Sorry that we
missed the last five days –
we were busy after the 2nd!
But so was the Bush regime. And
so, to make up, here are five reasons of the day, each introduced by an
appropriate passage of our call to DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME, and most having
come to light since the November 2 demonstrations:
1) “Your government, on the basis of
outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq. .
.“
On Sunday,
November 6, the New York Times quoted a February 2002 Defense Intelligence
Agency document that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi “was
intentionally misleading“
his interrogators in claiming that Iraq supported Al Qaeda‘s pursuit of chemical and biological
weapons. Despite this warning, Bush,
Cheney and Colin Powell all claimed that al-Libi‘s
information was “credible“, with Powell going on and on about
this in his infamous UN speech justifying the war. The February 2002 DIA document generally
dismissed the idea that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated at all.
Nonetheless,
knowing that their one “source“ was strongly suspected of being bogus
and having no substantiation whatsoever, Bush, Cheney and Powell pounded on the
theme that Iraq was somehow implicated in 9/11 with such relentlessness that most
of the American public came to believe it and to support the war on that
basis.
Meanwhile,
U.S. forces mounted a major offensive on the Syrian border. In the town of Husbaya, facing resistance as
they attempted to search every house in the town, the U.S. responded with
automatic weapons fire, tank rounds, 500-pound bombs, and strafing from
low-flying fighter jets. One marine was
killed in the fighting; U.S. forces offered no estimates of Iraqi dead.
2) “Your government is openly torturing
people and justifying it. . . “
While Bush
continues to threaten to veto a law that would outlaw “cruel,
inhuman and degrading treatment of anyone in U.S. custody“, the Washington Post reported that the
CIA manages a string of secret prisons in Eastern Europe in which people are
detained and tortured, out of the sight and knowledge of anyone else in the
world, including the Red Cross. This is
part of a worldwide network of secret prisons run by the CIA.
Earlier, on
October 24, the ACLU reported on a study of the autopsies and death reports of
44 people who died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. 21 of these deaths were deemed to be
homicide, and eight of the people killed appear to have resulted from torture
techniques.
3) “Your government puts people in jail on
the merest suspicion. . . “
Five Muslim
fans of the New York Giants football team reported being detained and
interrogated by the FBI for praying at a Giants=
football team. The men were refused
readmittance to Giants Stadium after having been “cleared.“
On Sunday, the
Washington Post reported that the FBI has increased the number of “national security letters“ from 300 to 30,000 since the passage
of the Patriot Act. “National security letters“ are used to force businesses to report
information on customers, including anything and everything done by someone on
the internet. In addition, recipients of
such letters are legally forbidden to reveal that they have gotten them.
4) “Your government is moving each day
closer to a theocracy. . . “
The court case
involving the Dover, PA school board=s
insistence on teaching that the theory of evolution is “not
a fact“ is
moving toward a conclusion. The board
has ordered schools to teach that “intelligent
design“ – the notion that life was “created“
by a “designer“ –
offers an equally valid explanation for the origin and development of life on
earth.
Science
requires that explanations for phenomena be sought in nature; “intelligent design“ claims that such explanations cannot
be sought for the origin of life on earth, and hence is supernatural and not
scientific. Moreover, testimony in the
case has shown that those who instituted the policy in Dover, PA originally wanted
to teach the creation story from the Christian and Jewish Bibles as fact
instead of evolution, but decided to use intelligent design as a more effective
political “wedge“ against the scientific explanation,
one that would “open the
door“ to the
Biblical explanation being taught in the future.
Last summer,
Bush called for the teaching of intelligent design in the schools.
5) “Your government is moving to deny women
here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion. . . “
Confirmation
hearings for Samuel Alito –
alias “Scalito“ –
were announced for early January.
Scalito most famous judicial opinion is his dissent on the case that
later became the Webster
vs Casey
precedent that upheld the right of women to abortion. Alito, in his dissent, saw nothing wrong with
legally forcing women to inform their spouse before getting an abortion. If confirmed, Alito will replace Sandra Day O‘Connor, who voted to overturn the
Pennsylvania law that Alito sought to uphold.