Findcate

Let’s pause for a minute amidst the scatty cacophony to John Edwards’ affair with his flighty “videographer,” who no reasonable person would pay to film paint dry.

No, it’s the fact that the down-home son of a millworker with his lazy Carolinian drawl (and lily-white skin) was supposed to be the safe bet for the Democrats. Jaded liberals squawked that America would never go for the ballsy chick or the black dude, so you’ll vote for Edwards and you’ll like it.

That’s the best we can hope for. America’s just not ready and all that.

Of course, folks in Iowa didn’t listen to the conventional wisdom and the rest is history. But even after Barack Obama secured the nomination, a pundit here or there would sourly mumble that he was floundering because of that black thing, needling that John Edwards would be blowing John McCain out of the water.

Which amounts to a nice theory for political science students to contemplate in between Jager bombs at the bar. Those of us in the real world rejected the Plastic One because we didn’t know who he was (even after being a few thousand votes in Ohio away from the vice presidency in ‘04) and didn’t trust him.

After observing and interviewing Edwards at political events since 2003, I can say that he was heavy on sheen and light on substance. He said all the right things, repeating Democratic talking points in his artful, aw-shucks way. The father of three was great at kissing babies.

But there was no way His Contrivance seemed ready to take that 3 a.m. phone call. (Although I would vote for him to play the president on tee-vee. His coif is killer).

So maybe that’s why few of us were shocked at his revelations that yes, he actually did dally with Rielle Hunter, who still sports ’80s Madonna hair as a nod to her days as a coked-out New York clubhopper.

To think that Elizabeth Edwards (who Rielle sniffed “didn’t give off good energy”) will have to spend her last years shuddering from this humiliation is just vile. Monsieur Edwards claims he told his family, which presumably includes his eldest daughter, Cate, a Harvard law student. Maybe his other two kids, 8 and 10, can find out as a Christmas present later after Mommy’s passed away.

Edwards, who nailed himself in an ABC interview as a narcissist, has cringingly insisted there’s nothing more for anyone to say as “I’ve stripped myself bare.” Well, there are questions of the paternity of Hunter’s daughter and if this was the first time the senator strayed.

But that’s just a measure on the hypocrisy scale. It’s the political implications that I’m interested in.

Just think for a moment if he were the nominee. This would be game-over for the Dems. You can argue that McCain dumping his disfigured wife for an Anheuser heiress 18 years his junior would become an issue. Perhaps. But that was almost 30 years ago and all we see now is silver-maned Cindy, doting mother of seven.

We can have a robust debate whether extramarital affairs should have any place in political discourse. I vote no, but I’m a journalistic curmudgeon, in spite of my Gen X birthday and the fact that I’m paid to blog. But Edwards’ tryst is out there (and how). Given the appalling scenario with his wife’s metastatic cancer, I don’t really feel like doing him any favors by ignoring the political fallout.

The reality is that this kind of salacious scandal is ruinous for politicians, especially when it reinforces the very doubts people had about the candidate in the first place. Edwards knows this, having watched Bill Clinton implode (and castigating him for it).

Which is another crisis likely averted by not picking Hillary as the nominee, besides the fact that she could unite the right in a way McCain never will. Who knows when Bill’s next bimbo eruption would strike, not to mention his less sexy, but far more troubling dealings in Dubai. That’s the real reason Clinton’s not on Obama’s veep short list, not bad blood after a bruising primary.

When it comes to arrogant politicians’ penchant for extracurricular activities, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

And so a skinny black guy with big ears, a funny name (and the magazine-cover perfect family) is not only the voters’ choice, but has turned out to be the Dems’ safest bet for presidency.

Tags: barack obama, cacophony, cate, contrivance, conventional wisdom, drawl, elizabeth edwards, film paint, humiliation, indy, jager bombs, john edwards, john mccain, journalist, political science students, pundit, reasonable person, safe bet, vice presidency

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The US Congress has passed a $290 billion farm bill, which will increase subsidies to US farmers and cut international aid programs.

George Bush has threatened to veto the bill, however, but there is still a good chance it will be passed into law. Interestingly, the presidential candidates response to the bill were contrasting with John McCain critical, Hilary Clinton supportive and Barack Obama labelling it as “far from perfect”.

“It does not target help for the farmers who really need it, and it increases the size and cost of government while jeopardizing the future of legitimate farm programs by damaging the credibility of farm bills in general,” Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer stated. “At a time of record setting income for farmers, it sends the wrong message to the rest of the country who are not experiencing the boom of the agriculture sector. This bill is loaded with taxpayer funded pet projects at a time when Americans are struggling to buy groceries and afford gas to get to work.”

“Eight months behind schedule, Congress will send a bill to the President that is trade distorting and fails to provide meaningful reform to the adjusted gross income limit, beneficial interest or the international food aid program,” he added.

Raymond Offenheiser, President of Oxfam America, was also strong in his criticism of the bill. “Faced with a mounting food crisis at home and abroad, Congress had the opportunity through the Farm Bill to shift funds from wasteful agricultural subsidies for large scale farms to food aid to meet the needs of the poor,” Mr Offenheiser said. “But instead, Congressional leaders settled on a bill that will continue to be costly to taxpayers, undermine our rural economy, damage our trade relationships, and hurt the world’s poorest farmers.”

The slight decrease in tax credits to ethanol producers (by 5c per gallon) and increased conservation funding were welcomed, although many believe the cuts in tax credits do not go far enough.

With global food prices skyrocketing this year and global fears of a potential food shortage growing, the bill sends a disappointing message from the US to the rest of the world.

Tags: adjusted gross income, agricultural subsidies, agriculture secretary, agriculture sector, barack obama, beneficial interest, ed schafer, ethanol producers, farm bill, farm bills, Food, food aid program, food crisis, food price, food prices, ford, hilary clinton, international food aid, john mccain, meaningful reform, oxfam america, rural economy, target, trade relationships, us congress

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Up to 70 people have died in Sadr City since Sunday in battles between black-masked militia loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and US and Iraqi troops.
The upsurge in fighting comes as the top US officials in Iraq testified in Washington that they opposed setting a timetable to withdraw troops from the 5-year-old war.
%26quot;The floor of the hospital is covered with the blood of children,%26quot; said Dr Qasim al-Mudalla, manager of the Imam Ali hospital in Sadr City, where he said four children and two women were among 11 dead bodies brought in on Wednesday.
%26quot;What is the world doing? They have seen the blood of our children and are doing nothing.%26quot;
Other parts of Baghdad were quiet, with streets clear of traffic because of a one-day vehicle ban in the capital for the anniversary of the day US troops rolled into the capital, deposing President Saddam Hussein.
Shops, government offices, schools and universities were shut and residents were allowed out only on foot.
Sadr had called a mass demonstration against the United States for the anniversary, but postponed it saying he feared for his followers%26#39; safety.
Many Iraqis spoke of the anniversary with bitterness. Retired army officer Salim Hussein said the past five years had yielded nothing but %26quot;blood, bombs, curfews and in-fighting%26quot;.
%26quot;The government is totally incapable of providing security,%26quot; he said, walking near the square where US forces toppled Saddam%26#39;s statue on April 9, 2003.
President Jalal Talabani, however, hailed the anniversary in a televised address as a day to be celebrated.
%26quot;April 9 will enter history as the day the most arrogant dictatorship Mesopotamia has ever witnessed was deposed, the fall of a political regime that… left behind mass graves that contained hundred thousands of innocents,%26quot; he said.
US President George W Bush, who is due to give a speech on Iraq on Thursday, spoke to Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki by telephone. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Bush expressed support for Maliki%26#39;s crackdown on militia.
Maliki launched operations against Sadr%26#39;s militia last month in the southern city of Basra and fighting has spread to Baghdad, where the cleric%26#39;s Mehdi Army has clashed fiercely with both US and Iraqi troops.
US forces announced on Wednesday that two more American soldiers had died, raising the toll to 13 since an upsurge of fighting began on Sunday. Rockets or mortars, which US forces say are mainly fired from Sadr City, hit the Green Zone compound, but caused no injuries, the US embassy said.
The Iraqi parliament%26#39;s Human Rights Committee warned in a statement of a %26quot;tragic situation%26quot; in Sadr City, where food and medicine are running short after a two-week blockade.
Vehicle bans were also imposed in Samarra and Tikrit, Saddam Hussein%26#39;s hometown. In Falluja, where members of Saddam%26#39;s Sunni Arab minority rose up twice against US forces in 2004, several hundred protesters marched calling for American forces to leave.
In Washington, the top two US officials in Iraq testified to members of Congress for a second day on Wednesday.
Military commander General David Petraeus and ambassador Ryan Crocker said Iraq had made progress over the past year, but the improvements were fragile and could be reversed.
Petraeus advised against committing to a timetable for new troop reductions after forces sent last year as part of the so-called surge return home in July.
Petraeus%26#39; testimony suggests more than 100,000 US troops will still be in Iraq when the next US president succeeds Bush in January. Republican candidate John McCain opposes a timetable for further troop cuts, while Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama want to set a timetable to withdraw.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 4000 US troops have died in the war. Two million Iraqis have fled the country and about as many are displaced within Iraq.
For 10-year-old Ammar Karim, taking advantage of the vehicle ban to play soccer with other boys in the middle of central Baghdad%26#39;s normally traffic-clogged Karrada Street, the anniversary had a simpler meaning: a chance to play.
%26quot;I like this government because we have a lot of curfews. It is the only time we can go out and play football. I wish we could have curfews all the time, because otherwise my family keeps me locked in the house.%26quot;

