a cloak of secrecy that is incompatible with democratic government. Hundreds of non-citizens have been rounded up and detained, many for months, in violation of constitutional protections, judicial authority, and INS policy. The government has repeatedly resisted requests for information regarding the detainees from loved ones, lawyers, and the press; it has denied detainees access to legal representation; and has conducted its hearings in secret, in some cases denying the very existence of such hearings. In a democracy, the actions of the government must be transparent, or our ability to vote on policies and the people who create those policies becomes meaningless. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the government's actions has been its attack on the Bill of Rights, the very cornerstone of American democracy. The "War on Terror" has seriously compromised the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendment rights of citizens and non-citizens alike. From the USA Patriot Act's over-broad definition of domestic terrorism, to the FBI's new powers of search and surveillance, to the indefinite detention of both citizens and non-citizens without formal charges, the principles of free speech, due process, and equal protection under the law have been seriously undermined. At the time of this writing, three states and 246 cities, towns, and counties (including New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago) have passed resolutions, ordinances, or ballot initiatives condemning, or refusing local cooperation with enforcement of, the Patriot Act.7

8.  Undermine the US economy through unwise tax cuts and vastly increased government borrowing.

The administration's evident goal is to bankrupt the US government so that social programs (including Social Security) can be entirely privatized or eliminated. However unwise (to put it charitably) that strategy may be on its own terms, the timing for its implementation could not possibly be worse. Since World War II the world has relied on the US dollar as the basis for monetary stability. Increasingly, the US has taken advantage of this situation by running up ever-larger trade deficits and more foreign-financed government debt. The current level of American debt — internal and external — is unprecedented and unsustainable, and Treasury officials made efforts in 2003 and early 2004 to gently lower the value of the dollar in relation to other currencies. However, if the dollar is devalued too much, other nations (including China) may decide to cease investing their savings in American stocks and Treasury securities; this in turn could trigger a dollar collapse. In short, the global monetary system that has maintained relative stability for the past several decades appears to be fraying. Just when the nations of the world need to invest heavily in renewable energy systems, efficiency measures, and sustainable agricultural production in order to deal with problems previously mentioned, investment capital may disappear altogether in a global financial crisis. The Bush administration's response — sweeping tax cuts and immense borrowing to fund an elective war in Iraq — greatly exacerbates the situation. The damage is by now likely irreparable. At the end of 1993, According to Al Martin, "The total national debt of the United States on a fully realized basis, inclusive of federal, state, county and local debt stood at a record $20.613 trillion (83.73% of said debt having been created from 1981-92 and from 2001 to present.) The total public and private indebtedness of the United States ended the year 2003 at $39.384 trillion. The total public and private assets of the United States ended the year 2003 at $26.134 trillion. Thus, the United States by the end of 2003 has a negative net worth of approximately $13 trillion. The total debt service of the United States ended the year 2003 at 309.4% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product). These are numbers never before seen. This is a higher debt to gross domestic product ratio than that of any other country on earth, which still services its debt. For instance this is a higher fraction of debt service to GDP than that of the government of Nigeria. The United States federal government, as of the end of 2003, was servicing 41.3% of total debt — the only first-world nation on the planet that services less than 100% of its debt.8

This is an extraordinary performance by any measure. In the current Bush administration we see a combination of gross incompetence, high criminality, ideological monomania, and almost limitless power — and this in the context of a time that requires the deftest and most visionary of leadership if we are to avert or at least minimize ecological and human catastrophe. It is difficult to overstate the peril inherent in such a combination. These people will not easily be unseated: if they stole one election, why not another? And if various legal battles threaten to overtake them, why would they not resort to facilitating another "terrorist" incident as justification for declaring martial law? In an interview in November, 2003 former US General Tommy Franks, who led America's campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, stated that if a WMD attack were to hit the US, the Constitution probably would not survive: "the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy."9  Was Franks giving us a heads-up on what is in store?

