It happens all the time. If the antiwar movement takes on the Democrats for their bitter shortcomings a few liberals are bound to criticize us for not hounding Bush instead. It doesn't even have to be an election year to get the progressives fired up. They just don't seem to get it. "How can you attack the Democrats when we have such a bullet-proof administration ruling the roost in Washington," somebody recently emailed me, "Don't you have something better to do than write this trash?!"

Well, not really. It's too cold in upstate New York right now to do anything other than fume over the liberal villains in Washington. "Why do I write about the putrid Democratic Party?" I responded, "I'll tell you, there's a reason this Republican administration is so damn bullet proof -- nobody from the opposition party is taking aim and pulling the trigger."

And that's why the Dems are just as culpable in all that has transpired since Bush took office in 2000. They aren't just a part of the problem -- the Democrats are the problem.

I mean, who is really all that surprised Bush and his boys wanted to conquer the Middle East, curtail civil liberties and rampage the environment? Not me. That's just what unreasonable neo-cons do: they stomp out the little guy, kill off the weak and suffocate the voiceless. They only care about the girth of their wallets and the number of scalps they can tack above their mantles.

The Democrats aren't just letting the Republicans get away with murder, however, some of them are also reaping the benefits of the Bush wars. We constantly hear about Dick Cheney's ties to Halliburton and how his ex-company is making bundles off US contracts in Iraq. But what we don't hear about is how Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein and her husband are also making tons of money off the "war on terror".

The wishy-washy senator now claims Bush misled her leading up to the invasion of Iraq. I don't think she's being honest with us though, there may have been other reasons she helped sell Bush's lies. According to The Center for Public Integrity, Senator Feinstein's husband Richard Blum has racked in millions of dollars from Perini, a civil infrastructure construction company, of which the billionaire investor wheels 75 percent of the voting share.

In April 2003 the US Army Corps of Engineers dived out $500 million to Perini to provide services for Iraq's central command. A month earlier in March 2003, Perini was awarded $25 million to design and construct a facility to support the Afghan National Army near Kabul. And in March 2004, Perini was awarded a hefty contract worth up to $500 million for "electrical power distribution and transmission" in the southern Iraq.

Senator Feinstein, who sits on the Appropriations Committee as well as the Select Committee on Intelligence, is reaping the benefits of her husband's investments. The Democratic royal family recently purchased a 16.5 million dollar mansion in the flush Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. It's a disgusting display of war profiteering and the leading Democrat, just like Cheney, should be called out for her offense.

And that's exactly why the Bush administration is so darn bullet-proof. The Democratic leadership in Washington is just as crooked and just as callous.

Joshua Frank edits the radical news blog www.BrickBurner.org and is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, published by Common Courage Press (2005). Josh can be reached at BrickBurner@gmail.com.

-- From inside the halls of Congress to the offices of Democratic politicians around the country there is increasing criticism of the stranglehold the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its political allies have on the Democratic Party's agenda and political message. WMR has spoken to a number of Democrats off-the-record and the story is much the same: Democratic leaders, from House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emmanuel to Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Dianne Feinstein -- pursuant to dictates from pro-Israeli political interests -- are curbing debate on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, impeachment, and generally, any strong or effective reaction by the Democrats to the Bush administration's and the neo-cons' disastrous war in Iraq. In various congressional districts, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is bypassing progressive Democratic candidates and replacing them with "centrist" and less anti-war candidates for the 2008 election.

Criticism within the Democratic Party of AIPAC is carried out very quietly. The consequence for any Democratic politician who is identified as speaking ill of the powerful lobby group is a political death sentence. However, from Washington DC to California, the message is much the same -- AIPAC and its allies are wearing down the patience of a number of Democrats who see the organization as a Republican and neo-con Trojan Horse within the Democratic Party. Next week, AIPAC will be holding its annual convention at the Washington, DC Convention Center. The gathering is bound to create more angst among Democrats -- with both Democratic presidential frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, tripping over themselves in seeking AIPAC campaign support.

The schism within the Democratic Party appeared when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to allow ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Jane Harman of California to become chairman. Pelosi was backed by powerful House Defense Appropriations Committee chairman John Murtha. That set off a battle for the House Majority Leader position between Murtha and Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Hoyer handily won the election while Pelosi supported Murtha. Hoyer's sister, Bernice Manocherian, has served as an executive president of AIPAC.

The controversy about Harman arose after she attempted to interfere in the Justice Department's investigation of AIPAC for espionage. Harman's links to AIPAC sank her chances of becoming HPSCI chair. Harman reportedly agreed to work with Republican chairman Peter Hoekstra to avoid an investigation of the cooked up pre-war intelligence on Iraq in return for the Bush administration going easy on the investigation of AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman, both later indicted for receiving highly classified documents from Israeli Pentagon spy Larry Franklin. After the Libby trial, the next major bombshells are expected to come from the Rosen and Weissman trial, set for June 4. The AIPAC conference next week will undoubtedly be readying for public relations spin for June's "perfect storm" -- sentencing for Libby is scheduled for June 5, the day after the Rosen and Weismann trial commences.

