Jeremy Brecher

'We ain't buying it': It's time for an all-out food fight with Trump

Hunger has a funny way of concentrating the attention.

The cost of food and cutbacks in the provision of food for those who need it have been drivers of mass protest throughout much of history:

One of the events initiating the French Revolution was the Women’s March on Versailles, which began among women in the marketplaces of Paris protesting the high price and scarcity of bread. Their demonstrations quickly became intertwined with the activities of those who were seeking an end to autocracy and had just issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
The 2008 Egyptian general strike over rising food costs provided inspiration for the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak three years later.
In 2022 in Sri Lanka, rising food prices among other grievances led to protests that culminated in the overthrow of the ruling regime.

Recent months have seen the emergence of a powerful movement-based opposition to President Donald Trump and MAGA, manifested in the 7 million participants in No Kings Day and the unprecedented on-the-ground opposition to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and National Guard occupations of American cities. At the same time, the price of food for Americans of every class has soared: A survey this summer by the Associated Press and NORC found the cost of groceries has become a major source of stress for just over half of all Americans—outpacing rent, healthcare, and student debt.

What are sometimes belittled as “pocketbook issues” like the cost of food, housing, and medical care have become critical issues for a majority of Americans. So far, the hundreds of millions suffering from inflated prices have not found a way to organize themselves and fight back. Nor has the movement-based opposition taken up their cause. But a rarely remembered consumer boycott half a century ago indicates how such self-organization against high food prices might emerge.

“America’s Largest Protest”

Ann Giordano, 33, described herself as “just a housewife.” She recalled that she was never particularly conscious of food prices; her Staten Island kitchen didn’t have enough shelf space for her to buy in large quantities. But one day when she had put the groceries away there was still space left on the shelf. She vaguely wondered if she had left a bag of food at the store. Next time she came home from shopping, she looked in her wallet and concluded that she had accidentally left a $20 bill behind. When she went back to the supermarket and found out how much her food really cost, she suddenly realized where the shelf space had come from and where the money had gone.

It was early spring in 1973. Inflation was rising, food prices were soaring, and millions of shoppers nationwide were having similar experiences. Mrs. Giordano called some of her friends and discussed the idea of a consumer boycott—an idea that was springing up simultaneously in many places around the country in response to rising food prices. Soon a substantial network of women was calling homes all over Staten Island, spreading word of the boycott. They called a meeting at a local bowling alley to which over one hundred people came on two days’ notice. They named themselves JET-STOP (Joint Effort to Stop These Outrageous Prices) and elected captains for each district. Within a week they had covered the island with leaflets. picketed the major stores, and laid the basis for a highly effective boycott.

Mrs. Giordano and her friends were typical of those who gave birth to the 1973 consumer meat boycott, “a movement which started in a hundred different places all at once and that’s not led by anyone.” As a newspaper account described it:

The boycott is being organized principally at the grassroots level rather than by any overall committee or national leadership. It is made up mainly of groups of tenants in apartment buildings, neighbors who shop at the same markets in small towns, block associations, and—perhaps most typical—groups of women who meet every morning over coffee. All have been spurred into action by the common desire to bring food prices back to what they consider a manageable level.

The 1973 consumer meat boycott was undoubtedly the largest mass protest in American history. A Gallup poll taken at the end of the boycott found that over 25% of all consumers—representing families with 50 million members—had participated in it. Large retail and wholesale distributors reported their meat sales down by one-half to two-thirds. The boycott was strongest among what the press referred to as “middle income” families—those with incomes around the then-national average of $10,000 to $12,000 a year. It represented, in the words of one reporter, “an awareness that, for a whole new class of Americans like themselves, push has finally come to shove.”

In low-income neighborhoods, sales fell less during the boycott, largely because, as retailers pointed out, the residents, who couldn’t afford much meat at any time, had been cutting back for weeks due to high prices. As one Harlem merchant said, “How much can these people tighten their belts when they don’t have too much under their belts in the first place?”

Some advocates of the boycott made the dubious argument that it would bring meat prices down by reducing the demand for meat. Most participants, however, saw the movement as a protest, a way of communicating to politicians and others what they felt about the rising cost of living.

President Richard Nixon responded by putting a freeze on meat prices, but his move was met by scorn among many boycotters, who felt that prices were already far too high (“They locked the barn door after the cow went through the roof,” commented one housewife).

“We Ain’t Buying It!”

The meat boycott did not prove to be an effective tactic for combating high prices. Lacking a further strategy for meeting its participants’ needs and failing to hook up with the other mass insurgencies of the time, the movement soon lost momentum. Participants stopped coordinating their activity and returned to more individual strategies. But it did show the tremendous capacity of ordinary people to organize themselves on a massive national scale around issues of mutual concern—in this case the price of food.

Recent months have seen the emergence of the consumer boycott as a powerful vehicle for combating the Trump regime and undermining its “pillars of support.” Today’s boycotts are far more effectively targeted on specific institutions and realizable demands. For example, when the “Tesla Takedown” challenged Elon Musk’s role demolishing federal agencies and jobs, sales plunged and company stocks fell 13% in three months. A boycott campaign against Target initiated in January by the local Black community in Minneapolis over its reversal of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies has now cut sharply into its sales, helping lead to its stock falling 33%, a $20 billion loss in shareholder value, and replacement of its CEO. When Disney took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air over comments he made following the murder of Charlie Kirk in September, the Working Families Party helped put together a toolkit that explained how to cancel a Disney subscription. The Wall Street Journal reported that customers ditched Disney+ and Hulu at double the normal rates in September. Disney brought Kimmel back within days, and Hulu soon followed suit.

The 1973 meat boycott illustrates the way what are sometimes dismissed as “pocketbook issues” can be drivers of self-organization and massive outpourings of public discontent.

Today’s boycotts are also much better aligned with other forces. For example, in the days following Thanksgiving, major organizations that had backed the millions-strong national No Kings and MayDay2025 days of action, including Indivisible, 50501, and MayDayStrong, swung behind the boycotts of Target, Amazon, Home Depot, and other major corporations. Some national coordination was provided by a group that called itself “We Ain’t Buying It.”

This action is taking direct aim at Target, for caving to this administration’s biased attacks on DEI; Home Depot, for allowing and colluding with ICE to kidnap our neighbors on their properties; and Amazon, for funding this administration to secure their own corporate tax cuts.

These groups and many others are backing the boycott in support of striking Starbuck’s workers under the slogan, “No contract, no coffee!”

Like the Tesla Takedowns, these boycotts are coordinated with and often spearheaded by demonstrations and other forms of direct action at physical locations. And they are finding ways to stimulate other forms of pressure on their targets: The Amazon protest group Athenaforall, for example, is encouraging local groups to demand an end to local contracts with Amazon, permission for Amazon expansions, and public subsidies for Amazon.

Today’s boycott actions are better targeted and better allied than the 1973 meat boycott, but so far, they have not drawn in much of the population that is directly harmed by Trump and his corporate backers. The 1973 meat boycott shows that pocketbook issues, such as inflation and most notably food prices, can be a basis for self-organization and action beyond the electoral arena among the wide swath of people they affect.

The 1973 meat boycott illustrates the way what are sometimes dismissed as “pocketbook issues” can be drivers of self-organization and massive outpourings of public discontent. Such examples from the past are unlikely to provide us the specific programs or tactics we need to meet today’s food crises. But they do demonstrate the power that people can mobilize when they are driven by food deprivation.

Food Facts

The US currently has two overlapping food crises. One is the elimination of food programs for the poor. According to the Center for American Progress:

Project 2025 and the Republican Study Committee budget envisioned a transformative dismantling of federal nutrition assistance programs. In January, the Trump administration chaotically froze federal funding, leaving farmers reeling and nonprofits serving the needy worrying about steady access to support from SNAP and Meals on Wheels. In March, the administration cut more than $1 billion of funding from two programs that supply schools and food banks with food from local farms and ranches. These cuts affected schoolchildren and small farmers in all 50 states.

Despite the end of the government shutdown, millions face cutoff of food assistance right now. The GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” passed earlier this year, cuts SNAP by roughly 20%. The cuts may affect people in every state. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the addition of new work requirements alone will cause 2.4 million people to lose benefits in an average month.

There is also another food crisis that affects everyone—poor and less poor—the fast-rising cost of food.

As you may have noticed, the price of food in American supermarkets has soared. As surveys indicate, the cost of groceries has become a major source of stress for American consumers.

Many consumers compare food prices now to five years ago. According to the Department of Agriculture, five years ago the average cost of groceries for a family of two working adults and two children ranged between $613 and $1,500 per month. In 2025, such a family is spending between $1,000 and $1,600 per month at the grocery store.

Food prices have continued rising through Trump’s presidency. In September 2025, banana prices were up 7% from a year before, ground beef had risen 13%, and roasted coffee rose 19%, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) data available. (At that point the Trump administration stopped releasing CPI data—perhaps on the theory that no news is good news, or that what you don’t know won’t starve you.) As of September, the average cost of a pound of ground beef was $6.30, according to Federal Reserve data—the highest since the Department of Labor started tracking beef prices in the 1980s and 65% higher than in late 2019. The average retail price of ground roast coffee reached a record high of $9.14 per pound in September, more than twice the price in December 2019 when a pound of ground coffee cost just over $4.

Discontent over inflation was a principal cause of Trump’s 2024 election victory. It was also a principal cause of the Republican rout in 2025. But there is little public confidence that either Democrats or Republicans will rectify it. And neither has much in the way of a program to fix it—beyond each blaming the other.

The Fight for Food

In the 1973 meat boycott, households with 50 million members found a way to protest high food prices without waiting for elections. Today, the hundreds of millions of victims of exorbitant food prices may be enraged, but they have not yet found a way to organize themselves and fight back. Nor has the movement-based opposition that has challenged Trump’s galloping autocracy yet found a way to address food and other affordability issues. Food deprivation presents an opportunity for the movement to defend society against Trump’s depredations to bring a new front—and a new constituency—into that struggle.

While food inflation has multiple causes, our current food crises are in considerable part a result of actions by Trump and MAGA’s would-be autocracy. For example, Trump’s tariffs, a significant cause of rising food prices, represent an unconstitutional usurpation of the exclusive authority of the legislative branch to levy taxes. The violent attacks by ICE on immigrant workers—especially on farm workers—have driven workers from the fields, leading to farm labor shortages and rising food prices. And of course the cuts in SNAP and other food support programs make food immensely more expensive for tens of millions of people. While long-term solutions to food prices and food security will require major reforms in agricultural and other policies, reversing Trump’s tariff, anti-immigrant, and anti-SNAP policies could help a lot right now.

The anti-autocracy movement has the opportunity to raise the issues of food and other consumer prices as a fundamental part of the way MAGA autocracy is hurting ordinary people. The message can be: The destruction of democracy is hurting you. This can open a way to the convergence of “pocketbook” concerns and the “No Kings” struggle for democracy. The movement-based opposition can serve as an ally to help people organize themselves and fight for themselves—as households with 50 million members did in the 1973 meat boycott.

While food inflation has multiple causes, our current food crises are in considerable part a result of actions by Trump and MAGA’s would-be autocracy.

The 1973 meat boycott grew out of the daily life conditions of millions of people; mass response to today’s food crises will similarly depend on the experiences, feelings, reflections, discussions, and above all experimental action of those suffering their consequences. But one of the limits on the meat boycott’s success was the difficulty it had formulating concrete demands and a program which could actually realize its objectives. Today, there are proposals “in the wind” to bring down food prices that are well worth discussing and testing. They include:

End all tariffs on food: Trump’s tariffs contribute significantly to the high cost of meat, coffee, bananas, and other groceries—tariffs on Brazilian beef imports are more than 75%, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. Whatever the Supreme Court decides about current challenges to the constitutionality of Trump’s tariff programs, he will almost certainly try to continue his tariff powers using different legal justifications—and the impact on consumers will continue. Yet his recent reduction of some tariffs on food shows how politically vulnerable he is on this issue—and indicates that pressure could force even more reductions.

The Yale Budget Lab recently estimated that tariffs will cost households almost $2,400 a year. In a recent poll, three-quarters said their regular monthly household costs have increased by at least $100 a month from last year. Respondents identified the tariffs as the second biggest threat to the economy. Only 22% supported Trump’s tariffs. A demand to end all tariffs on food might win quick and massive support—and find allies among the public officials and corporate leaders who are turning against Trump’s tariffs. Sen. Jacky Rosen of Nevada recently introduced the No Tariffs on Groceries Act, saying, “Donald Trump lied to the American people when he promised to bring prices down ‘on day one.’ His reckless tariffs have done the opposite, raising grocery costs and making it harder for hardworking families to put food on the table.”

Restore all food programs: The hunger-producing cuts in nutrition programs like SNAP are immensely unpopular. In October, Republican Senator Josh Hawley, of all people, introduced two bills to reinstate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits and critical farm programs during the government shutdown. Despite the end of the government shutdown, cuts in SNAP and other nutrition programs are burgeoning. A campaign to cancel all cuts in all food programs would have wide popular support and could be spearheaded by those who have lost or will lose their benefits. Legislation to do so was introduced in Congress in late November.

