The Broken

I produce a radio show on WPVM called Veterans' Voices. It is a show by Veterans, about Veterans, service members and their family and friends. While listening to the moving Winter Soldier testimony to find a clip to air, I ran across the testimony of Perry O'Brien, a former Army medic who served in Afghanistan. He talked about the use of Afghani corpses for medical practice. This disturbed me greatly. My nephew also served as an Army medic in Afghanistan. I have tried to talk to him about his experiences in the war, and he only repeats Pentagon talking points; "We have to fight them there so we do not have to fight them here"..."We have to finish the job" and other similar words we have heard spew out of the mouths of this administration. Of all my sister's boys, I always seemed closer to him. He has wanted to be in the Army since he started walking, so when he signed up, I was not surprised.
I discussed O'Brien's statement about using the dead bodies of the Afghanistan people, without the consent of family members, with my sister. She says, "If he had done that, I would have known, he would have bragged about it". 'Bragged about it'! This does not sound like the loving, caring boy I once knew. What has the Army done to my favorite nephew?
He hides more from his mother than she thinks he does. He came home with shrapnel wounds, months since healed. He never told her about them, until she saw them. His brother Bob, my sister's 'Golden Child', wants to go to Iraq. He has been in the Navy for many years, an officer in the nuclear field with a new wife and baby. Jim argues with his brother, Bob about it. (Notice, they have grown up now, no longer Jimmy and Bobby) Jim has been there and knows about the horrors of war. He wants to protect his brother and his new family. (This sounds more like the Jimmy I knew) Their fates have yet to be determined. I wish I lived closer to him, so I could get to know him again and learn about his experiences.
This whole story reminds me of a guest we had on Veterans' Voices. He had been in Vietnam and returned a broken man. Then I believe it was either his cousin or brother that wanted to go enlist. He told him that he would rather run him over with his car than see him go to Vietnam.
War destroys many more lives than the body count indicates. The number reported by the Department of Defense, currently 4036, is almost insulting to the actual number. Count in those that have died months after being medically discharged from the military and those that have come home so broken spiritually that they take their own lives. These deserve to be counted. To not do so would be a dishonor.

Afgani Nightmares and Dreams

If you want news about Afghanistan, do not look to the mainstream media. I have not heard a thing about it since we invaded Iraq. Like everything is fine there. It's not. Poor families growing poppies just to have food and shelter, young boy slaves forced to dance and sexually abused after, bombings almost on a daily basis still.

The Dancing Boys of the North

Wealthy strongmen recruit adolescent boys for entertainment and sex, with the local authorities powerless to stop the practice.

By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Mazar-e-Sharif (ARR No. 268, 10-Oct-07)
“Some men enjoy playing with dogs, some with women. I enjoy playing with boys,” said Allah Daad, a one-time mujahedin commander in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz.

He is one of a growing number of men involved in what is known as “bacha baazi”— literally, “boy-play” — a time-honoured tradition, deplored by human rights activists and clerics, that is seeing a revival in the relatively secure north of Afghanistan.

The boys are kept by powerful older men, made to dance at special parties, and often sexually abused afterwards. Known as “bacha bereesh” - literally, “beardless boys”, they are under 18, with 14 the preferred age.

“When I was young, I had a bacha bereesh who was the best in the region,” recalled Allah Daad, 44. “He danced like a flying pigeon.... Nobody could take his place afterwards. I kept him for three years, then left him when he matured.”

Allah Daad has kept many boys over the years, and says he enjoys his “hobby”. “I am married, but I prefer boys to women,” he said. “You can’t take women with you to parties in this region, and you can’t make them dance. These boys are our [mark of] prestige.”

Large halls known as “qush-khana” provide the venues for bacha baazi parties where the boys’ “owners” or “kaatah” invite their friends to watch them dancing. Late in the night, when the dancing is over, the boys are often shared with close friends, for sexual abuse.

Allah Daad explained how the boys are enticed into the arrangement. “First we select boys in the village and later on we try to trick them into coming with us,” he said. “Some of them stay with us for money; they get a monthly allowance, and in return we can have them any time we want. They don’t stay with us all the time - they can do their own jobs and then just come to parties with us.”

If a boy refuses to become a bacha bereesh, he said, there is little a man can do to make him. “We can’t force them,” he insisted. “Only the very powerful can have boys with them all the time.”

The owner will take his boy to wedding parties to show him off to other men.

“When the party starts, the boys are dressed in special clothes, called ‘jaaman’,” continued Allah Daad. “Then Mazari dancing bells are tied to their feet and they dance in time to the music.”