The last straw for some Democrats is quiet but firm backing from AIPAC-allied politicians and special interests for a presidential pardon for convicted former Vice President Chief of Staff Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Even as Libby was being found guilty, the Libby Legal Defense Fund announced a new member had joined its advisory committee. He is Charles Heimbold, Jr., former Chairman and CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb Company and a former U.S. ambassador to Sweden. Advisory Committee Chairman Mel Sembler, the former U.S. ambassador to Italy whose fingerprints are found on the transmittal of the bogus Niger documents from Italian hands to the Bush administration -- one of the incidents that led to CIA Leakgate -- said the following about the conviction of Libby: "Scooter is a good man and a distinguished public servant who has been wrongly accused."

Other Libby Defense Fund advisory committee members who continue to support the convicted felon include Mary Matalin, former aide to Dick Cheney and wife of Democratic Party insider and Hillary Clinton supporter James Carville; former Education Secretary William Bennett; former HUD Secretary Jack Kemp; former Attorney General Edwin Meese III; former Senator Don Nickles; former Rep. Bill Paxon; former Clinton Middle East envoy Dennis Ross; former Senator Alan Simpson; Hollywood straphanger and former Senator Fred Thompson; and former CIA Director James Woolsey. The one question that can be asked of all these and other Libby Advisory Committee members is: "Why do they hate America so much?"

Libby Defense Find features this photo of Libby with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. Libby once penned a novel titled "The Apprentice," which featured pedophilia, bestiality, and rape. Karzai is rumored by our Afghanistan sources to be an aficionado of "boy dancers," underage male strip dancers that are popular with Karzai's fellow Pashtun warlords. One reason the Taliban banned music and dancing was to eliminate the attendant sexual exploitation of boys by the Pashtun elite.

Cindy Sheehan to Dianne Feinstein:
Fillibuster Alito or I’ll Challenge Your Senate Seat

Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2006-01-27 23:38. Cindy Sheehan Caracas, Venezuela – Gold star mother Cindy Sheehan has decided to run against California Senator Diane Feinstein if Feinstein does not filibuster the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Samuel Alito. While in Venezuela attending the World Social Forum, Sheehan learned that several Democratic Senators had announced their plans for a filibuster but that Senator Feinstein, who’s up for re-election in November, had stated she would vote against the nomination but not filibuster it. "I’m appalled that Diane Feinstein wouldn’t recognize how dangerous Alito’s nomination is to upholding the values of our constitution and restricting the usurpation of presidential powers, for which I’ve already paid the ultimate price," Sheehan said.

Sheehan is the grieving military mother whose vigil outside President Bush’s ranch in Crawford last summer focused the nation’s attention on the human cost of the Iraq war. Her son Casey was killed in Iraq in April 2004.

Judge Alito has an extensive paper trail documenting the right-wing political agenda that he has actively advanced, not only as a high-ranking official in the Reagan Administration, but also as a judge. He has publicly supported the "Unitary Executive" theory, a radical notion that the President holds exclusive and inherent authority to execute all federal law. He has supported efforts to curtail privacy rights, including not only privacy from government surveillance and arbitrary arrest, but also other constitutional rights based on privacy, such as reproductive liberty for women. Alito has outspokenly sought to restrict Congress' power, limiting the scope of the Commerce Clause of Article I of the Constitution. In addition, he has consistently applied his discretion as a judge in favor of certain interests and against others. He rarely votes against big business, police or prosecutors.

Sheehan is available for interviews from Venezuela through the contact people listed above. She returns to the United States on Monday morning and will travel to Washington, DC on Tuesday to participate in an alternative State of the Union event.

AIPAC spy case:
Larry Franklin sentenced, former honchos may sue over legal fees

Pentagon Iran analyst Larry Franklin was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison after he pled guilty to passing classified military intelligence about Iran and Iraq to two indicted former top lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as well as an Israeli diplomat. In its Saturday, Jan. 21 edition, The New York Times saw fit to print this item on the last page (p. 30) of its A Section.

Franklin was sentenced by Judge T.S. Ellis III in the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Virginia just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC. Despite Ellis' puzzling remark that Franklin had been motivated by a desire to help the United States, Franklin's aim was less noble when he had asked Steve Rosen, the indicted AIPAC lobbyist who was in charge of foreign policy issues, to speak a good word for him with officers on the National Security Council, which Franklin had been ambitious to join.

Franklin will not begin serving his sentence until the completion of legal proceedings against Rosen and fellow former AIPAC employee Keith Weissman, like Franklin an Iranian specialist. Plato Cacheris, Franklin's prominent Washington, DC lawyer, was quoted as saying, "Mr. Franklin will not have to commence his sentence until after he completes his cooperation; at which time the court will entertain a motion to reduce his sentence."

