Here We Go Again! 1,000's More to Afghanistan

2008-03-24T21:29:00.000-07:00

Hawaii Island of Oahu Loses Power During Storm
By David Briscoe, Associated Press Writer / USA Today
HONOLULU — The island of Oahu lost power Friday evening in the midst of heavy rain and lightning, leaving some 800,000 residents and thousands of tourists in the dark, as well as the neighborhood where President-elect Barack Obama was vacationing.
Residents were being advised by the power company and civil authorities to get to their homes and conserve water. Several radio stations were broadcasting emergency information.

Gov. Linda Lingle said that Hawaiian Electric Co. was taking an emergency generator to the compound on the east side of the island where Obama has been staying. Lingle said she had asked the utility to notify her when it had been delivered.

Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann told KSSK radio that Obama is in one of the "most secure places, so he'll be OK."

Honolulu International Airport was running on an emergency generator, but Lingle said most outgoing mainland flights were being being postponed until daylight hours as airport officials struggle to process incoming flights. Some were diverted to other Hawaiian islands, which have separate power grids.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Barack Obama Oklahoma Department of Transportation Oahu post-Christmas Howie Mandel Honolulu International Airport Lingle Audrey McAvoy Hawaiian Electric Co
Hawaiian Electric spokesman Peter Rosegg said the initial power outage hit at 6:45 p.m., knocking out electricity to most of the island. The rest of Oahu lost power two hours later when a second generator failed.

Rosegg said engineers were working to gradually restore power across the isolated island grid.

Lingle said she expected power to be restored by morning. The cause of the outage was being investigated.

Lingle said the utility had asked the state to fly a helicopter at daylight so it can inspect power lines on a mountain ridge that it fears may be damaged.

Although the outage was triggered during a thunderstorm, the weather cleared up quickly over most of the island.

The outage closed stores at major retail outlets just after sunset, halting post-Christmas shopping a couple of hours early. Residents were trapped in parking lots and highways were clogged as everyone tried to get home at once.

Lingle in a radio interview late Friday told residents, "I would advise ... everyone to just go to sleep."

Several Christmas weekend events were scuttled by the blackout, including a show at the Blaisdell Concert Hall by comedian Howie Mandel.

Ten Dead in California Christmas Eve Rampage
By Gina Keating and Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A man who dressed as Santa Claus to kill nine Christmas Eve party guests before taking his own life had been divorced just a week when he unleashed a hail of gunfire and flames that seemed intended for his former wife and in-laws, officials said on Friday.

Authorities in the suburban town of Covina, 23 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles, still were trying to comprehend what drove Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, 45, a jobless engineer and longtime church usher, to carry out his fiery rampage.

But survivors told police Pardo seemed to zero in on his ex-spouse and her relatives after he burst into her parents' home at about 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday night, opening fire with four handguns on about 25 party guests there.

"It appears he did have some intended targets, those being family members in the immediate family of his ex-wife," Covina Police Chief Kim Raney told reporters at a news conference.

After running out of bullets, Pardo used a makeshift gas dispenser to spray the inside of the home with a combustible vapor consisting partly of auto-racing fuel, which quickly ignited in an explosion, gutting the dwelling, police said.

The bodies of nine victims, charred beyond recognition, were recovered from the house. Pardo's ex-wife, Sylvia Ortega, 43, and her parents were believed to be among the dead.

Ed Winter, assistant chief coroner for Los Angeles County, said medical and dental records would be needed to identify the bodies, and autopsies to determine whether victims died in the gunfire or the explosion and fire that followed.

Pardo himself suffered third-degree burns in the blast, which melted the Santa suit onto his body. He then fled to his brother's house about 40 miles away, where authorities later found him dead from a gunshot wound to the head.

Some $17,000 in cash and airline tickets for a Thursday flight from Los Angeles to Canada were found on his body.

"All indications are that he intended to commit this crime and then flee the country," Raney said. "It appears ... he didn't anticipate injuring himself to the point where he obviously took his own life."

According to a copy of Pardo's resume and other information obtained by detectives, Pardo held degrees in electrical engineering and had worked for about nine years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, ending in 1994.

Raney said Pardo lost his job at a radar company in October and that he and his former wife had finalized their divorce last Thursday in a proceeding the police chief described as "somewhat contentious." They had no children together.

A member of Pardo's Roman Catholic congregation in the community of Montrose, 13 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, told a newspaper that Pardo had been an usher for the past five or six years and was "just the nicest guy. He would do anything for the church."

Among those who survived the rampage were an 8-year-old girl who was shot in the face by Pardo when she opened the door for him, and a 16-year-old girl who was shot in the back as guests fled in horror.

The house was engulfed in flames when police arrived, about three minutes after someone made an emergency call. One girl jumped from a second-floor window to escape, Raney said.

In a final act of destruction encountered by authorities after Pardo had killed himself, his rental car was discovered to have been booby-trapped with the remnants of the Santa suit rigged to a homemade fire bomb.

The bomb ignited when authorities tried to defuse it, engulfing the car in flames, but no one was hurt, Raney said.

At Pardo's home, police found a supply of racing fuel, empty handgun boxes and two high-powered shotguns, Raney said.

(Editing by Mary Milliken and Bill Trott)

A worker walks in the newly completed Wuhan Yangtze River tunnel in Wuhan, Hubei province December 26, 2008. The tunnel, which is approximately 3,600 metres (11,811 feet) in length and China's first road tunnel under the Yangtze River, is scheduled to open on December 28, 2008, China Daily reported. REUTERS/China Daily
Pakistan Moves Troops Toward Indian Border
USA Today - AP
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan has started to redeploy thousands of troops to the Indian border from the tribal areas near Afghanistan, intelligence officials said Friday, raising tensions triggered by the Mumbai terror attacks.
India has blamed Pakistani-based militants for last month's siege on its financial capital, which killed 164 people and has provoked an increasingly bitter war of words between nuclear-armed neighbors that have fought three wars in 60 years.

The troops headed to the Indian border were being diverted away from tribal areas near Afghanistan, the two officials said, and the move was expected to frustrate the United States, which has been pushing Pakistan to step up its fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants near the Afghan border.

The officials said elements of the army's 14th Infantry Division were being redeployed to the towns of Kasur and Sialkot, close to the Indian border.

The military began the troop movement Thursday and plans to shift a total of 20,000 soliders, they said without providing a timeframe.

Earlier Friday, a security official said all troop leave had been canceled.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

India and Pakistan have said they want to avoid military conflict over the attacks. But India has not ruled out the use of force as it presses its neighbor to crack down on the Pakistani-based terrorist group it blames for the attack.

Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has promised to respond aggressively if attacked but reassured India Friday that Pakistan would not strike first.

"We will not take any action on our own," Gilani told reporters. "There will be no aggression from our side."

Meanwhile, Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee accused Pakistan of trying to divert attention away from its struggle to rein in homegrown terror groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba, which Delhi accuses of masterminding the Mumbai attacks.

"They should concentrate on the real issue: how to fight against terrorists and how to fight against and bring to book the perpetrators of (the) Bombay terrorist attack," he said.

Pakistan has arrested several senior members of the banned group and cracked down on a charity the U.S. and UN say was a front for Lashkar. India has demanded greater action, but Pakistan says it needs to share evidence backing up its claims.

Mukherjee responded Friday by saying India had provided more than enough evidence about the militants, who infiltrated Mumbai by sea.

"We have indicated to them that there are ample evidences from the log book of the captured ship, from the information available from satellite telephones and various others that elements from Pakistan were responsible for this attack," Mukherjee told reporters.

Earlier, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met Friday with the chiefs of the army, navy and air force to discuss "the prevailing security situation," according to an official statement.

An Associated Press reporter in Dera Ismail Khan, a district that borders Pakistan's militant-infested South Waziristan tribal area, said he saw around 25 trucks loaded with soldiers and equipment heading away from the Afghan border Friday.

A senior security official confirmed that soldiers were being moved out of the border area, but said it was "a limited number from areas where they were not engaged in any operation."

He declined further comment and asked his name not be used, citing the sensitivity of the situation.

The White House said it was discussing the reported troop movements with U.S. embassies in the region and was urging both countries to cooperate in investigating the attacks and fighting terrorism.

"We hope that both sides will avoid taking steps that will unnecessarily raise tensions during these already tense times," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Analysts said the redeployment was likely meant as a warning to India not to launch missile strikes against militant targets on its territory, a response that some have speculated is possible.