Several different types of dances are popular, he explained, each with its own beat. If the boy refuses to dance or performs badly, his master beats him with a long stick.

“We have to do that,” said Allah Daad. “We spend money on these boys, so they have to dance.”

Allah Dad’s current bacha, who is 16, refused to be interviewed.

Another owner forced his 14-year-old boy to speak, although he would not give his name.

“I was dancing last night,” he said, looking exhausted. “I have been doing this for the past year. I have no choice - I’m poor. My father is dead, and this is the only source of income for me and my family. I try to dance well, especially at huge parties. The men throw money at me, and then I gather it up. Sometimes they take me to the market and buy me nice clothes.”

The tradition of older men maintaining adolescent boys is by no means restricted to the north of Afghanistan, but the custom is in abeyance in the south, where the Taleban and their strict moral code act as a deterrent.

In the north, no such curbs exist, and bacha baazi has seen a massive resurgence in the past few years.

“Bacha baazi has increased tremendously lately and is still on the rise,” said Baz Gul, a resident of Kunduz. “In the past, people were ashamed of it, and tried to hide it. Now nobody is shy about it, and they participate openly in these parties.”

He explained that there were several reasons why the practice had become more common, one of which was the growing influence of local strongmen, who regard bacha baazi as status symbols.

These militia commanders are supposed to have demobilised their forces and handed over their weapons, but as IWPR has reported, many still rule the roost on the ground and retain the power to intimidate the local population.

Baz Gul said poverty was another reason why boys could find themselves ensnared, while the government had failed to do much about the problem and its police force enjoyed little public confidence.

“It used to be that only a few people had boys. Now everyone owns one and the authorities don’t care about it at all,” he said. “It’s got to the point where almost no party takes place without dancing boys. It’s seen as a disgrace if you don’t have dancing boys at your wedding. This has led to a rise in immoral behaviour among boys, and if nothing is done about it, this trend will continue.”

For some, a bacha bereesh is a status symbol.

“I am not really rich, but I am just as good as the wealthy,” said Nasruddin, known as Nasro Bay, who lives in Baghlan province. “I want as many bacha bereesh as possible, so that when I go to parties I am no worse than anybody else.”

Nasro Bay insisted that the dancing boy tradition was a good one.

“It’s a good thing,” he said. “We have our own culture. In foreign countries, the women dance. We have our own dances which don’t exist anywhere else in the world.”

Militia commanders and other men of substance buy and sell good-looking boys, using the bacha baazi parties as marketplaces.

“Commanders and wealthy men arrange parties in order to select a bacha bereesh,” said Nek Mohammad, a resident of Baghlan’s Andarab district who frequently attends dance parties, although he does not own a bacha bereesh himself. “Many of the men make their boys dance at these parties, and other men choose one and pay for him. By the end of the party, the boy has acquired a new owner.”

He said substantial amounts of money changes hands in these transactions.

Like Nasro Bay, Nek Mohammad sees public ostentation as part of the bacha baazi tradition.

“Commanders often take their boys to a market and buy them beautiful clothes, as a challenge to other commanders. Sometimes they even give them cars. That gives them a very big reputation,” he said.

Religious scholars condemn the custom, which they count as one of the most sinful acts possible.

“Making boys dance and sexually abusing them is strictly prohibited by Islam,” said Mawlawi Ghulam Rabbani, a religious leader in Takhar province. “Those who engage in it should be punished. They should be thrown off a mountain and stoned to death.”

Local officials admit the practice is prevalent but are at a loss as to how to combat it.

“Yes, bacha baazi is practiced a great deal, especially in the Khost-o-Fering and Andarab districts,” said Hafizullah Khaliqyar, head of the prosecutor’s office for Baghlan province. “Boys are forced to dance, they are sexually abused, and they are even bought and sold. Fights take place over these bacha bereesh. It’s increasing day by day, and it’s catastrophic.”

Khaliqyar said there was little that prosecutors could do. “The police and district heads won’t cooperate with us,” he complained. “They don’t send us their files, so we can’t take action.”

He said the paramilitary commanders involved were so powerful that no one – not even the police – would raise a hand against them.

“Regional commanders engage in this practice and support it,” he said. “They have money, power and weapons, and neither the district heads nor the local population dares to tell us about this.”

However, Khaliqyar said he is committed to fighting the practice and had had some successes.

“We treat this matter very seriously. It’s against the law, and the perpetrators should be punished,” he said.

Police in Pul-e-Khumri, the capital of Baghlan, recently raided a bacha-baazi hall and arrested 30 men. “Their case is currently with the Supreme Court. We have sent several men to prison on these types of charges,” said Khaliqyar.

