For about thirty minutes after his chief of staff told him that America was under attack, George W. Bush continued to sit in an elementary school classroom listening to a second-grader tell a story about a pet goat. He did a marvelous job of looking completely unsurprised. Meanwhile, four hijacked jumbo jets were able to fly off-course across several states without encountering any opposition from the most powerful and responsive air force in the world. Less than a month later, on the pretext of pursuing terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, the Bush administration began what it called a "war" on the impoverished and already war-torn country of Afghanistan. It turns out this assault had been in the works well before September 11 took place. Soon after replacing the Taliban government with one more to its liking (and, in what is surely a coincidence, resuscitating the world's most bountiful opium fields), the administration began agitating for a similar, but even more destructive, bombardment of the oil-rich nation of Iraq. This, although Osama bin Laden was still at large and no link between him and Saddam Hussein could be established. For these reasons and hundreds of others, the year following September 11 has seen probably the most staggering proliferation of "conspiracy theories" in American history. Angry speculation -- focused mainly on government dirty dealings, ulterior motives, and potential complicity in the attacks -- has risen to a clamor that easily rivals what followed the Kennedy assassination. Some of these suppositions are patent balderdash. But many others are coherent and well argued, and cite disconcerting reports from the U.S. corporate media and respected overseas news desks to support their claims. Providing grist for the mill are such odd episodes as last year's partisan anthrax poisonings (using U.S. army microbes) and the sniper attacks that recently plagued Washington, DC. Following are the ten most alarming theories about September 11, the "War on Terror," and the future of the world. Feel free to accept them as gospel, study them as symptoms of a traumatized culture, or scoff at them as anti-American propaganda.     1. Great Game in the Caspian Sea   Among the theories about the administration's real reasons for bombing and occupying Afghanistan, the one with the most traction argues that Afghanistan provides the best real estate for an oil and natural gas pipeline. Believers say that fossil fuels in the Caspian Sea, once part of the Soviet empire, are now up for grabs in a fierce contest between Russia and the West. To the winner will go control of much of the energy supply for East Asia. Sources cited in support of this idea -- which has gotten ink in England's Guardian newspaper and the BBC, as well as offhand mention on U.S. Sunday talk shows -- include Zbigniew Brzezinski's apology for empire, The Grand Chessboard, and a 1998 Taliban-damning report to Congress from the oil company Unocal. But the most telling evidence of all: Now that Afghanistan is a satellite state of the Bush administration, the pipeline is actually being built!.   2. The Afghanistan/Enron Connection   Rumor has it that in the months before Enron's collapse, Bush, Cheney, and the much-gossiped-about "energy task force" convened daily, high-priority meetings to try and engineer a bailout for Bush's most generous campaign contributor. At the peak of the Enron scandal and in the aftermath of the attack on Afghanistan, a fascinating document surfaced in conspiracy circles that told of a bank-breaking Enron venture: A power plant the firm had partly built in India. Plagued with cost overruns and accusations of employee mistreatment that led to violent labor disputes, the power plant became a cash sinkhole that threatened to send Enron into insolvency -- unless the plant could tap into a pipeline network to be spun off from the Caspian Sea venture and recover some of its losses by operating on natural gas. A detailed and intriguing read, this document explains why Dick Cheney would sooner chug a quart of 10W-40 than surrender the minutes of those energy meetings.   3. The Magic Passport Theory   We can now add Mohamed Atta's reality-defying passport to the Arlen Specter Gallery of Improbable Projectiles. This incriminating item was thrown intact from a cataclysmic fireball and miraculously plucked from 1.6 million tons of debris in a matter of hours. The corporate media rarely mention the unlikelihood of this. Many in the alternative press, though, are unafraid to draw an obvious, albeit taboo, inference: that the Atta passport is planted evidence. According to Washington, DC, peace activist John Judge, other potential plants include the Arabic-language flight manuals left in one of the hijackers' cars (with note: The discussion of the flight manuals begins at around 13:30). These manuals could serve no useful purpose at such a late stage unless the hijackers planned to finish learning how to fly during a half-hour ride to the airport. But as deliberately placed articles, they are as if a signed diary called "My Plan to Kill the President" had been unearthed in Lee Harvey Oswald's flat. Also high on the possible planted evidence list is a spiritual manifesto for the Al Qaeda kamikaze pilots, which, to journalist Robert Fisk, sounds an awful lot like it was written by a God-fearing Christian.   