"It is a message to India that if you think you can get away with strikes, you are sadly mistaken," said Talat Masood, a retired general and military analyst based in Islamabad.

Pakistan and India have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947, two over Kashmir, a Muslim majority region in the Himalayas claimed by both countries.

They came close to a fourth after suspected Pakistani militants attacked India's parliament in 2001. Both countries massed hundreds of thousands of troops to the disputed Kashmir region, but tensions cooled after intensive international diplomacy.

News of the buildup comes as Indian officials say militant activity in Indian Kashmir has fallen to its lowest levels since an anti-India militant movement began there in 1989.

The number of militant attacks fell 40% from 2007-2008, reaching 709 this year from roughly 1,100 last year, Kuldeep Khoda, a senior police official, said in a statement.

Police say there are 850 militants fighting in the region, including followers of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is widely believed to be a creation of Pakistani intelligence in the 1980s and used to fight Indian-rule in Kashmir.

Indian authorities say the decrease in attacks is the result of an experienced security apparatus that has struck at the heart of many militant groups — Khoda said Indian forces have killed about 350 militants this year, including some top-ranking commanders. But they also say that the militants have scaled back their attacks as a large public protest movement gained momentum since last summer.

Pakistan has deployed more than 100,000 soldiers in Waziristan and other northwestern regions to fight Islamic militants blamed for surging violence against Western troops in Afghanistan as well as suicide attacks in Pakistan.

Security officials have previously said the country would be forced to withdraw troops from the Afghan border if tensions with India — whose army is twice as large — escalated.

"This is a serious blow to the war on terror in the sense that the whole focus is now shifting toward the eastern border," said Masood. "It will give more leeway to the militants and increased space to operate."

The United States wants Pakistan to stay focused on the fight against militants in the border region, where Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda leaders are believed to be hiding.

A volunteer finishes erecting a tent at a church before Christmas celebrations in Kathmandu December 25, 2008. REUTERS/Gopal Chitrakar
Mexico Suspends Purchases from 30 U.S. Meat Plants
Reuters
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Mexico suspended purchases from 30 U.S. meat plants due to sanitary issues, which sent U.S. cattle and hog prices sharply lower on Friday and prompted speculation the ban was retaliation against a U.S. labeling law.

Early on Friday, U.S. analysts said the bans were likely because of Mexico's opposition to a recently enacted meat labeling law. The law, commonly called Country-of-Origin Labeling or COOL, requires that meat packages in U.S. supermarkets carry labels stating the countries where the meat animals were raised.

Mexico and the U.S. Agriculture Department both denied the retaliation charge.

"Countries would go through dispute settlement under either (the North American Free Trade Agreement) or (World Trade Organization) -- not use the action of plant-by-plant delistment," said Amanda Eamich of USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service.

USDA listed the affected plants on its website on Friday, but the suspensions became effective on Tuesday. The listed plants produce beef, lamb, pork, and poultry and can be found here

Many of the banned plants are owned by the largest U.S. meat companies, including Cargill Inc, Tyson Foods Inc, JBS, Seaboard and Smithfield Foods.

Mexico is a leading buyer of U.S. meat and said that purchases from the affected plants could resume as early as Monday.

"If everything goes well, the plants could be re-listed next Monday," Mexico's agriculture ministry said on Friday.

The ministry said the affected plants fell short on standards like packaging, labeling, and some transport conditions.

USDA said it is working with Mexico and the meat companies to resolve the issues.

CANADA, MEXICO OPPOSED LAW

U.S. consumer and farm groups say the labeling rules will distinguish U.S.-grown food from imports on the grocery shelf and fulfill the shopper's right to know about products.

Canadian and Mexican officials have opposed the law arguing that it will have U.S. meat plants and consumers discriminating against non-U.S. animals and meat. Both countries ship livestock into the United States.

"It appears they (Mexican officials) are using this to send a signal to our government that they don't like COOL," Don Roose, analyst at U.S. Commodities, said earlier on Friday.

Earlier this year, Mexico had warned many U.S. meat plants of alleged "point of entry violations" and Friday's suspensions may have been related to that, Jim Herlihy, spokesman for the U.S. Meat Export Federation, said early on Friday.

Point of entry violations could be a number of things including incorrect paperwork or labeling issues, he said.

BANS MAY BE LIFTED SOON

Prior to Mexico saying shipments could resume on Monday, Roose had predicted the bans would be short, because Mexico needs the meat for its population.

"You have to feed the masses," he said.

News of the bans prompted selling in U.S. cattle and hog markets at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Friday, with cattle prices dropping 2 to 2.5 percent and hog prices dropping about 3 percent.

"That is bad news," Jim Clarkson, Chicago-based analyst at A&A Trading said of Mexico's action. "They (Mexico) are fighting COOL."

After Mexico denied it was retaliating for COOL, Clarkson still predicted the labeling law may have helped prompt the bans.

Due to the holiday period, attempts on Friday were unsuccessful to reach many of the U.S. meat companies.

(Additional reporting by Jason Lange and Adriana Barrera in Mexico City; Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Worshippers walk on a mountain footpath which connects the local villages during the "Dajiao" Taoist festival in Fengjiashan village, Shaanxi province December 26, 2008.
REUTERS/Reinhard Krause

Philadelphia Man Shot Because Family Talked During Movie
By Barbara Boyer - Philly.com
A South Philadelphia man enraged because a father and son were talking during a Christmas showing of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button took care of the situation when he pulled a .380-caliber gun and shot the father, police said.
James Joseph Cialella Jr., 29, of the 1900 block of Hollywood Street is charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, and weapons violations.

"It's truly frightening when you see something like this evolve into such violence," said police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore.

Police were called to the Riverview Theatre in the 1400 block of Columbus Boulevard about 9:30 p.m. where the gunshot victim, a Philadelphia man who was not identified, told police a man sitting near him told his family to be quiet and threw popcorn at his son.

After exchanging words, Vanore said Cialella allegedly got out of his seat to confront the family when the father got up to protect them. That's when the victim was shot once in the left arm, sending others in the theatre running to safety.

Cialella then sat down to watch the movie. Police arrived a short time later and arrested Cialella and confiscated his weapon, Vanore said.

The Cape Neddick 'Nubble' Lighthouse is illuminated for Christmas in York, Maine December 25, 2008. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Top Ten Myths about Iraq, 2008
by Juan Cole - Informed Comment / Common Dreams
1. Iraqis are safer because of Bush's War. In fact, conditions of insecurity have helped created both an internal and external refugee problem:

' At least 4.2 million Iraqis were displaced. These included 2.2 million who were displaced within Iraq and some 2 million refugees, mostly in Syria (around 1.4 million) and Jordan (around half a million). In the last months of the year both these neighbouring states, struggling to meet the health, education and other needs of the Iraqi refugees already present, introduced visa requirements that impeded the entry of Iraqis seeking refuge. Within Iraq, most governorates barred entry to Iraqis fleeing sectarian violence elsewhere.'
2. Large numbers of Iraqis in exile abroad have returned. In fact, no great number have returned, and more Iraqis may still be leaving to Syria than returning.

3. Iraqis are materially better off because of Bush's war. In fact, A million Iraqis are "food insecure" and another 6 million need UN food rations to survive. Oxfam estimated in summer, 2007, that 28% of Iraqi children are malnourished.

4. The Bush administration scored a major victory with its Status of Forces Agreement. In fact, The Iraqis forced on Bush an agreement that the US would withdraw combat troops from Iraqi cities by July, 2009,and would completely withdraw from the Country by the end of 2011. The Bush administration had wanted 58 long-term bases, and the authority to arrest Iraqis at will and to launch military operations unilaterally.

5. Minorities in Iraq are safer since Bush's invasion. In fact, there have in 2008 been significant attacks on and displacement of Iraqi Christians from Mosul. In early January of 2008, guerrillas bombed churches in Mosul, wounding a number of persons. More recently, some 13,000 Christians have had to flee Mosul because of violence.