In Takhar province, the head of the local security agencies, General Sayed Ahmad Saame, also complained about lack of cooperation from the public.

“We have closed every bacha baazi centre we have found,” he said. “We have forwarded seven cases to the prosecutor’s office so far this year.”

But there is only so much the police can do. “This practice has such a long history in this province that local people treat it as a respected custom, and won’t cooperate with us. This is a serious obstacle to our work,” said Saame.

General Asadullah Amarkhail, the security chief in Kunduz, agreed that public cooperation was needed if the practice was to be curbed, although to date 27 people had been arrested in his province.

Mohammad Zaher Zafari, head of the northern branch of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, bemoaned the government’s inability to take action.

“Unfortunately I have to say that this type of dancing, sexual abuse and even the sale of boys has been going on for years,” he said. “It is a despicable culture. The boys involved are usually poor, underage or orphans, and they are forced into it by their economic circumstances.

“It’s shocking from both a humanitarian and a legal point of view. The boys who do this have a very dark future ahead of them – they will always be ashamed and they grow into frustrated human beings, and, pose a threat to community. The government has taken no action on this issue, and child abuse is still being practiced.”

Khaliqyar took a similar view of the damage done to the bacha bereesh, saying it destroys their identity.

“If the United Nations and the government don’t take this issue as seriously as they do child-trafficking and drug-smuggling, and punish the offenders, it’s going to be almost impossible to prevent it,” he said.

Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.

___________________________________________________________

Afghan Strongman’s Reign of Fear

Panicked residents of Faryab province say a local warlord is exacting tribute and abusing civilians while the government does nothing to stop him.

By Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi in Faryab (ARR No. 269, 18-Oct-07)

Shahabudin fled when life became intolerable for him in his native district of Pashtun Kot, in the northern Afghan province of Faryab. He claims that a former militia commander has taken over Pashtun Kot and is ruling virtually unchallenged.

Some commentators say the situation here exemplifies a wider pattern of lawlessness where paramilitary strongmen are effectively sidelining local administrations in parts of northern Afghanistan, at a time when attention is focused on the war against the Taleban in the south.

“Abdul Rahman Shamal reigns in [Pashtun Kot], and he roams the district on his horses just like a king. He is accompanied by armed men on horseback. Anyone who sees him coming tries to hide,” said Shahabudin. “He treats people like slaves, and no one can do a thing without his permission.

“When we marry off our daughters, we have to go to the commander, offer him 5,000 afghani [100 US dollars] and ask his permission. Otherwise the marriage will not be possible.”

Shamal was formerly, at least, a militia commander within Junbesh-e-Milli-ye-Islami (National Islamic Movement), the military faction led by Uzbek strongman General Abdul Rashid Dostum.

Dostum is a controversial figure, but he has been at least partially co-opted into government, serving as chief of staff to the commander-in-chief of Afghanistan’s armed forces. However, some of his former lieutenants are using the power vacuum in the north to exert their authority. Despite concerted drives in recent years to dismantle the numerous irregular forces across Afghanistan, such men still retain significant private militias.

In Faryab, at least, the continuing existence of illegal armed groups is no secret. In August 2006, Shamal’s forces clashed with those of another commander, Khalifa Saleh, who was aligned with a major rival of Dostum. Some 300 armed men took part in the fight, which left 14 people dead. (See IWPR’s story on this, “Afghan Interior Ministry Takes on Armed Factions”, ARR No.228, 1-Sep-06.)

Shahabudin alleged that men are forcibly levied from local families to join Shamal’s paramilitaries.

“Anyone who refuses to send his son to the commander’s militia is beaten or even killed,” he said.

He added that the militia commander extorts money to buy horses and provide food for his men. Once again, resistance is punished by imprisonment or torture.

An arrest warrant has been issued for Shamal, and both government security forces and their international allies claim to be searching for him.

But while local people seem to know exactly where Shamal and his men are operating, the commander has not been detained.

“We have conducted three operations against this commander,” said General Khalilullah Ziaee, chief of police in Faryab province.

“But the terrain favours him. He hides in the mountains, and when we approach, he sees us coming three hours before we can get to him, and he makes an easy escape. Later on, when we are gone, he comes back.”

Ziaee said that police were determined to capture the commander, but lacked the resources to do so.

“We want to save people from his evil-doing,” he said. “But he runs away when we attack him, and we don’t have the horses to chase him with.”

In the end, Shahabudin had to make his own choice. “Life became unbearable. Death and dishonour followed us. So we had to flee,” he said.

