Ignore The Problem, Surely It'll Go Away

An inordinate number of Iraq Vets are returning from their time in Hell with shell shock -- sorry, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The underfinanced VA hospitals will now have to give them care.

The Bush Administration answer to this problem? Just don't diagnose them! After all, their mental health isn't nearly as important as the financial bottom line!

The Washington Post reports this little fact, here.

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"In the past five years, the number of veterans receiving compensation for the disorder commonly called PTSD has grown nearly seven times as fast as the number receiving benefits for disabilities in general, according to a report this year by the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. A total of 215,871 veterans received PTSD benefit payments last year at a cost of $4.3 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 1999 -- a jump of more than 150 percent."

"It has become a pro-war-versus-antiwar issue," said one VA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because politics is not supposed to enter the debate. "If we show that PTSD is prevalent and severe, that becomes one more little reason we should stop waging war. If, on the other hand, PTSD rates are low . . . that is convenient for the Bush administration."
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The article continues:

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The concern about overdiagnosis and fraud -- what researchers call "false positives" -- has drawn the ire of veterans groups and many other mental health experts.

A far bigger problem is the many veterans who seek help but do not get it or who never seek help, a number of experts said. Studies have shown that large numbers of veterans with PTSD never seek treatment, possibly because of the stigma surrounding mental illness.

"There are periodic false positives, but there are also a lot of false negatives out there," said Terence M. Keane, one of the nation's best-known PTSD researchers, who cited a 1988 study on the numbers of veterans who do not get treatment. "Less than one-fourth of people with combat-related PTSD have used VA-related services."
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Yet despite this, the Republicans don't want to pay for even that many vets seeking help following their service:

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Among other things, the department asked the institute -- a branch of the National Academies chartered by Congress to advise the government on science policy -- to review the American Psychiatric Association's criteria for diagnosing PTSD. Effectively, Scott said, Veterans Affairs was trying to get one scientific organization to second-guess another.

"What they are trying to do is figure out a way not to diagnose vets with PTSD," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans advocacy group. "It's like telling a patient with cancer, 'if we tell you, you don't have cancer, then you won't suffer from cancer.'"
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Way to "support the troops", neocons.......

The Definition of Blowback

The Bush Administration not only violated the U.S. Constitution by spying on Americans, this stunt of pulling an end-run around the FISA Court has now laid the legal ground for terrorists to claim their incarceration was based on false information obtained illegally. This one screw-up now forms the basis for legal appeals by defense lawyers in Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia.

So not only did the Bush Administration publicly admit to violating a law that requires a minimum sentence of a $10,000 fine and 5 years in prison, not only did it commit a massive overreach of Executive power that outstrips previous abuses like Iran-Contra or the exploits of the Nixon Administration, but it may have weakened the very "war on terror" it was supposedly attempting to strengthen.

Congratulations! You've managed to weaken both our freedoms AND our security. Way to go.

Dowd Nails It

Once again, the New York Times' Maureen Dowd has hit the nail on the head.

"Consider this: when Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, supported by President Ford, pushed a plan to have the government help develop alternative sources of energy and reduce our dependence on oil and Saudi Arabia, guess who helped scotch it? Dick Cheney. Then and now, the man is a menace."

Too true. And too bad most people won't read her byline, or other important Times writers like Paul Krugman, thanks to the fact that their most important op-ed writers have been stuffed into the subscription box.

Way to gut your influence, Times.

"All the news that's fit to print?" For a SOLID YEAR the New York Times sat on a story so explosive it could have stopped that moron George Bush from being elected in 2004, and saved this country a lot of grief. After all that, one can't help but ask the question, what other vitally important stories are they keeping under wraps that the American people need to hear, while simultaneously letting joke reporters like Judith Miller have a platform to spew utter lies?

What a thousand right wing smear tactics couldn't do, they managed to do to themselves. Unless they make some radical changes, they may have damaged their credibility beyond repair. Very sad.