6. The sole explanation for the fall in the monthly death rate for Iraqi civilians was the troop excalation or surge of 30,000 extra US troops in 2007. In fact, troop levels had been that high before without major effect. The US military did good counter-insurgency in 2007. The major reason for the fall in the death toll, however, was that the Shiites won the war for Baghdad, ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Sunnis from the capital, and turning it into a city with a Shiite majority of 75 to 80 percent. (When Bush invaded, Baghdad was about 50/50 Sunni and Shiite). The high death tolls in 2006 and 2007 were a by-product of this massive ethnic cleansing campaign. Now, a Shiite militiaman in Baghdad would have to drive for a while to find a Sunni Arab to kill.

7. John McCain alleged that if the US left Iraq, it would be promptly taken over by al-Qaeda. In fact, there are few followers of Usamah Bin Laden in Iraq. The fundamentalist extremists, if that is what McCain meant, are not supported by most Sunni Arabs. They are supported by no Shiites (60% of Iraq) or Kurds (20% of Iraq), and are hated by Iran, Syria, Turkey, and Jordan, who would never allow such a takeover.

8. The Iraq War made the world safer from terrorism. In fact, Iraq has become a major training ground for extremists and is implicated in the major bombings in Madrid, London, and Glasgow.

9. Bush went to war in Iraq because he was given bad intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capabilities. In fact, the State Department's Intelligence & Research (I & R) division cast doubt on the alarmist WMD stories that Bush/Cheney put about. The CIA refused to sign off on the inclusion of the Niger uranium lie in the State of the Union address, which made Bush source it to the British MI6 instead. The Downing Street Memo revealed that Bush fixed the intelligence around the policy. Bush sought to get up a provocation such as a false flag attack on UN planes so as to blame it on Iraq. And UN weapons inspectors in Feb.-Mar. of 2003 examined 100 of 600 suspected weapons sites and found nothing; Bush's response was to pull them out and go to war.

10. Douglas Feith and other Neoconservatives didn't really want a war with Iraq (!). Yeah, that was why they demanded war on Iraq with their 1996 white paper for Bibi Netanyahu and again in their 1998 Project for a New American Century letter to Clinton, where they explicitly called for military action. The Neoconservatives are notorious liars and by the time they get through with rewriting history, they will be a combination of Gandhi and Mother Teresa and the Iraq War will be Bill Clinton's fault. The only thing is, I think people are wise to them by now. Being a liar can actually get you somewhere. Being a notorious liar is a disadvantage if what you want to is get people to listen to you and act on your advice. I say, Never Again.

from Minnesotans for Global Warming:

Obama to Inherit Legacy of Free Market Free Fall
by Adrianne Appel - Inter Press Service / Common Dreams
BOSTON - Despite hundreds of billions of dollars thrown at banks large and small, the U.S. economy is in a free fall, just weeks before President-elect Barack Obama takes office, analysts say.

"Most measures of economic and financial activity look like they fell off a cliff in September and October, and have been deteriorating at an alarming rate ever since," says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight.

The bank bailout, which now stands at 335 billion dollars, was supposed to ease credit lending, and jumpstart the economy. But U.S. businesses and individuals report that they are still unable to get loans from banks, and new reports show the economy in very bad shape.

"The bailout hasn't succeeded. The problem is the diagnosis of it as a 'financial crisis'. It is a toxic stew of subprime mortgages that is the problem, and its consequences are to poison the well of finance. Pouring capital into the banks doesn't fix it," Jamie Galbraith, an economist at the University of Texas, told reporters recently.

Galbraith and 120 other economists, progressives and labour leaders sent a letter to Obama urging him to spend 900 billion dollars or more starting in the New Year, to stimulate the economy.

"This crisis is unprecedented since the Great Depression. It will take unprecedented measures," Galbraith said.

Government figures released Tuesday show the overall economy has almost stalled, and between July and September grew at an annually adjusted rate of just 0.5 percent, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product. Healthy GDP growth for the U.S. is considered to be 3 percent or more per year.

Economists estimate that the current GDP is declining at 6 percent.

New unemployment claims for the week ending Dec. 20 were 586,000, the highest since November 1982, according to the U.S. Labour Department Wednesday. About 4.3 million people nationwide are already receiving unemployment benefits, said to be just a fraction of those actually unemployed, due to the restrictions placed on receiving benefits.

The public cut spending in November by 0.6 percent, after cutting spending 1 percent in October, according to the Commerce Department Wednesday.

More than 2 million people have been thrown out of work this year, and it's estimated that 12.5 percent of previously fully employed people are now "underemployed". One out of 10 mortgages are delinquent in payments.

"The United States is now officially in a recession that started in December 2007. Japan and many European countries are in the same boat," Behravesh says, adding that markets in the developing world will "decelerate dramatically".

"We are experiencing a fundamental collapse of the basic mechanisms of trust and exchange at the heart of the credit system," Galbraith said.

Obama has said he wants to stimulate the suffering U.S. economy by delivering hundreds of billions, possibly close to a trillion dollars, in infrastructure projects with the goal of creating 3 million new jobs over two years, and tax cuts, plus food and unemployment programs for those who need it.

"My administration will be absolutely committed to the future of America's middle-class and working families," Obama said Sunday.

Incomes of working people didn't increase during the George W. Bush years of 2000 to 2007-- they decreased by about 2,000 dollars each, Obama has said.

More recently, those with 401(K) retirement accounts have lost 2 trillion dollars this year, as the stock market has plunged 40 percent, Obama noted.

Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden are putting the finishing touches on the package, and working with the Democratic leadership in Congress to craft a bill that will pass Congress, and land on Obama's desk for signing within days of him taking office, on Jan. 20. Congress returns Jan. 6.

Biden said Sunday that the billions are needed immediately to keep the economy from worsening.

"Every economist that I've spoken to ... from well-known economists on the right, conservative economists, to economists on the left, and everyone in between, says the scope of this package has to be bold; it has to be big," Biden said on ABC This Week.

"They are well advised to do too much than too little. We can always scale back. We should get a very large programme in place," Galbraith said.

"There are a whole bunch of anxious and angry workers wondering why we keep throwing money at the people who have created the mess," said Leo Gerard, president of the United Steel Workers, who also signed the letter.

"We're going to take to the streets if Republicans try to block this," Gerard told reporters.

"We have 850,000 members in two countries. Any Democrat or Republican that tries to put a stick in the spokes of this wheel is going to have problems in the next election," Gerard said.

In addition to the stimulus package, the new Treasury secretary may have access to about 350 billion dollars in bailout funds that remain of the 700 billion dollars Congress approved in October.

An actor from the fire theatre performs on a street outside Moscow, December 25, 2008.
REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov

The Right-Wing Economics That Got Us into This Mess Should Go the Way of Soviet CommunismBy Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post - Alternet

It's high time we cast "free market" economic theory into the dustbin of history.
The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.

The only place you can find an American Marxist these days is teaching a college linguistic theory class. But you can find all manner of free market fundamentalists still on the Senate floor or in Governor's mansions or showing up on TV trying to peddle the deregulation snake oil.

Take Sen. John Ensign, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who went on Face the Nation and, with a straight face, said of the economic meltdown: "Unfortunately, it was allowed to be portrayed that this was a result of deregulation, when in fact it was a result of overregulation."

Or Gov. Mark Sanford, who told Joe Scarborough he was against bailing out the auto industry because it would "threaten the very market-based system that has created the wealth that this country has enjoyed."

If a politician announced he was running on a platform of "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" he would be laughed off the stage. That is also the correct response to anyone who continues to make the case that markets do best when left alone.

It's time to drive the final nail into the coffin of laissez-faire capitalism by treating it like the discredited ideology it inarguably is. If not, the Dr. Frankensteins of the right will surely try to revive the monster and send it marauding through our economy once again.

We've only just begun to bury the financially dead, and the free market fundamentalists are already looking to deflect the blame.

In a comprehensive piece on what led to the mortgage crisis and the subsequent financial meltdown, the New York Times shows how the Bush administration's devotion to unregulated markets was a primary cause of our economy to ruin. But the otherwise fascinating piece puts too much focus on the "mistakes" the Bush team made by not paying attention to the warning signs popping up all around them.

"There is no question we did not recognize the severity of the problems," claimed Al Hubbard, Bush's former chief economic adviser. "Had we, we would have attacked them."

But the mistake wasn't in not recognizing the "severity of the problems" -- the mistake was the ideology that led to the problems. Communism didn't fail because Soviet leaders didn't execute it well enough. Same with free market fundamentalism. In fact, Bush and his team did a bang-up job executing a defective theory. The problem wasn't just the bathwater; the baby itself is rotten to the core.