Mullah Yar Bay is another Pashtun Kot resident who fled to escape the commander’s rule, which he said involved arbitrary detention, torture and murder.

“Commander Shamal has private prisons and he arrests those who do not obey him,” he said. “Many of those who have defied him have either disappeared or been imprisoned. Our lives and everything we own belong to this commander.”

Local residents chafing under the yoke are angry that the authorities are unable – perhaps even unwilling – to find the commander.

“The government doesn’t want to catch Shamal,” said a man who still lives in Pashtun Kot. “They come into his area and leave without doing anything. I am sure that if the government does fight him, it will not win.”

This interviewee believed the authorities were allowing Shamal a free hand in Pashtun Kot to keep him from branching out into other parts of the province.

“The government makes promises, but they are just deceiving people. I’ve decided to go and live somewhere else, because as long as Shamal is alive, no one can do anything in Pashtun Kot,” he said.

Sattar Barez, Faryab’s deputy governor, acknowledged that the presence of Shamal was a problem, but insisted the authorities were taking steps to deal with it.

“It is totally wrong to say that the government is silent,” he said. “[Shamal] is a criminal who tortures and beats people. His crimes are known to everyone. We have plans to deal with him soon.”

IWPR was unable to contact Shamal, but spoke to Junbesh, the party with which he was formerly connected and allegedly still is.

Junbesh officials say their party has made the transition from armed faction to legitimate political party, and deny links with commanders such as Shamal.

Deputy party leader Kinja Kargar told IWPR that the party was fully compliant with Afghan laws, which ban political groups from maintaining links with armed groups.

“Junbesh is a powerful public party that has dissolved all of its military branches under DIAG and DDR,” he said, referring to two government-sponsored programmes, Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups and its predecessor, the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration scheme.

Critics say both programmes, which were backed by the United Nations and which cost tens of millions of dollars, were less than successful.

But Kargar was adamant that the Junbesh organisation no longer embraces armed groups.

“Anyone in possession of weaponry does not belong to Junbesh,” he said.

Faryab’s police chief told IWPR that political parties often issue such disclaimers. “[Shamal] belongs to a party that is known to everyone,” said Ziaee. “The party denies the relationship so as to avoid legal problems.”

Human rights groups are worried about the situation, saying they have brought their concerns to the authorities’ attention but little action has been taken.

“This issue is of great concern, but unfortunately we have no powers of enforcement,” he said Zaidullah Paiwand, the head of the Faryab branch of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission. “We see here that commanders torture people, rob them and beat them. We have received many complaints against this commander [Shamal]. We have submitted all our reports to the law enforcement agencies, but unfortunately nothing significant has happened.”

Paiwand could not confirm the existence of private prisons, but said, “I think that every inch of the area he [Shamal] has occupied is a prison for the local people, because he can do anything he wants.”

Worryingly, some analysts see the Pashtun Kot situation as part of a much broader trend. They argue that the militia commanders who were dominant in the early to mid-Nineties are once again emerging as a powerful force in the north, taking advantage of the weakness of central government.

“The government and human rights organisations have claimed that the situation is improving, but in reality the commanders are gradually gaining the upper hand, and the government can’t do anything about it,” said Mohammad Nabi Aseer, a journalist and analyst in northern Afghanistan.

“The government is unable to combat the Taleban, and it is afraid that if it alienates the [northern] commanders, they might turn into an even more powerful enemy.”

Aseer said disarmament programmes had not worked, and that most of the factions-turned-parties retained a paramilitary wing, a factor that encouraged central government to do nothing.

“In reality, leaders of political parties obtain power in government via these military wings,” he said. “Taking action against local commanders would entail taking action against their leaders in Kabul. [President Hamed] Karzai’s government does not have the power to do this. Commander Shamal is a good example.”

Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi is an IWPR staff reporter in Mazar-e-Sharif.

On vacation in Afghanistan



But it sure is beautiful country...

If Bush Told You to Jump Off a Cliff, Would You Do That Too?

Since 9/11 the propaganda machine has been running overtime. I can't even count how many times 9/11 has been invoked by our presidential candidates. It is because of that, that we are in Iraq, right? Oh wait, there was no connection from 9/11 to Iraq. Whatever the lie will be this week is yet to be told. I found an interesting article on AlterNet about the propaganda machine:

The Maga-Lie Called the "War on Terror": A Masterpiece of Propaganda

By Richard W. Behan, AlterNet. Posted September 27, 2007

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror" is clearly revealed by looking at the pattern of actions that preceded and followed its launch.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the state can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie ... The truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the state." --Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945

Since Sept. 11, 2001, the administration of George W. Bush has told and repeated a lie that is "big enough" to confirm Joseph Goebbels' testimony. It is a mega-lie, and the American people have come to believe it. It is the "War on Terror."