THE NEOCONS AND MACHIAVELLI

The current US leaders' actions are so clearly sabotaging the very system that sustains them that an explanation is in order. What motivates these people? Is it mere thirst for wealth and power? Perhaps we can gain some insight by examining the philosophies they espouse. Neoconservatism, the political movement to which most of the current administration belongs, is widely attributed to be the intellectual offspring of Leo Strauss (1899-1973), a Jewish scholar who fled Hitler's Germany and taught political science at the University of Chicago. According to Shadia Drury in Leo Strauss and the American Right (Griffin, 1999) Strauss advocated an essentially Machiavellian approach to governance. He believed that:

Drury writes that, "in Stauss's view, the trouble with liberal society is that it dispenses with noble lies and pious frauds. It tries to found society on secular rational foundations."

Among Strauss's students was Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading hawks in the Defense Department who urged the invasion of Iraq; more distant followers include Newt Gingrich, Clarence Thomas, Irving Kristol, William Bennett, John Ashcroft, and Michael Ledeen.

Ledeen, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Machiavelli on Modern Leadership: Why Machiavelli's Iron Rules are as Timely and Important Today as Five Centuries Ago (Griffin, 1999), is a policy advisor (via Karl Rove) to the Bush administration. His fascination with Machiavelli seems to be deep and abiding, and to be shared by his fellow neocons. "In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments," writes Ledeen, "the leader may have to enter into evil. This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still. . . ." Machiavelli's books, The Prince and The Discourses, constituted manuals on amassing political power; they have inspired kings and tyrants including Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin and Stalin. The leader, according to Machiavelli, must pretend to do good even as he is actually doing the opposite. "Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them. . . . Let a prince therefore aim at conquering and maintaining the state, and the means will always be judged honourable and praised by everyone, for the vulgar is always taken by appearances. . . ." It is to Machiavelli that we owe the dictum that "the end justifies the means."

But what are the ends to which neoconservatives strive? Briefly: in foreign policy, American supremacy; in domestic policy, reactionary "values." We can get a sense of what makes them tick by reviewing a little recent history.

The neoconservative movement began to coalesce in the 1970s amid the Supreme Count mandated legalization of abortion, court-ordered busing, rising crime rates, and the disruption of urban cores by major highway projects. Otherwise liberal urban dwellers began fleeing to the suburbs.

Meanwhile in foreign affairs, the US was in a state of paralysis as a result of the Vietnam debacle. American elites were losing confidence in their own Cold War rhetoric. However, Israel, in contrast, had just trounced its enemies during a six-day war that had devastated the armies of the Arab world.

Catholic and Jewish Democrats, many of them followers of Democratic Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (who mounted three unsuccessful bids for the presidency), began entering the GOP establishment. Disagreeing with their party's positions on social issues (busing, welfare, secularism and campus revolts) these voters were also looking for a way to regain lost US prestige. For them, Israel served as a positive example: the solution to America's sense of foreign policy directionlessness was a turn to the right. An early intellectual leader of the movement was the Jewish former Trotskyite New Yorker Irving Kristol, whose book Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea describes the events of the era from the neocons' perspective and gives considerable insight into their motives.

Kristol founded Public Interest, one of the primary organs of the movement. Another Jewish former radical, Norman Podhoretz, founded the equally influential magazine Commentary. Podhoretz later defined neoconservatives as "liberals who had been mugged by reality." Two other neoconservative former Democrats, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had been members of "Scoop's Troops" (Jackson's cadre of young activists) during the 1970s, but jumped the Democratic ship during the Carter years. Both came to advocate a value-driven, hard-line approach to American intervention. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Ambassador to the UN under Reagan, was yet another former Democrat turned neocon hawk. On the domestic front, the neocons learned first to speak the language of southern Democrats — a language of carefully veiled racial fears and resentments — and thus gained the entire South for the Republican party. In some respects, this was part of a larger strategy to emphasize values as a way of motivating support among the lower and middle classes. The somewhat independent neoconservative Ben Wattenberg explained this strategy in his book, Values Matter Most: How Republicans or Democrats or a Third Party Can Win and Renew the American Way of Life (Free Press, 1995). Right-wing think tanks, funded by wealthy right-wing foundations, spent years systematically and scientifically identifying the "values" issues that would connect with the masses. In the process, they cemented important alliances with a cultural group that was itself becoming increasingly organized, activist, and powerful.