William Seidman, the longtime GOP economic advisor who oversaw the S&L bailout in 1991, cuts to the chase: "This administration made decisions that allowed the free market to operate as a barroom brawl instead of a prize fight. To make the market work well, you have to have a lot of rules."

Even Alan Greenspan, whose owl-eyed visage would adorn a Mount Rushmore of unregulated capitalists, has begun to see the light, telling a House committee in October that he "made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."

But most Republicans are still refusing to see what's right in front of them. Especially Bush, our CEO president, who lays the blame not on the failures of the marketplace but on past administrations and corporate greed. "Wall Street got drunk," he says. Maybe so, but who made the last 8 years Happy Hour, and kept serving up the drinks?

Last week, Ben Smith reported that the GOP was launching "a new, in-house think tank aimed at reviving the party's policy heft." In a private memo explaining the think tank, RNC chairman Mike Duncan wrote: "We must show how our ideology can be applied to solve problems." But, of course, it's that very ideology that's causing the problems. It's like the old horror movie cliché: "We've traced the call -- it's coming from inside the house!"

We've got to do everything we can to make sure there will be no sequels to this political horror. The blame shifters cannot be allowed to make their case without the truth being pointed out at every turn. It's time to relegate free market fundamentalists to the same standing as Marxist ideologues: intellectual curiosities occasionally trotted out as relics of a failed philosophy.

from BartCop

The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney (Parts I and II)
by Andy Worthington - The Huffington Post / Common Dreams

Part I

On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a compelling report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody (PDF), based on a detailed analysis of how Chinese torture techniques, which are used in US military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation if captured, were reverse engineered and applied to prisoners captured in the "War on Terror."

The techniques, taught as part of the SERE programs (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) include sleep deprivation, the prolonged use of stress positions, forced nudity, hooding, exposure to extreme temperatures, subjecting prisoners to loud music and flashing lights, "treating them like animals," and, in some cases, the ancient torture technique known as waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning that the torturers of the Spanish Inquisition called "tortura del agua."

The report rejected the conclusions of over a dozen investigations, conducted since the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004, which identified problems concerning the treatment of prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo, but which were not authorized to gaze up the chain of command to blame senior officials for approving the use of torture by US forces, and for instigating abusive policies.

This enabled the administration to maintain, as it did with Abu Ghraib, that any abuse was the result of the rogue activities of "a few bad apples," but the Senate Committee report comprehensively demolished this defense. The authors wrote:

The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.
Those singled out for blame include President George W. Bush (for stripping prisoners of the protections of the Geneva Conventions in February 2002, which paved the way for all the abuse that followed), former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney's former legal counsel (and now chief of staff) David Addington, former Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes II, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, former White House general counsel (and later US Attorney General) Alberto Gonzales, former White House deputy counsel Timothy Flanigan, former Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, former Justice Department legal adviser John Yoo, former Guantánamo commanders Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq.

The one senior official who was not mentioned -- presumably because of the talent for remaining behind the scenes that once earned him the secret service nickname "Backseat" -- was Dick Cheney. However, just four days later, as if to make up for his omission from the report, Cheney was interviewed by ABC News, and took the opportunity to present a detailed defense of the administration's national security policies, throwing down a very public gauntlet to critics of torture, Guantánamo, illegal wiretapping and the invasion of Iraq, and raising fears that he was only doing so because a Presidential pardon is just around the corner.

Cheney's most significant remark was his first admission in public that he was involved in approving the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks (who, it should be noted, claimed responsibility for the attacks before he was captured by US forces). However, the entire interview is worth looking at, as Cheney's version of the truth does not stand up to scrutiny, and features ten lies that should not be allowed to pass without further comment and analysis.

1) On the supposed legality of unauthorized wiretapping

Asked what he thought about suggestions from Barack Obama's transition team that the Bush administration's homeland security policy "has basically been torture and illegal wiretapping, and that they want to undo the central tenets of your anti-terrorist policy," Cheney replied, "They're wrong. On the question of terrorist surveillance, this was always a policy to intercept communications between terrorists, or known terrorists, or so-called 'dirty numbers,' and folks inside the United States, to capture those international communications. It's worked. It's been successful. It's now embodied in the FISA statute that we passed last year, and that Barack Obama voted for, which I think was a good decision on his part. It's a very, very important capability. It is legal. It was legal from the very beginning. It is constitutional, and to claim that it isn't I think is just wrong."

THE LIE: Although the Bush administration secured Congressional approval for the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the week after the 9/11 attacks (the founding document of the "War on Terror," which granted the President seemingly open-ended powers "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001"), the approval for the warrantless surveillance of communications to and from the United States that followed on September 25 was neither "legal" nor "constitutional."

In a series on Dick Cheney in the Washington Post last summer, Barton Gellman and Jo Becker explained how, on the day of the 9/11 attacks, Cheney and David Addington swiftly assembled a team that included Timothy Flanigan and John Yoo to begin "contemplating the founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary powers will the President need for his response?" Gellman and Becker described how Flanigan, with advice from Yoo, drafted the AUMF, and Yoo explained that "they used the broadest possible language because 'this war was so different, you can't predict what might come up'."

In fact, as the authors point out, they "knew very well what would come next: the interception -- without a warrant -- of communications to and from the United States." Although warrantless communications intercepts had been forbidden by federal law since 1978, the administration claimed that they were "justified, in secret, as 'incident to' the authority Congress had just granted" the President, in a memorandum that Yoo finalized on 25 September. Far from being "legal" and "constitutional," therefore, the secret memorandum was the first brazen attempt by the key policy-makers (in the Office of the Vice President and the Pentagon) to use the AUMF as cover for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power that was intended to cut Congress, the judiciary, and all other government departments out of the loop.

2) On the definition of torture

Moving on to the allegations of torture, Cheney said, "On the question of so-called 'torture,' we don't do torture, we never have. It's not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously; we checked, we had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross. The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful, wouldn't do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong."

THE LIE: The claim, "we don't do torture," which President Bush has also peddled on numerous occasions, is an outright lie. The definition of torture, as laid down in the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person." However, in the summer of 2002 (obviously with Cheney's knowledge), John Yoo, with input from Addington, Gonzales and Flanigan, drafted another secret memorandum, issued on August 1 (PDF), which has become known as the "Torture Memo." This extraordinary document -- one of the most legally manipulative in the whole of the "War on Terror" -- drew creatively on historical rulings about torture in countries including Northern Ireland and Bosnia, and attempted to claim that, for the pain inflicted to count as torture, it "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Last summer, Yoo confirmed that Addington was responsible for another of the memo's radical claims -- that, as Commander in Chief, the President could authorize torture if he felt that it was necessary -- and also confirmed that a second opinion was signed off on August 1, 2002, which, unlike the first (leaked after the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004) has never been made public. An unnamed source cited by Gellman and Becker explained that this second memo contained a long list of techniques approved for use by the CIA, which included waterboarding, but apparently drew the line at threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

As a result, all Cheney's talk of "careful" and "cautious" legal advice is nothing more than a failed attempt to justify redefining torture. Outside of the White House and the Pentagon, it has always been abundantly clear that the SERE techniques (let alone the more extreme methods approved for use by the CIA) are torture, pure and simple, and the Senate Committee's recent report quotes extensively from a number of bodies -- the Air Force, the Defense Department's Criminal Investigative Task Force, the Army's International and Operational Law Division, the Navy and the Marine Corps -- who were opposed to their implementation for this very reason. Others, who took their complaints to the highest levels, were Alberto J. Mora, the head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and the FBI.

3) On intelligence obtained through torture

Following his defense of the interrogation techniques authorized by the administration, Cheney continued: "Did it produce the desired results? I think it did. I think, for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was the number three man in al-Qaeda, the man who planned the attacks of 9/11, provided us with a wealth of information. There was a period of time there, three or four years ago, when about half of everything we knew about al-Qaeda came from that one source."

THE LIE: With exquisite timing, Cheney's bombastic pronouncements about the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and its supposed value coincided with the publication, in Vanity Fair, of an article by David Rose, in which a number of senior officials from both the FBI and the CIA directly refuted Cheney's claims. The article, which is worth reading in its entirety, focused primarily on the torture of Abu Zubaydah, Binyam Mohamed and Jose Padilla (which I have discussed at length before), but there were also key insights into the torture of KSM. Although President Bush claimed that KSM had provided "many details of other plots to kill innocent Americans," a former senior CIA official, who read all the interrogation reports from KSM's torture in secret CIA custody, explained that "90 percent of it was total fucking bullshit," and a former Pentagon analyst added, "KSM produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were."