The Bush administration endlessly recites its mantra of deceit:

The War on Terror was launched in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It is intended to enhance our national security at home and to spread democracy in the Middle East.

This is the struggle of our lifetime; we are defending our way of life from an enemy intent on destroying our freedoms. We must fight the enemy in the Middle East, or we will fight him in our cities.

This is classic propaganda. In Goebbels' terms, it is the "state" speaking its lie, but the political, economic, and military consequences of the Bush administration lie are coming into view, and they are all catastrophic. If truth is the enemy of both the lie and George Bush's "state," then the American people need to know the truth.

The military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq were not done in retaliation for 9/11. The Bush administration had them clearly in mind upon taking office, and they were set in motion as early as Feb. 3, 2001. That was seven months prior to the attacks on the Trade Towers and the Pentagon, and the objectives of the wars had nothing to do with terrorism.

This is beyond dispute. The mainstream press has ignored the story, but the administration's congenital belligerence is fully documented in book-length treatments and in the limitless information pool of the internet. (See my earlier work, for example.)

Invading a sovereign nation unprovoked, however, directly violates the charter of the United Nations. It is an international crime. Before the Bush administration could attack either Afghanistan or Iraq, it would need a politically and diplomatically credible reason for doing so.

The terrorist violence of Sept. 11, 2001, provided a spectacular opportunity. In the cacophony of outrage and confusion, the administration could conceal its intentions, disguise the true nature of its premeditated wars, and launch them. The opportunity was exploited in a heartbeat.

Within hours of the attacks, President Bush declared the United States "… would take the fight directly to the terrorists," and "… he announced to the world the United States would make no distinction between the terrorists and the states that harbor them." Thus the "War on Terror" was born.

The fraudulence of the "War on Terror," however, is clearly revealed in the pattern of subsequent facts:

• In Afghanistan the state was overthrown instead of apprehending the terrorist. Offers by the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden were ignored, and he remains at large to this day.
• In Iraq, when the United States invaded, there were no al Qaeda terrorists at all.
• Both states have been supplied with puppet governments, and both are dotted with permanent U.S. military bases in strategic proximity to their hydrocarbon assets.
• The U.S. embassy nearing completion in Baghdad is comprised of 21 multistory buildings on 104 acres of land. It will house 5,500 diplomats, staff and families. It is ten times larger than any other U.S. embassy in the world, but we have yet to be told why.
• A 2006 National Intelligence Estimate shows the war in Iraq has exacerbated, not diminished, the threat of terrorism since 9/11. If the "War on Terror" is not a deception, it is a disastrously counterproductive failure.
• Today two American and two British oil companies are poised to claim immense profits from 81 percent of Iraq's undeveloped crude oil reserves. They cannot proceed, however, until the Iraqi Parliament enacts a statute known as the "hydrocarbon framework law."
• The features of postwar oil policy so heavily favoring the oil companies were crafted by the Bush administration State Department in 2002, a year before the invasion.
• Drafting of the law itself was begun during Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority, with the invited participation of a number of major oil companies. The law was written in English and translated into Arabic only when it was due for Iraqi approval.
• President Bush made passage of the hydrocarbon law a mandatory "benchmark" when he announced the troop surge in January of 2007.

When it took office, the Bush administration brushed aside warnings about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Their anxiety to attack both Afghanistan and Iraq was based on other factors.

Iraq

The Iraqi war was conceived in 1992, during the first Bush administration, in a 46-page document entitled Draft Defense Planning Guidance.

The document advocated the concept of preemptive war to assure the military and diplomatic dominance of the world by the United States. It asserted the need for "… access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil." It warned of "… proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." And it spoke of "… threats to U.S. citizens from terrorism." It was the template for today's war in Iraq.

The Draft Defense Planning Guidance was signed by the secretary of defense, Richard Cheney. It was prepared by three top staffers: Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Zalmay Khalilzad-all of whom would fill high-level positions in the administration of George W. Bush, nine years in the future.

In proposing global dominance and preemptive war, it was a radical departure from the traditional U.S. policy of multilateral realism, and it was an early statement of the emerging ideology of "neoconservatism."

The document was too extreme. President George H.W. Bush publicly denounced it and immediately retracted it. Many in his administration referred to its authors as "the crazies."