Tags: army officer, barack obama, Food, john mccain, ups

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The Democratic senator, campaigning in Pennsylvania, dismissed the charges of being elitist and out of touch by fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton and by Republican John McCain as unfounded, given his background.
%26quot;I am amused about this notion of elitist, given that when you%26#39;re raised by a single mom, when you were on food stamps for a while when you were growing up, you went to school on scholarship,%26quot; he told a town hall meeting of US military veterans in western Pennsylvania.
Obama has come under fire by opponents after he told an audience in San Francisco last week that economic problems led voters in some small towns to become %26quot;bitter%26quot; and %26quot;cling to guns or religion%26quot; as an outlet for their frustrations.
Neither of his wife Michelle%26#39;s parents attended college, and both he and his wife financed their educations with student loans, Obama said.
%26quot;We lived for the first 13 years of our marriage up until three years ago in a three-bedroom condo without a garage so if you live in Chicago that means you%26#39;re scraping ice every morning,%26quot; he said in rejecting the elitist label.
%26quot;When somebody makes that argument, particularly given that I%26#39;ve spent my entire life working with workers in low-income communities to try to make people%26#39;s lives a little bit better, that%26#39;s when you know you%26#39;re in political silly season,%26quot; said Obama, who leads Clinton in the tight race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
%26quot;This is what we do politically when we start getting behind in races, and we start going on the attack,%26quot; he said.
The winner of the Democratic presidential nomination faces McCain, the Republican presumptive nominee, in the November general election.
Obama and his wife lived in a condominium they bought in 1993 for $US277,500, The Boston Globe reported. They now live in a house for which they paid $US1.95 million in 2005.
Clinton has condemned Obama%26#39;s remarks from last week in a political ad featuring a woman saying she was %26quot;insulted,%26quot; while McCain said the comments represented %26quot;a certain out-of-touch elitism.%26quot;
Obama%26#39;s comments on Tuesday came in response to a man in the audience who said he felt the label of elitist was not far from the label of %26quot;uppity,%26quot; a racially insulting term used against blacks.
Obama said he did not think there were racial overtones to the criticism.

Tags: Food, john mccain

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Some of us fear talking about it, get nervous and fluttery and act as if this is a topic polite people should avoid.

Some of us are unequipped to talk about it, too ignorant of the history that undergirds it, too willing to bend that history toward ideological ends, too blithely dismissive of the fact that history matters, that past informs present informs future.

Some of us lack the compassion to talk about it, prefer to use it only as a means of denigrating, diminishing and dismissing the Other.

Some of us are uncomfortable talking about it because it makes us feel what we’d rather not: anger, sorrow, defensiveness, guilt.

And some of us — politicians in particular — talk about race only to use it as a weapon, only as a means of hitting the other candidate.

Barack Obama spoke of race Tuesday in Philadelphia. He did so with calm confidence, with a firm grasp of, and appreciation for, the history that undergirds it, with compassion that did not stop at the color line and yet, without anger, sorrow, defensiveness, or an attempt to impose guilt, without making it a political cudgel.

“Not this time,” he said.

“And so,” intoned Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show,” “at 11 o’clock a.m. on a Tuesday, a prominent politician spoke to Americans about race as through they were adults.”

Obama, who has steadfastly refused to be defined or confined by race, has nevertheless seen race consume the last two weeks of his campaign. First, there was Geraldine Ferraro and her asinine contention that Obama is somehow an affirmative action candidate, that the millions of black, white and other voters who support him are somehow bewitched by the color of his skin and never mind that Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Alan Keyes have the same color skin, yet never enjoyed more than a fraction of his success.

More substantively, there was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s friend and former pastor. Video clips (from what source, I still can’t tell) flooded the Internet showing the pastor denouncing America in coarse and strident tones. As depicted in those excerpts, Wright, who is also an avowed admirer of the hateful Louis Farrakhan, crossed the line from the incendiary truth-telling of the African-American ministerial tradition into a corrosive, paranoid, ungodly bitterness.

For Obama, the expedient and politically intelligent thing would have been to denounce Wright, cut him loose and move on. Instead, he did what Clinton did not after Ferraro shot off her mouth, what George W. Bush did not after he spoke at Bob Jones University, what John McCain did not after he wimped out about the Confederate flag, what Ronald Reagan did not after he blessed “state’s rights,” what Jimmy Carter did not after he invoked “ethnic purity.”

He showed courage. He seized the teachable moment. Then he taught that moment, not in the stark and simplistic black and white terms so often preferred by blacks and whites but, rather, with a sophisticated grasp of the thorny nuances of race and a compassion vast enough to comprehend not only the anger and frustration of blacks, but also that of whites — and to recognize the righteousness in both.

And Obama reminded us that anger and frustration are not destiny. “America can change,” he said. “That is the true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope, the audacity to hope, for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.”

He explained America to itself. He pointed America toward higher ground. It was a brave, magnificent and — mark my words — historic moment. You see, we just lost the last excuse for our inability to talk about race.

Last week in Philadelphia, Barack Obama showed us how.

Tags: barack obama, cate, john mccain

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Jonathan Merritt nailed his equivalent of “95 Theses” to the door of the Southern Baptist Convention. And the door surprisingly opened, at a speed much faster than Martin Luther experienced in Wittenberg 450 years ago.

Mr. Merritt, a 25-year old seminarian, got religion a year or so ago about the perils of a changing climate. More specifically, the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary student began thinking about how his fellow Southern Baptists needed to make a bigger priority out of the environment.

He started pressing the issue and benefiting from the contacts that flowed from the days when his father presided over the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest body of Christian believers in the U.S. next to Roman Catholics.

One thing led to another, and this month the Southern Baptists _ the Southern Baptists! _ adopted one of those formal church statements that signal a sea change. The leaders of the convention, which include high-powered pastors like Dr. Jack Graham of Plano’s Prestonwood Baptist Church, pledged to do better in addressing climate change.

This shift may not be as significant as the Reformation that Martin Luther spawned with his list of grievances against the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, welcome to your new evangelicalism.

What’s going on among evangelicals is a both a generational and thematic shift. Mr. Merritt’s advocacy typifies what you see among the new wave of evangelicals, which Southern Baptists are with their emphasis on conversions and the inerrancy of Scripture.

Younger leaders are stepping forward to replace or push aside the Jerry Falwells, James Dobsons, Pat Robertsons and James Kennedys. That first group of evangelical political leaders set the movement’s social agenda from Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election through the 2004 general election. But they have been losing their grip for several years. In fact, change is hitting full speed today.

This is a good thing. Evangelicalism is one of the most powerful movements in American culture and politics. Whether you like or dislike the movement is beside the point. What happens within evangelical churches, schools and organizations affects the rest of our society.

By broadening evangelicalism’s agenda, younger evangelicals like Jonathan Merritt, Rick Warren and Mike Huckabee are doing us a favor. They’re shifting the political discussion to issues like climate change, AIDS in Africa, Darfur or the struggling middle class.

This transition is nicely detailed in David Gushee’s new book, The Future of Faith in American Politics. A younger evangelical himself, the McAfee School of Theology professor chronicles the emergence of an evangelical center.

There are international aid organizations like World Vision, publishing houses like InterVarsity Press and activist groups like the Evangelical Environmental Network. And next month in Pennsylvania, a wide range of evangelicals, including Mike Huckabee, are asking the remaining presidential candidates to participate in a “Compassion Forum,” where issues like global AIDS and the environment will get discussed.

While they’re at it, I’d love to see some of these new evangelicals wade into the faith-and-science debate. Not just the one about climate change, but the broader ones, such as how the human condition survives in a technological world.

Polish philosopher and Catholic priest Michael Heller had a wonderful line last week when he won the Templeton Prize for his work in science and philosophy: “Science gives us knowledge, and religion gives us meaning. Both are prerequisites of the decent existence.”