Provide free school meals: Free school lunch programs represent a widely accepted form of support for all families—without demeaning means tests. In Colorado voters just passed statewide ballot measures which would raise $95 million annually for school meals by limiting deductions for high income taxpayers. The measures will support Healthy School Meals for All, a state program that provides free breakfast and lunch to all students regardless of their family’s income level. Excess receipts can be used to compensate for the loss of federal SNAP funds. Nine states and many cities already provide free meals for all students. Such programs can directly reduce the money families have to pay for food.

Expand SNAP to all who need it: A proposal by food insecurity expert Craig Gunderson would provide SNAP benefits to all those with incomes up to 400% of the poverty line. If benefits were also expanded by roughly 25%, it would reduce food insecurity by more than 98% at a cost of $564.5 billion. While such a program is not likely to be instituted all at once, the demand to expand SNAP eligibility could win wide popular support and directly benefit tens of millions of people. According to Gunderson, states can and have set higher eligibility thresholds of up to 200% of the poverty line. Given the wide public outrage over the soaring wealth of the wealthy, surely a tax on high-income people to pay for such a program could win popular support.

Support community gardens, local farms, and food mutual aid: The Trump administration has eliminated two programs that provided schools and food banks $1 billion to buy food from local farms. This has directly impacted food banks, schools, and farmers by cutting off a key market for local produce and reducing the amount of fresh food available to those in need. People don’t have to wait for government programs to start growing their own food to fight hunger—in fact, they are doing so already, for example, through community gardens. But state and municipal programs can provide essential support for expanding these efforts.

Open public grocery stores: New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has proposed a network of city-owned grocery stores focused on keeping prices low, rather than on making a profit. They would buy and sell at wholesale prices, centralize warehousing and distribution, and partner with local neighborhoods on products and sourcing.

“Don’t Starve—Fight”

Historically it has often been hard to find the levers of power to affect food prices. The 1973 meat boycott was powerful enough to bring about token action by President Richard Nixon. But it was unable to parlay participation by families with 50 million members into an effective way to reduce food prices. Around the world food riots have often been more successful in bringing down governments than in bringing down the price of food.

Targeted boycotts have recently proved effective where they could seriously affect a powerful target—witness the Tesla Takedown causing Elon Musk to withdraw from his DOGE disaster and Disney’s rapid rehiring of Jimmy Kimmel. Targets might include food companies that have supported Trump.

Today’s boycotts are highly effective at generating new and creative tactics: Consider the anti-ICE activists in Los Angeles, Charlotte, and elsewhere who swelled long lines to buy 17-cent ice scrapers, then again swelled long lines to return them—to send a message to Home Depot “to scrape ICE out of their stores.”

A movement against the failure to bring down high food prices could be a natural ally for the emerging movement to defend society against Trump and MAGA.

Boycotts are only one vehicle that could be used for food protests. Local demonstrations and “hunger marches” can be vehicles for dramatizing the issue and mobilizing people around it. Food banks, unions, churches, and other local institutions are in a strong position to initiate such actions. There is no way to know in advance what actions will achieve traction, but that is a good reason to start “testing the waters.”

Under public pressure, many states are stepping up to replace SNAP funding to compensate for federal cuts. A special session of the New Mexico legislature, for example, authorized $20 million weekly to provide state nutrition assistance benefits to the 460,000 New Mexicans who rely on SNAP.

But states will only be able to fill in for the federal government for a limited period of time. The New Mexico program, for example, only provides funding through the week of January, 19, 2026. At some point, even Republican governors and legislators may well begin demanding “re-federalization” of food programs.

Such a dynamic can be seen in the federalization of relief in the early days of the Great Depression. The entire American establishment, led by President Herbert Hoover, abhorred the idea of federal help for the poor and hungry, maintaining it was exclusively the responsibility of local governments and charities. But “hunger strikes” and other protests, often under the slogan “Don’t Starve—Fight!” created disruption and fear of social upheaval. In response, many cities and states created emergency relief programs, but soon many of them were on the verge of bankruptcy. Once-conservative city and state leaders began trooping to Washington to ask for federal support. As Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven put it, “Driven by the protests of the masses of unemployed and the threat of financial ruin, mayors of the biggest cities of the United States, joined by business and banking leaders, had become lobbyists for the poor.”

Under such pressure, the Hoover administration developed a program of loans to states to pay for relief programs. With the coming of the New Deal, this became an enormously expanded program of federal grants. The New Deal also began to buy surplus commodities from farmers and distribute them to families with low income.

While the details are different, this basic dynamic of pressure from people to cities and states to the federal government is still relevant today. Pressure to expand local and state programs is not an alternative to federal programs, but a step to forcing their expansion.

One weakness of the 1973 meat boycott was its isolation from the other burgeoning movements of the time, including the civil rights movement; the movement against the Vietnam War; and the large-scale wave of strikes, many of them wildcats. This made it less powerful than it otherwise might have been. A food movement today would have the opportunity for powerful alliances. Like consumers, farmers are being devastated by Trump’s tariffs and would benefit from expanded food programs. Like food consumers, farmers are also being hurt by the ICE policies driving farm workers away from the fields.

Food inflation might seem to be a middle-class issue, but poor people spend a substantially higher proportion of their total income on food, so rising food prices affect them even more. In 2023, the fifth of the population with the lowest incomes spent nearly 33% of their income on food; the highest-income fifth spent barely 8%. The rising cost of food means the poor can buy even less with whatever small funds they have. So low-income and better-off food consumers are natural allies.

High food prices were an important reason for Donald Trump’s election; he promised to reduce prices on “day one” of his presidency. Spooked by rising consumer anger at high food prices, on December 6 Trump established two task forces to investigate “whether anti-competitive behavior, especially by foreign-controlled companies, increases the cost of living for Americans.” An accompanying fact sheet stated, “President Trump is fighting every day to reverse Biden’s inflation crisis and bring down sky-high grocery prices—and he will not rest until every American feels the relief at the checkout line.” The task forces are instructed to report their findings to Congress within 180 days and present recommendations for congressional action within a year.

A movement against the failure to bring down high food prices could be a natural ally for the emerging movement to defend society against Trump and MAGA—what I have called “Social Self-Defense.” Conversely, the emerging movement-based opposition to Trump and MAGA has everything to gain by encouraging the development of a movement that allows millions of people to fight, not starve.

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"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Should those who ordered war crimes be held to account? With the conclusion of the Bush regime approaching, many people are dubious, even those horrified by Administration actions. They fear a long, divisive ordeal that could tear the country apart. They note that such division could make it far harder for the country to address the many other crises it is facing. They see the upcoming elections as a better way to set the country on a new path.

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Meanwhile, the evidence confirming not only a deliberate policy of torture, but of conspiring in an illegal war of aggression and conducting a criminal occupation, continues to pile ever higher. Bush's own press secretary Scott McClellan has revealed in his book, What Happened, how deliberately the public was misled to foment the attack on Iraq. Philippe Sands' new book, Torture Team, has shown how the top legal and political leadership fought for a policy of torture -- circumventing and misleading top military officials to do so. Jane Mayer's The Dark Side, reveals that a secret report by the Red Cross -- given to the CIA and shared with President Bush and Condoleezza Rice -- found that U.S. interrogation methods are "categorically" torture and that the "abuse constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the U.S. government in jeopardy of being prosecuted."

Despite the reluctance to open what many see as a can of worms, there are fresh moves on many fronts to hold top U.S. officials accountable for war crimes.

Courts: U.S. courts have issued a barrage of decisions against the Administration's claim that they can do anything and still be within the law. The Supreme Court ruled June 12 that the Administration cannot deny habeas corpus rights to GuantÃƒÂ¡namo detainees. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals on June 30 overturned the Pentagon's enemy combatant designation of a Chinese Muslim held in GuantÃƒÂ¡namo for the last six years. A Maine jury in April acquitted the Bangor Six of criminal trespass charges stemming from protesters' claim that the "Constitution was being violated by the Bush Administration's involvement in Iraq."

Congressional investigation: Rep. John Conyers has recently brought top policy-makers, including former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff David Addington, and this week former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and former Attorney General John Ashcroft before a House Judiciary subcommittee and grilled them on their role crafting the Administration's torture policy.

Senate hearings in June revealed that treatment of GuantÃƒÂ¡namo captives was modeled on techniques allegedly used by Communist China to force false confessions from U.S. soldiers.

Impeachment: Despite Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi's instruction to keep impeachment "off the table," Rep. Dennis Kucinich for the first time brought an impeachment resolution to the House floor that incorporated a devastating, thirty-five article indictment spelling out Bush Administration war crimes and crimes against the Constitution. Now Rep. Conyers has announced that the Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the charges July 25. Even after the Bush Administration leaves office, the judges it appointed who appear complicit in war crimes -- notably torture policy architect Judge Jay S. Bybee -- could still be impeached.

Truth commission: In response to General Taguba's accusations, New York Times Op-Ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof has just called for the establishment of a truth commission -- like that of post-Apartheid South Africa -- with subpoena power to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11 and "lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing."

International: In May, Vanity Fair magazine published an article by British human rights attorney Philippe Sands, in which he described the reasons Administration lawyers face a real risk of criminal investigations if they stray beyond U.S. borders. The British parliament is about to launch an investigation of Washington's lying to the British government about its use of its facilities for "extraordinary rendition." Constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley recently said, "I think it might in fact be time for the United States to be held internationally to a tribunal. I never thought in my lifetime I would say that." Colin Powell's former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson publicly advised Feith, Addington, And Albert Gonzales "never to travel outside the U.S., except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel."

Prosecution: According to a recent Mellman Group survey commissioned by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans of all political stripes overwhelmingly support the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate both the destruction of the CIA's interrogation tapes and the possible use of torture by the agency. Every segment of the electorate -- including majorities of Democrats (82 percent), independents (62 percent), and Republicans (51 percent) -- want to hold this administration accountable for its role in the destruction of the torture tapes.

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All these developments suggest approaches that might be used to hold Bush Administration war criminals accountable. Establishing accountability for U.S. war crimes in the Iraq war era is the sine qua non for initiating a new era on different principles. Here are nine reasons why we must not let bygones be bygones:

1. World peace cannot be achieved without human rights and accountability.

According to Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals, "The ultimate step in avoiding periodic wars, which are inevitable in a system of international lawlessness, is to make statesmen responsible to law." Moving in that direction will be impossible unless such responsibility applies to the statesmen of the world's most powerful countries, and above all the world's sole superpower. U.S. support for the war crimes charges like those just brought by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir will represent little more than hypocrisy if U.S. Presidents are not held to the same standard.

2. The rule of law is central to our democracy.

Most Americans believe that even the highest officials are bound by law. If we send mentally-disabled juveniles to prison as adults, but let government officials who authorize torture and launch illegal wars go scot-free, we destroy the very basis of the rule of law.

3. We must not allow precedents to be set that promote war crimes.

Executive action unchallenged by Congress changes the way our law is interpreted. According to Robert Borosage, writing for Huffington Post, "If Bush's extreme assertions of power are not challenged by the Congress, they end up not simply creating new law, they could end up rewriting the Constitution itself."

4. We must restore the principles of democracy to our government.

The claim that the President, as commander-in-chief, can exercise the unlimited powers of a king or dictator strikes at the very heart of our democracy. As Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson put it, we, as citizens, would "submit ourselves to rules only if under rules." Countries like Chile can attest that the restoration of democracy and the rule of law requires more than voting a new party into office -- it requires a rejection of impunity for the criminal acts of government officials.

5. We must forestall an imperialist resurgence.

When they are out of office, the advocates of imperial expansion and global domination have proven brilliant at lying in wait to undermine and destroy their opponents.

They did it to destroy the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. They'll do it again to an Obama Administration unless their machinations are exposed and discredited first.

6. We must have national consensus on the real reasons for the Bush Administration's failures.

Republicans are preparing to dominate future decades of American politics by blaming the failure of the Iraq war on those who "sent a signal" that the U.S. would not "stay the course" whatever the cost. Establishing the real reasons for the failure of the U.S. in Iraq -- the criminal and anti-democratic character of the war -- is the necessary condition for defeating that effort.

7. We must restore America's damaged reputation abroad.

The world has watched as the United States -- the self-proclaimed steward of democracy -- has systematically broken the letter and spirit of its Constitution, violated international treaties, and ignored basic moral tenets of humanity. As former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora recently pointed out to the Senate Armed Services Committee, our nation's "policy of cruelty" has violated our "overarching foreign policy interests and our national security." To establish international legitimacy, we must demonstrate that we are capable of holding our leaders to account.

8. We must lay the basis for major change in U.S. foreign policy.

Real security in the era of global warming and nuclear proliferation must be based on international cooperation. But genuine cooperation requires that the U.S. entirely repudiate the course of the past eight years. The American people must understand why international cooperation rather than pursuit of global domination is necessary to their own security. And other countries must be convinced that we really mean it.

9. We must deter future U.S. war crimes.

The specter of more war crimes haunts our future. Rumors continue to circulate about an American or American-backed Israeli attack on Iran. A recently introduced House resolution promoted by AIPAC "demands" that the President initiate what is effectively a blockade against Iran -- an act seen by some as tantamount to a declaration of war. Nothing could provide a greater deterrent to such future war crimes than establishing accountability for those of the past.

Holding war criminals accountable will require placing the long-term well-being of our country and the world ahead of short-term political advantage. As Rep. Wexler put it, "We owe it to the American people and history to pursue the wrongdoing of this Administration whether or not it helps us politically or in the next election. Our actions will properly define the Bush Administration in the eyes of history and that is the true test."