ENTER THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

Strauss's belief that religion is a tool that leaders can use to manipulate the masses naturally leads one to wonder about the history and nature of the collaboration between neoconservatives and the Christian evangelical movement. Clearly, the neocon agenda is not what most people would traditionally have thought of as exemplifying the teachings of Jesus; how, then, has the philosophy of Strauss, Kristol, Podhoretz, and Wolfowitz come to achieve virtual sanctification in the eyes of tens of millions of devout American Christians? To answer this question, we must first examine developments within the more conservative US Christian churches in the past few decades. In her essay "The Despoiling of America" investigative reporter Katherine Yurica explains the origins of the now-dominant faction of the Christian Right, which she calls "dominionism," and how it has found common cause with the neoconservative movement.10  Dominionism, closely related to another Christian movement called "reconstructionism," was founded by the late R. J. Rushdoony, who also co-founded the Council for National Policy — which has been called the politburo of the American conservative movement, since it is composed of top political and business leaders who set the national agenda for the vast network of right-wing foundations, publishers, media, and universities that have schooled a whole generation in the ideology of neoconservatism, much the way the extremist Wahabbi religious schools funded by Saudi billionaires have seeded the Middle East with Islamic fundamentalism. Dominionism began to flourish in the 1970s as a politicized religious reaction to communism and secular humanism. One of its foremost spokesmen, Pat Robertson (religious broadcaster, former presidential candidate, and founder of the Christian Coalition), has for decades patiently and relentlessly put forward the dominionist view to his millions of daily TV viewers that God intends His followers to rule the world on His behalf. Yurica describes dominionism as a Machiavellian perversion of Christianity.

The original and defining text of Dominionism and Reconstructionism is Ruchdoony's 800-page Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), a turgid exegesis of the Ten Commandments that sets forth the Biblical "case law" that derives from them. "The only true order," Rushdoony wrote, "is founded on Biblical Law. All law is religious in nature, and every non-Biblical law-order represents an anti-Christian religion." Further, "Every law-order is a state of war against the enemies of that order, and all law is a form of warfare."

Reconstructionism argues that the Bible must be the governing text for all areas of life — including government, education, law, and the arts. Reconstructionists examine contemporary issues and events in the light of a "Biblical world view" and "Biblical principles." Reconstructionist theologian David Chilton summarizes this view as follows: "The Christian goal for the world is the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics, in which every area of life is redeemed and placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ and the rule of God's law." Reconstructionists espouse the goal of world conquest or "dominion," assured that the Bible has prophesied their "inevitable victory."

Reconstructionists would replace democracy with a theocratic elite who would govern according to "Biblical Law." They would also eliminate labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools. Women would leave the work force and return to the home. Capital punishment would be applicable to crimes such as blasphemy, heresy, adultery and homosexuality.

While not all viewers of Robertson's popular daily 700 Club television program would agree with the most extreme dominionist and reconstructionist dogmas, most have been conditioned to believe that the US is a "Christian nation" that is under attack from within by secular humanists, homosexuals and socialists; and that George W. Bush has a mandate from God to govern America (on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ) during these troubling times.