But the ideology survived. Five years later William Kristol and Robert Kagan created a neoconservative organization to advocate preemptive war and U.S. global dominion to achieve, in their words, a "benevolent global hegemony." It was called the Project for the New American Century, quickly abbreviated as PNAC. Among the founding members were Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad, Donald Rumsfeld and Jeb Bush.

In a letter to President Clinton on Jan. 26, 1998, the Project for the New American Century once more urged the military overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime.

President Clinton ignored the letter, apparently viewing this iteration of the proposal as no less crazy than the original.

As the presidential campaign of 2000 drew to a close, the PNAC produced yet another proposal for U.S. world dominion, preemptive war and the invasion of Iraq. It was a document called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources For a New Century" (PDF).

Weeks later, in January of 2001, 29 members of the Project for the New American Century joined the administration of George W. Bush. Their ideology of world dominion and preemptive war would dominate the Bush administration's foreign and defense policies.

Within 10 days of his inauguration, President Bush convened his National Security Council. The PNAC people triumphed when the invasion of Iraq was placed at the top of the agenda for Mideast foreign policy. Reconciling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, long the top priority, was dropped from consideration.

The neoconservative dream of invading Iraq was a tragic anachronism, an ideological fantasy of retrograde imperialism. A related and far more pragmatic reason for the invasion, however, would surface soon.

No administration in memory had been more closely aligned with the oil industry. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were intimately tied to it, and so was National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice. So were eight cabinet secretaries and 32 other high-level appointees.

By early February, Vice President Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was at work. Federal agency people were joined by executives and lobbyists from the Enron, Exxon-Mobil, Conoco-Phillips, Shell and BP America corporations.

Soon the task force was poring over detailed maps of the Iraqi oil fields, pipelines, tanker terminals, refineries and the undeveloped oil exploration blocks. It studied two pages of "foreign suitors for Iraqi oil field contracts" -- foreign companies negotiating with Saddam Hussein's regime, none of which was a major American or British oil company.

The intent to invade Iraq and the keen interest in Iraqi oil would soon converge in a top secret memo of Feb. 3, 2001, from a "high level National Security Council official." The memo: "… directed the NSC staff to cooperate fully with the Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of two seemingly unrelated areas of policy: 'the review of operational policies toward rogue states' such as Iraq and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'"

As early as Feb. 3, 2001, the Bush administration was committed to invading Iraq, with the oil fields clearly in mind.

The terrorist attacks on Washington and New York were still seven months in the future.

Afghanistan

The issue in Afghanistan was the strategically valuable location for a pipeline to connect the immense oil and gas resources of the Caspian Basin to the richest markets. Whoever built the pipeline would control the Basin, and in the 1990s the contest to build it was spirited.

American interests in the region were promoted by an organization called the Foreign Oil Companies Group. Among its most active members were Henry Kissinger, a former secretary of state but now an advisor to the Unocal Corp.; Alexander Haig, another former secretary of state but now a lobbyist for Turkmenistan; and Richard Cheney, a former secretary of defense, but now the CEO of the Halliburton Corp.

Late in 1996, however, the Bridas Corp. of Argentina finally signed contracts with the Taliban and with Gen. Dostum of the Northern Alliance to build the pipeline.

One American company in particular, Unocal, found that intolerable and fought back vigorously, hiring a number of consultants in addition to Kissinger: Hamid Karzai, Richard Armitage, and Zalmay Khalilzad. (Armitage and Khalilzad would join the George W. Bush administration in 2001.)

Unocal wooed Taliban officials at its headquarters in Texas and in Washington, D.C., seeking to have the Bridas contract voided, but the Taliban refused. Finally, in February of 1998, John J. Maresca, a Unocal vice president, asked in a congressional hearing to have the Taliban replaced by a more stable regime.

The Clinton administration, having recently refused the PNAC request to invade Iraq, was not any more interested in a military overthrow of the Taliban. President Clinton did, however, shoot a few cruise missiles into Afghanistan, after the al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Africa. And he issued an executive order forbidding further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Maresca was thus twice disappointed: The Taliban would not be replaced very soon, and Unocal would have to cease its pleadings with the regime.

Unocal's prospects rocketed when George W. Bush entered the White House, and the Project for the New American Century ideology of global dominance took hold.

The Bush administration itself took up active negotiations with the Taliban in January of 2001, seeking secure access to the Caspian Basin for American companies. The Enron Corp. also was eyeing a pipeline to feed its proposed power plant in India.) The administration offered a package of foreign aid as an inducement, and the parties met in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad. The Bridas contract might still be voided.