4. Hijacker Oddities I   Little-observed in the fine print of the FBI rap sheet on the September 11 hijackers was a clumsily phrased disclaimer admitting that the Bureau's document wasn't, ahem, necessarily a final draft (with note: "It should be noted that attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under way").   Ringleader Mohamed Atta's identity was a slam-dunk, of course, owing to the propitious recovery of his passport. But bear in mind how quickly the FBI conjured its 19 Enemies of the State while you ponder the strange case of Waleed Al Shehri. In an article for the BBC, this Saudi Arabian national says that he turned up on the FBI list and feels that rumors of his death were greatly exaggerated. Not to be outdone, the British Daily Telegraph also ran an article on the subject, claiming to have found no fewer than four of the supposed September 11 attackers -- alive, well, and hopping mad. Pending long overdue clarification from John Ashcroft's vaunted Bureau, one can hardly blame the conspiracy-minded for crying "patsy."   5. Hijacker Oddities II   Another theory about the hijackers' real identities takes as its departure an utterly bizarre and largely overlooked story on, which says that some of the hijackers may have trained at U.S. Army bases. Yes, you read that right. Strange as it may seem, providing terrorists-slash-"freedom fighters" with lethal skills is a tradition in certain specialized arms of the American military and U.S. intelligence. The infamous School of the Americas, for example, helped to train the death squads that claimed so many innocent lives in Central America. Even so, the idea that the government might aid Osama's minions is completely beyond the pale, right? Perhaps. But remember the CIA and the military's record-breaking aid program to the Afghan Mujahedin movement, as outlined, for example, in John Cooley's Unholy Wars. Questions about hijacker links to U.S. intelligence got more complicated when the spook watchdog magazine CovertAction Quarterly claimed that many of the hijackers got into the country using CIA "snitch" visas. (This article can be found in CovertAction Quarterly's Winter 2001, 41-44; the BBC conducted an interview with the author, Michael Springmann). As with many issues involving The Agency, this promises to be shrouded in mystery for a long time.   6. Insider Trades   Remember right after the attacks when you couldn't watch TV for five minutes without hearing somebody say "put option"? The 9/11 insider stock trades got endless airplay on the major networks before Osama bin Laden became fixed in the popular imagination, whereupon the media bent themselves to the task of establishing his guilt. Still, even if Al Qaeda placed the 4,744 suspicious transactions, wouldn't the story still be useful, if only to further illuminate the terrorist network's money machine? Apparently not, because the story didn't just fade away over time; it suddenly vanished. Once in a while, a TV news anchorperson would assure us there had been "nothing to" the rumors while failing to explain, if this was true, where the story had come from or why it had gotten so such attention.   But conservative scandal-tracker Tom Flocco didn't give up on the hinky stock trades. In a series of articles, he follows the money back to a bigwig in the financial firm Deutsche Bank, who also was once executive director of (surprise!) the CIA. Some might question Flocco's credibility as an investigative reporter, I suppose -- although credibility in the news business appears to be a dead letter anyway, if CNN could accidentally fabricate the 5,000 trades out of whole cloth to begin with.   7. The New World Order Will Not Be Televised   Assuming you haven't stopped reading yet -- either to start digging a bomb shelter in your backyard or to flip on FOX News for a much-needed dose of pro-war soma -- you have to be wondering how these flabbergasting stories escaped the notice of America's intrepid newshounds. Examine this question for even a minute and you will stumble onto a proven, card-carrying evil conspiracy: It's called the U.S. Congress, and conclusive evidence links them to a truly terrifying document known as the Telecommunications Act of 1996.   This legislation is relevant post-9/11 because it allowed the megamergers of media conglomerates to become ultra-monstermergers. As a result, today a handful of multinationals control most of what is said in the U.S. about military actions overseas and the reasons for them. At least one of these companies -- General Electric -- has financial stakes in the weapons racket as well, but this blatant conflict of interest gets as much coverage as the Telecommunications Act originally got when it was on the floor of Congress: next to none. Some media observers and academics, like MIT's Noam Chomsky and Norman Solomon of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, have doggedly pointed out that the bloated media emperor has no clothes. Too bad they stand little chance of appearing regularly on Face the Nation.   Not many people noticed when the rules governing what gets said about war and who gets to say it were exposed in Harper's Magazine, which ran a Florida News Herald memo outlining some of the carefully crafted talking points journalists must observe in discussing U.S. bombing campaigns. Among them: Ignore or minimize innocent death. "If the story needs rewriting to play down the civilian casualties" caused by U.S. bombings, the Herald's copy desk decrees, "DO IT.... Failure to follow any of these or other standing rules could put your job in jeopardy" . Lesson? If you live in the U.S. and think you know what your government is doing to other countries and why, just because you watch cable or read a daily newspaper -- think again.   