Will the Military Halt an Iran Attack?

Sometimes history -- and necessity -- make strange bedfellows. The German general staff transported Lenin to Russia to lead a revolution. Union-buster Ronald Reagan played godfather to the birth of the Polish Solidarity union. Equally strange -- but perhaps equally necessary -- is the addressee of a new appeal signed by Daniel Ellsberg, Cindy Sheehan, Ann Wright and many other leaders of the American peace movement:

"ATTENTION: Joint Chiefs of Staff and all U.S. Military Personnel: Do not attack Iran."

The initiative responds to the growing calls for an attack on Iran from the likes of Norman Podhoretz and John Bolton, and the reports of growing war momentum in Washington by reporters like Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker and Joe Klein of Time. International lawyer Scott Horton says European diplomats at the recent United Nations General Assembly gathering in New York "believe that the United States will launch an air war on Iran, and that it will occur within the next six to eight months." He puts the likelihood of conflict at 70 percent.

The initiative also responds to the recent failure of Congress to pass legislation requiring its approval before an attack on Iran and the hawk-driven resolution encouraging the President to act against the Iranian military. Marcy Winograd, president of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles, who originally suggested the petition, told The Nation:

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Will Bush Provoke a Constitutional Crisis?

While the November elections provided the Democratic Party a public mandate to end the war in Iraq, President Bush has signaled his intent to utilize his institutional powers as Commander in Chief to maintain and even escalate the U.S. commitment, public or congressional opinion notwithstanding. The Democratic leadership has removed two obvious ways to stop him -- impeachment and a cutoff of war funds -- from the table. Some Democrats have even indicated they will acquiesce in the sending of tens of thousands more troops to Iraq.

For those for in Congress and the public whom acquiescence is not an option, there remains an indirect route to challenging Presidential war-making power and force withdrawal from Iraq. That is to so discredit the Administration in the eyes of the public that neither Republican politicians nor the military, the intelligence agencies, the foreign policy establishment, or the corporate elite will allow it to continue on its catastrophic course. That requires a devastating exposure of the criminality, corruption, stupidity, and false premises of those who are making the decisions.

The road to withdrawal from Iraq, in short, may run through a congressional hearing room. But whether it does will depend in large part on how Democrats go about their investigations and how much the public demands they truly confront the Bush administration's criminality.

Just in the first three weeks of the session, Senate Democrats plan to call at least 13 hearings on Iraq.1 On the House side, Rep. John Murtha has promised to hold two hearings a day for several months beginning on January 17th, and many others are planned as well.

The Democrats' investigations could follow either of two strategies. One is to use hearings simply to service their '08 election goals by revealing some blemishes in Bush's Iraq policy -- while letting the war, torture, spying, and other crimes continue unimpeded. The alternate is to investigate with the intent of driving a dagger into the soft underbelly of the Bush juggernaut -- its criminal violation of the U.S. Constitution and U.S. and international law and its criminal coverup of its abuses.

The upcoming hearings will undoubtedly include demands for information that the Administration has up till now refused to provide. The consequence will be a power struggle which could -- if Democrats so choose -- be the defining moment in the effort to establish legal and constitutional accountability for the Bush administration -- and thereby force it to end the war.

The Bush administration has been historic in its refusal to share information with Congress or the public. It has strong motivations to continue to conceal such information, such as avoiding humiliation, further public exposure, and probable criminal liability. It has sent strong signals it will indeed refuse to provide such information. As Time magazine wrote just before the election:

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Reining in the President

The constitutional crisis facing the United States has only deepened as a result of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony on warrantless domestic spying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday. Karl Rove's well-publicized scheme to tar critics of the secret NSA program as friends of terrorism has fallen flat.

Despite the committee's indulgence of Gonzales' stonewalling, the hearing revealed deep bipartisan concern about a presidency that defies all checks and balances. Committee chair Arlen Specter promised further hearings and said he would consider subpoenas for documents the Administration is withholding. These are the first indications that the institutions of restraint on presidential power, while comatose, may not be dead.

Further indications followed unexpectedly and quickly. The first was the call for a full Congressional inquiry into the warrantless spying program by Republican Representative Heather Wilson of New Mexico. A former National Security Council aide under George H.W. Bush, Wilson heads the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, which oversees the National Security Agency.

In a New York Times interview Wednesday, she called for a "painstaking" review that would include not only classified briefings but access to internal documents and interviews with NSA staff. She also called for a briefing of the full House Intelligence Committee on the program's operational details.

Lo and behold, Gonzales and Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy to the director of U.S. national intelligence, showed up just hours later on Wednesday afternoon to brief the full House Intelligence Committee -- for the first time ever -- on the warrantless spying. Wilson claimed credit for the White House reversal but said, "I don't believe it complies with the National Security Act, which requires that the committees be kept fully informed of intelligence activities."

Meanwhile, the Republican chair of the House Judiciary Committee, James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, wrote a letter to Gonzales demanding answers by March 2 to fifty-one pointed questions about the warrantless surveillance program. And Specter announced he would introduce legislation requiring President Bush to have a special court examine the eavesdropping program.

These developments may seem like an earthquake after long years in which Bush scornfully defied all attempts at restraint and most of the Congress meekly acquiesced. But it is still a long way from effective checks and balances on executive power. The Bush Administration may still try to parlay its retreat into Congressional support for warrantless spying, just as it turned McCain's anti-torture bill into a legalization of prisoner abuse.

Seeking accountability

More forthright action is unlikely without public pressure. Turning Congressional concern into effective restraint will require a string of battles whose goal is not immediate victory but rather education of the public on why constitutional restraint on executive power matters. This kind of public education -- from Congressional hearings to courageous civic resistance -- is what finally terminated the criminal regimes of Senator Joe McCarthy and President Richard Nixon.

The next step toward any kind of accountability for Bush Administration criminality is to penetrate the wall of silence that surrounds Administration deceit. Leaks, ranging from the photos of Abu Ghraib to the Downing Street memos to the warrantless spying, have driven the anti-Bush backlash. Investigations like those proposed by Representative Wilson could well be the next arena.

The House Progressive Caucus has adopted an informal strategy of encouraging as many members of Congress as possible to introduce Resolutions of Inquiry. These ROIs allow members to pose factual questions to the President or Cabinet officials, and since the resolutions are privileged, relevant committees are required to report back to the House within fourteen legislative days.

In this session alone, Democrats have introduced twenty-two ROIs, the majority of which have centered on prewar intelligence, Plamegate and rendition. The assault began in July 2005, with Congresswoman Barbara Lee and others introducing a succession of seven ROIs in one month. The Downing Street memo ROI prompted extensive debate in the International Relations Committee about the role of Congressional oversight in relation to the war in Iraq, and while the resolution failed, the vote marked the first time all Democrats on the committee voted unanimously concerning Iraq.