But the Taliban would not yield.

Anticipating this in the spring of 2001, the State Department had sought and gained the concurrence of India and Pakistan to take military action if necessary. The PNAC people were not timid about using force.

At the final meeting with the Taliban, on Aug. 2, 2001, State Department negotiator Christine Rocca, clarified the options: "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs." With the futility of negotiations apparent, "President Bush promptly informed Pakistan and India the U.S. would launch a military mission into Afghanistan before the end of October."

This was five weeks before the events of 9/11.

Sept. 11, 2001

A tectonic groundswell of skepticism, doubt and suspicion has emerged about the Bush administration's official explanation of 9/11. Some claim the administration orchestrated the attacks. Others see complicity. Still others find criminal negligence. The cases they make are neither extreme nor trivial.

Whatever the truth about 9/11, the Bush administration now had a fortuitous, spectacular opportunity to proceed with its premeditated attacks.

The administration would have to play its hand skillfully, however.

Other nations have suffered criminal acts of terrorism, but there is no precedent for conflating the terrorists with the states that harbor them, declaring a "war" and seeking with military force to overthrow a sovereign government. Victimized nations have always relied successfully on international law enforcement and police action to bring terrorists to justice.

But the Bush administration needed more than this. War plans were in the files. They needed to justify invasions. Only by targeting the "harboring states," as well as the terrorists, did they stand a chance of doing so.

The administration played its hand brilliantly. It compared the terrorist attacks immediately to Pearl Harbor, and in the smoke and rage of 9/11 the comparison was superficially attractive. But Pearl Harbor was the violent expression of hostile intent by a formidably armed nation, and it introduced four years of full-scale land, sea and airborne combat. 9/11 was al Qaeda's violent expression of hostility: 19 fanatics armed with box cutters. Yes, extraordinary destruction and loss of life, but the physical security of our entire nation was simply not at stake.

Though the comparison was specious, the "War on Terror" was born, and it has proven to be an exquisite smokescreen. But labeling the preplanned invasions as a "War on Terror" was the mega-lie, dwarfing all the untruths that followed. The mega-lie would be the centerpiece of a masterful propaganda blitz that continues to this day.

The wars

On Oct. 7, 2001, the carpet of bombs is unleashed over Afghanistan.

Soon, with the Taliban overthrown, the Bush administration installed Hamid Karzai as head of an interim government. Karzai had been a Unocal consultant.

The first ambassador to Karzai's government was John J. Maresca, a vice president of Unocal.

The next ambassador to Afghanistan was Zalmay Khalilzad, another Unocal consultant.

Four months after the carpet of bombs, President Karzai and President Musharraf of Pakistan signed an agreement for a new pipeline. The Bridas contract was moot. The way was open for Unocal.

In February of 2003 an oil industry trade journal reported the Bush administration was ready to finance the pipeline across Afghanistan and to protect it with a permanent military presence. Osama bin Laden remained at large.

The mega-lie, the fabricated "War on Terror" was an easy sell in the Afghanistan adventure. The shock of 9/11 was immense, Osama bin Laden was operating from Afghanistan and the "state," the Taliban, was at least sympathetic to his organization. And the signature secrecy of the Bush Administration had kept from public view its eight months of negotiating with the Taliban. The first premeditated war was largely unopposed.

Selling the Iraq invasion to the American people and to the Congress would be far more difficult.

With the Trade Towers and the Pentagon still smoldering, President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld ordered their staffs to find Saddam Hussein's complicity in the attacks. Of course they could not, so there would need to be a sustained and persuasive selling job -- a professionally orchestrated campaign of propaganda.

Soon after 9/11, fear-mongering propagandizing became the modus operandi of the Bush Administration. It began in earnest with the president's "axis of evil" State of the Union address in 2002, full of terrorism and fear. "The United States of America," the president said, "will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

No regime anywhere was in fact threatening anyone with anything, but Bush appointed a 10-person "White House Iraq Group" in August of 2002. Chaired by Karl Rove, its members were trusted partisans and communications experts skilled in perception management. Their role was explicitly to market the need to invade Iraq. The group operated in strict secrecy, sifting intelligence, writing position papers and speeches, creating "talking points," planning strategy and timing, and feeding information to the media. This was the nerve center, where the campaign of propaganda was orchestrated and promulgated.

The group chose to trumpet nearly exclusively the most frightening threat-nuclear weapons. Rice soon introduced the litany of the smoking gun and the mushroom cloud, Cheney said hundreds of thousands of Americans might die, and Bush claimed Saddam was "six months away from developing a weapon."