8. Iran/Contra Redux   This proposed logo for the US Information Awareness Office was dropped due to fears that its Masonic symbolism would provoke conspiracy theories Near the end of 2002, a surprisingly lethargic debate was underway in the U.S. concerning the "war on terror"'s erosion of Americans' civil liberties -- which many felt were already pretty meager anyhow, having been picked clean during two decades of the "war on drugs." The debate took a turn toward the paranormal when the corporate media briefly went agog over the Bush administration's citizen-stalking Information Awareness Office. By the time it got mentioned in the Washington Post, though, the IAO was old news to flying saucer buffs: Art Bell rival Jeff Rense had already run several articles scrutinizing the IAO's logo, which -- with its all-seeing, Masonic pyramid-and-eyeball -- seems meant to agitate the growing ranks of the understandably paranoid.   It takes only a few clicks on the IAO's homepage to learn that the agency is presided over by Iran/Contra luminary John Poindexter, just one weapons-running Reagan-era alumnus to find an honored seat in Dubya's star chamber. Also plucked from political ignominy is Elliot Abrams, who has gone from pleading no-contest to charges of perjury before Congress to helping lead the Bush Administration's Mid-East policy. These are only two of the administration's many questionable appointments -- don't even get me started on Henry Kissinger -- but Iran/Contra is a matter of special note to conspiracy trackers.   Take the late Mae Brussell, a minor legend to some for her reflections on the Kennedy murder. She once provided scathing alternative assessments of Iran/Contra for her underground radio show, "World Watchers" Like Tom Flocco, Mae Brussell should be taken with some healthy skepticism. Even so, the rage behind her accusations -- she links the Iran/Contra figures with wholesale drug dealing and the CIA with the Jonestown massacre -- is a predictable result when bloody official policies are conducted absent anything resembling consent of the governed.   9. The Reichstag Fire and Operation Northwoods   Now things get really weird. To those who scoff at the idea that the government could have had foreknowledge of or complicity in the September 11 attacks, conspiracy researchers respond that attacks have been faked or manufactured plenty of times before, usually to maneuver the public into supporting a war they would otherwise oppose. The Nazi party, for instance, most likely set fire to the Reichstag building in order to pin the crime on the communists and galvanize the people behind their police-state tactics. They also forged a fake battle to justify their invasion of Poland. Sure, you say, but the Nazis were like that. Unfortunately, similar incidents pop up in the U.S.'s recent past, as well. Frequently mentioned examples include Pearl Harbor -- which many, such as Day of Deceit author Robert Stinnett, feel was allowed to happen to prompt America's entry into World War II -- and the weird Gulf of Tonkin incident.   Researchers discussing this issue often cite an interesting find: an internal Pentagon document from the early 1960s, which appears in James Bamford's book on military subterfuge, Body of Secrets, and puts the lie to the contention that the government would never manufacture incidents or attack its own people to lead the country to war. The Operation Northwoods memo is the result of a brainstorming session on ways to help sell military action in Cuba by fabricating or committing acts of violence and blaming them on Fidel Castro. Among its suggestions: shoot down a plane full of college students, sink an American ship ("casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation"), or rig astronaut John Glenn's rocket to explode. The Northwoods memo invites us to rethink what some in the government might be capable of not only in terms of September 11 but also the Kennedy assassination. After all, if spectacular murders of people like John Glenn are conceivable, is it so fantastic to plot the assassination of a sitting president? Operation Northwoods may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government. Operation Northwoods had called for nothing less than the launch of a secret campaign of terrorism within the United States in order to blame Castro and provoke a war with Cuba. ~James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets - The History of the National Security Agency (published April 2001)    In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba. Code named Operation NORTHWOODS, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban »migr»s, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities. The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro. America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: 'We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,' and, 'casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.' The plans had the written approval of all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and