The new evangelicals have done enough, though, to warrant the attention of the Big Thinkers behind John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Whenever a 25-year old can get the attention of the Southern Baptist Convention, you know something’s rumbling.

William McKenzie (wmckenzie@dallasnews.com) is an editorial columnist for The Dallas Morning News.

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by Frida Berrigan

(Foreign Policy in Focus)The U.S. base at Guantanamo has been called many things. The ?a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/26/usa.guantanamo”>gulag of our time?(Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan, May 2005). he key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror?(Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, January 2007). The ?a href=”http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/op_ed/posner_speech_0403.htm”>legal equivalent of outer space?(unnamed Administration official). The right place for ?a href=”http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20020127-1.html”>the worst of a very bad lot?(Vice President Dick Cheney, January 2002) and for the ?a href=”http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-15-gitmo-freed_x.htm”>most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth?(former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, January 2002).

Guantanamo is now best known as the home of oversized iguanas, banana rats, and the more than 700 揺nemy combatants?who have been detained,

tortured, and interrogated there over the past six years as part of the

Bush administration global war on terrorism. But, the history of the

U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay stretches much further back ?to the

beginning of the last century ?when the United States wrestled this

prime real-estate from Spain to become the colonial power in the hemisphere.

Twenty-first century experiences at Guantanamo have now been exposed in a sheaf of books, including difficult, vivid memoirs from former detainees and powerful poetry, and dramatized in plays and films, such as the best-documentary Oscar winner Taxi to the Dark Side and the critically-acclaimed Road to Guantanamo. The iconic orange jumpsuits are on display at every anti-war protest

and the word 揋uantanamo?is often used as shorthand for the Bush

administration whole system of indefinite detention, rendition,

torture, and abuse of power established since September 2001.

Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo

Calls to hut down Guantanamo?from legal and human rights experts, politicians, and the international community

are now strong, irrepressible and growing louder each day. At the same

time, the facility has finally penetrated pop culture. This spring,

movie-goers can enjoy the sequel of the 2004 slacker-stoner Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

In the new film, the two friends are arrested after smuggling a bong on

a flight to Amsterdam and end up at Guantanamo. Yep, the movie is titled: Harold and Kumar II: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Promoted with the tag-line: his Time, They抮e Running from

the Joint,?the film is described as n irreverent and epic journey of

deep thoughts, deeper inhaling and a wild trip around the world that is

as 憉n-PC?as it gets.?/p>

Guantanamo is getting more attention (both outraged and outrageous),

but the question of how the United States came to control a swath of

Cuban territory is worth more discussion. If the Guantanamo prison is

shuttered tomorrow, and the prisoners get their day in court, the U.S.

base will continue to exist as a key colonial outpost in a

post-colonial world. Now that Fidel Castro has turned over power to his

brother Raul and the United States is again poised to emocratize?
socialist Cuba, this question has even greater resonance.

Booty from a 揝plendid Little War?/h3>

Perched on the south-eastern corner of Cuba, the U.S. Naval Base

straddles the deep water harbor of Guantanamo Bay and occupies 45

square miles of Cuban territory.

In 1898, the United States and Spain battled for control of Cuba and

other Spanish colonies in what Washington had come to see as part of

its phere of influence.?The Spanish-American War is known for the

Rough Riders and the 揜emember the Maine?call to arms (which refers to

the now historically suspect attack on the USS Maine battleship sunk in

the Havana Harbor). In a letter to his good friend Teddy Roosevelt, the

U.S. Ambassador to England dubbed it a plendid little war.?Ignoring

the countless (literally)

Cubans, Filipinos and others who were killed, one could see his point.

The United States won a lot in the war: it lasted less than four

months, resulted in the death of fewer than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and put

the United States in charge of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam ?all former Spanish colonies ?and gave the United States control of Hawaii. The U.S. Navy also discovered the benefits of Guantamo Bay when they sought refuge from summer hurricanes. One hundred and ten years later, they are still there.

While the U.S. Congress promised Cuba independence after the war, the Platt Amendment

forced a peace treaty that granted the United States the right to

tabilize?the island militarily and established a permanent U.S.

naval base in Cuba.

Cuban-American Treaty

The Cuban-American Treaty

was signed in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt and Tomas Estrada

Palma, the President of Cuba ?a U.S. citizen fully backed by

Washington. According to the text of the treaty,

the U.S. military presence will 揺nable the United States to maintain

the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as

for its own defense, the Cuban Government will sell or lease to the

United States the lands necessary for coaling or naval stations.?The

treaty goes onto acknowledge Cuba 搖ltimate sovereignty?over the

territory, but asserts that while the United States occupies it, they

have 揷omplete jurisdiction and control?over the land.

It difficult to call an agreement between a world power and a

conquered colony a treaty, but it has governed operations there ever

since. Only a few restrictions were placed on U.S. freedom of

operation, even when the treaty was updated in 1934. The document

stipulated that the site could only be used for the purposes outlined

and prohibited the U.S. from conducting private enterprise there. The

U.S. granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the bay

and agreed to pay Havana $2,000 in gold per year. Finally, the two

countries promised to return fugitives from justice who crossed into

the others?territory.

As U.S. Navy Rear Admiral M.E. Murphy, a military historian, put it in his 1953 History of Guantanamo Bay:

the land is bit of American territory, and so it will probably

remain as long as we have a Navy.?He goes on to note e have a lease

in perpetuity to this Naval reservation and it is inconceivable that we

would abandon it.?/p>

And we have not abandoned it.

After the Revolution

When Washington close ally Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by the

Cuban Revolution in 1958, the relationship between the U.S. base and

the nation it occupied changed dramatically. When Batista fled to Spain

(where he lived the rest of his life in luxury), thousands of Cubans

with ties to his regime sought refuge on the base, and the rest of the

island was deemed off limits to U.S. servicemen and civilians in 1959.

Washington cut diplomatic relations in 1961.

In February 1964, two years after the Cuban missile crisis, Cuban

President Fidel Castro cut water and supply lines to the base and since

then, the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay has been self-sufficient.

It is outfitted with a de-salinization plant to produce water, and

windmills and other technology produce all of the base electricity.

In 2002, the first 揺nemy combatants?in the global war on terrorism

landed at the Base. But this was not the first time the U.S. had

confined internationals at the base. In the early 1990s, civil unrest

in Haiti and economic crisis in Cuba drove tens of thousands of people

from both countries to seek refuge in the United States. In little

boats overcrowded with migrants, these people set off from the United

States ?only to end up at Guantanamo Bay.

As many as 45,000 migrants were rocessed?through the base, with many

of the Haitians sent home to deprivation and the majority of the Cubans

granted asylum.

揌onor Bound to Defend Freedom?/h3>

揌onor Bound to Defend Freedom?strong> is the proud sentiment emblazoned above the entrance to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo. The website

for the Commander of Navy Installations Command Guantanamo features a

large picture of an iguana and the greeting: elcome to the website

for the oldest overseas U.S. Naval Station and the only one in a

country with which the U.S. does not maintain diplomatic relations.?/p>

Navy Commander Jeffery D. Gordon explains that the U.S. presence at

Guantanamo serves vital role in Caribbean regional security,

protection from narco-trafficking and terrorism and safeguards against

mass migration attempts in unseaworthy craft.?The Navy Atlantic

fleet is based there and the base is described as being 搊n the front

lines of the battle for regional security.?/p>

Changing the Rationale

The military aggressively makes the case for the base. Eighty years

ago, Guantanamo was crucial to colonial expansion and the smooth

extraction of resources from Latin America; 30 years ago, it would have

been justified as playing a key role in supporting anti-democratic

regimes in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. More recently, the

war on drugs served as rationale.

But, before 2001, the number of military personnel stationed at the base had dwindled to about 300. And many saw Guantanamo greatest value as a carrot to dangle before the Cuban people in Washington long project to unseat Fidel Castro. Part of the 1996 Helms Burton Act

(the chief aim of which was to strengthen and continue to U.S. trade

related embargo on Cuba) ?for example ?offered to open negotiations

with a emocratically elected Cuban government?to return the base at

Guantanamo to Cuba or redefine the lease.

Then, Washington decided that the Guantanamo base would be an ideal

place to try and hide war on terrorism detainees from the law and

public scrutiny. And planeloads of shackled prisoners wearing

blacked-out goggles, noise canceling headphones, and orange jumpsuits

began landing at the U.S. base. Initially, many were housed in

chain-link cages. In June 2005, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

told reporters that the Pentagon had invested $100 million

to construct new prisons and barracks and upgrade other facilities.

Operating the base and the prison cost another $95 million a year. For

U.S. soldiers and Marines stationed there, Guantanamo is a slice of the

American mall culture transported to coastal Cuba ?there is a weekly

newspaper, The Guantanamo Bay Gazette, a movie theater that

offers current films like 揑 Am Legend?and he Spiderwick

Chronicles.?McDonalds and Starbucks are both on base.

With no end in sight to the global war on terrorism, more than 8,000

military personnel are now based at Guantanamo. So, for the time being,

the military has a new way to fend off calls to shut down the U.S.

military base there. In a January 2007 interview on C-SPAN, Charles

Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee

Affairs, justified the U.S. base at Guantanamo, saying 揑t is important during time of war

to have a place where, number one, you can take people off the

battlefield and not allow them to go back to the battlefield, but also,

exploit intelligence that they may possess?Guantanamo today remains

the key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror.?/p>

o my knowledge, the Cubans have never officially asked for it

back?John Regan, the acting Officer at the State Department Cuba

Desk, is quoted as saying in an April 2007 Los Angeles Times

article. He goes on to say that they have not raised objections to the

presence of war on terrorism prisoners. He must not be listening very

closely.

In June 2002, at the United Nations General Assembly, Cuba demanded that the Guantamo territory be returned to the island. And two years later, Cuba

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque proposed a resolution before the

United Nations Human Rights Commission that would have condemned the

violation of human rights at Guantanamo. More recently, these calls

have grown louder. In a December 2007 speech in Havana, Roque said: ?/strong>We

demand today, on the World Day of Human Rights, that the President of

the United States and that the U.S. Government close down the torture

center in Guantamo and return to our homeland the territory that they

occupy illegally.?Cuba protests in other ways as well. The U.S.

Treasury continues to pay the 揼old?that Roosevelt promised 105 years

ago. Annual checks for $4,085 are deposited into an account for the

Cuban government, but not a single one has been cashed in 47 years.

Toxic Brand

Cuba doesn like Guantanamo, and many in the administration agree

that the detention facility has become a problem. During Robert Gates?
first week as Secretary of Defense following the resignation of Donald

Rumsfeld, he argued that the detention facility should be closed,

pointing out that the U.S. image abroad is so tainted that any legal

proceedings for detainees at the base will be viewed as illegitimate.

He commented: 揑 think that Guantanamo has become symbolic,

whether we like it or not, for many around the world.?He also cut one

big zero off Rumsfeld plan to spend $100 million on new

infrastructure, resulting in a more modest (but still significant) $10

million expenditure for air-conditioned pods and other amenities for

the military commissions hearings.

President George W. Bush acknowledges Guantanamo as a problem too, saying during a June 2006 press conference:

揑抎 like to close Guantanamo. No question: Guantanamo sends a signal

to some of our friends and provides an excuse ?for example, to say the

United States is not upholding the values that they抮e trying to

encourage other countries to adhere to.?Despite his claims to being

the ecider in chief,?Bush has not taken any executive steps to

change the signal we are sending.

What is at the heart of the administration discomfort with Guantanamo? It is not torture ?President Bush just vetoed a law

that would have prohibited water-boarding. It is certainly not respect

for Cuba sovereignty ?the State Department has a whole office

devoted to meddling in the country affairs. It is the PR problem. In

March of last year, William Taft, a former State Department adviser,

testified before the House of Representatives on Guantanamo. He

acknowledged that the logistical advantages of housing prisoners at

Guantanamo are outweighed by the olitical costs of continuing its

operation. At some point a brand becomes so toxic that no amount of Madison Avenue talent can rehabilitate it.?/p>

One solution is to give the base back to Cuba. But, Julia Sweig,

the Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign

Relations, is not sure Havana would want it back, saying 搃t become

such a global symbol of what has gone wrong with America ?not just a

symbol of our colonial impulses, but of the anti-imperialist fight

throughout Latin America ?it is something Cuba uses to greater benefit

than getting the base back.?Rhetorical benefits are of value ?but you

can eat, trade or wield geo-political power with rhetoric.

What Next?

But closing the prison and relinquishing control of the territory are two completely different things. Can Cuba get Guantanamo Bay back?

The Guantanamo prison is not a hot-button campaign issue. Lee

Feinstein, Director of National Security for Senator Hillary Clinton

campaign, says that s President, she would direct the Justice

Department to evaluate the evidence amassed against these prisoners and

make a determination.?Not exactly a rousing and definitive call to

shut down Guantanamo, but at least she has a process. For his part,

Senator Barack Obama does not see the need for military justice

proceedings there, asserting 揑 believe that our civilian courts or our

traditional system of military courts-martial are best able to meet

this challenge and demonstrate our commitment to the rule of law.?On

the Republican side, Senator John McCain has pushed for Guantanamo to

be closed and the prisoners sent to maximum security prison in Ft.

Leavenworth, Kentucky.

On the larger issue of U.S.-Cuba relations, Obama favors engagement

and dialogue without preconditions, while Clinton would predicate

diplomatic overtures on Cuba steps towards democratization. McCain

holds the position that U.S. containment policy has worked, and he

would not talk to Cuba until they held free elections and released

political prisoners and made other reforms.

Returning the occupied territory to Cuba has not been mentioned as

an option by Presidential candidates, and it is not high on the list of

objectives in Cuba policy circles. Close Cuba-watcher Patrick Doherty ?
the Deputy Director of the New America Foundation American Strategy Program

?predicts it would come up only in he later stages of a long-term

process of rapprochement.?That because, in addition to the

geographic value of an American military base at Guantanamo, Doherty

says 搊ne of our most effective areas of quiet cooperation with the

Cuban government is at the mil-mil level in managing our presence and

operations out of Guantanamo?and working on counter narcotics,

counter-crime, and general Caribbean security issues. Without many

other vehicles for official dialogue, Guantanamo, ironically, is acting

like a confidence-building measure.?/p>

Some international law experts assert that the United States is in

violation of the treaty made with Cuba and that could be the basis of a

movement to win the territory back. Dr. Alfredo de Zayas,

a professor of international law at the Geneva School for Diplomacy,

argues that even before looking at specific violations, the treaty can

be nullified because, he lease for the military base in a foreign

country is conditioned on the friendly relations between states.?While

relations between Cuba and the United States were friendly at the time

of the treaty, that is no longer the case. De Zayas also asserts that

the treaty is 搗oidable by virtue of a material breach,?because it

clearly stipulates that the area should be used for naval purposes

(coaling refers to re-fueling naval vessels when they were steam

powered) and 揻or no other purpose?including housing war on terrorism

detainees. Additionally, the treaty bars the United States from

establishing 揷ommercial, industrial or other enterprises?but the base

is home to McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway sandwiches, and other

commercial enterprises, another material breach.

While Washington does not make a habit of abiding by the treaty or

its obligations under it, the 1903 agreement was repeatedly cited as a

reason to keep Guantanamo detainees and their cases out of U.S. courts.

During Supreme Court hearings for Rasul vs. Bush and Al Odah vs. United States,

government lawyers argued that under the 1903 treaty and the 1934

revisions, the United States 搑ecognizes the continuance of the

ultimate sovereignty?of Cuba over Guantanamo and that the base is thus

搉ot part of the sovereign territory of the United States,?and

therefore not under U.S. law, meaning that the prisoners at Guantanamo

should not be allowed access to U.S. courts.

In 2004, the Supreme Court rejected those arguments, but the legal fight continues.

Shut it Down

The decision of what to do with the prisoners at Guantanamo will

most likely be left to the next administration. Washington policy and

attitude towards Cuba will also be shaped by the next person to sit

behind the big desk in the Oval Office. The next steps in the global

war on terrorism; a major change (up or down) in the size, scope and

objective of the U.S. occupation of Iraq; a shift in how (or if)

we communicate and cooperate with the rest of the world; an exploration

of the effectiveness of U.S. military might in resolving problems:

these pressing issues will be seen through new eyes post-November 2008.

The U.S. military occupation and control of territory ?from

Guantanamo to Germany to Okinawa and beyond ?should be included in

this reckoning. Shutting down Guantanamo ?not just the prison where

men are tortured, abused, and held in contravention of U.S. and

international law, but the sprawling colonial-holdover enterprise that

the United States came to control and continues to occupy

illegitimately and illegally ?would be a huge symbolic step towards

the rule of law, respect for other nations and the dawning recognition

that military might is a tool of last resort not first assault. One

hundred and five years later, the time has more than come.

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Frida Berrigan is a senior program associate at the Arms and Security Project of the New America Foundation.

Tags: attitude, barack obama, brother, bush administration, cate, john mccain, los angeles times, objective, pace

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by Frida Berrigan

(Foreign Policy in Focus)The U.S. base at Guantanamo has been called many things. The ?a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/may/26/usa.guantanamo”>gulag of our time?(Amnesty International General Secretary Irene Khan, May 2005). he key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror?(Charles Stimson, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, January 2007). The ?a href=”http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/op_ed/posner_speech_0403.htm”>legal equivalent of outer space?(unnamed Administration official). The right place for ?a href=”http://www.whitehouse.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20020127-1.html”>the worst of a very bad lot?(Vice President Dick Cheney, January 2002) and for the ?a href=”http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-15-gitmo-freed_x.htm”>most dangerous, best trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth?(former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, January 2002).

Guantanamo is now best known as the home of oversized iguanas, banana rats, and the more than 700 揺nemy combatants?who have been detained,

tortured, and interrogated there over the past six years as part of the

Bush administration global war on terrorism. But, the history of the

U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay stretches much further back ?to the

beginning of the last century ?when the United States wrestled this

prime real-estate from Spain to become the colonial power in the hemisphere.

Twenty-first century experiences at Guantanamo have now been exposed in a sheaf of books, including difficult, vivid memoirs from former detainees and powerful poetry, and dramatized in plays and films, such as the best-documentary Oscar winner Taxi to the Dark Side and the critically-acclaimed Road to Guantanamo. The iconic orange jumpsuits are on display at every anti-war protest

and the word 揋uantanamo?is often used as shorthand for the Bush

administration whole system of indefinite detention, rendition,

torture, and abuse of power established since September 2001.

Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo

Calls to hut down Guantanamo?from legal and human rights experts, politicians, and the international community

are now strong, irrepressible and growing louder each day. At the same

time, the facility has finally penetrated pop culture. This spring,

movie-goers can enjoy the sequel of the 2004 slacker-stoner Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

In the new film, the two friends are arrested after smuggling a bong on

a flight to Amsterdam and end up at Guantanamo. Yep, the movie is titled: Harold and Kumar II: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. Promoted with the tag-line: his Time, They抮e Running from

the Joint,?the film is described as n irreverent and epic journey of

deep thoughts, deeper inhaling and a wild trip around the world that is

as 憉n-PC?as it gets.?/p>

Guantanamo is getting more attention (both outraged and outrageous),

but the question of how the United States came to control a swath of

Cuban territory is worth more discussion. If the Guantanamo prison is

shuttered tomorrow, and the prisoners get their day in court, the U.S.

base will continue to exist as a key colonial outpost in a

post-colonial world. Now that Fidel Castro has turned over power to his

brother Raul and the United States is again poised to emocratize?
socialist Cuba, this question has even greater resonance.

Booty from a 揝plendid Little War?/h3>

Perched on the south-eastern corner of Cuba, the U.S. Naval Base

straddles the deep water harbor of Guantanamo Bay and occupies 45

square miles of Cuban territory.

In 1898, the United States and Spain battled for control of Cuba and

other Spanish colonies in what Washington had come to see as part of

its phere of influence.?The Spanish-American War is known for the

Rough Riders and the 揜emember the Maine?call to arms (which refers to

the now historically suspect attack on the USS Maine battleship sunk in

the Havana Harbor). In a letter to his good friend Teddy Roosevelt, the

U.S. Ambassador to England dubbed it a plendid little war.?Ignoring

the countless (literally)

Cubans, Filipinos and others who were killed, one could see his point.

The United States won a lot in the war: it lasted less than four

months, resulted in the death of fewer than 1,000 U.S. soldiers and put

the United States in charge of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam ?all former Spanish colonies ?and gave the United States control of Hawaii. The U.S. Navy also discovered the benefits of Guantamo Bay when they sought refuge from summer hurricanes. One hundred and ten years later, they are still there.

While the U.S. Congress promised Cuba independence after the war, the Platt Amendment

forced a peace treaty that granted the United States the right to

tabilize?the island militarily and established a permanent U.S.

naval base in Cuba.

Cuban-American Treaty

The Cuban-American Treaty

was signed in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt and Tomas Estrada

Palma, the President of Cuba ?a U.S. citizen fully backed by

Washington. According to the text of the treaty,

the U.S. military presence will 揺nable the United States to maintain

the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as

for its own defense, the Cuban Government will sell or lease to the

United States the lands necessary for coaling or naval stations.?The

treaty goes onto acknowledge Cuba 搖ltimate sovereignty?over the

territory, but asserts that while the United States occupies it, they

have 揷omplete jurisdiction and control?over the land.

It difficult to call an agreement between a world power and a

conquered colony a treaty, but it has governed operations there ever

since. Only a few restrictions were placed on U.S. freedom of

operation, even when the treaty was updated in 1934. The document

stipulated that the site could only be used for the purposes outlined

and prohibited the U.S. from conducting private enterprise there. The

U.S. granted Cuba and her trading partners free access through the bay

and agreed to pay Havana $2,000 in gold per year. Finally, the two

countries promised to return fugitives from justice who crossed into

the others?territory.

As U.S. Navy Rear Admiral M.E. Murphy, a military historian, put it in his 1953 History of Guantanamo Bay:

the land is bit of American territory, and so it will probably

remain as long as we have a Navy.?He goes on to note e have a lease

in perpetuity to this Naval reservation and it is inconceivable that we

would abandon it.?/p>

And we have not abandoned it.

After the Revolution

When Washington close ally Fulgencio Batista was overthrown by the

Cuban Revolution in 1958, the relationship between the U.S. base and

the nation it occupied changed dramatically. When Batista fled to Spain

(where he lived the rest of his life in luxury), thousands of Cubans

with ties to his regime sought refuge on the base, and the rest of the

island was deemed off limits to U.S. servicemen and civilians in 1959.

Washington cut diplomatic relations in 1961.

In February 1964, two years after the Cuban missile crisis, Cuban

President Fidel Castro cut water and supply lines to the base and since

then, the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay has been self-sufficient.

It is outfitted with a de-salinization plant to produce water, and

windmills and other technology produce all of the base electricity.

In 2002, the first 揺nemy combatants?in the global war on terrorism

landed at the Base. But this was not the first time the U.S. had

confined internationals at the base. In the early 1990s, civil unrest

in Haiti and economic crisis in Cuba drove tens of thousands of people

from both countries to seek refuge in the United States. In little

boats overcrowded with migrants, these people set off from the United

States ?only to end up at Guantanamo Bay.

As many as 45,000 migrants were rocessed?through the base, with many

of the Haitians sent home to deprivation and the majority of the Cubans

granted asylum.

揌onor Bound to Defend Freedom?/h3>

揌onor Bound to Defend Freedom?strong> is the proud sentiment emblazoned above the entrance to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo. The website

for the Commander of Navy Installations Command Guantanamo features a

large picture of an iguana and the greeting: elcome to the website

for the oldest overseas U.S. Naval Station and the only one in a

country with which the U.S. does not maintain diplomatic relations.?/p>

Navy Commander Jeffery D. Gordon explains that the U.S. presence at

Guantanamo serves vital role in Caribbean regional security,

protection from narco-trafficking and terrorism and safeguards against

mass migration attempts in unseaworthy craft.?The Navy Atlantic

fleet is based there and the base is described as being 搊n the front

lines of the battle for regional security.?/p>

Changing the Rationale

The military aggressively makes the case for the base. Eighty years

ago, Guantanamo was crucial to colonial expansion and the smooth

extraction of resources from Latin America; 30 years ago, it would have

been justified as playing a key role in supporting anti-democratic

regimes in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. More recently, the

war on drugs served as rationale.

But, before 2001, the number of military personnel stationed at the base had dwindled to about 300. And many saw Guantanamo greatest value as a carrot to dangle before the Cuban people in Washington long project to unseat Fidel Castro. Part of the 1996 Helms Burton Act

(the chief aim of which was to strengthen and continue to U.S. trade

related embargo on Cuba) ?for example ?offered to open negotiations

with a emocratically elected Cuban government?to return the base at

Guantanamo to Cuba or redefine the lease.

Then, Washington decided that the Guantanamo base would be an ideal

place to try and hide war on terrorism detainees from the law and

public scrutiny. And planeloads of shackled prisoners wearing

blacked-out goggles, noise canceling headphones, and orange jumpsuits

began landing at the U.S. base. Initially, many were housed in

chain-link cages. In June 2005, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

told reporters that the Pentagon had invested $100 million

to construct new prisons and barracks and upgrade other facilities.

Operating the base and the prison cost another $95 million a year. For

U.S. soldiers and Marines stationed there, Guantanamo is a slice of the

American mall culture transported to coastal Cuba ?there is a weekly

newspaper, The Guantanamo Bay Gazette, a movie theater that

offers current films like 揑 Am Legend?and he Spiderwick

Chronicles.?McDonalds and Starbucks are both on base.

With no end in sight to the global war on terrorism, more than 8,000

military personnel are now based at Guantanamo. So, for the time being,

the military has a new way to fend off calls to shut down the U.S.

military base there. In a January 2007 interview on C-SPAN, Charles

Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee

Affairs, justified the U.S. base at Guantanamo, saying 揑t is important during time of war

to have a place where, number one, you can take people off the

battlefield and not allow them to go back to the battlefield, but also,

exploit intelligence that they may possess?Guantanamo today remains

the key strategic intelligence platform in the war on terror.?/p>

o my knowledge, the Cubans have never officially asked for it

back?John Regan, the acting Officer at the State Department Cuba

Desk, is quoted as saying in an April 2007 Los Angeles Times

article. He goes on to say that they have not raised objections to the

presence of war on terrorism prisoners. He must not be listening very

closely.

In June 2002, at the United Nations General Assembly, Cuba demanded that the Guantamo territory be returned to the island. And two years later, Cuba

Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque proposed a resolution before the

United Nations Human Rights Commission that would have condemned the

violation of human rights at Guantanamo. More recently, these calls

have grown louder. In a December 2007 speech in Havana, Roque said: ?/strong>We

demand today, on the World Day of Human Rights, that the President of

the United States and that the U.S. Government close down the torture

center in Guantamo and return to our homeland the territory that they

occupy illegally.?Cuba protests in other ways as well. The U.S.

Treasury continues to pay the 揼old?that Roosevelt promised 105 years

ago. Annual checks for $4,085 are deposited into an account for the

Cuban government, but not a single one has been cashed in 47 years.

Toxic Brand

Cuba doesn like Guantanamo, and many in the administration agree

that the detention facility has become a problem. During Robert Gates?
first week as Secretary of Defense following the resignation of Donald

Rumsfeld, he argued that the detention facility should be closed,

pointing out that the U.S. image abroad is so tainted that any legal

proceedings for detainees at the base will be viewed as illegitimate.

He commented: 揑 think that Guantanamo has become symbolic,

whether we like it or not, for many around the world.?He also cut one

big zero off Rumsfeld plan to spend $100 million on new

infrastructure, resulting in a more modest (but still significant) $10

million expenditure for air-conditioned pods and other amenities for

the military commissions hearings.

President George W. Bush acknowledges Guantanamo as a problem too, saying during a June 2006 press conference:

揑抎 like to close Guantanamo. No question: Guantanamo sends a signal

to some of our friends and provides an excuse ?for example, to say the

United States is not upholding the values that they抮e trying to

encourage other countries to adhere to.?Despite his claims to being

the ecider in chief,?Bush has not taken any executive steps to

change the signal we are sending.

What is at the heart of the administration discomfort with Guantanamo? It is not torture ?President Bush just vetoed a law

that would have prohibited water-boarding. It is certainly not respect

for Cuba sovereignty ?the State Department has a whole office

devoted to meddling in the country affairs. It is the PR problem. In

March of last year, William Taft, a former State Department adviser,

testified before the House of Representatives on Guantanamo. He

acknowledged that the logistical advantages of housing prisoners at

Guantanamo are outweighed by the olitical costs of continuing its

operation. At some point a brand becomes so toxic that no amount of Madison Avenue talent can rehabilitate it.?/p>

One solution is to give the base back to Cuba. But, Julia Sweig,

the Director for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign

Relations, is not sure Havana would want it back, saying 搃t become

such a global symbol of what has gone wrong with America ?not just a

symbol of our colonial impulses, but of the anti-imperialist fight

throughout Latin America ?it is something Cuba uses to greater benefit

than getting the base back.?Rhetorical benefits are of value ?but you

can eat, trade or wield geo-political power with rhetoric.

What Next?

But closing the prison and relinquishing control of the territory are two completely different things. Can Cuba get Guantanamo Bay back?

The Guantanamo prison is not a hot-button campaign issue. Lee

Feinstein, Director of National Security for Senator Hillary Clinton

campaign, says that s President, she would direct the Justice

Department to evaluate the evidence amassed against these prisoners and

make a determination.?Not exactly a rousing and definitive call to

shut down Guantanamo, but at least she has a process. For his part,

Senator Barack Obama does not see the need for military justice

proceedings there, asserting 揑 believe that our civilian courts or our

traditional system of military courts-martial are best able to meet

this challenge and demonstrate our commitment to the rule of law.?On

the Republican side, Senator John McCain has pushed for Guantanamo to

be closed and the prisoners sent to maximum security prison in Ft.

Leavenworth, Kentucky.

On the larger issue of U.S.-Cuba relations, Obama favors engagement

and dialogue without preconditions, while Clinton would predicate

diplomatic overtures on Cuba steps towards democratization. McCain

holds the position that U.S. containment policy has worked, and he

would not talk to Cuba until they held free elections and released

political prisoners and made other reforms.

Returning the occupied territory to Cuba has not been mentioned as

an option by Presidential candidates, and it is not high on the list of

objectives in Cuba policy circles. Close Cuba-watcher Patrick Doherty ?
the Deputy Director of the New America Foundation American Strategy Program

?predicts it would come up only in he later stages of a long-term

process of rapprochement.?That because, in addition to the

geographic value of an American military base at Guantanamo, Doherty

says 搊ne of our most effective areas of quiet cooperation with the

Cuban government is at the mil-mil level in managing our presence and

operations out of Guantanamo?and working on counter narcotics,

counter-crime, and general Caribbean security issues. Without many

other vehicles for official dialogue, Guantanamo, ironically, is acting

like a confidence-building measure.?/p>

Some international law experts assert that the United States is in

violation of the treaty made with Cuba and that could be the basis of a

movement to win the territory back. Dr. Alfredo de Zayas,

a professor of international law at the Geneva School for Diplomacy,

argues that even before looking at specific violations, the treaty can

be nullified because, he lease for the military base in a foreign

country is conditioned on the friendly relations between states.?While

relations between Cuba and the United States were friendly at the time

of the treaty, that is no longer the case. De Zayas also asserts that

the treaty is 搗oidable by virtue of a material breach,?because it

clearly stipulates that the area should be used for naval purposes

(coaling refers to re-fueling naval vessels when they were steam

powered) and 揻or no other purpose?including housing war on terrorism

detainees. Additionally, the treaty bars the United States from

establishing 揷ommercial, industrial or other enterprises?but the base

is home to McDonalds, Starbucks, Subway sandwiches, and other

commercial enterprises, another material breach.

While Washington does not make a habit of abiding by the treaty or

its obligations under it, the 1903 agreement was repeatedly cited as a

reason to keep Guantanamo detainees and their cases out of U.S. courts.

During Supreme Court hearings for Rasul vs. Bush and Al Odah vs. United States,

government lawyers argued that under the 1903 treaty and the 1934

revisions, the United States 搑ecognizes the continuance of the

ultimate sovereignty?of Cuba over Guantanamo and that the base is thus

搉ot part of the sovereign territory of the United States,?and

therefore not under U.S. law, meaning that the prisoners at Guantanamo

should not be allowed access to U.S. courts.

In 2004, the Supreme Court rejected those arguments, but the legal fight continues.

Shut it Down

The decision of what to do with the prisoners at Guantanamo will

most likely be left to the next administration. Washington policy and

attitude towards Cuba will also be shaped by the next person to sit

behind the big desk in the Oval Office. The next steps in the global

war on terrorism; a major change (up or down) in the size, scope and

objective of the U.S. occupation of Iraq; a shift in how (or if)

we communicate and cooperate with the rest of the world; an exploration

of the effectiveness of U.S. military might in resolving problems:

these pressing issues will be seen through new eyes post-November 2008.

The U.S. military occupation and control of territory ?from

Guantanamo to Germany to Okinawa and beyond ?should be included in

this reckoning. Shutting down Guantanamo ?not just the prison where

men are tortured, abused, and held in contravention of U.S. and

international law, but the sprawling colonial-holdover enterprise that

the United States came to control and continues to occupy

illegitimately and illegally ?would be a huge symbolic step towards

the rule of law, respect for other nations and the dawning recognition

that military might is a tool of last resort not first assault. One

hundred and five years later, the time has more than come.

Foreign Policy In Focus columnist Frida Berrigan is a senior program associate at the Arms and Security Project of the New America Foundation.