In the 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush uttered the infamous "sixteen words": "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This was typical of White House Iraq Group work: The CIA knew and had said the information was bogus.

The propaganda campaign was ultimately successful, not least because of the axiomatic trust American people extend to their presidents: Nobody could have anticipated the range, intensity and magnitude of the expertly crafted deception. And the campaign was aided by a compliant mainstream press that swallowed and regurgitated the talking points.

The Congress was persuaded sufficiently to authorize the use of military force. The American people were persuaded sufficiently to accept the war and to send Mr. Bush to the White House for a second term. But no other war in the country's history had to be so consciously and comprehensively sold.

Much of the deception, distortion and lies was eventually exposed. The link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, the weapons of mass destruction, the aluminum tubes, the mobile laboratories, the yellowcake from Niger: none of it true. Only the mega-lie, the "War on Terror," survives.

On Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the Security Council, waving the vial of simulated anthrax and claiming "there is no doubt in my mind" Saddam Hussein was working to produce nuclear weapons.

But the Security Council, not so easily propagandized, refused to authorize American force.

On March 14, 2003, President Bush met in the Azores with Prime Ministers Blair of the United Kingdom and Aznar of Spain. They abandoned the effort for U.N. authorization, claimed the right to proceed without it and a week later launched the war.

Four years of violence. Nearly 4,000 young Americans dead. Seven times that many maimed. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead. Millions fleeing as refugees, their economy and infrastructure in ruins. A raging civil war. Half a trillion dollars and counting.

Stopping the madness

And for what? Neither face of the war has come remotely close to success. The "War on Terrorism" has not suppressed terrorism but has encouraged it instead. The premeditated war -- for ideological dreams of world dominion and the pragmatic capture of hydrocarbon assets -- is a colossus of failure.

The Afghan pipeline is a dead issue. As the warlords and the poppy growers in Afghanistan thrive, and as the Taliban regroups and regains dominance, the country tilts ominously into chaos once more.

The Iraqi hydrocarbon law -- the clever disguise for capturing the oil fields -- is fatally wounded, its true purpose becoming more widely known. Organized resistance is growing quickly, both in Iraq and in the United States. And the factions who need to agree on the law are otherwise engaged in killing each other.

The Iraqi war has not resulted, either, in the global dominance sought by the Project for the New American Century people, but in global repugnance for what their pathetic ideology has wrought.

Clearly the involvement of the U.S. military in the Mideast must cease. Pouring more lives and dollars into the quagmire may keep alive the warped dreams of the Bush administration, but those dreams are illegitimate, indeed criminal.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney reject any alteration in their course. They ask instead for more time, more money and even -- in threatening Iran -- for more targets.

There is no apparent way to the stop madness, to end the hemorrhaging of blood and treasure, but to impeach these men and, if found guilty, to remove them from office.

The integrity of the Constitution and the rule of law are at stake as well, but the Congress continues its indifference to impeachment, effectively condoning the administration's behavior. Should this continue, thinking Americans will discard the last crumbs of respect for the incumbent legislature -- polling shows there's not much left -- and punish its members, Republican and Democrat alike, in next year's election.

Impeachment will expose the fraudulence of the "War on Terror" and liberate us from the pall of fear the Bush administration has deliberately cast upon the country. Both political parties will be free to speak the truth: Terrorism is real and a cause for concern, but it is not a reason for abject fear.

We need only compare the hazard of al Qaeda to the threat posed by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. On the one hand is a wretched group of sad fanatics -- perhaps 50,000 in all -- clever enough to commandeer airliners with box cutters. On the other was a nation of 140 million people, a powerful economy, a standing army of hundreds of divisions, a formidable navy and air force and thousands of nuclear tipped intercontinental missiles pre-aimed at American targets.

We were a vigilant but poised and confident people then, not a nation commanded to cower in fear. We can and must regain that strength and self-assurance.

Ending the nightmare will take far less courage than the Bush people exhibited in beginning it. Taking a nation to war on distortion, deception and lies is enormously risky in many respects: in lives and in treasure, certainly, but also in a nation's prestige abroad and in the trust and support of its people. The Bush administration risked all this and more, and it has lost.

We risk far less by embracing the truth and acting on it. Our nation cherishes honesty: the fraudulence must end. But Bush and Cheney have shown themselves incapable of honesty, and we also cherish justice. They must be impeached.

This propaganda machine is most effective if a major tragedy happens like 9/11. Naomei Klein has written a terrific book called The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Alfonso Cuarón, director of "Children of Men", made a short film about it. If you have not seen it, here it is: