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Today's Stories

June 6, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Federal Bureau of Entrapment

Nicole Colson
Inside Walter Reed Hospital

Ali Khan
Friendly Renditions to Muslim Torture Chambers

Jason Leopold
When Will Rumsfeld Be Indicted?

Charles Walker Poff
Rumsfeld, China and Hypocrisy

Ramzy Baroud
My Grandpa's Right of Return

Rep. John Conyers
Did Bush Deliberately Deceive America About Iraq?

Evelyn Pringle
TeenScreen's Top Pusher

Gary Corseri
25 Reasons to Impeach Bush

Website of the Day
Save This 200 Year Old Burr Oak from Bible Thumpers with Chainsaws

June 4 / 5, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
France's Magnificent Non!

James Petras
The Centrality of Peasant Movements in Latin America

Robert Fisk
Who Killed Samir?

Patrick Cockburn
My Father, Claud Cockburn, the MI5 Suspect

Rev. William Alberts
When Pride in Power Corrupts: the Story of a Methodist President, His Bishops and an "Incompatible" Lesbian Minister

Saul Landau
40 Interns and a Mule: Will the Dems Ever Take Advantage of the Republicans' Blunders?

Mario Lamo Jimenez
Dante with a Brush: Botero Immortalizes Bush

Dave Lindorff
What is the Media Running From?

Lance Selfa
Why Bush is Getting Away with Murder

Tom Crumpacker
On the Use of State Terrorism: the Posada Precedent

Joshua Frank
How Beltway Dems Sank Dean for America

Fred Gardner
Don't Bogart That Taxable Commodity

Michael Dickinson
Roll Out the Barrel: Blood, Oil and Baku

Roger Martin
We Can See, But Not Far Enough

Reza Fiyouzat
Welcome to the Third World

Ben Tripp
Romance: Advice from a Pro

Graeme Greenback
Pardon Me, While I Piss on this Bible

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Albert, Engel, Smith

 

 

 

June 3, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
Welcome to a Has-Been Country

Joseph Massad
Witch Hunt at Columbia

Jeff Halper
The Process of Transfer Continues

Tom Barry
The Immigration Debate: Whose Side Are You On?

Bruce K. Gagnon
Bush Seeks Military Control of Space: "It's Our Destiny"

Joshua Frank
Bombing Iran: Facts Don't Matter

Mickey Z.
Deep Throat as Sideshow

Gary Leupp
"Peddling Lies About How They Were Mistreated"

Website of the Day
Tattoo on My Heart: Warriors of Wounded Knee, 1973

 

June 2, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
The Slave Traders of the Gitmo Gulag

Forrest Hylton
Bolivia: the Agony of Stalemate

Mike Whitney
Post-Mortem on the 4th Amendment: Warrants without Judges

Brian Cloughley
Anarchy in Afghanistan; Ignorance in America

Mazin Qumsiyeh
A Two-State Solution is No Solution

Russell D. Hoffman
High Tension at San Onofre

Norman Madarasz
"Le Jolie Mois de Mai": the Meaning of the French "Non"

Norman Solomon
War Made Easy: from Vietnam to Iraq

David Price
The Shallowness of Deep Throat

Website of the Day
Fallujah on Film

 

June 1, 2005

James Petras
Beyond Hypocrisy: the Deeper Meaning of Posada

Justin Delacour
Framing Venezuela: US Media Bias Against Chavez

Edward Jay Epstein
Was "Deep Throat" a Fictoid?

Omar Barghouti / Lisa Taraki
The AUT Boycott: Freedom vs. "Academic" Freedom

Dave Lindorff
When War Goes Off the Script

Kevin Zeese
Reality Check: Who to Believe on Iraq War and Gitmo?