Tags: attitude, barack obama, brother, bush administration, cate, john mccain, los angeles times, objective, pace

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by Juan Cole

(Salon)The most

important thing about the endorsements proffered to John McCain by

George W. Bush and evangelist John Hagee last week was McCain’s

reaction to them. The freshly minted Republican nominee for president,

who has had harsh words in the past for both Bush’s policies and

evangelical agents of intolerance, meekly accepted their support. He

knows he cannot win in November if the evangelicals and pro-war

conservatives stay home. How far will McCain go in presenting himself

as Son of Bush in order to energize his party’s base? To date, based on

his willingness to embrace the Bush agenda and to associate with

religious extremists, the answer seems to be pretty far indeed.

When John McCain went to the White House last week, President Bush seemed to be offering him an out. Bush welcomed McCain as the Republican nominee in his official statement,

but didn’t initially use the word endorse. It was McCain who leapt

for the e-word. Well, I’m very honored and humbled, said McCain, to

have the opportunity to receive the endorsement of the President of the

United States, a man who I have great admiration, respect and affection

[for].

McCain’s strategists, meanwhile, are said to be privately plotting

how best to deploy the deeply unpopular Bush, perhaps by quietly

sending him to host fundraisers deep inside red states where he would

not risk alienating the general population from McCain. But McCain is hewing so faithfully to Bush’s legacy he may need no help from the man himself in alienating the population.

Whereas in his 2000 presidential bid, the Arizona senator sharply criticized Bush for appearing at the anti-Catholic Bob Jones University, which at that time also still banned interracial dating, he is less vocal about such matters now. He is himself behaving as Bush

did then. McCain once dismissed evangelicals such as Jerry Falwell and

Pat Robertson as agents of intolerance. But last week the senator

embraced Hagee’s endorsement. Talk about an agent of intolerance! Hagee

is like Pat Robertson on steroids.

The Democratic National Committee was quick to point out that Hagee said

that Jews have faced persecution right up to this very day because

they rejected Jesus and so demonstrated disobedience and rebellion

toward Jehovah. He said that the difference between a woman with

premenstrual syndrome and a terrorist is that you can negotiate with a

terrorist. He said that Katrina was divine punishment on New Orleans

for its sinfulness, and on gays for planning a parade there. He said

that Roman Catholics were linked with Hitler in a conspiracy to

exterminate the Jews, and called the Catholic Church the Great

Whore. He suggested a faux slave auction as a church fundraiser. He

told a startled Terry Gross on Fresh Air that the Quran directs

Muslims to kill Christians and Jews. (In fact the Quran recognizes

Christians and Jews as people of scripture and only urges the early

Muslims to fight back against the militant infidels or polytheists

who were trying to wipe them out.)

McCain reacted warmly to Hagee’s endorsement, saying, I am very

proud of Pastor John Hagee’s spiritual leadership to thousands of

people and I am proud of his commitment to the independence and the

freedom of the state of Israel. (Apparently for Hagee Israel is good,

even if Jews are bad.) Pressed by Roman Catholics and others, McCain

refused to distance himself from the pastor, saying only, In no way

did I intend for his endorsement to suggest that I in turn agree with

all of Pastor Hagee’s views, which I obviously do not. This

non-disavowing disavowal has not satisfied most of the people offended

by McCain’s having associated himself with Hagee.

Hagee’s endorsement is McCain’s Bob Jones moment, taken from the

W. playbook of 2000. In other respects, McCain is trying to repeat

Bush’s big win of 2004, when he fended off a near-upset by a weak

Democratic candidate by doubling down on fear. McCain has adopted

foreign policy and domestic stances similar to those of Bush’s

successful reelection run.

In July of 2004, Bush abruptly announced that he was looking into

whether Iran played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S., and

accused the Shiite ayatollahs of Tehran of harboring al-Qaida

operatives, who are Sunnis. The whole fantastic set of allegations was

immediately denied by Bush’s own intelligence officials. Hawkishness

toward Iran was one way for Bush to take the focus off his failures in

Iraq. Bush by his belligerence appealed to a combination of evangelical

holy warriors and so-called national-security conservatives, and McCain

seems poised to move in the same direction.

Echoing Bush’s fear-mongering about the Islamic world, which by

August 2006, two years after his reelection, regularly included

references to so-called Islamic fascism, McCain maintains that the

transcendent challenge facing the United States in 2008 is radical

Islamic extremism. McCain alleges that al-Qaida in Iraq will follow

us home if the U.S. withdraws from that country. McCain takes this

line even though most Muslim countries are close allies of the United

States and Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida has been revealed to be a small

fringe, now in disarray.

Hagee’s endorsement, meanwhile, brings more than white Protestant

intolerance to the table. The organization he founded, Christians

United for Israel, is lobbying for a war on Iran and dismisses last fall’s National Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran has no active nuclear weapons program as incompetent. McCain himself has joked about bombing Iran, to the tune of an old Beach Boys song.

George Bush has been closely wed to Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf,

even in the face of the reverses of the last year, which have seen the

general’s fortunes plummet as he alienated the entire electorate by

sacking the supreme court and ordering a ham-fisted invasion of a

militant mosque. Even after Musharraf’s party lost heavily in recent

parliamentary elections, McCain insisted,

We appreciate the relationship we have with President Musharraf and

hope to maintain that. Musharraf’s high-handed tactics have turned the

whole Pakistani population against him, and he seems set to be much

weakened by a new alliance of the democratically elected opposition

parties. McCain, like Bush, doesn’t want to let go of the dictator.

Bush’s signature project has been the war in Iraq, which he has

managed like a veteran Las Vegas magician, with a misdirection and

legerdemain that can make a whole elephant disappear. Despite nearly

4,000 U.S. soldiers killed, 30,000 wounded, hundreds of thousands of

Iraqis killed, millions displaced internally and abroad, the creation

of a new and serious terrorism problem, high fuel costs at home, and

the entire lack of any obvious benefit from the whole endeavor to the

American people, more than 40 percent of Americans now say the U.S. is making progress in establishing civil order in that country.

McCain went to the same David Coppersmith School of Prestidigitation as

Bush. He says he is dedicated to nothing less than complete military

victory in Iraq and the maintenance of bases in that country for as

much as a century, and his audiences do not appear to break out in

derisive laughter. The bad news for McCain is that about 63 percent of Americans,

a figure that has been fairly steady for the past year, continue to

believe launching the war in the first place was a mistake.

Surely lack of health insurance for tens of millions, loss of good

jobs, blighted cities like Detroit and New Orleans, and erosion of key

civil liberties are a more transcendent challenge than the activities

of small cultlike groups that are finding it harder and harder to

operate on the soil of Middle Eastern and European allies of the U.S.

But that’s not to say that McCain isn’t pushing a domestic agenda as

well. McCain does have a domestic agenda. It’s George Bush’s.

On domestic policy, McCain’s nostrums for the bad economy are job training and tax cuts.

As Paul Krugman once pointed out, tax cuts were Bush’s response to

each and every economic problem that arose, however unrealistic they

were. Half of all the benefits of Bush’s 2003 tax cut went to

millionaires, and the sad impact on ordinary Americans of consequent lack of services and the diversion of wealth to the wealthy, has now become amply apparent. The more economically literate Republicans have caught

on to Bush’s tax cut shell game. Ironically, John McCain used to be

one of them, declining to sign on to some of Bush’s tax cuts. No more.

By tax cuts, Republicans such as McCain mean lowering specific

federal taxes on income and capital gains. This step would harm federal

income, which will fall anyway if there is an extended recession, and

would mainly benefit Americans in the top income brackets. A federal

government with less income will be less able to pay for the services

and job training ordinary workers and middle-class people need,

especially in bad times. Moreover, in a recession, you want the

government to spend more money, not less, which cannot be accomplished

by reducing its income. McCain, like Bush, seems firmly stuck in 1929.

Bush championed the North American Free Trade Agreement, criticizing Sens. Clinton and Obama

for saying they might pull out of it if Mexico and Canada declined to

renegotiate some of its provisions. Bush is now pushing for a free

trade agreement with Colombia, arguing it is necessary for national

security.

McCain is just as committed to NAFTA as Bush. Worried about the impact on U.S.-Canadian relations

of Democratic attacks on the agreement, he said, I want to tell our

Canadian friends that I will negotiate and conclude free trade

agreements and I will not, after entering into solemn agreements, go

and say that I will abrogate those agreements. He denounced the

Democratic candidates for risking protectionism, and added, One of

the greatest assets we have in Afghanistan today, frankly, are our

Canadian friends. He noted the unpopularity of the Canadian

participation in the NATO mission there, which is part of a NATO

contingent, given the 78 Canadian soldiers killed so far. He concluded,

We need their continued support in Afghanistan. Some 58 percent of

Canadians reject the idea of extending their country’s mission in Afghanistan past February 2009.

