The Sorrows of Empire (59 page)

16
. Julian Borger, “U.S. Plan for New Nuclear Arsenal,”
Guardian,
February 19, 2003. Also see Ellen Goodman, “War Is Now the Cover Story for Making More Terror,”
Newsday,
March 14, 2002; Tad Daley, “America’s Nuclear Hypocrisy,”
International Herald Tribune,
October 21, 2002; Jonathan Schell, “The Bomb Is Back,”
Sojourners Magazine,
November-December 2002, pp. 20–25, 58–59; Ira Chernus, “Brandishing Nukes—A Self-Defeating Policy,”
CommonDreams.org,
February 4, 2003; Dan Stober, “Administration Moves Ahead on Nuclear’Bunker Busters,’”
San Jose Mercury News,
April 23, 2003; and Noah Shachtman, “Embattled Lab Unveils New Nukes,”
Wired,
April 23, 2003.

17
. Elaine Scarry, “A Nuclear Double Standard,”
Boston Globe,
November 3, 2002.

18
. See Marilyn W. Thompson,
The Killer Strain: Anthrax and a Government Exposed
(New York: HarperCollins, 2003); and Chuck Murphy, “Not Iraq, but Anniston, Ala.,”
St. Petersburg Times,
March 16, 2003. According to Murphy, the U.S. Army is currently storing in the United States 873,020 pounds of sarin, 1,657,480 pounds of VX nerve agent, and 1,976,760 pounds of mustard gas.

19
. “Complete Text of President Bush’s State of the Union Address,”
Los Angeles Times,
January 28, 2003. Also see Ian Urbina, “On the Road with Murder, Inc.,”
Asia Times,
January 24, 2003; Ori Nir, “Bush Seeks Israeli Advice on ‘Targeted Killings,’”
Forward,
February 7, 2003.

20
. Bob Woodward,
Bush at War
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), pp. 145–46.

21
. James Madison, as quoted by Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-West Virginia), October 3, 2002, speaking in opposition to a resolution granting the president open-ended authority to go to war whenever he chooses. See John C. Bonifaz, “War Powers: The White House Continues to Defy the Constitution,”
TomPaine.com,
February 4, 2003.

22
. Doug Thompson, “Role Reversal: Bush Wants a War, Pentagon Urges Caution,”
Capitol Hill Blue,
January 22, 2002; quoted by Winslow T. Wheeler, “The Week of Shame: Congress Wilts as the President Demands an Unclogged Road to War” (Washington: Center for Defense Information, January 2003), p. 17.

23
. Wheeler, “Week of Shame,” p. 17. Also see Steve Lopez, “Hindsight Casts Harsh Light on Use-of-Force Resolution,”
Los Angeles Times,
March 5, 2003.

24
.1 am indebted to William Norman Griggs analysis in his “Suspending Habeas Corpus,”
New American
18:14 (July 15, 2002). Also see “Detaining Americans,”
Washington Post,
June 13, 2002; and Nat Hentoff, “George W. Bush’s Constitution,”
Village Voice,
January 3, 2003.

25
. Benjamin Weiser, “U.S. to Appeal Order Giving Lawyers Access to Detainee,”
New York Times,
March 26, 2003.

26
. Dick Meyer, “John Ashcroft: Minister of Fear,”
CBSNews.com,
June 12, 2002. Also see Geov Parrish, “Hello? Is Anybody Getting This Down?”
WorkingForChange.com,
June 11, 2002; and Edward Alden and Caroline Daniel, “Battle Lines Blurred as U.S. Searches for Enemies in the War on Terrorism,”
Financial Times,
January 2, 2003.

27
. For details, see Paul Brodeur,
Secrets: A Writer in the Cold War
(Boston: Faber and Faber, 1997), pp. 159–65. On the CIA’s illegal domestic spying, see Angus Mackenzie,
Secrets: The CIA’s War at Home
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). There is direct continuity between these thirty-year-old assaults on civil liberties and the Bush administration’s 2003 proposal to give the Pentagon and the CIA subpoena powers, which would allow them to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of alleged
counterterrorism operations. See Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, “Broad Domestic Role Asked for CIA and the Pentagon,”
New York Times,
May 2, 2003.