were presented to President Kennedy's defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in March 1962. But they apparently were rejected by the civilian leadership and have gone undisclosed for nearly 40 years. The Joint Chiefs at the time were headed by Eisenhower appointee Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who, with the signed plans in hand made a pitch to McNamara on March 13, 1962, recommending Operation Northwoods be run by the military. Another idea was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base - an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. ~ABC News, "Friendly Fire - U.S. Military Drafted Plans to Terrorize U.S. Cities to Provoke War With Cuba," May 1, 2001   10. Things to Come   For many writers the corruption of American empire is relevant, but only as a sidebar. The real problem stems from two incontrovertible facts: that reserves of oil and other non-renewable resources will some day run out, and that on its current course, the Earth is soon to become overloaded with people. If these twin problems go unaddressed, our species faces a gloomy fate. As the situation gets worse, governance in the traditional mode, based around at least the pretense of liberal democracy, will become impossible. Instead, naked power grabs will become the norm for wealthy elites capable of mounting them. "The people"'s job will be simply to provide money and labor for the war machines that make these imperial conquests possible; those who aspire to a role in their own governance beyond subsidizing imperial expansion will be brutally repressed.   Harvey and others feel that such a global transformation has already begun, and episodes like September 11 and the U.S. government's bizarre obsession with oil-laden Iraq are among its harbingers. But, you say, oil supplies look fine from where you sit. The problem won't manifest itself all at once, when the world's oil wells suddenly dry up. It is instead happening incrementally, because the rate of production has started to lag behind the world's increasing demand. Among numerous cases in point, "The Coming Anarchy," an Atlantic Monthly article describing intolerable government repression in the long-neglected region of sub-Saharan Africa. Such will be the harvest of empire for our overextended world: warlordism, brutal dictatorships that verge on chaos -- death, and in vast quantities. I don't know whether these predictions will come to pass. But I find the possibility an awful lot easier to imagine.   25 Things We Now Know About 911 By Bernard Weiner Co-Editor, The Crisis Papers 9-4-4 The Republican Party -- in a shameless , all-too-obvious attempt to manipulate the tragedy of 9/11 for partisan ends -- chose New York City for its nominating convention. Must have seemed like a great idea at the time.   Their coming to Manhattan not only infuriates New Yorkers, who were badly played by Bush&Co. after the attacks, but enables the rest of us in the country to use Ground Zero as the backdrop for examining the gross failures and crimes of the Bush Administration since that tragic day in September 2001.   So, here is an update* of things we've learned during the three years since 9/11 -- documented mostly from government papers and respected journalistic accounts -- about the Administration that rules in our names. If you find this compendium useful, you might want to make this list available to your friends and colleagues, especially to those still uncertain which presidential candidate they will vote for ten weeks from now.   THE 9/11 ATTACKS/COVERUP   1. Immediately after the destruction of the Twin Towers, Bush's Environmental Protection Agency tested the air in and around Ground Zero. Anxious Lower Manhattan residents, worried about possible airborne toxic particles affecting them and especially their children, were assured by the EPA on September 18 that the tests indicated it was safe for them to return to and live normal lives in their homes and apartments and businesses. It wasn't until two years later that the EPA admitted that they had lied to New Yorkers: The Bush Administration knew from their own test results that the toxicity revealed was WAY over the safe levels. Typical Bush&Co. pattern: secrecy, lies, denial, cover-up.   2. There is no evidence that Bush&Co. ordered Osama bin Laden -- who had been on the CIA payroll in Afghanistan when he and his forces were battling the Soviet occupiers -- to launch terrorist attacks on the U.S. Resurgent radical Islam is a genuine phenomenon, with its own religious and political roots. There definitely are Bad Guys out there.   What is well-documented is that the highest circles around Bush were quite aware in the Summer of 2001 -- as a result of fairly detailed intelligence frantically being passed on to them by other governments in the months and weeks before 9/11-- that a massive terrorist attack was in the works, which likely would involve hijacked airplanes aimed at icon American economic and political targets. (The August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," talked about al-Qaida wanting to strike the nation's capital, preparations for airline hijackings, casing of buildings in New York, terrorists in the U.S. with explosives, etc.) Bush went to ground in Texas, the FBI told Ashcroft to stop flying commercial jets, etc. The attacks finally came on 9/11.   