Both at home and abroad, McCain appears intent on abandoning some of

his most deeply cherished personal values, including his commitment to

secular values and distaste for religious bigotry, in favor of catering

to the great W. coalition of white evangelicals and security-obsessed

conservatives. Like Bush, his mantras are war and belligerence abroad,

and at home, fear-mongering, free trade, lower taxes on the wealthy,

and job training for the increasingly miserable middle classes. If he

is elected, it will be Groundhog Day, the Bill Murray film about a

character doomed to live through the same day over and over again. It

will be the last eight years that we will suffer through again under a

President McCain. Only worse, because we have already eaten so much of

our seed corn.

Tags: cate, champion, distaste, endor, europe, job, john mccain, roman catholics, spira, ups

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by Stephen LendmanCall it another salvo in Bush v. Chavez with Ecuador’s Raphael Correa as a secondary target and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribe as a proxy aggressor. The Ecuadorean incursion was no ordinary cross-border raid. It was a made in Washington affair that escalates a nine year attempt to remove the Venezuelan leader and return oligarchs in the country to power. It also threatens two regional leaders who know what they’re up against in Uribe and Washington, friendly handshakes in the Dominican Republic notwithstanding. The situation is far from settled, and here’s how events unfolded so far:– on March 1, the Colombian military illegally entered Ecuadorean air space and invaded on the ground; the target was a FARC-EP rebel camp; US intelligence was key by identifying the precise location to bomb through satellite telephone tracking; Colombian Radio Cadena Nacional (RCN) reported it heard a FARC-EP leader - Chavez conversation three days before the raid; Colombian Noticias Uno TV said foreign spy planes photographed FARC-EP’s precise location for the country’s military to use in the raid; — it’s also known that US Special Forces train Colombian counterinsurgents, accompany them on missions, and likely participated (covertly) in the March 1 operation; — Colombian (and likely US) forces attacked and slaughtered over 20 people in total, including 16 Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FACR-EP) members while they slept;– among the dead was FARC-EP’s second-in-command, Raul Reyes; he was FARC-EP’s public voice, its key peace negotiator since the 1990s, and the lead figure in the Chavez-arranged hostage releases; that and his prominence made him a target so his death may disrupt the process and current efforts toward resolving a 40 year conflict equitably; Washington wants it halted, so does Uribe, and that’s where things now stand;– Hugo Chavez and other Latin American leaders were united in condemning the hostile act; the 35-member Organization of American States, however, was tepid in its formal March 5 response; Correa called it welcome but inadequate and insists on a formal condemnation; Chavez was even more forceful saying: We demand condemnation of the Colombian government for this aberrant act, he called it a war crime (and blamed the crisis on the US) empire and its lackeys;– ahead of the March 7 Dominican Republic XX Rio Group Summit of Latin American leaders, foreign ministers from Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Peru issued a statement demanding respect for their national sovereignty; Chavez called the meeting positive and advocated cooling tensions; he supported Ecuador and said: We don’t want war; — Chavez, Correa and Uribe exchanged cool handshakes and pro forma conciliatory statements at the Summit; for what it’s worth, Uribe issued a formal apology to the Ecuadorean government and its people; call it disingenuous diplomacy; it settles nothing in spite of how the media played it or that Venezuela and Colombia restored diplomatic ties; for his part, Correa said it will be difficult to recover trust and reestablishing normal relations will take a little time;– one example of media coverage came from correspondent Simon Romero of The New York Times; he’s always disingenuous and never neutral; he reported handshakes and warm embraces….ended the dispute as though nothing ever happened and it’s again business as usual; in fact, nothing is settled; the incident still simmers, it’s just a matter of time before the next one erupts, and Chavez, Correa and other regional leaders know it; so does Washington that plans them;– earlier, Chavez also called Colombia the Israel of Latin America saying both countries claimed a supposed right to defense, to bomb and invade neighbors on orders from Washington;– Uribe confirmed it by saying he refused to rule out future military incursions into Ecuador or Venezuela, so expect more provocations ahead with full Washington backing; — at the same time, huge crowds of Colombians at home and abroad marched for peace and against terrorist acts; they denounced violence on both sides and want it ended, but a new disturbing report came out:– the Colombia weekly Semana wrote that ex-Israeli military men are fighting guerrilla organizations (meaning the FARC-EP and ELN), and Defense Minister Juan Santos confirmed that A group of former Israeli military officials (including three senior generals, a lower ranking officer and three translators) is counseling the military’s top brass on intelligence issues; in addition, FARC-EP claims that Israeli commandos were engaged against them along with US and British forces.The hostile words followed with Ecuadorean officials citing irrefutable evidence that Uribe’s attack was premeditated and his worst ever aggression against their country. Correa expressed outrage and sees no negotiated settlement because there is nothing to negotiate. In Brazil for a meeting with Lula da Silva, he said Ecuador is prepared to go up to the ultimate consequences (over this even though) nobody wants war. But we won’t fool ourselves. The war was started by Colombia. We were bombed.Correa and Chavez both deployed troops to their borders, and each country went further. Ecuador severed diplomatic ties with its neighbor, and Correa called Uribe Washington’s unconditional puppet for his blatant act of aggression. Chavez also expelled Colombia’s ambassador, and called the strike a cowardly murder, all of it coldly calculated and planned in Washington. He also warned Colombia against similar Venezuelan incursions that he would interpret as a cause for war.Uribe, in turn, defiantly shot back that Colombia will charge Chavez in the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for materially aiding the FARC-EP by sponsor(ing) and funding genocidal groups. Colombia’s Radio Caracol then reported Uribe intends to revise or examine his charges with no further details given. And on the same day Vice-President Francisco Santos Calderon provocatively indicated that relations with Correa may be recovered, but it will be very difficult to reach a diplomatic solution with Chavez. He and Uribe have long been antagonists and have been at odds for months over Chavez’s hostage mediating success that embarrassed the Colombian president and Washington in the process. Colombian officials heightened tensions further through misstatements. First, they claimed bombings occurred on their own territory. Then they changed the story saying: Colombia has not violated any sovereignty, (we) only acted in accordance with the principle of legitimate defense, and responded to fire from inside Ecuador. Both statements were untrue and Chavez reacted. He accused Uribe of lying and called him a criminal saying: Not only is he a liar, a mafia boss, a paramilitary who leads a narco-government (that’s) a lackey of the United States (but he also) leads a band of criminals from his palace. The war of words continues with Washington’s OAS ambassador, Robert Manzanares, accusing FARC-EP of undertak(ing) repeated incursions and infringements of national sovereignty (against Colombia’s) neighbors. Defense Secretary Robert Gates applauded Uribe’s action, and when asked if US intelligence supported it said: Well, I would just say that we are very supportive.George Bush joined in, and jumped to his ally’s defense. Well he should as Washington provides Colombia with over $600 million a year and all for one purpose - to support repression and the interests of capital at the expense of beneficial social change. On March 4, Bush phoned Uribe with assurances America fully supports Colombia’s democracy (and) firmly opposes any acts of aggression that could destabilize the region. He also called sending Venezuelan troops to the border provocative maneuvers. In addition, he used the crisis to push Congress to approve a trade deal that’s been stalled over issues of Uribe’s paramilitary links and the country’s human rights record. Bush did what he always does. He cited national security and said ratification is a way to counter leaders like Chavez who destabilize the region. If we fail to approve this agreement, we will let down our close ally, we will damage our credibility (and) will embolden the demagogues in our hemisphere.Consider comments as well from US presidential candidates. On March 3, Barack Obama said: The Colombian people have suffered for more than four decades at the hands of a brutal terrorist insurgency, and the Colombian government has every right to defend itself against the…FARC.Hillary Clinton was even more hostile stating: Hugo Chavez’s order yesterday to send ten battalions to the Colombian border is unwarranted and dangerous. (Colombia) has every right to defend itself against drug trafficking terrorist organizations that have kidnapped innocent civilians, including American citizens. By praising and supporting the (FARC-EP), Chavez is openly siding with terrorists that threaten Colombian democracy and the peace and security in the region. (Chavez) must call a halt to this provocative action. As president, I will….press Chavez to change course.Then there’s John McCain who even scares some in the Pentagon and is virulently hostile to Chavez. He calls him a wacko and two-bit-dictator and advocates his ouster in the name of democracy and freedom throughout the hemisphere. As president, he’d be the most likely to provoke a confrontation because he’s ideologically committed to militarism to confront a range of security challenges….in a dangerous world. One writer calls him an authoritarian maverick and a man to fear as president. Another describes his McCainiac mentality, his notion of occupying Iraq for 100 years or as long a