Jason Leopold
When Presidents Lie

William S. Lind
Wreck It and Run

 

 

May 31, 2005

Sen. Mike Gravel
Thank You, Mark Felt: We Need a New Deep Throat

David Krieger
US Nuclear Hypocrisy

Tad Daley
The Nuclear Me-Too Club

Joshua Frank
Pelosi at AIPAC: Israel Comes First

Richard Gott
Chavez Leads the Way

Norman Solomon
Time to Get Serious About Impeachment

Tom Segev
Our Man in the Territories

Walter Brasch
Killing Americans with Secrecy

Diana Johnstone
The French "Non"

 

 

May 28 / 30, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
There's Their Way or the Galloway

Richard Lichtman
We Wuz Framed! the Consolations of George Lakoff

Sharon Smith
The Road to Abu Ghraib

Paul Craig Roberts
Bush Opts for Civil War in Iraq

Dave Lindorff
Whigged Out: the Dems Have Become Merely a Vestigial Opposition Party

Ramzy Baroud
Muslims Were Desecrated, Not Just Their Holy Book

Brian Cloughley
Why Are Nukes OK for You, But Not for Us?

Fred Gardner
Advice from a Lawyer About Medical Pot

Lee Sustar
Chavez Gets Proactive

Joshua Frank
Isikoff Comes Clean: "Nobody in the US Said a Word, Until the Riots"

Justin E.H. Smith
What About the People? a Report from Romania

Jackie Corr
A Montana History Lesson on Assfulness

Michael Kimaid
Bush as Ahab

Toufic Haddad
Lessons from the Reversal of the AUC Boycott

Justin Taylor
The Fear of Paul Virilio

Amir Butler
Searching for a Saladin

Ben Tripp
Insomnia and Sarcasm

Poets' Basement
Albert, Engel, Davies and Louise

May 27, 2005

Gary Leupp
It Really is a Crusade!

Daniel Estulin
Infiltrating Bilderberg 2005

Kevin Zeese
Iraq Withdrawal Vote: If Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones Can See the Light, Why Can't Nancy Pelosi?

Robert Fisk
Mubarak's Goon Squads

Dave Zirin
Why Pat Tillman's Parents Are No Longer Silent

Website of the Day
Stuckists

 

May 26, 2005

Yuki Tanaka
Firebombing and Atom Bombing

Ray McGovern
Bolton, the Monomaniac Who Would Be Ambassador

Arthur Mitzman
Agenda for a Sustainable Europe

Jack Random
Afghanistan: the Forgotten Occupation

Britt Bailey and Brian Tokar
Big Food Strikes Back

Rebecca Rush
The New Banana Wars: Chiquita's Threat to the Caribbean Islands

Jorge Mariscal
Santiago v. Rumsfeld

Paul Craig Roberts
Uncovering a DOJ Cover-up: The Murder of Kenneth Trentadue

Website of the Day
The F Word

 

 

May 25, 2005

Camilo Mejia
Prisoners of Conscience

Dave Lindorff
Brain Dead Democrats

William S. Lind
Of Cabbages, Cessnas and Kings

Chris Floyd
Tattoo Nation: Abu Ghraib as Normalcy

Brian Cloughley
The Stench of "Progress": the Torture and the Lies Continue

Lenni Brenner
The Plot to Stigmatize My Book on Nazi-Zionist Collaboration

Sean Cain
A Review of Naomi Klein's "The Take"

Karl Shepard
Extinction, Kansas and "Intelligent Design"

John Ross
Sweet Revenge at Terminal Island

Website of the Day
SWARM the Minutemen

 

 


May 24, 2005

Dave Zirin
Palestine's Big Visitor: Not Laura, but Ronaldo

Michele Bollinger
Criminalizing Abortion in S. Carolina: Why Did Gabriela Flores Go to Jail?

Winslow Wheeler
The Pork War

Uri Avnery
Wagner at the Holocaust Memorial

Michael Donnelly
Behind the Green(back) Curtain

Joshua Frank
Chavez's Economy: Is It Sustainable?

Stephen Dunifer
The Folly of Media Reform

Paul Craig Roberts
Is Bush a Sith Lord?

 

 

May 23, 2005

Esther Sassaman / Thomas Nagy
An Exclusive Interview with George Galloway

Mike Whitney
Free Jose Padilla: Three Years in Prison, Not a Shred of Evidence

Ramzy Baroud
Fallout from a Forged War: Battling Windmills While Iraq Burns

Michael Dickinson
Pictures at an Exhibition: Censoring the "Carnival of Chaos"

Walter Brasch
In Praise of Bob Barr

Dick J. Reavis
The Newsweek Scandal: an Unmentioned Detail

Maria Tomchick
Galloway and the US Press

Norman Solomon
Let's Play "Media Jeopardy"

Kevin Zeese
Inventing a Pretext for War: an Inte4rview with James Bamford

Website of the Day
Drawings of Darfur: Genocide Through Children's Eyes

 

 

May 21 / 22, 2005

David H. Price
CIA Skullduggery in Academia

Gabriel García Márquez
My Visit to the Clinton White House, Bearing a Message from Fidel on Terrorism

Oren Ben-Dor
To Create Academic Freedom in Israel, a Boycott is Needed

Gary Leupp
Nights in White House Satin with Jeff Gannon

Laith al-Saud
An Anatomy of the Iraqi Resistance

Elaine Cassel
Bush and the Angry God: Twilight of Secular Democracy in America?

Greg Moses
The Saints of Mischief and Halliburton

Fred Gardner
Martyring Dr. Carol Wolman

Dave Lindorff
The GOP's Police State

Alan Maass
Uzbekistan's Karimov: Bush's Favorite Terrorist?

William Blum
The American Myth Industry

Tom Crumpacker
Send Posada Carriles to Venezuela

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Newsweek: a Contest of Hypocrisies

Doug Giebel
The Grand Illusion

Evelyn J. Pringle
No Child Left Unmedicated: TeenScreen, State-drugging and Suicide

Carolyn Baker
Spiritual Abuse by the Religious Right

Chris Floyd
Justice in JebWorld

Frederick B. Hudson
Black and Gay?: a Review of "Brother to Brother"

Ben Tripp
Him Talk Plenty Long Time: Busting the Filibuster

Poets' Basement
Davies, Engel and Louise

 

 

May 20, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Newsweek and White House Hypocrisy

Kevin Zeese
As Insurgency Increases, New US Military Recruits Fall

Paul de Rooij
"Private": a Film in Search of a Cliché

Christopher Brauchli
How Insurance Companies Exploited 9/11

Mark Engler
Triumph Over Debt?

Joshua Frank
Bush to Dine with Porn Star

Robert Jensen
TV Talk, No Evidence Required

Jeffery R. Webber
Bolivia Erupts

 

 

May 19, 2005

Bill Forman
An Interview with Alexander Cockburn

Stan Goff
Hey, Democrats, Listen to Galloway and Learn Something

Neve Gordon
From Ghettos to Frontiers: What Will Happen After Israel Withdraws from Gaza

Michael Dickinson
The Trouble with Menwith: Tagging British Peace Activists

Karyn Strickler
The Texas Nexus: How Racial and Political Gerrymandering United

Andrew Freedman
Nazi Science at NIH

Paul Craig Roberts
The Politics and Economics of Outsourcing

 

 

May 18, 2005

Jean Bricmont
Vive La France?

Laura Carlsen
Bush's Posada Carriles Quandry: an Anti-Cuba Terrorist is Still a Terrorist

Mike Whitney
The Secret Raids of Alberto Gonzales: 10,000 Swept Up

Joshua Frank
Flushing the Koran: Why Newsweek Got It Right

George Galloway
Thusly, I Humiliated Norm Coleman (and Christopher Hitchens)

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Writing Tickets for American War Crimes

Dwight D. Eisenhower
How the GOP will Destroy Itself

Dave Lindorff
The Plot to Make the PATRIOT Act Even Worse


May 17, 2005

Mickey Z.
GIs Behaving Badly

Petuuche Gilbert
The People of Acoma Still Fight to be Free

Paul Craig Roberts
Lies That Kill: Why Isn't Bush in the Dock?

Ramzy Baroud
The New Palestinian Uprising

Robert Jensen / Pat Youngblood
Pinning the Blame on Newsweek

Stan Cox
Poisoning Patancheru: the Severe Side Effects of India's Drug Industry

Dave Zirin
American Anthem: Ozzie Guillen and Fining for Freedom

Diana Barahona
Reporters Without Borders Unmasked

Website of the Day
Revolutionary Flower Pot Society

May 16, 2005

Michael Gillespie
The Family Released a Statement: Death Notices for the Warrior Theocracy

Jason Leopold
BP Stains the Arctic

Jesse Muldoon
How Many Schools Left Behind?