28
. James Bamford, “Washington Bends the Rules,”
New York Times,
August 27, 2002.

29
. Patrick S. Poole, “Inside America’s Secret Court: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” <
http://fly.hiwaay.net/~pspoole/fiscshort.html
>.

30
. Anita Ramasastry, “Why the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court Was Right to Rebuke the Justice Department,” September 4, 2002, <
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20020904.html
>. Ramasastry is a professor of law at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle.

31
. Richard B. Schmitt, “U.S. Expands Clandestine Surveillance Operations,”
Los Angeles Times,
March 5, 2003.

32
. Bob Egelko, “Spy Court to Review Prosecutors’ Powers,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
September 1, 2002; and Anita Ramasastry, “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review Creates a Potential End Run around Traditional Fourth Amendment Protections for Certain Criminal Law Enforcement Wiretaps,” November 26, 2002, <
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/ramasastry/20021126.html
>.

33
. “U.S. Considers New Anti-Terrorism Legislation,” Reuters, February 7, 2003.

34
. William M. Arkin, “The Military’s New War of Words,”
Los Angeles Times,
November 24, 2002.

35
. Bob Kemper, “Team Makes Sure War Message Is Unified, Positive,”
Chicago Tribune,
April 7, 2003.

36
. “U.S. Lobbyist Helped Draft Eastern Europeans’ Iraq Statement,” Yahoo News, February 20, 2003.

37
. Pervez Hoodbhoy, “America’s Dreams of Empire,”
Los Angeles Times,
January 26, 2003; Chris Floyd, “Bush Uses War to Bury Probe of 9/11,”
CounterPunch,
March 22, 2003.

38
. James Bamford,
Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-secret National Security Agency
(New York: Anchor Books, 2002), pp. 78–91. Also see Bamford, “Bush Wrong to Use Pretext as Excuse to Invade Iraq,”
USA
Today,
August 29, 2002; Adam Hochschild, “War or Peace? The U.S. Is Looking for an Excuse to Fight,03 ”
San Francisco Chronicle,
January 19, 2003; and Jennifer A. Gritt, “Weapons of Mass Delusion,” April 30, 2003, <
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/gritt2.html
>.

39
. “Weighing the Evidence,” New
York Times,
February 15, 2003.

40
. The transcript is online at <
http://www.fair.org/press-releases/kamel.pdf
>. Also see “Star Witness on Iraq Said Weapons Were Destroyed,” Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting,
Media Advisory,
February 27, 2003; John Barry, “The Defector’s Secrets,”
Newsweek,
March 3, 2003; Andrew Gumbel, “Anthrax, Chemicals, and Nerve Gas: Who Is Lying?”
Independent,
April 20, 2003; and “So Where Are They, Mr. Blair?”
Independent,
April 20, 2003.

41
. The most useful statement from Ritter is his interview with the PBS television program
Frontline
in 1999, <
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/unscom/interviews/ritter.html
>.

42
. Jonathan Rugman, “Downing Street Dossier Plagiarized,” Channel 4 News, February 6, 2003, <
http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/02/week_l/06_dossier.html
>; and Alexander Cockburn, “The Great’Intelligence Fraud,’”
CounterPunch,
February 15, 2003.

43
. “U.N. Inspectors: U.S. Used Forged Reports,”
Guardian,
March 8, 2003.

44
. Joby Warrick, “Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake,”
Washington Post,
March 8, 2003; Stephen Fidler, “Niger Documents Fake, Says ElBaradei,”
Financial Times,
March 8–9, 2003; Louis Charbonneau, “’Proof That Iraq Sought Uranium Was Fake,” Reuters, March 7, 2003; Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, “Intelligence Value in Iraq Questioned,”
Los Angeles Times,
March 8, 2003; Mark Phillips, “Inspectors Call U.S. Tips ‘Garbage,’”
CBSNews.com,
February 20, 2003; Congressman Henry A. Waxman to President George W. Bush, March 17, 2003, <
http://www.house.gov/waxman/text/admin_iraq_march_17_let.htm
>; Dana Priest and Karen De Young, “CIA Questioned Documents Linking Iraq, Uranium Ore,”
Washington Post,
March 22, 2003; and Seymour M. Hersh, “Who Lied to Whom?”
New Yorker,
March 31, 2003, pp. 41–43.