In addition, Cheney's claims about KSM were directly contradicted by Jack Cloonan, a senior FBI operative whose torture-free interrogation of al-Qaeda operatives in the years before 9/11 provides an object lesson in how the administration should have operated afterwards. Disputing the unspecified claims that, as Cheney put it, the interrogation of KSM had produced "a wealth of information," Cloonan said, "The proponents of torture say, 'Look at the body of information that has been obtained by these methods.' But if KSM and Abu Zubaydah did give up stuff, we would have heard the details." Rose added that a former CIA officer asked, "Why can't they say what the good stuff from Abu Zubaydah or KSM is? It's not as if this is sensitive material from a secret, vulnerable source. You're not blowing your source but validating your program. They say they can't do this, even though five or six years have passed, because it's a 'continuing operation.' But has it really taken so long to check it all out?"

However, what was probably the most damning opinion was offered by FBI director Robert Mueller:

I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls "enhanced techniques"?
"I'm really reluctant to answer that," Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: "I don't believe that has been the case."

4) On approval for the use of torture on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

The key elements of Cheney's admission that waterboarding was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and that Cheney believed that this was "appropriate," are as follows:

Jonathan Karl: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Dick Cheney: I was aware of the program certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do, and I supported it. Jonathan Karl: In hindsight, do you think any of those tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others went too far? Dick Cheney: I don't. Jonathan Karl: And on KSM, one of those tactics, of course, widely reported was waterboarding, and that seems to be a tactic we no longer use. Even that you think was appropriate? Dick Cheney: I do.
THE LIE: Cheney's explanation of how he came to "support" the CIA program that was responsible for the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (and numerous other "high-value detainees") suggests that he was little more than an adviser for a preconceived project. Yet again, nothing could be further from the truth.

To understand why, it is necessary to examine how the "Torture Memos" of August 2002 came about, by looking at the events of November 13, 2001, when, under the cover of his regular weekly meeting with the President, Cheney played the leading role in circulating and gaining approval for a presidential order that authorized the President to seize "terror suspects" anywhere in the world and imprison them as "enemy combatants" without charge or trial, (or, if required, to try them in Military Commissions, which were empowered to accept secret evidence and evidence obtained through torture).

Approved within an hour by only two other figures in the White House -- associate counsel Bradford Berenson, and deputy staff secretary Stuart Bowen, whose objections that it had to be seen by other presidential advisors were only dropped after "rapid, urgent persuasion" that the President "was standing by to sign and that the order was too sensitive to delay" -- the order was the first move in a deliberate ploy to strip prisoners of rights, so that they could be interrogated as the administration saw fit.

This was confirmed the following day, when Cheney told the US Chamber of Commerce that terrorists do not "deserve to be treated as prisoners of war." It took him another ten weeks to persuade the President to agree with him, but in the meantime the pressure to approve the use of torture increased when, shortly after Guantánamo opened, a CIA delegation came to the White House to explain, as John Yoo described it, that they were "going to have some real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees," if interrogators were obliged to confine themselves to treatment permitted by the Geneva Conventions.

While this timeline confirms that CIA representatives pressed for removing the protections of the Geneva Conventions in mid-January 2002, it's also clear that Cheney had a similar plan in mind at least two months earlier. After the CIA visit, Addington wrote another notorious memorandum -- to which the rather less articulate Alberto Gonzales put his name -- in which the Conventions' "strict limits on questioning of enemy prisoners" were seen as hindering attempts "to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists."

This was issued on January 25, and on February 6 Addington provided the President with the words for his next presidential order, which, as Cheney had signaled on November 14, stated that the protections of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners seized in the "War on Terror." The final development came after the capture of Abu Zubaydah on March 28, 2002, when, as John Yoo explained, CIA officials returned to the White House to ask "what the legal limits on interrogation are." As described above, this led to the "Torture Memos" of August 2002, even though the torture of Zubaydah began four months before the memos were issued.

In conclusion, then, although the CIA had some input, the development of the entire program, from November 13, 2001 to August 1, 2002, in which prisoners were defined as "enemy combatants," stripped of all rights so that they could be interrogated, and then set up for torture, was driven not by the CIA but by Cheney and his close advisers.

The Capitol Christmas Tree stands lit with the Capitol in the background in Washington December 24, 2008. REUTERS/Molly Riley

Part II

In Part One of this article, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison, examined Dick Cheney's recent interview with ABC News, in which the Vice President presented a detailed defense of the administration's national security policies, throwing down a very public gauntlet to critics of torture, Guantánamo, illegal wiretapping and the invasion of Iraq. Part One focused on Cheney's lies regarding the use of torture and the implementation of warrantless wiretapping, and this second part examines his lies regarding Guantánamo and the invasion of Iraq.

5) On the prisoners in Guantánamo

When Jonathan Karl mentioned that President Bush had said that he wanted to close Guantánamo two years ago, and asked, "Why has that not happened?" Cheney said, "It's very hard to do. Guantánamo has been the repository, if you will, of hundreds of terrorists, or suspected terrorists, that we've captured since 9/11. They -- many of them, hundreds, have been released back to their home countries. What we have left is the hardcore. Their cases are reviewed on an annual basis to see whether or not they're still a threat, whether or not they're still intelligence value in terms of continuing to hold them. But -- and we're down now to some 200 being held at Guantánamo -- that includes the core group, the really high-value targets like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

THE LIE: Cheney's description of the remaining prisoners as "the hardcore" is typical, but by no means accurate, as the Vice President has always claimed that those in Guantánamo are "the hardcore" or "the worst of the worst." Just two weeks after Guantánamo opened, on January 27, 2002, he told Fox News, "These are the worst of a very bad lot. They are very dangerous. They are devoted to killing millions of Americans, innocent Americans, if they can, and they are perfectly prepared to die in the effort." And last July, on CNN, he said, "I think you need to have someplace to hold those individuals who have been captured during the global war on terror. I'm thinking of people like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ... There are hundreds of people like that, and if you closed Guantánamo, you'd have to find someplace else to put these folks."

Given that around 80 prisoners have been released since Cheney made this last pronouncement, it's clear that his talk of "hardcore" prisoners is a repeated lie, adjusted according to how many prisoners are actually held at Guantánamo.

In addition, Cheney's unsubstantiated claim about the remaining prisoners ignores the fact that, as I explained at length in The Guantánamo Files, and have repeatedly described in articles (most recently here), the majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo were captured not by US forces, but by their Afghan and Pakistani allies, at a time when the US military was offering substantial bounty payments for "al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects." Moreover, they have never been screened adequately to determine whether they should have been declared as "enemy combatants" -- not on capture (when they should have received Article 5 battlefield tribunals, according to the Geneva Conventions), not in the prisons in Afghanistan that were used to process them for Guantánamo (where the orders were that every Arab was to be sent to Cuba), and not in Guantánamo itself. The tribunals established to review the status of the prisoners in Guantánamo relied almost exclusively on woefully generic information, and on confessions obtained through the torture, coercion or bribery of other prisoners. As former insider Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham has eloquently explained, the entire process was designed not to provide justice, but to defend the administration's blanket assertions that the prisoners were "enemy combatants."

6) On the prisoners' rights

Cheney continued, "Now, the question, if you're going to close Guantánamo, what are you going to do with those prisoners? One suggestion is, well, we'll bring them to the United States. Well, I don't know very many congressmen, for example, who are eager to have 200 al-Qaeda terrorists deposited in their district. It's a complex and difficult problem. If you bring them onshore into the United States, they automatically acquire certain legal rights and responsibilities that the government would then have, that they don't as long as they're at Guantánamo. And that's an important consideration.

THE LIE: In this statement, Cheney's lie, which reveals his disdain for the Supreme Court, is his claim that, as long as the prisoners are in Guantánamo, they don't have "certain legal rights." As far as the Supreme Court is concerned, the pretence that Guantánamo was beyond the reach of US law, and that the prisoners could be held without rights, was demolished in June 2004, when the highest court in the land ruled in Rasul v. Bush that Guantánamo was "territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control," and that, because the prisoners denied that they had "engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against this country," and had "never been afforded access to any tribunal, much less charged with and convicted of wrongdoing," they had habeas corpus rights; in other words, the right to challenge the basis of their detention before an impartial judge.