On Wednesday, Progressive Caucus members turned their attention to questions of U.S. torture and rendition. Representative Ed Markey's resolution was one of three ROIs that came before the committee requesting documents on any person subject to torture after being transferred to another country by U.S. officials. It won support from Republicans James Leach, former chair of the Banking Committee, and antiwar conservative Ron Paul, but it was defeated by the Republican majority. Representative John Conyers and others now have their sights set on the NSA spying controversy, with four more ROIs expected to come up in the next few weeks.

The Senate is anticipating its own battles over information access and Congressional oversight. Last December, in response to the Administration's claims that Congress had access to the same intelligence as the President when deciding to go to war in Iraq, Senator Ted Kennedy offered an amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Bill requiring the disclosure of the President's Daily Briefs. The amendment passed with the support of Pat Roberts, Republican chair of the Intelligence Committee. The measure also included two other amendments requiring information on U.S. rendition policy. In response, for the first time twenty-seven years, the Senate failed to pass an intelligence authorization bill because an unknown senator placed a hold on the bill. Kennedy has refused to back down, promising a head-on clash with the Administration.

Abuse of Presidential authority is likely to come up in other venues as well. A debate lies ahead on renewal of the Patriot Act. Senator Specter has promised to hold hearings on the GuantÃƒÂ¡namo prison. The Senate leadership has promised Intelligence Committee hearings on the abuse of prewar intelligence. Looking further to the future are Representative Conyers' proposals for a special prosecutor, a vote of censure and a select committee to investigate impeachable offenses by President Bush. Human rights groups have recently brought suit to find NSA spying unconstitutional. And of course, there are the upcoming Congressional elections.

Foiling Rove's strategy

At the January meeting of the Republican National Committee, Karl Rove explicitly laid out a strategy to win the 2006 election by stigmatizing the Democratic Party as weak on national security. Bush, Cheney and Gonzales have followed Rove's script in their aggressive defense of warrantless NSA spying.

Nothing would make Rove happier than to have warrantless spying and other abuses of presidential authority treated as a partisan issue of Democrats against Republicans. But they aren't. As Al Gore recently observed, "Democrats as well as Republicans in the Congress must share the blame for not taking sufficient action to protest and seek to prevent what they consider a grossly unconstitutional program." Specter told the Washington Post, "I think they are seeing concerns in a lot of directions from all segments: Democrats and Republicans in all shades of the political spectrum."

One key to foiling Rove strategy is to treat government lawlessness as a nonpartisan concern. The combination of bipartisan complicity and bipartisan concern opens a new opportunity to split support for Bush's criminal activities and to build a coalition to terminate them.

This is possible because Rove's script isn't playing so well even in the Republican Party. Insight magazine quoted Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska as saying, "I didn't like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it's the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context." Before the Gonzales hearing Specter said that the spy program of his own party's President is in flat violation of the law. In a post-hearing interview with the Washington Post, Specter said of Gonzales, "He's smoking Dutch Cleanser!"

The Republican resistance is even more impressive given an Insight magazine report that Rove has threatened to put any Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee who votes against the President on his blacklist, denying them political and financial support. Despite that, four of the ten Republicans on the committee, including South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, raised doubts about the legality of the NSA program.

Republican politicians are faced with contrary pulls. On the one hand they are fearful, as Rove warned them that the defection of even a few Republicans could be catastrophic for the 2006 elections. On the other hand, if the Bush Administration is crashing, they have an interest in distancing themselves from it so that they don't go down with it. Then there's always principle: Norman Ornstein, head of the American Enterprise Institute, estimates that a majority of Republicans in both houses, if polled in secret, would be concerned about the government's invasion of privacy.

Another key to foiling Rove's strategy is to focus on the fundamental issue of constitutional checks and balances on presidential power. The issue is not whether Republicans or Democrats care more about protecting Americans against terrorists; the question is who -- in or out of either party -- will stand up for the principles of constitutional democracy?

Conyers exemplifies what it means to articulate that frame. He told The Nation, "There is no doubt that our nation is at a constitutional crossroads, and the domestic spying scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. We can continue down the path of an out-of-control executive unwilling to account for his actions and a Congress unable to muster the will to challenge him, or we can return to a system of checks and balances, where Congress performs genuine oversight and stands up for our citizens' rights and liberties."

Such a frame both allows and requires the entire spectrum of Bush Administration criminality to be painted as part of the same picture: not just warrantless domestic spying but lying to Congress about weapons of mass destruction; conducting an aggressive war in violation of international law; engaging in torture of terror suspects; outsourcing of torture through "rendition"; secret prisons; use of white phosphorus and other illegal weapons in Iraq; and multiple other violations of national and international law. These are all actions that have been conducted and justified on the basis of an antidemocratic, anticonstitutional doctrine of unlimited presidential power.

None of this would be happening without the growing public distrust of President Bush and outrage over his debacle in Iraq. They underlie the Administration's inability to keep Congress in line. They are also the primary reason Rove's plan to wave the bloody shirt of 9/11 is less and less effective. But that growing alienation needs to find expression in a repudiation of those in high places who have committed and justified crimes -- and an irresistible public demand that those who are supposed to hold them accountable step forward to meet their responsibilities.

Bush's retreat on Congressional oversight of NSA spying is a small step, but it demonstrates the Administration's vulnerability to a bipartisan challenge based on constitutional principles. What is at stake is not just punishing the crimes already committed by the Bush Administration but making it possible to prevent Bush and his successors from committing similar or worse offenses in the future.

Commanding Responsibility from the Pentagon

A jury verdict in Memphis late last year caused little stir among the general public, but it may have caught the attention of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and other high officials of the Bush administration. The jury found Colonel Nicolas Carranza, former Vice Minister of Defense of El Salvador and now a U.S. citizen living in Memphis, responsible for overseeing the torture and killing in that country 25 years ago. Could similar charges be brought against high U.S. officials for the actions of their subordinates in Abu Ghraib, Falluja, and Guantanamo?

Carranza was sued by victims of armed forces under his control. The jury applied the principle of "command responsibility," which holds a superior legally responsible for human rights abuses by subordinates if the official knew or should have known about them and failed to prevent them or punish those who committed them.

Intelligence agency whistleblowers recently leaked to ABC News a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" authorized for CIA agents in mid-March 2002. The agents, according to an ABC News report, did so "because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen."

The techniques included "Water Boarding:" "The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt." CIA officers who subjected themselves to the technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. According to John Sifton of Human Rights Watch, "It really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law."

