Chalmers Johnson - The Sorrows of Empire - Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic

10. See chapter 6 above; and Madhavee Inamdar, “Global Vigilance in a Global Village: U.S. Expands Its Military Bases,” Progressive Response 6:41 (December 31, 2002).

11. William M. Arkin, “The Best Defense,” Los Angeles Times, July 14, 2002; “War Designed to Test New Weapons: Interview with Vladimir Slipchenko,” Rossiyskaya Gazeta, February 22, 2003, .

12. John A. Gentry, “Doomed to Fail: America’s Blind Faith in Military Technology,” Parameters, Winter 2002–03, pp. 88–103. Also see Mike Davis, “Slouching toward Baghdad,” Tomdispatch.com, February 26, 2003. For the computer crash of January 2000, see James Bamford, Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), pp. 451–53.

13. Gentry, “Doomed to Fail,” p. 99.

14. Jason Vest, “The Army’s Empire Skeptics,” Nation, March 3, 2003, pp. 27–30. Also see Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon Loeb, “Unrivaled Military Feels Strains of Unending War,” Washington Post, February 16, 2003.

15. See Ira Chernus, “Shock & Awe: Is Baghdad the Next Hiroshima?” CommonDreams.org, January 27, 2003. On the proposed Anglo-American use of such weapons as lasers that can blind and stun and microwave beams that can heat the water in human skin to the boiling point, see Antony Barnett, “Army’s Secret ‘People Zapper’ Plans,” Observer, November 3, 2002. The United States is sponsoring research on chemical and biological weapons that violates the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention and other international treaties. One of the projects is to produce antibiotic-resistant anthrax (Julian Borger, “U.S. Weapons Secrets Exposed,” Guardian, October 29, 2002; and Thomas Fuller, “Microwave Weapons: The Dangers of First Use,” International Herald Tribune, March 17, 2003).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

29. Patrick S. Poole, “Inside America’s Secret Court: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court,” .

30. Anita Ramasastry, “Why the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court Was Right to Rebuke the Justice Department,” September 4, 2002, . Ramasastry is a professor of law at the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle.

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

32. Bob Egelko, “Spy Court to Review Prosecutors’ Powers,” San Francisco Chronicle, September 1, 2002; and Anita Ramasastry, “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review Creates a Potential End Run around Traditional Fourth Amendment Protections for Certain Criminal Law Enforcement Wiretaps,” November 26, 2002, .

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

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

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

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

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

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