Bad Week for Bush - Great Week For Americans

First his illegal wiretapping program came to light, then former Nixon White House counsel John Dean called Bush "the first president to admit to an impeachable offense," then the Senate Democrats blocked permanent extension of the Patriot Act throwing the Republicans a mere bone of a six-month extension, and now a federal appeals court just slapped him over his detention of American, Jose Padilla.

And this last from a conservative judge, no less.

Judge J. Michael Luttig wrote the opinion for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, and he denounced the Bush Administration for their treatment of so-called “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla. He basically dumped Bush's contention that the Padilla case should somehow be barred from a Supreme Court decision, which is about to rule on the government’s right to keep American citizens locked up without charge or prosecution.

Writing for the majority opinion, Justice Luttig said, the government's actions have left "the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if justifiably, by mistake," and this may hurt the government's "credibility before the courts."

Real Reason to Fear, Real Need To Win in 2006

Bush SHOULD be impeached for allowing illegal wiretapping and so-called "sneak & peek" operations among many other crimes (from SEC violations when he sold $840,000 worth of Harken Energy stock just before it tanked while he was sitting on their Audit Board, to National Guard desertion during a time of war, to election fraud, to war crimes), Cheney should be impeached for outing a covert agent and tried for treason, but the REALLY scary part is, even if that happens, it means Republicans like Dennis Hastert and Ted "Bridge To Nowhere" Stevens are actually in the line of succession.

Now THAT is scary.

There is such a DEPTH of corruption and evil in American government right now, that even if we impeached BOTH the President and the Vice President, we'd STILL be screwed as a nation.

That's why it is SO IMPERATIVE that Democrats re-take the House and Senate in the 2006 election.

We can barely handle even the wait until the election, the country is in such a desperate condition, but waiting until 2008 for a regime change might kill this country altogether.

Bush has already sold this country to the Chinese Communists and produced the largest deficit in history - $7 trillion dollars - if we are weakened any further, this noble experiment in Democracy may come to an ugly end if our creditors call in their debts.

Truth About FISA Power & National Security

Bush claims he needed all this extra power to protect us, yet there is already in place a mechanism to do such secret domestic wiretaps if needed, and many regard even THAT as too much power for government to wield fairly.

This process involves going to what us known as a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court. Indeed in 2003, the American Bar Association adopted a resolution calling on Congress to conduct more strict oversight on the FISA courts process, to ensure that they did not violate Constitutional protections guaranteed to the American people. The the FISA process alone is so outside the normal system of American jurisprudence, it had them worried.

Under the Fourth Amendment, a search warrant must be based on probable cause that a particular crime has been or is being committed. This is not the rule under FISA. Government surveillance under FISA is permitted solely based on whether the surveillance target is a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power, irrespective of whether the target is suspected of engaging in criminal activity. However, if the target is a U.S. citizen, there must be probable cause to believe that the U.S. person's activities may involve espionage or other similar conduct in violation of the criminal statutes of the United States. Nor may a U.S. person be determined to be an agent of a foreign power "solely upon the basis of activities protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States," such as lawful protest activities.

FISA established a special court -- the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) -- composed of seven federal district court judges appointed by the Chief Justice for staggered terms and from different circuits. Individual judges of the FISC review the Attorney General's applications for authorization of electronic surveillance aimed at obtaining foreign intelligence information. The FISC meets two days monthly.

A FISA application must contain:

• a statement of reasons to believe that the target of the surveillance is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power;
• a certification from a high-ranking executive branch official stating that the information sought is deemed to be foreign intelligence information, and that the information sought cannot reasonably be obtained by normal investigative techniques;
• statements regarding all previous applications involving the target;
• detailed description of the nature of the information sought and of the type of communication or activities to be subject to the surveillance;
• the length of time surveillance is required;
• whether physical entry into a premises is necessary, and proposed procedures to minimize the acquisition, use, and retention of information concerning nonconsenting U.S. persons.