The administration then persuaded Congress to remove these rights in two appalling pieces of legislation -- the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- but the Supreme Court restored their habeas corpus rights in another landmark case in June 2008, Boumediene v. Bush, and made sure that Cheney could not persuade Congress to remove them again by ruling that this time their rights were constitutional.

The prisoners have therefore had "certain legal rights" since June 2004, although it is clear that Cheney still does not regard Supreme Court rulings as having any impact on the President's whims as the Commander-in-Chief of a self-declared war without end.

7) On conditions at Guantánamo

Next, Cheney said, "These are not American citizens. They are not subject, nor do they have the same rights that an American citizen does vis-à-vis the government. But they are well treated."

THE LIE: It is hard to conceive of a manner in which the prisoners at Guantánamo are "well treated." A dedicated PR machine has attempted to make out that they are all coddled and well-fed, but the truth is that, unlike convicted criminals on the US mainland, who watch TV, have opportunities to socialize, receive family visits and have regular access to reading and writing materials, the prisoners in Guantánamo -- who have never been charged with a crime, let alone convicted -- are deprived of almost all "comfort items" to relieve the crushing monotony of their daily lives and the desperate uncertainty of their fate. They have, for example, never received a single visit from their loved ones, they are still hurled into isolation cells or beaten by armored response teams for the slightest infraction of the rules, and if they protest their seemingly endless imprisonment without charge or trial by embarking on hunger strikes, they are force-fed in the most brutal manner, even though force-feeding competent prisoners is illegal.

8) On the Military Commissions at Guantánamo

Cheney continued, "They also have the opportunity, and the process has just started now to be heard before a military commission with a judgment, fair and honest judgment made about their guilt or innocence, to be represented by counsel provided through that process."

THE LIE: I have covered the Military Commissions in depth over the last year and a half, and at no point has it ever been demonstrated that the system dreamt up by Cheney and Addington in November 2001 is "fair and honest." Every defense attorney appointed by the government has risked his or her career by openly criticizing the system, and several prosecutors have resigned in protest at what they regarded as a rigged system, the most significant being Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor, who complained of political interference, and Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who complained that evidence vital to the defense was routinely withheld. Both stories were covered in detail in my article, "The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials."

Other problems include the fact that two prisoners who were juveniles when seized (Omar Khadr and Mohamed Jawad) have been put forward for trials, despite the fact that no juvenile has been put forward for a war crimes trial since the Second World War, and despite claims that the allegations against them are rigged, and several insignificant Afghan prisoners have also been charged. Moreover, the prisoners regarded as particularly significant (the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators, for example) have been allowed to make a mockery of the system, and on the eve of the Presidential election, a man named Ali Hamza al-Bahlul was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for his association with al-Qaeda, even though he refused to mount a defense. In the rest of the world, that would be referred to as a show trial.

9) On the alleged recidivism of released prisoners

Cheney was asked about the danger of closing Guantánamo "too soon," shortly after the following disturbing exchange took place:

Jonathan Karl: So when do you think we'll be at a point where Guantánamo could be responsibly shut down? Dick Cheney: Well, I think that would come with the end of the war on terror. Jonathan Karl: When's that going to be? Dick Cheney: Well, nobody knows. Nobody can specify that. Jonathan Karl: But basically it sounds like you're saying Guantánamo Bay will be open indefinitely.
Cheney said, "Well, if you release people that shouldn't have been released, and that's happened in some cases already, you end up with them back on the battlefield. We've had, as I recall now -- and these are rough numbers, I'd want to check it -- but, say, approximately 30 of these folks who've been held in Guantánamo, been released, and ended up back on the battlefield again, and we've encountered them a second time around. They've either been killed or captured in further conflicts with our forces."

THE LIE: The claim that 30 former prisoners "ended up back on the battlefield" is a staple of Pentagon propaganda, even though it has never been backed up with evidence. Instead, as the Seton Hall Law School noted in a report last December (PDF), the Pentagon regarded speaking out about Guantánamo as "returning to the battlefield" (as in the case of three Britons, Ruhal Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, who were involved in a film about their experiences, The Road to Guantánamo).

The Pentagon has also conveniently ignored the fact that at least six Taliban fighters were released because the US authorities had refused to consult with their Afghan allies. In 2004, officials in Hamid Karzai's government blamed the US for the return of Taliban commanders to the battlefield, explaining that "neither the American military officials, nor the Kabul police, who briefly process the detainees when they are sent home, consult them about the detainees they free."

The true number of prisoners who have "returned to the battlefield" is certainly less than the number quoted by the Pentagon -- and by Dick Cheney -- although it should also be noted that, even if it were correct, a recidivism rate of 6 percent is considerably lower than in any other US prison, and indicates, of course, that a large number of those released were not terrorists or militants in the first place.

10) On the reason for invading Iraq

Turning to Iraq, Jonathan Karl said, "You probably saw -- Karl Rove last week said that if the intelligence had been correct, we probably would not have gone to war," and Cheney responded, "I disagree with that. I think the -- as I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren't any stockpiles. What we found in the after-action reports after the intelligence report was done and then various special groups went and looked at the intelligence and what its validity was, what they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feedstocks. They also found that he had every intention of resuming production once the international sanctions were lifted."

THE LIE: Brazen to the end, Cheney has clung to the WMD deception as though it had ever been anything other than an excuse for regime change following the illegal invasion of a sovereign country, driven by a deranged desire to gain geopolitical supremacy and establish an ill-defined facsimile of the American political and economic system in the heart of the Middle East.

No one credible agrees with Cheney's assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities -- or his intentions -- and in addition, of course, Cheney has a colourful and reprehensible record of bullying the intelligence agencies into finding reasons to invade Iraq, and promoting the fiction that Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain "yellowcake" uranium ore from Niger.

Moreover, two of Cheney's particular enthusiasms -- the torture of prisoners, and the invasion of Iraq -- came together when Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the head of the Khaldan military training camp in Afghanistan (which had little connection with al-Qaeda) was captured and sent to Egypt to be tortured, where he made a false confession that Saddam Hussein had offered to train two al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons. Al-Libi later recanted his confession, but not until Secretary of State Colin Powell -- to his eternal shame -- has used the story in February 2003 in an attempt to persuade the UN to support the invasion of Iraq.

This, of course, is disturbing enough, but as David Rose explained in an article in Vanity Fair that coincided with Cheney's recent ABC News interview, al-Libi was not the only torture victim spouting nonsense about Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.

According to two senior intelligence analysts, Abu Zubaydah, the facilitator for the Khaldan camp, who, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was subjected to torture -- including waterboarding -- also made a number of false confessions about connections between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, beyond one ludicrous claim which was subsequently leaked by the administration: that Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were working with Saddam Hussein to destabilize the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq. One of the analysts, who worked at the Pentagon, explained, "The intelligence community was lapping this up, and so was the administration, obviously. Abu Zubaydah was saying Iraq and al-Qaeda had an operational relationship. It was everything the administration hoped it would be."

However, none of the analysts knew that these confessions had been obtained through torture. The Pentagon analyst told David Rose, "As soon as I learned that the reports had come from torture, once my anger had subsided I understood the damage it had done. I was so angry, knowing that the higher-ups in the administration knew he was tortured, and that the information he was giving up was tainted by the torture, and that it became one reason to attack Iraq." He added, "It seems to me they were using torture to achieve a political objective."

This is the end, for now, of my tour through the dark, unjust and counter-productive world fashioned by Dick Cheney and his colleagues and close advisers in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, but I hope -- as disturbing rumors begin to swirl -- that it serves to confirm how a Presidential pardon for the Vice President would, effectively, be an endorsement for some of the cruellest manfestations of unfettered executive power and disdain for the rule of law that the United States has ever experienced.

A winter swimmer jumps into the icy water of Songgua River in Harbin, Heilongjiang province December 24, 2008. REUTERS/Sheng Li

Why Al Franken Should NOT Be Riding Private Planes
by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman - Common Dreams
The tragic and suspicious death of Karl Rove's election thief in chief should send a clear message to Al Franken and other key liberals: don't be riding in any small private planes.

Death by air crash now seems to be the favored means of ridding the Rovian right of troublesome characters.