Bush could have assumed command immediately; instead, 27 minutes went by while he sat in a schoolroom and then posed for photos. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, somewhere on the Pentagon premises, was strangely missing from action, uninvolved in defending the country until after the horrific events had unfolded. Even though the protocols were clear, NORAD could not reach Rumsfeld and did not scramble jets until long after the horrific mass-murder attacks were over. When Bush did emerge from the school, he claims he could not reach Cheney or the White House by phone. (Passengers using cell phones on the final doomed jet had no problems reaching their loved ones and emergency centers all around the country.)   In short, the key Administration officials responsible for protecting America, and coordinating its responses to attacks, were not available, either out of incompetence and confusion or out of more nefarious motives. As Nina Moliver, a 9/11 sleuth puts it, "On 9/11, there was a grand stall. A stall for time. I learned this from a glance at the findings of the 9/11 commission. How could ANYBODY miss it? Bush and Rumsfeld didn't 'fail' on Sept 11. They succeeded masterfully." A bit far out, to be sure, but if the Bush circle knew something was coming that morning -- and numerous others did, including the mayor of San Francisco -- it's certainly a theory that can't be ruled out.   3. We know that the future neo-conservative architects of Bush foreign/military policy, members of The Project for The New American Century (PNAC), knew that their ideas were too extreme for most Americans to swallow. They noted that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."   Again, there is no proof of coordination by the Bush Administration with the al-Qaida terrorists who carried out the terrorist attacks, but BushCheney and their closest aides were aware on 9/11 that they now had the "Pearl Harbor" that would clear the way for their agenda to be realized.   4. We know that Bush and Cheney, early on, approached the leaders of the House and Senate and urged them not to investigate the pre-9/11 activities of the Administration, because of "national security." The cover-up was beginning.   5. The 9/11 Commission examined how the intelligence community screwed up the pre-9/11 intelligence -- thus effectively laying the blame on lower-level agents and officials -- but says it won't issue its report on how the Bush Administration used or misused that information until AFTER the election. The cover-up continues. Many victims' families are furious.   6. We know that the Bush Administration has been able to obtain whatever legislation it needs in its self-proclaimed "War on Terror" by utilizing, and hyping, the understandable fright of the American people. The USA PATRIOT Act -- composed of many honorable initiatives, and many clearly unconstitutional provisions, cobbled together from those submitted over the years by GOP hardliners and rejected as too extreme by Congress -- was presented almost immediately to a House and Senate frightened by the 9/11 attacks and by the anthrax introduced into their chambers by someone still not discovered. Ridge and Ashcroft emerge periodically to manipulate the public's fright by announcing another "terror" threat, based on "credible" but unverified evidence; these announcements can be correlated almost exactly to when Bush seems to need a headline to distract the public from yet another scandal or significant drop in the polls.   ATTACK ON IRAQ   7. We know that a cabal of ideologically-motivated Bush officials, on the rightwing fringe of the Republican Party, were calling for a military takeover of Iraq as early as 1991. This elite group included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Woolsey, Bolton, Khalizad and others, all of whom are now located in positions of power in the Pentagon and White House, and, to a lesser extent, State Department. A secret blueprint for U.S. global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure regime change even before he took power in January 2001. ~Ted Koppel: Nightline, March 5, 2003, re Project for New American Century Corporation (PNAC), "Rebuilding America's Defenses", by "Dick" Cheney, Jeb Bush, et al.   They were among the key founders of the Project for The New American Century (PNAC) in 1997; among their recommendations: "pre-emptively" attacking other countries devoid of imminent danger to the U.S., abrogating agreed-upon treaties when they conflict with U.S. goals, making sure no other country (or organization, such as the United Nations) can ever achieve parity with the U.S., installing U.S.-friendly governments to do America's will, using tactical nuclear weapons, and so on. In short, as they put it, the goal is "benevolent global hegemony" -- or, in layman's English, a kind of neo-imperialism.   All of these extreme suggestions, once regarded as lunatic, are now enshrined as official U.S. policy in the National Security Strategy of the United States of America, published by the Bush Administration in late-2002.   