According to the Israeli daily Haaretz for Dec. 22, 2005, Naor Gilon, the Israeli Embassy diplomat to whom Franklin is accused of passing military secrets, was back in Washington "three weeks ago." Gilon had been stationed at the Israeli Embassy in Washington for three years when he left his post for "personal reasons" last summer, at which time the press reported that the FBI had wanted to talk to him and to two other Israeli Embassy officers. The fact that Gilan had returned to Washington and left without incident means, according to Haaretz, that there no longer is any "serious" U.S. concern about Israeli involvement in the AIPAC affair.

In an apparent effort to lessen the seriousness of the charges against Rosen and Weissman, who are due to be tried on April 25, The New York Times saw fit to explain that "They operated in a circle of lobbyists who had traditionally traded gossip, political insights and intelligence with administration officials, Congressional aides and journalists. But prosecutors have suggested that their actions.... could have damaged the United States."

The Times' benevolent view sought to portray Rosen and Weissman as simply playing a harmless and "traditional" Washington, DC game.

A countervailing opinion of AIPAC is that of a political colossus so powerful that it actually prevents the United States from pursuing Middle East policies that preserve its own interests. Consider its undoubted role in the initial Bush administration appointments of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Under Secretary of State John Bolton. Might the United States have avoided the war in Iraq without the twisted intelligence fed Bush by these neocons and their fellow travelers?

At the Pentagon, Feith created a private U.S. intelligence operation called the Office of Special Plans (OSP). There he cherry picked the most outlandish bits and pieces of intelligence to feed to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. Feith's OSP "proved" that Saddam Hussain possessed nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

Cheney then whispered Feith's lies about Iraq into President Bush's ear, and this disinformation helped Bush make up his mind to attack Iraq. Did Feith not play a role in the disastrous Iraq misadventure? Nor is there any sign that he cared about the consequences for the United States.

An April Date With Destiny

The trial of Steve Rosen, former foreign policy director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and Keith Weissman, AIPAC's former Iranian analyst, is set to begin April 25 at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. Although AIPAC, Washington's principal Israel lobby, has offered $1.625 million to cover Rosen's and Weissman's legal fees, the two erstwhile AIPAC officers refuse to put a cap on their defense costs, which they estimate will come to $4 million. The above information was reported in Israel's Jerusalem Post and the American Jewish weekly Forward.

Negotiations between AIPAC and Rosen/Weissman have come to a halt, at least temporarily, amid indications that the two dismissed employees may sue over the issue. Their position is that AIPAC should continue to pay their lawyers' monthly legal fees as it did between August 2004 and March 2005. The two insist that AIPAC has the money, having raised $59 million in 2004, and with the figure for 2005 expected to surpass that. They rejected AIPAC's offer because it was made on the condition that they forfeit the right to sue their former employer.

AIPAC is doing all it can to distance itself from Rosen and Weissman fearing that, if the two are convicted of receiving classified information from former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and passing it on to Israeli diplomats and members of the press, AIPAC's reputation will suffer a serious blow. Rosen and Weissman, on the other hand, are straining to identify themselves as closely as possible to AIPAC, arguing that AIPAC officials were fully aware of, and approved, their actions.

AIPAC initially hired attorneys Abbe Lowell to represent Rosen and John Nassikas to represent Weissman, undertaking to "cover the legal costs." But the payments to the legal team ended when AIPAC fired the defendants last spring.

"It is very possible that" Rosen and Weissman will call senior AIPAC officials to testify in court, sources familiar with the case told the Forward. Such testimony undoubtedly would be embarrassing to Israel's lobbying behemoth.

Essentially the dispute between the defense attorneys and AIPAC is a "mock" fight, with the two sides implicitly agreeing that they will not really harm each other. AIPAC apparently recently hired Jamie Gorelick, a prominent Washington, DC lawyer, former deputy attorney general and member of the 9/11 Commission, to demonstrate that it would stick to its guns. In a letter to Rosen and Weissman's attorneys, she wrote that the question of payment "cannot be addressed or resolved until current proceedings against them have been concluded." In other words, "Don't press us to pay now (because it makes us look guilty) but we'll pay up when it's all over."

Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Pro-Israel Party Line: "Common Practice"

ON FEB. 4, The Washington Post's Walter Pincus joined the apologists for indicted AIPAC has-beens Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Wrote Pincus: "The former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Policy helped write a memorandum of law calling for dismissal of Espionage Act charges against the two pro-Israel lobbyists, arguing that in receiving leaked classified information and relaying it to others, they were doing what reporters, think tank experts and congressional staffers do perhaps hundreds of times every day."

In Israel, Nathan Guttman, writing in the Feb. 22 Jerusalem Post, argued that Rosen and Weissman should be exonerated because Israel is a U.S. ally. Nearly two decades ago, spy-for-Israel Jonathan Jay Pollard tried to use that same defense--unsuccessfully. Guttman, too, maintained that the "AIPAC case" represented nothing more than "common practice" in Washington, DC.

The question, of course, is whether these practices are common to the American friends of all foreign governments, or to those of one in particular.--A.I.K.

AIPAC spy case: Larry Franklin sentenced, former honchos may sue over legal fees

AIPAC spy case:
Larry Franklin sentenced, former honchos may sue over legal fees