The most recent is Michael Connell, who died Friday night when his private plane crashed near his northern Ohio home. Connell was the information techology whiz kid who helped Rove steal the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, along with a few in between--possibly including the 2002 senatorial campaign in Minnesota that followed the death of Paul Wellstone.

Connell was an expert pilot whose plane crashed in clear weather. He held virtually all the secrets to how George W. Bush was illegally foisted on the American people--and the world--for eight horrifying years. By manipulating computerized results in Florida 2000 and Ohio 2004 Connell made history. By some accounts, he was about to tell the attorneys in the on-going King-Lincoln-Bronzeville federal civil rights lawsuit how he did it. He also approached expressed a willingness to appear under oath before Congress. But now he is dead.

Current cover stories include the possibility that his plane ran out of fuel. But its crash was accompanied by a very large fireball explosion that burned for more than ten minutes. A trooper on the scene immediately identified Connell, but newspaper accounts say his body was charred beyond recognition.

Connell told various sources that he was being threatened by Rove. He canceled at least two previous flights due to mechanical failure. A father of four, his decision to fly from a highly restricted airport in Maryland remains a mystery. Connell reportedly did contract work for security-industrial agencies, like the CIA. Connell also openly acknowledged that he was the first IT contractor to move his servers behind the firewall of the US House of Representatves where he oversaw the websites of the House Judiciary Committee, Intelligence Committee, Ways and Means Committee, and Administrative Committee, arguably the four most powerful committees in the House.

He now joins such critical players as Paul Wellstone, Mel Carnahan, Ron Brown, Mickey Leland, John Tower, John F. Kennedy, Jr., and many more critical public figures who have died in small plane crashes at questionable moments.

In all cases there are non-nefarious potential explanations for their deaths. Conspiracy theories can, indeed, be frivolous.

But so can their out-of-hand dismissal by coincidence theorists. Both Wellstone and Carnahan died two weeks before critical Senatorial elections they were favored to win in a divided Senate. In 2000, Carnahan's Missouri seat was taken by his wife, who subsequently lost it.

Wellstone, the leading liberal light in the US Senate, had been personally threatened by Dick Cheney for opposing the Iraq war. Wellstone's plane crashed under dubious circumstances, carrying himself, his wife and daughter. In an extremely questionable outcome, Norm Coleman got his seat.

Coleman was hand-picked by Karl Rove to run against Wellstone. His ensuing victory over stand-in candidate Walter Mondale was the highly unlikely outcome of a messy, manipulated election that coincided with equally dubious senatorial vote counts in Georgia and Colorado.

Al Franken may now be poised to take back the Wellstone seat for the Democratic Party. As an Air America talk host, he repeatedly mocked those who were investigating the theft of the 2004 election.

But he now owes the possibility of being elected to the diligent work of election protection activists who have fought all these years for fair, open and reliable vote counts. Had former Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell been in charge of this year's Minnesota election, Franken would not even be in the running.

Ironically, a brutal right-wing hate campaign is now being waged against Franken, charging him with election theft. Among other things, it claims he "went to Hollywood" for money to steal his way into the Senate.

Were it not for the deaths of so many others before him, such talk could be dismissed out of hand.

But under the circumstances, we would strongly urge Al Franken not to be flying in any small planes.

The US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet, and We Simply Never Talk About ItBy Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com - Alternet

America garrisons the globe in ways that are truly unprecedented, but if you live in the United States, you rarely hear a word about it.
Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers. When those troops don't stay, often American equipment does -- carefully stored for further use at tiny "cooperative security locations," known informally as "lily pads" (from which U.S. troops, like so many frogs, could assumedly leap quickly into a region in crisis).

At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military "sites" abroad.

The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard -- that is, the population of an American town -- are functionally floating bases.

And here's the other half of that simple truth: We don't care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial.

Now, that's the gist of it. If, like most Americans, that's more than you care to know, stop here.

Where the Sun Never Sets

Let's face it, we're on an imperial bender and it's been a long, long night. Even now, in the wee hours, the Pentagon continues its massive expansion of recent years; we spend militarily as if there were no tomorrow; we're still building bases as if the world were our oyster; and we're still in denial. Someone should phone the imperial equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous.

But let's start in a sunnier time, less than two decades ago, when it seemed that there would be many tomorrows, all painted red, white, and blue. Remember the 1990s when the U.S. was hailed -- or perhaps more accurately, Washington hailed itself -- not just as the planet's "sole superpower" or even its unique "hyperpower," but as its "global policeman," the only cop on the block? As it happened, our leaders took that label seriously and our central police headquarters, that famed five-sided building in Washington D.C, promptly began dropping police stations -- aka military bases -- in or near the oil heartlands of the planet (Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait) after successful wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Persian Gulf.

As those bases multiplied, it seemed that we were embarking on a new, post-Soviet version of "containment." With the USSR gone, however, what we were containing grew a lot vaguer and, before 9/11, no one spoke its name. Nonetheless, it was, in essence, Muslims who happened to live on so many of the key oil lands of the planet.

Yes, for a while we also kept intact our old bases from our triumphant mega-war against Japan and Germany, and then the stalemated "police action" in South Korea (1950-1953) -- vast structures which added up to something like an all-military American version of the old British Raj. According to the Pentagon, we still have a total of 124 bases in Japan, up to 38 on the small island of Okinawa, and 87 in South Korea. (Of course, there were setbacks. The giant bases we built in South Vietnam were lost in 1975, and we were peaceably ejected from our major bases in the Philippines in 1992.) (continue reading)

Two Dangerous Bush-Cheney Myths
By Robert Parry - Consortium News

As George W. Bush and Dick Cheney make their case for some positive legacy from the past eight years, two arguments are playing key roles: the notion that torturing terror suspects saved American lives and the belief that Bush’s Iraq troop “surge” transformed a disaster into something close to “victory.”
Not only will these twin arguments be important in defining the public’s future impression of where Bush should rank on the presidential list, but they could constrain how far President Barack Obama can go in reversing these policies. In other words, the perception of the past can affect the future.

Though most current thinking holds that George W. Bush might want to trademark the slogan “Worst President Ever,” America's powerful right-wing media (and its many allies in the mainstream press) will surely seek to rehabilitate Bush’s reputation as much as possible.

Even elevating Bush to the status of a presidential mediocrity might open the door for a revival of the Bush Dynasty with brother Jeb already eyeing one of Florida’s U.S. Senate seats and possibly harboring grander ambitions.

And even if another Bush in the White House is not realistic, a kinder-gentler judgment on George W. Bush at least could help the Republican Party rebound in 2010 and 2012. So evaluating the Bush-Cheney torture policies and how successful the “surge” are not just academic exercises.

Two recent articles by people with first-hand knowledge also shed important new light on these issues: one by a lead U.S. interrogator in Iraq and the other by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The interrogator – using the pseudonym “Matthew Alexander” for an article in the Washington Post’s Outlook section on Nov. 30 – wrote that the practice of humiliating and abusing prisoners had proved counterproductive, not only violating U.S. principles and failing to extract reliable intelligence but fueling the Iraqi insurgency and getting large numbers of U.S. soldiers killed.

Indeed, “Alexander,” a U.S. Air Force special operations officer, argued that it was his team’s abandonment of those harsh tactics that contributed to the tracking down and killing of the murderous al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006, an important turning point in reducing levels of violence in Iraq.

“Alexander” said he arrived in Iraq in March 2006, amid the bloody civil war that Sunni extremist Zarqawi had helped provoke a month earlier with the bombing of the golden-domed Askariya mosque in Samarra, a shrine revered by Iraq's majority Shiites.

“Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi,” he wrote. “What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model. … These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

“I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information.”

Breakthroughs

By getting to know the captives and negotiating with them, his team achieved breakthroughs that enabled the U.S. military to close in on Zarqawi while also gaining a deeper understanding of what drove the Iraqi insurgency, “Alexander” wrote.

“Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq.

“Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money,” the interrogator wrote, noting that this understanding played a key role in the U.S. military turning many Sunnis against the hyper-violent extremism of Zarqawi’s organization.

“Alexander” added that the new interrogation methods “convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.”

Despite the success in killing Zarqawi, “Alexander” said the old, harsh interrogation methods continued. “I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished,” he wrote. “Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees.”

“Alexander” found that the engrained support for using “rough stuff” against hardened jihadists was difficult to overcome despite the successes from more subtle approaches.