45
. Quoted by Ray Close, “A CIA Analyst on Forging Intelligence,”
CounterPunch,
March 10, 2003.

46
. Ray McGovern, “CIA Director Caves In,”
CommonDreams.org,
February 13, 2003.

47
. Seymour M. Hersh, “Selective Intelligence,”
New Yorker,
May 12, 2003, pp. 44–51. Also see Paul Harris, Martin Bright, Taji Helmore, and Ed Helmore, “U.S. Rivals Turn On Each Other as Weapons Search Draws a Blank,”
Observer,
May 11, 2003; Barton Gellman, “Frustrated, U.S. Arms Team to Leave Iraq; Task Force Unable to Find Any Weapons,”
Washington Post,
May 11, 2003; and Harold Meyerson, “Enron-like Unreality,”
Washington Post,
May 13, 2003.

48
. Thorn Shanker and Richard W. Stevenson, “Pentagon Wants $10 Billion a Year for Antiterror Fund,”
New York Times,
November 27, 2002; Leslie Wayne, “Rumsfeld Warns He Will Ask Congress for More Billions,”
New York Times,
February 6, 2003. Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr., “War and the Economy,”
Mises.org,
March 10, 2003.

49
. David R. Sands, “Allies Unlikely to Help Pay for Second Iraq Invasion,”
Washington Times,
March 10, 2003.

50
. Edmund L. Andrews, “Federal Debt Near Ceiling; Second Time in 9 Months,”
New York Times,
February 20, 2003.

51
. David Hale, “Are the Financial Markets Ready for One War or Two?” Zurich Financial Services, March 12, 2003.

52
. Vincent Cable, “The Economic Consequences of War,”
Observer,
February 2, 2003.

53
. Laton McCartney,
Friends in High Places. The Bechtel Story: The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the World
(New York: Ballantine, 1989); “U.S. Invites Bids for Iraq Reconstruction Work,” Reuters, March 10, 2003; Joshua Chaffin, “Halliburton’s Links Sharpen Bids Dispute,”
Financial Times,
March 27, 2003; Oliver Morgan and Ed Vulliamy, “Cronies Set to Make a Killing,”
Observer,
April 6, 2003; Stephen Glain, “Halliburton Unit Could Make $7 Billion,”
Boston Globe,
April 11, 2003; and David Ivanovich, “Pentagon Defends Halliburton Job,”
Houston Chronicle,
April 10, 2003.

54
. Robert Higgs, “Free Enterprise and War, a Dangerous Liaison,” Independent Institute, January 22, 2003, <
http://www.independent.org/tii/news/030122Higgs.html
>.

55
. Fred Kaplan, “Star Wars Spending Spree,”
Slate,
November 7, 2002;
and Seymour Melman, “In the Grip of a Permanent War Economy,”
Bear Left!,
March 9, 2003, <
http://www.bear-left.com/original/2003/0309permanent.html
>.

56
. Reinhold Niebuhr,
The Irony of American History
(New York: Scribner, 1952); quoted by Joseph C. Hough Jr., “President’s Newsletter,” Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, March 2003.

57
. “U.S. Plans Death Camp,”
Herald Sun
(Australia), May 26, 2003, ; “Guantánamo Courtrooms Being Prepared,”
Los Angeles Times,
June 2, 2003.

58
. Michael Klare,
Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict
(New York: Owl Books, 2002); Ken Silverstein, “The Crude Politics of Trading Oil,”
Los Angeles Times,
December 6, 2002.

59
. Loring Wirbel, “U.S. ‘Negation Policy in Space Raises Concerns Abroad,”
EETimes,
May 22, 2003.

This book was not easy to write. I do not like what it has to say about my country. But I am convinced by the course of events leading up to and the developments following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that this analysis is fundamentally correct. It is because I do not like stating that the United States is probably lost to militarism that this book is so heavily documented. I want to ensure that readers know how I claim to know something. Of course, I leave it to others to decide whether I have been convincing and whether my alarm about the course our country is taking is well-founded. I do not think we shall have to wait long to find out.