8. We know that the Bush Administration was planning to attack Iraq long before 9/11, and that, even though Rumsfeld was told by his intelligence analysts that 9/11 was an al-Qaida operation, he began dragging an attack on Iraq -- which had no significant contacts with bin Laden's network -- into the war planning. When the traditional intelligence agencies couldn't, or wouldn't, furnish the White House with made-up "facts" to back up an attack on Iraq, Rumsfeld set up his own "intelligence" unit inside his office, the Office of Special Plans, staffed it with political PNAC appointees, and, lo and behold, got the justifications he wanted -- which cooked-"intelligence" turned out to be the lies and deceptions that took the U.S. into Iraq.   Note: Rumsfeld's secretive Office of Special Plans, with direct access to the Secretary of Defense and thus to shaping policy toward Iraq and Iran, is implicated in the current, serious scandal involving possible treason (passing classified material to foreign countries, in this case maybe Israel and Iran), with potential links to the slimy double-agent Ahmad Chalabi and others.   9. We know that the Bush Administration felt that it could not get Congressional and public support for its plan to attack Iraq if the true reasons were revealed -- to control the massive Iraqi oil reserves, to obtain a military staging base in the region, and to use a U.S.-friendly "democratic" government as a lever to alter the geopolitical situation in the Middle East and beyond. So, according to Wolfowitz, it settled on the one justification they thought would work: accusing Saddam Hussein of preparing to attack its neighbors and the United States with supposed massive stockpiles of "weapons of mass destruction." Senators were lied to by Administration briefers, who told them Iraqi drone planes could drop biochemical agents over American cities; Condoleezza Rice warned about "mushroom clouds" over New York and Washington.   Millions of citizens across the globe, and world leaders among our own allies, warned the Bush Administration that an attack on Iraq -- a weak country, with no military power to speak of -- was wrong, would backfire on the U.S. and world peace, would enrage the Islamic world and produce more terrorist recruits, and would lose America its reputation and its post-9/11 sympathy across the globe. But the Bush Administration had made the essential decision to go to war a year before the invasion ("Fuck Saddam, Bush told three U.S. Senators in March of 2002. "We,re taking him out.) And, even though Saddam authorized the United Nations inspectors to return to Iraq to complete their weapons survey, Bush was determined to go to car. Secretary of State Powell was dispatched to the United Nations to outline the U.S. case and obtain authorization; his case was filled with laughably thin and phony intelligence, and the U.N. demurred. Bush launched his attack.   10. We know that no WMDs were discovered. No nuclear program. No missiles aimed at U.S. or British interests. No drone planes. No biochemical weaponry. Bush and his spokesmen then attempted to change the rationale for the war away from those scary WMDs to an implication that Saddam was part of the terrorist network that carried out the 9/11 attacks. There was no convincing proof offered, merely the constant repetition of the non-existent al-Qaida tie -- so much so that the Big Lie technique worked early on as 70% of Americans thought there must have been some tie-in to 9/11. The 9/11 Commission verified that there was no such operative connection to al-Qaida. Bush publicly agreed, but Cheney and others even today continue to suggest otherwise. When the American public stopped believing in the al-Qaida/Iraq lie, the rationale for the war was switched again. Now the reason for the war was that Saddam Hussein was a terrible tyrant -- an assertion everybody could agree on -- though why we toppled this guy and not a half dozen other equally as bad dictators (some of them our close allies) was left unanswered.   10. We know that the predictions of our key allies, and those millions in the streets who protested, have come true. The U.S., having had no "post-war" plan, is bogged down in Iraq, facing a nationalist insurgency, and a rebellious religious faction of fighters, with no end in sight; it has lost the countryside and is losing the cities as well. The U.S. has engineered an American-friendly interim government that is locked into the reconstruction contracts that permit huge American corporations such as Bechtel and Halliburton -- who, quite by coincidence, of course, are huge financial backers of the Bush Administration -- to make out like bandits in that country, often with no-bid contracts. The U.S. has at least 14 military bases in Iraq, which it intends to continue using as a military/political lever in reshaping the geopolitics of the Middle East -- regardless of the costs in lives and treasure, and not caring that its policies with regard to the Palestinian/Israeli problem fan the flames of terrorism in that area of the world, and beyond.   AUTHORITARIAN MANEUVERINGS   11. We know that CIA Director George Tenet fell on his sword, taking the thrust of the bad-intel blame away from Bush. Other elements inside the agency, outraged by Bush&Co. using them as whipping-boys, then began leaking all sorts of damaging information about White House skulduggery. Elements in the State Department, appalled at the neo-cons in control of U.S. military policy at the Pentagon, likewise leaked information damaging to the extremists.   