The FISA law establishes a separate legal regime for "foreign intelligence" surveillance. And it's power has grown with time. At first, it was limited to electronic eavesdropping and wiretapping. In 1994 it was amended to permit covert physical entries in connection with "security" investigations. 1998, it was amended to permit pen/trap orders. Then FISA Court was allowed to obtain some business records.

Moreover, it's not like these secret courts aren't giving government requests enough deference to the requests to where additional powers would even be required by the Executive. The fact is, the FISA Court has, in over 18,742 requests since 1978, only rejected 4 requests for wiretap.

But all this wasn't enough for old George.

Better?

He's made the argument that for the sake of immediacy, if an attack is pending, they need to have the power to skirt the FISA court altogether. But this argument is highly specious because AGAIN, a mechanism is already in place for such an eventuality. If there is and urgent matter, the government is allowed to wiretap WITHOUT a FISA warrant for up to 72 hours.

So Bush had all the power he needed to do his job, but he just wanted MORE.

Republican Congressman Dana Rohrbacher made the statement that "If it was up to [critics of the President's use of power], they probably would have blown up the Brooklyn Bridge. The bottom line is this: in wartime we expect our leaders, yes, to exercise more authority."

Which interested me, because President Clinton actually DID thwart a plot to blow up the George Washington Bridge back in the early 90's, as well as:

• The Millennium plot to blow up 12 U.S. jetliners simultaneously
• The plot to blow up UN Headquarters;
• The plot to blow up FBI Headquarters;
• The plot to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Washington;
• The plot to blow up Boston airport;
• The plot to blow up Lincoln and Holland Tunnels in NY;
• The plot to blow up the Los Angeles airport LAX;
• The plot to blow up the Seattle Space Needle, and;
• The plot to blow up the US Embassy in Albania.

And he didn't seem to need all these extra powers to do it.

So why can't Bush?

Oh that's right.... he's as incompetent as Brownie.

My Sympathies to the Hearing Impaired

I'd like to talk for a moment about the hearing impaired in this country.

Now I personally thought I had it bad because I had to listen to Bush ramble and stumble through his speeches, but I have just experienced something that makes me wonder about that assumption.

You see, I've been up at some odd hours lately, and out of respect for my neighbors, I'll often watch TV with the sound muted. Since I have digital cable, that means that when I mute the sound, I see the captioned text which appears for those who are hearing impaired.

Tonight I turned on the C-SPAN, and Bush's lame, rambly press conference was on. I gotta tell you, while it's bad enough listening to Bush butcher the English language or pull off that annoying frat boy laugh, it's nothing to trying to READ his words LIVE.

Sweet Jesus, that has got to annoy the hell out of the deaf in this country.

I'm just saying. Yikes.

Snooping Increasing Exponentially

More invasion of privacy news (there's been a rash of it lately, and it's itchy) --- we can add the DOD and NSA to the domestic snoop list.


- NBC's Investigative Unit reported that, a DOD database includes nearly four dozen anti-war meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center. The DOD database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons, and indicates they are monitoring even the vehicles which visit the protest areas in an attempt to identify individuals engaging in LAWFUL, Constitutionally-protected protest.

- TALON ("Threat and Local Observation Notice") reports now provide "non-validated domestic threat information" from military units throughout the United States that are collected and retained in a CIFA database. The reports include details on potential surveillance of military bases, stolen vehicles, bomb threats and planned anti-war protests.

- NBC's Investigative Unit reported that, "CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity) is becoming the superpower of data mining within the U.S. national security community. Its operational and analytical records include reports of investigation, collection reports, statements of individuals, affidavits, correspondence, and other documentation pertaining to investigative or analytical efforts by the DOD and other U.S. government agencies to identify terrorist and other threats. Since March 2004, CIFA has awarded at least $33 million in contracts to corporate giants Lockheed Martin, Unisys Corporation, Computer Sciences Corporation and Northrop Grumman to develop databases that comb through classified and unclassified government data, commercial information and Internet chatter to help sniff out terrorists, saboteurs and spies. (And fluffy, non-violent Quakers....)