“We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques,” he wrote. “A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, ‘I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate.’"

From hundreds of these interrogations, “Alexander” said he learned that the images from Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib were actually getting American soldiers killed by drawing angry young Arabs into the Iraq War.

“Torture and abuse cost American lives,” the interrogator wrote. “I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq.

“It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001.

"How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.”

Nevertheless, in a series of candid “exit interviews,” Vice President Cheney – and to a lesser degree President Bush – have defended their actions that included sanctioning brutal methods of interrogation, such as the simulated drowning of “waterboarding.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Cheney Defends Waterboarding Order.”]

The ‘Surge’

To this day, the belief that subjecting “bad guys” to physical and psychological abuse makes them crack -- and thus saves American lives -- remains a central myth that the departing Bush administration won’t abandon. A parallel myth is the notion of the “successful surge.”

It holds that Bush’s brave decision to go against the prevailing political winds in early 2007 and escalate U.S. military involvement in Iraq – with a 30,000-troop “surge” – saved the day. News stories and opinion articles across the U.S. news media, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, have transformed this argument into “conventional wisdom.”

However, as we have pointed out in other stories, the reality is far more complex, with several other key reasons contributing to the drop in Iraqi violence, many predating or unrelated to the “surge,” including:

--The decision by Sunni tribes to turn against al-Qaeda and accept U.S. financial support, the so-called “Anbar Awakening” that began in 2006. Zarqawi’s extremism contributed to this shift, which in turn was a factor in his isolation and death in June 2006.

--Vicious ethnic cleansing had separated Sunnis and Shiites to such a degree that there were fewer targets to kill. Several million Iraqis fled as refugees either into neighboring countries or within their own.

--Concrete walls built between Sunni and Shiite areas made “death-squad” raids more difficult but also “cantonized” much of Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, making everyday life for Iraqis even more exhausting as they sought food or traveled to work.

--An expanded U.S. policy of rounding up so-called “military age males” locked up tens of thousands in prison.

--Awesome U.S. firepower, concentrated on Iraqi insurgents and civilian bystanders for more than five years, had slaughtered countless thousands of Iraqis and intimidated many others to look simply to their own survival.

--With the total Iraqi death toll estimated in the hundreds of thousands and many more Iraqis horribly maimed, the society was deeply traumatized. As tyrants have learned throughout history, at some point violent repression does work.

However, in Washington political circles, it was all about the “successful surge.”

There also was little concern about the 1,000 additional U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq since President Bush started the “surge” in 2007. The Americans killed during the “surge” represent roughly one-quarter of the total war dead whose numbers have now passed the 4,200 mark.

Rumsfeld’s Doubts

Surprisingly to some Iraq War critics, one of the chief obstacles to Bush’s “surge” was the widely despised Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who – in fall 2006 – pushed for a strategy that would have slashed the U.S. military presence in Iraq dramatically by mid-2007.

On Nov. 6, 2006, Rumsfeld sent a memo to the White House, in which he listed his preferred – or “above the line” – options as "an accelerated drawdown of U.S. bases … to five by July 2007" and withdrawal of U.S. forces "from vulnerable positions — cities, patrolling, etc. … so the Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."

Two days later, Rumsfeld was forced to submit his resignation and Bush announced Robert Gates as the new Defense Secretary. Not aware of Rumsfeld’s memo, Washington pundits and many leading Democrats misinterpreted the personnel shift as a reaction to the Democratic congressional election victory on Nov. 7, 2006.

The consensus view was that the “realist” Gates would oversee a rapid U.S. military drawdown in Iraq. However, the opposite occurred. Gates became Bush’s front man for the “surge.” [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Robert Gates: As Bad as Rumsfeld?”]

The subsequent conventional wisdom about the “successful surge” catapulted Gates from the ranks of the departing Bush administration into those of the arriving Obama administration, where he will remain Defense Secretary.

On Nov. 23, 2008, less than three weeks after Obama’s Nov. 4 election victory as it was becoming clear that Obama would retain Gates, Rumsfeld shed more light on his own Iraq War strategy in an op-ed for the New York Times.

While bowing to the prevailing conventional wisdom about the “successful surge,” Rumsfeld defended his pre-surge thinking, explaining that a number of factors had set up the “tipping point” that enabled the “surge” to be successful.

Though using more positive language about those preconditions (than we did), Rumsfeld made essentially the same points, adding that previous increases in U.S. troop levels – to numbers comparable to the “surge” levels – had achieved minimal effect in containing the violence.

“As one who is occasionally — and incorrectly — portrayed as an opponent of the surge in Iraq, I believe that while the surge has been effective in Iraq, we must also recognize the conditions that made it successful,” Rumsfeld wrote.
“By early 2007, several years of struggle had created the new conditions for a tipping point:

“--Al Qaeda in Iraq’s campaign of terrorism and intimidation had turned its Sunni base of support against it. The result was the so-called Anbar Awakening in the late summer of 2006, followed by similar awakening movements across Iraq.

“--From 2003 through 2006, United States military forces, under the leadership of Gen. John Abizaid and Gen. George Casey, inflicted huge losses on the Baathist and Qaeda leadership. Many thousands of insurgents, including the Qaeda chief in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, were captured or killed and proved difficult to replace.

“--The Iraqi Security Forces had achieved cohesion, improved operational effectiveness and critical mass. By December 2006, some 320,000 Iraqis had been trained, equipped and deployed, producing the forces necessary to help hold difficult neighborhoods against the enemy. By 2007, the surge, for most Iraqis, could have an Iraqi face.

“--And the political scene in Iraq had shifted. Moktada al-Sadr, the firebrand cleric, declared a cease-fire in February 2007. The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, seated in May 2006, moved against militias and Iranian-backed militias and has imperfectly, but notably, rejected narrow sectarian policies.

“The best indication that timing is everything may be that there had been earlier surges without the same effect as the 2007 surge. In 2005, troop levels in Iraq were increased to numbers nearly equal to the 2007 surge — twice. But the effects were not as durable because large segments of the Sunni population were still providing sanctuary to insurgents, and Iraq’s security forces were not sufficiently capable or large enough.”

In other words, even Rumsfeld would agree that the simplistic conventional wisdom of Washington – that Bush’s “surge” turned everything around and that everyone, including Barack Obama, must accept that “fact” – doesn’t square with the more complex reality.

Still, as Americans should have learned over the past three decades of image-managing – from Ronald Reagan to Karl Rove – perceptions can be a powerful thing. Perception may not be the same as reality but it can become a very dangerous substitute both in defining the present and charting the future.

A person walks across a field in the village Khomutino in Russia's remote Altai region 150 km (93 miles) from the regional centre Barnaul December 25, 2008.
REUTERS/Andrei Kasprishin

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A Proper Shoulder Turn Could Be
The Key to Eliminating Your Slice
Making a proper “full shoulder turn” is one of the most important fundamentals of the golf swing, yet it's one of the most common mistakes made by golfers; and why so many have slice problems. A proper shoulder turn is when you rotate the shoulders so the leading shoulder comes under your chin, without letting your hips turn much at all. Below we explain the ways this eliminates the slice:

• If your shoulder rotation is stopped too early, your arms will tend to continue by fling across the target line and causing an outside-to-inside swing path, resulting in the dreaded banana-ball. A full shoulder turn will help the club fall “on plane”, which greatly reduces the chance of cutting across the target line and slicing the golf ball.

• A full shoulder turn will promote proper weight shift. Remember too keep your lower body from moving laterally. Do not confuse the full shoulder turn as meaning you must get the club back to parallel at the top of the swing. Many great golfers have a compact swing that comes up far short of parallel at the top, but all great golfers take a full shoulder turn when executing a full shot.

• A full shoulder turn will bring you to the top of the swing and assist in getting the hands and arms into proper position.

• Keep your chin up and off your chest so the leading shoulder can rotate and pass under the chin. If the shoulder hits your chin, it will cut the shoulder rotation short and encourage a slice.

• When a golfer does not utilize a full shoulder turn, they tend to rely more on the small muscles (hands and arms) to swing the golf club. This leads to inconsistent ball striking and shots prone to slicing. With a full shoulder turn, you will use more of your big muscles, which are much more consistent, and help you square the club face and avoid a slice. Don’t be in a rush; taking the club back slow will help you to finish the back swing with a full shoulder turn. More body, less arms.

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