12. We know that once Bush assumed power, he moved to obtain immunity for U.S. officials and troops from international war-crimes prosecutions, pulling America out of the relevant treaties. We didn't know why at the time, but later, after our covert and overt behavior in Afghanistan and Iraq and the tortures scandal erupted, we figured it out.   13. We know that Bush lawyers in the White House and Pentagon (State Department attorneys did not agree) issued memoranda that outlined how Bush and other key officials could avoid criminal prosecution for their wartime policies and for advocating use of "harsh interrogation methods" (read: torture) of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo, and in Afghanistan, Iraq and other U.S. facilities around the world. Ignoring the Founders' wise "separation of powers" -- designed to keep any leader or branch of government from assuming total control of the levers of powers -- the lawyers claimed that whenever Bush acts as "commander in chief" during "wartime," he is above the law. In common parlance, these are rationalizations for authoritarian rule, by dictatorial decrees.   14. We know that the Pentagon was well aware of the tortures at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere -- key military reports had been submitted -- but the issue was ignored until grisly photographs and videotapes surfaced in public media documenting the "harsh interrogation methods"; some of those methods resulted in a goodly number of deaths to prisoners under U.S. control. Several commissions reported that the rot came from the top at the Pentagon, including Rumsfeld, but, by and large, only lower-level troops and officers have been disciplined or charged. In the meantime, the humiliating and brutal treatment of Muslim men, women and children in U.S. custody has reverberated throughout the Islamic world, helping create more and more converts to terrorist organizations.   SCANDALS AT HOME   15. In two instances, the Bush Administration, for its own political reasons, compromised American national security by naming key intelligence operatives -- one a CIA agent, Valerie Plame, with important contacts in the shadowy world of weapons of mass destruction (outed by two "senior Administration officials," apparently in retaliation for her husband's political comments); revealing the name of a CIA agent is a felony. The other, more recently (apparently to show off how successful they were in their anti-terrorism hunt), was a high-ranking mole close to bin Laden's inner circle, who could have kept the U.S. informed as ongoing and future plans of al-Qaida. That's our anti-terrorism government at work.   16. We know that Karl Rove -- Bush's senior political advisor, who along with Dick Cheney, manipulates Bush's strings -- has been instrumental in helping get the so-called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" off the ground. Longtime GOP operatives and major Bush donors supplied the money and organizing skill, and then let them loose with their lies -- with precious little skepticism displayed by the corporate-owned mass-media. Apparently, at least initially, the Big Lie technique worked once again -- though now polls show the smears being doubted -- forcing Kerry to stop his attacks on Bush domestic policies and concentrate on damage control. The Kerry campaign took a while to rev up its counter-campaign, bringing in all sorts of eyewitnesses that documented the truth of his heroism in winning his Vietnam medals. Even slimier charges are expected at any moment about Kerry's post-discharge opposition to that war.   PROTECTING THE VOTE   17. We know that even though several large states -- among them, California and Ohio -- have prohibited computer-voting machines from being used in the November election, unless there is a voter-verified paper trail, most of the toss-up states will be using the touch-screen, unverified system. This would be suspicious if Democrats or Republicans were in charge of those machines, but in this election it's virtually all Republicans. The three largest makers of the machines are owned by far-right Republicans; those same companies tabulate the results. Republican-leaning companies also control the testing of those machines. In short, it smells rank -- especially inasmuch as it's been demonstrated how easily the software can be manipulated, without anybody knowing -- and definitely looks as if the fix is in. The CEO of one of the companies, a major "Pioneer" donor to the Bush campaign, promised Bush he would "deliver" his state to the GOP candidate, and Gov. Jeb Bush in Florida has quashed all attempts to stop or alter computer-voting in his state. (Note: The GOP has urged all its members in Florida to vote by absentee ballot, because the machines are "unreliable." Get the picture?)   