- One of the CIFA-funded database projects is called "Person Search", and searches not only government sources, but commercial databases as well.

- According to the Computer Sciences Corp. contract, CIFA's "Insider Threat Initiative", is supposedly designed to "develop systems able to detect, mitigate and investigate insider threats, as well as the ability to identify and document normal and abnormal activities and behaviors." (They're documenting NORMAL behavior too?? WTF???)

- The NY Times reported that under a Presidential order signed in 2002, the NSA (which is SUPPOSED to be tasked to snooping solely on foreign chatter, not Americans) has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people INSIDE the United States without warrants over the past three years. The Chimp-in-Chief admitted to this stunning overreach and abuse of power by claiming it "Saves lives" while simultaneously offering no actual examples of a single life saved by reckless intrusion.

- Vets traumatized by war, now also get to be traumatized by the TSA and perhaps barred from flying. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, "PTSD" otherwise known as "shell shock" affects as many as 17% of vets returning from Iraq in 204 alone. More than half, or 53 percent, of the 1 million combat veterans of Vietnam were afflicted to one degree or another, said a four-year, $9 million study published by the VA in 1990. This week it was revealed that the agency is putting their names in a database and classifying them as "mental defectives". The TSA notice, first reported by Government Security News, reads: "Examples of new data sources would be DoD files for military service histories or VA files for lists of persons who have been declared mental defectives." Hmm... Now where have I heard that phrase before? Oh yeah. The Nazis used to call mentally ill people that right before they killed them. They were the first people the Nazis killed. You know, before they really got the hang of killing jews and faggots.

- TSA plans to add two new "data sources" per year to it's little database.

- The FBI quietly announced via the Federal Register on Dec. 2 that it was putting the Terrorist Screening Records System beyond the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.

"It's absolute paranoia at the highest levels of our government," says Hersh of The Truth Project.

And beyond the ethical implications, the PRACTICAL problem here is that there is so much data mining going on, that the government is going to be buried in irrelevancy, and miss the REAL threats because it simply can't process all the data sufficiently, much less analyse it with any sort of accuracy. This is one of the reasons why 9/11 happened in the first place -- too much data, no coordination and too few people with a brain to put the pieces together to stop it. Now the Bush Administration has only exaccerbated the problem.

This is totally out of control.

National "Security" Letters?

So first up in disturbing news is this little gem:

Concord Monitor Article

Here are the key parts:

"The FBI now issues more than 30,000 national security letters a year, according to government sources, a hundredfold increase over historic norms. The letters are extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans."

"Issued by FBI field supervisors, national security letters do not need the imprimatur of a prosecutor, grand jury or judge. They receive no review after the fact by the Justice Department or Congress."

"The Bush administration defeated legislation and a lawsuit to require a public accounting, and it has offered no example in which the use of a national security letter disrupted a terrorist plot."

"The burgeoning use of national security letters coincides with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks - and to share those records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed. Late last month, President Bush expanded access to those files for "state, local and tribal" governments and for 'appropriate private sector entities.'"

"Former representative Robert Barr Jr. of Georgia, who finds himself allied with the American Civil Liberties Union after a career as prosecutor, CIA analyst and conservative GOP stalwart. 'There's no checks and balances whatever on them. It is simply some bureaucrat's decision that they want information, and they can basically just go and get it.'"

"Because recipients are permanently barred from disclosing the letters, outsiders can make no assessment of their relevance."

"To establish the 'relevance' of the information they seek, agents face a test so basic it is hard to fail."

"Barr, the former congressman, said that 'the abuse is in the power itself.'
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So it's useless, ineffective, intrusive, unnecessary, and an abuse of power. Great.

Welcome to the Police State.

Welcome!

I've added a blog to the main CTF site, so that no matter where I'm at, I can post updates. This will also allow readers a format to immediately respond to events. If you want to submit essays for permanent posting, you can of course still do that at the regular Submissions Page at considerthefuture.com. I hope you enjoy the site, and I look forward to hearing your views.

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