The rise of the religious right has so shifted the American political landscape in recent years that a law, the "Constitution Restoration Act of 2004," which would have been unimaginable only a decade or two ago, is now making its way through Congress. Introduced in February, the new law would, if enacted, "acknowledge God as the sovereign source of law, liberty [and] government" in the United States. Thus, in effect, the arbitrary dictates of a "higher power — as interpreted by a judge, policeman, bureaucrat or president — could override existing legal precedent. Any judge who presumed to overrule "God's sovereign authority" as so interpreted could be removed from office. All of this provides tinder for the spark of Mel Gibson's recent film The Passion of the Christ, which Roger Ebert has called 'the most violent single movie I have ever seen." In my view, the film's danger is not merely its anti-Semitism (Bible scholars have pointed out that the New Testament was written several decades after the events it describes, and after the sacking of Jerusalem by Rome; evidently, in that context the Gospel authors hesitated to saddle Romans with the primary responsibility for Jesus's death, and thus settled on the Jewish aristocracy as the best available scapegoats). Richard Cohen, writing in the Washington Post, perhaps comes closer to capturing the inherent danger of this movie phenomenon when he calls The Passion "fascistic" because of its glorification of violence. Others have made light of the film's goriness; Maureen Dowd notes that The Passion "has the cartoonish violence of a Sergio Leone Western; you might even call it a spaghetti crucifixion, 'A Fistful of Nails.'" The online magazine Slate described it as "a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie — The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre"; while Steve Martin suggests it should have been called "Lethal Passion."

For the devout, however, the blood and flying flesh are sacred reminders of what our Lord endured for us. They are a measure of the wickedness of the secularists, the Muslims, the unbelievers. "See what they did to our Lord!," the well-schooled dominionist must think when leaving the theater. "When the time comes that we have them supine before us, we must show them no mercy!"

And so, for the next few months, until the election, we will, all of us — like it or not — be marinating in a dangerous mixture of religion, political intrigue, economic upheaval, and unraveling scandal. The people in power (and their supporters) are not open to logic or compromise. Nevertheless, challenges to their power are arising in ever-greater number and intensity. An irresistible force is about to encounter an immovable object.

NOTES

1. See Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy: An Investigative Reporteer Exposes the Truth about Globalization, Corporate Cons, and High Finance Fraudsters, Pluto Press, 2002.

2. George Freimoth, "The Return of Cold War 'Terrorists'", Marin Interfaith Task Force on Central America newsletter, Spring 2002 http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Cold_War_Terrorists.html.

3. See also Eric Hofschmid, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack, Endpoint Software, 2002; http://www.fromthewilderness.com; http://www.cooperativeresearch.org; http://www.globalresearch.ca; http://www.whatreallyhappened.com.

4. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "Report says Iraq didn't have WMD," released January 8, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/01/08/sprj.nirq.wmd.report/index.html.

5. In January 2001, the European Parliament approved a resolution imposing a ban on the use of DU munitions while investigations were carried out into the links between DU and cancer. In August 2002, the UN published a report citing a series of international laws and conventions breached by the use of DU weapons, including: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, the UN Genocide Convention, the Convention Against Torture, the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, the Conventional Weapons Convention of 1980 and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, which all forbid the deployment of "poison or poisoned weapons" and "arms, projectiles or materials calculated to cause unnecessary suffering."

6. See: http://www.mindfully.org/Nucs/2003/Rokke-Depleted-Uranium-DU21apr03.htm. See also "Iraq: Experts Warn of Radioactive Battlefields," by Katherine Stapp, Interpress News Service, September 12, 2003, http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=20113; Scott Peterson, "Remains of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq," Christian Science Monitor, May 15, 2003, http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.htm.

7. This paragraph is adapted from "The State of Civil Liberties: One Year Later, Erosion of Civil Liberties in the Post 9/11 Era," by the Center for Constitutional Rights, http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/whatsnew/report.asp?ObjID=nQdbIRkDgG&Content=153.

8. "Scoreboard 2003," by Al Martin, http://www.almartinraw.com, accessed January 12, 2004.

9. December 5, 2003 edition, Cigar Afficionado. Reported, for example, in John O. Edwards, "Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack," November 1, 2003, http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/11/20/185048.shtml.

10. http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

For more on the pernicious influence of the Neocons see Jeffrey Steinberg's
The 'Ignoble Liars' Behind Bush's Deadly Iraq War.

The World Trade Center Demolition and the So-Called War on Terrorism
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