18. We know that the GOP is trying, by hook or by crook, to lower the number of potential Democrat voters. Attempts have been made to remove thousands of African-American citizens from the rolls (reminiscent of Florida in 2000, where anywhere from 47,000 to 90,000 black voters where disenfranchised), police agents have visited numerous elderly black voters in their rural homes and warned them about possible violence at the polls, a GOP official in Michigan talked about the need to "discourage" the vote in largely-black Detroit, GOP "observers" will stand outside voting places in rural areas as possible intimidators of older black voters, GOP operatives registering new American citizens filled out the paperwork for them and signed them up as Republicans, and so on.   19. We know that Administration lawyers have issued memoranda making it possible for Bush to "postpone" the November election for "anti-terrorist" reasons -- say, a major attack or "credible" threat of a major attack. Note: There has never been a national election postponed, not even during the Civil War.   20. We know that Administration attorneys have issued memoranda that would make it possible for Bush to be elected by partial voting. That is, he could be elected by voters supporting him, even if citizens in pro-Kerry states were prohibited from voting or having their votes counted. Again, the fig-leaf is "terrorism." If a "red alert" were to be issued for certain areas on November 2 -- say, the West Coast and New England states -- Bush could, under state-of-emergency declarations, "limit the movement" of citizens in those areas, while the election proceeded as normal elsewhere. A truncated election would be permitted, and, under this scheme, whoever had the most ballots would win.   STARVING THE GOVERNMENT   21. We know that the Bush Administration paid off its backers (and itself) by giving humongous tax breaks, for 10 years out, to the already wealthy and to large corporations. This was done at a time when the U.S. economy was in recessionary doldrums and when the treasury deficit from those tax-breaks was growing even larger from Iraq war costs. So far as we know, the Bush Administration has no plans for how to retire that debt and no real plan (other than the discredited "trickle-down" theory) for restarting the economy and creating jobs. In 2004, it's clear that whatever positive "trickle-down" effect the tax refunds may have provided, that impact is no more, and the (jobless) "recovery" is slowing and starting to look recessional again. People need good-paying employment.   22. We know that the Hard Right conservatives who control Bush policy don't really care what kind of debt and deficits his policies cause; in some ways, the more the better. They want to decimate and eviscerate popular social programs from the New Deal/Great Society eras, including, most visibly, Head Start, Social Security, Medicare (and real drug coverage for seniors), aspects of public education. Since these programs are so well-approved by the public, the destruction will be carried out stealthily with the magic words of "privatization," "deregulation," "choice" and so on, and by going to the public and saying that they'd love to keep the programs intact but they have no alternative but to cut them, given the deficit, weak economy and "anti-terrorist" wars abroad.   23. We know that Bush environmental policy -- dealing with air and water pollution, national park systems, and so on -- is an unmitigated disaster, more or less giving free rein to corporations whose bottom line does better when they don't have to pay attention to the public interest.   24. We know from "insider" memoirs and reports by former Bush Administration officials -- Joseph DeIulio, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, et al. -- that the public interest plays little role in the formulation of policy inside the Bush Administration. The motivating factors are greed and control and remaining in political power. Further, they say, there is little or no curiosity to think outside the political box, or even to hear other opinions -- in other words, don't bother me with facts, my mind's made up. Some of this non-curiosity may be based in fundamentalist religious, even Apocalyptic, beliefs.   25. Finally (although we could continue forever detailing the crimes and misdemeanors of this corrupt, incompetent Administration), we know that more and more, the permanent-war policy abroad and police-state tactics at home -- with the shredding of Constitutional rights designed to protect citizens from a potential repressive government -- are taking us into a kind of American fascism at home and an imperial foreign policy overseas.   As a result, we are beginning to see more alliances between liberal/left forces and libertarians/traditional conservatives horrified that their party has been hijacked by extreme ideologues. If Bush loses his bid for a second term, it will come less from what we progressives do and more from those moderate-to-conservative Republicans and Libertarians, who cannot abide what Bush&Co. have done to their party, their movement, and to this country. Since Sept. 11, the kinds of words that used to be coupled in the same sentence with 'Third Reich,' 'Gulag' and 'Pinochet' have actually creeped into the mouths of mainstream talking heads. Some in Congress are beginning to wake up and smell the coffee, and what's in the air isn't too fresh. They see a growing police state being implemented. While people may fear a downward spiral towards brown-shirts and book burnings, the truth is that an American police state may show up in a Brooks Brothers suit with an impressive law degree. What really galls is how the Bush administration has treated the American people like children. Anybody feeling the water temperature rising? Water or coffee may not be the right comparison. Maybe it's smoke. Maybe it's the smoke of the Reichstag burning. ~Ellen Ratner, White House correspondent and bureau chief for the Talk Radio News service, Washington bureau chief and political editor for Talkers Magazine, Fox News analyst, "It can't happen here - or can it?" October 2001