President Bush has said "We do not torture." But according to a classified report by the CIA's own Inspector General John Helgerwon, the techniques appeared "to constitute cruel and degrading treatment under the [Geneva] convention." If so, they are likely to be crimes not only under international law, but under the U.S. Anti-Torture and War Crimes Acts.

Where they have acknowledged prisoner abuse, Bush administration officials have often blamed it on a few "bad apples" at the bottom of the chain of command. But under the principle of command responsibility, this is no excuse -- and no legal defense.

Colin Powell's top aide, Colonel Larry Wilkerson, said late last year that the United States has tortured and, "There's no question in my mind where the philosophical guidance and the flexibility in order to do so originated -- in the vice president of the United States' office."

According to Wilkerson, "His implementer in this case was Donald Rumsfeld and the Defense Department." Wilkerson explained, "The vice president had to cover this in order for it to happen and in order for Secretary Rumsfeld to feel as though he had freedom of action."

The former commander at Abu Ghraib prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, confirms Wilkerson's charge: Abusive techniques at Abu Ghraib were "delivered with full authority and knowledge of the secretary of defense and probably Cheney."

This is not just a question of past abuses. According to Wilkerson, "There's no doubt in my mind that we may still be doing it." When the vice president of the United States "lobbies the Congress on behalf of cruel and unusual punishment" Wilkerson says he can "only assume" that "it's still going on."

Asked whether Cheney was guilty of a war crime, Col. Wilkerson said the vice president's actions were certainly a domestic crime and, he would suspect, "an international crime as well." Wilkerson says his charges are based on an "audit trail" he prepared for Secretary Powell, including government memoranda and reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Criminal investigation is warranted where facts or circumstances "reasonably indicate" that a crime has been committed. Wilkerson's charges are sufficient in themselves to require the Department of Justice to immediately open a criminal investigation of Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. Such an investigation could take as its starting point Wilkerson's "audit trail," the statements of CIA agents and the CIA Inspector General, and extensive published evidence indicating torture and prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel around the world.

If I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and other high government officials can be investigated for outing Valerie Plame, don't facts that "reasonably indicate" war crimes and crimes against humanity deserve equal time?

Bush administration officials have said over and over that they have acted within the law. If so, they have nothing to fear from an investigation and should encourage one to clear the air.

The United States is supposed to have "equal justice under law." Colonel Carranza has had his day in court. We as citizens -- and our prosecutors, judges, and elected representatives -- need to address the question: When will Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, and their collaborators get theirs?

A Sanctuary for Torturers

Thousands of well-meaning people are mobilizing to pressure Congress to pass legislation banning torture. But the Bush Administration is maneuvering to turn it into legislation that would instead protect the torturers by eliminating a basic legal right. To stop them, torture opponents will need to be not just as innocent as doves but also as cunning as foxes.

When Congress returns to Washington on Monday, a campaign will unfold in support of Senator John McCain's legislation banning torture, which is attached to a defense bill. But McCain's amendment is accompanied by one from Senator Lindsey Graham that bans the appeals that prisoners at Guantanamo have used to take their cases to civilian courts.

In the 2004 case Rasul v. Bush, brought on behalf of Guantanamo captives, the Supreme Court established the right of foreigners held by the United States to habeas corpus, the 800-year-old legal procedure grounded in the Magna Carta and enshrined in the US Constitution, which requires government officials to explain to a court why they are holding someone in captivity. Graham's amendment strips courts of the power to hear such cases.

Graham sprang his amendment on the Senate in the closing days of the session with no hearings and little debate. A firestorm of criticism forced Graham to accept a compromise--negotiated with Democratic Senator Carl Levin--that allows captives limited appeals to civilian courts. (Newsweek has reported that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House Counsel Harriet Miers were also in on the negotiations.) But the Graham compromise still strips federal courts of jurisdiction to hear applications for habeas corpus brought by Guantanamo prisoners.

The Senate passed the compromise amendment 84 to 14. Republican Senator Arlen Specter, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, described it as "a sophisticated, blatant attempt at court-stripping."

Bill Goodman, legal director for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought the first habeas corpus cases for Guantanamo captives, says the Graham amendment "will formalize the lawless policies of the Bush Administration that allow the Department of Defense to hold prisoners indefinitely without any requirement that it show any reason for doing so." That has and will continue to result in "torture of US prisoners."

The Graham amendment bans habeas corpus appeals against conditions of confinement. The consequence, according to Michael Dorf, the Sovern Professor of Law at Columbia University, is that "a prisoner cannot get into federal court by claiming (or presenting evidence) that he is being subject to torture or otherwise degrading treatment."

Deviously, the Graham amendment has been packaged with McCain's anti-torture amendment. But the package will make things worse, not better, for Guantanamo captives unless Graham's amendment banning habeas corpus is removed. As Bill Goodman points out, while the pair of amendments "profess to ban torture," without the right to judicial oversight, they are "defanged." They are "a right without a remedy and, as such, meaningless."

The Bush Administration is now negotiating with Graham and others to make the legislation even more restrictive. A Justice Department spokesperson told Newsweek, "We definitely agree with the principle behind the current bill, though there are still some concerns that the language may need to be improved." White House spokesman Trent Duffy also told Newsweek that the White House is positive about the Graham bill and is "working with Senator Graham on technical aspects" of the legislation.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has talked with Senator Graham about the bill at least twice. The Justice Department spokesperson told Newsweek Gonzales was "particularly focused on thwarting some of the 160 habeas lawsuits filed by Gitmo detainees." (Gonzales was the author of the notorious 2002 memo advising the President that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in order to provide "a solid defense to any future prosecution" of US officials under the War Crimes Act. Gonzales's personal role in laying the groundwork for torture is sufficient for professor Marjorie Cohn, now president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, to have drafted an indictment of Gonzales for violating the War Crimes Act.)

The Bush Administration is apparently divided. Despite the role of the White House in preparing the Graham compromise amendment, Vice President Cheney opposed it. Indeed, Cheney has fought any legislation that would eliminate the government's right to torture, though he seems willing to compromise on language that leaves the CIA, but not the military, free to torture. In the past, President Bush has threatened to veto the entire defense bill if McCain's anti-torture amendment is included.

Both the Graham and McCain amendments are attached to a defense bill that now goes to a Senate-House conference. Graham and Levin plan to demand that the final legislation include both.

The conference committee will undoubtedly be the focus of pressure from those who want to preserve the right of habeas corpus. A statement by Habeas Counsel, the coalition of prestigious attorneys representing Guantanamo captives, says, "To legislate this way is disgraceful. It is also completely unnecessary. This is not an emergency situation. The Graham-Levin amendment should be stripped out in conference. The genuine deliberation required by the gravity of the issue can then begin."

Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, a member of the Progressive Caucus and an outspoken opponent of torture and "extraordinary rendition" (a k a government-run kidnapping), describes the task facing cunning progressive foxes:

"If the US wants to demonstrate that we are a nation committed to justice and the rule of law, we should adopt the McCain amendment barring torture and drop the Graham amendment suspending habeas corpus rights for those detained at Guantanamo Bay. If persons held by the US lack the right to challenge their detention or their treatment, the McCain amendment's protections against torture and other forms of cruel or humiliating treatment may turn out to be illusory."

Only nine of the more than 500 Guantanamo captives have even been charged with crimes, and their trials are being prolonged year after year. This is exactly the situation habeas corpus is designed to remedy. And without it, the captives can rot in prison forever and possibly be subject to torture and inhumane treatment that the courts are unable even to learn about.

Graham and the Bush Administration oppose rights for Guantanamo detainees in part on the grounds that they are terrorists who deserve no better. They refuse to face the very real possibility of innocent people caught up in the system, acknowledged by the military's own commanders at Guantanamo. According to the Wall Street Journal:

"American commanders acknowledge that many prisoners shouldn't have been locked up here in the first place because they weren't dangerous and didn't know anything of value. 'Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks,' says Brig. Gen. Jay Hood, Guantanamo's current commander."

Graham's original proposal to eliminate habeas corpus for foreign captives was met by extraordinary condemnation. Ten retired military leaders endorsed a letter from Rear Adm. John Hutson calling the restriction on habeas corpus a "momentous" change. "The practical effects of such a bill would be sweeping and negative." Signers included Army Lieut. Gen. Robert Gard, Marine Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes and other senior officers.

Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice, the organization of military lawyers, said the Graham amendment would sanction "unreviewable executive detention that cannot be harmonized with the nation's longstanding adherence to the rule of law."

The American Bar Association has urged the Senate to reconsider and defeat the original Graham amendment. Michael Greco, president of the association, gave a stirring defense of habeas corpus, which "cannot and should not" be replaced by the "extremely limited review" provided by the Graham amendment, which "would undermine the very principles that distinguish us from our enemies."

Does Congress have the power to tell the Supreme Court what cases it can or cannot hear? In American law, courts have the power to review the constitutionality of legislation passed by Congress, but they tend to defer to the other branches of government, especially where national security issues are involved.

Both Graham's original amendment and his compromise amendment directly conflict with the Supreme Court's decision in Rasul v. Bush that Guantanamo captives have the right to habeas corpus. The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a challenge to the constitutionality of the Bush Administration's military tribunals for Guantanamo captives.

No one knows how the Court would respond to an instruction from Congress to reverse its interpretation of the Constitution. Indeed, the conflict over the power of courts to hear prisoners' appeals is plunging the country into an ongoing constitutional crisis in which all three branches of government are involved.

Since treatment of captives held by the United States has included well-documented cases of torture, brutality and even treatment leading to death, the Graham amendment would erect a screen behind which such crimes may be conducted with impunity. Opponents of torture need to make sure they are not inadvertently helping to pass an amendment that would protect torturers.

Fitzgerald Needs to Dig Deeper

Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's name has reaffirmed the basic American principle that even the highest government officials are subject to the rule of law. His charges represent the start of a revitalization of the institutions designed to maintain government under law. But that revitalization still has a long way to go.

As a prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald rightly brought charges where the law was clearest and the evidence most compelling. But the alleged crimes he is investigating are in essence the apparent cover-up operation for another possible set of crimes against national and international law. Why would I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby commit perjury and lie to FBI agents, as he is accused of doing?

The letters from Acting Attorney General James B. Comey appointing Mr. Fitzgerald delegated to him "all the authority of the attorney general" to investigate and prosecute "violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure."

We would argue that Mr. Comey's charge, based on the evidence Mr. Fitzgerald has uncovered, authorizes the special prosecutor to investigate the following:

Did top Bush administration officials deceive Congress? Several federal statutes make it a crime to lie to Congress. As Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York recently put it, "If, as mounting evidence is tending to show, administration officials deliberately deceived Congress and the American people, this would constitute a criminal conspiracy against the entire country."

Did top administration officials violate the U.S. Anti-Torture Act? The law makes torture and conspiracy to commit torture a crime. The former commander at Abu Ghraib prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has stated that abusive techniques were "delivered with full authority and knowledge of the secretary of defense and probably [Vice President Dick] Cheney."

Did top administration officials violate the War Crimes Act? Passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, the law makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national to commit a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

In a 2002 memo, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who was then White House counsel, urged that the United States "opt out" of the Geneva Conventions for the Afghan war on the grounds that opting out "substantially reduces the likelihood of prosecution under the War Crimes Act."

What was he worrying about? Did the special prosecutor find evidence that top Bush administration officials ordered or condoned the string of Geneva Conventions violations that run from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo Bay and from the leveling of Fallujah to attacks on medical facilities?

Did top administration officials violate the War Powers Act? The law requires the president to present to Congress the basis for proposed U.S. military action. If the administration provided false information, is it guilty of violating the War Powers Act and, in effect, usurping the war powers given to Congress under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution?

Did top administration officials violate the U.N. Charter? U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said the U.S. attack on Iraq was "illegal." The conduct of the war has involved many breaches of internationally guaranteed protections of civilians. Did the special prosecutor find evidence of deliberate violation of U.S. treaty obligations, which under Article VI of the Constitution are the law of the land?

If the special prosecutor found evidence of violation of "any criminal laws," he is obliged to investigate and prosecute. Where the abuses he finds are not covered by existing federal law, they must be addressed by Congress, either by new laws or through the impeachment process.

The Bush administration's alleged abuses of national and international law are closely linked. The Valerie Plame affair was not just a random incident, but rather an effort to silence critics attempting to halt an aggressive war whose initiation and conduct appear to have violated both national and international law. Indeed, aggressive war, illegal conduct of war and torture are nothing less than war crimes.

Investigation and, if warranted, prosecution of such crimes is crucial for the revitalization of democratic government in our country. To let such flagrant flouting of the rule of law go unpunished would be to invite government officials to subvert our Constitution again.

Repudiating war crimes committed by high U.S. officials is also an essential starting point for repairing the damage done to our country's international relationships and reputation. There is no way to take the taint off our country for the abuses symbolized by Abu Ghraib without holding those responsible for them accountable.

This editorial originally appeared in the Baltimore Sun.

Globalization From Below

In the year since the "Battle of Seattle," international demonstrations from Washington, DC, to Okinawa and from Bangkok to Prague have confronted and sometimes halted meetings of the WTO, IMF, World Bank and other instruments of globalization. They have had successes that could not have been imagined just a year ago. They have reframed the debate on globalization, put its advocates on the defensive and forced change in the rhetoric if not the actions of world leaders and global institutions.

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Mobilize government

Mobilize labor

Mobilize money and material resources

Conclusion