Norman Solomon
Media and the War: "The Bombs in Iraq Explode at Home"

Robert Cray
Twenty

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq is a Bloody No Man's Land

Website of the Day
Bolton's Divorce Papers: She Took It All Away, Including Most of the Furniture

 

May 14 / 15, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Join the 14 Per Cent Club!

Saul Landau
Lessons from Vietnam: Wars Kill Empires as Well as People

Gary Leupp
Whither Yale? Towards the Imperial University

JoAnn Wypijewski
The Glory that is Lockhart, Texas

Ben Tripp
The Wayward Airplane: a Cautionary Tale

Brian J. Foley
Was Jesus Gay?

Tom Barry
Bolton the Eavesdropper

Mitchell Verter
Barbarous Oaxaca: Indigenous Rights Groups Meet the "Law of the Club"

Mike Ferner
War on COs: Army Files Additional Charges Against Kevin Benderman

Dan Smith
Perceiving Darfur

Mark Scaramella
Death with Pitfalls

Don Fitz
Mommy, Is This a Finger in My Rice Puffs?: Splicing Human DNA into the Food Chain

Diane Farsetta
PR Industry Imitates Big Tobacco: the Senate's "Fake News" Hearings

Michael Dickinson
Soldier Crawling: Military Conscription in Turkey

Ron Jacobs
The Jackson State Murders

Fred Gardner
"Hydroponics? Ridiculous!": A Real Farmer Looks at Medical Marijuana

Farrah Hassen
Far From Heaven: a Review of Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven"

Douglas Valentine
50 Cent's Plea

Poets' Basement
Louise, Ford, Engel, & Albert

Website of the Weekend
Military Base Closings and the South

May 13, 2005

Tom Stephens
A Chronology of US War Crimes and Torture, 1975-2005

Patrick Cockburn
"They Destroyed Everything"

Mike Whitney
Tom Friedman, Imperial Chronicler

Chris Floyd
Miami Vice: the Sleazy World of Jeb Bush

Jenna Orkin
Ground Zero's Toxic Dust

Dave Lindorff
Googling for Fun

Joshua Frank
Yale Fires an Acclaimed Anarchist Scholar: an Interview with David Graeber

Website of the Day
Botero: Pinta El Horror de Abu Ghraib

 

May 12, 2005

Paul Craig Roberts
America is Losing: More Phony Jobs Hype

Uri Avnery
Death of a Myth

Greg Moses
Neo-Con Logic at the Border

Carolyn Baker
The Politics of Dominionism: the New Religious Right in America

Pat Williams
Amateurish High Jinks on Roadless Areas

William S. Lind
Reality Gap: the Myth of US Invincibilty

Jack Random
The Dubious Wisdom of George W. Bush

Gary Leupp
Douglas Feith Bares His Soul to Jeffrey Goldberg

 

 

May 11, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
The Rise, Fall and Rise of Ahmed Chalabi: King of Jordan to Pardon His $300 Million Bank Swindle

Kevin Zeese
The Occupation Gets More Saddam-like Every Day

Christopher Brauchli
Coffee, Tea or Torture?: A One Way Ticket to Uzbekistan

Zalman Amit
The Collapse of Academic Freedom in Israel: Tantura, Teddy Katz and Haifa University

Robert Shull
Carte Blanche for the Terror Cops: Senate Gives DHS Power to Waive All Laws

Mike Whitney
God, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst
Anti-Arabic Week at a Southern High School

Norman Solomon
Political Bluster and the Filibuster

 

May 10, 2005

Richard Drayton
The Imperial Mythology of WW II: an Ethical Blank Check

Dave Zirin
Steve Nash's Brilliant Year: Anti-War Hoopster Wins NBA's MVP

Jackie Corr
The Medicare Catch: Mrs. O'Hara's Windfall

Dave Lindorff
Silence of the Scams: Economists on China

Michael Donnelly
From Roadless to Clueless: the Great Stillborn Eco Victory

Reza Fiyouzat
Nomadic Abstracts

Scott Parkin
Taking Direct Action Against Halliburton

Stephen Babcock
The Burden of Knowing Better

Alan Farago
Florida, Water and Lobbyists

Michael Neumann
Naomi's Courage

Website of the Day
One Nation Under Plagiarism

 

May 9, 2005

Louis Proyect
Shilling for Chevron: Jared Diamond, Greenwasher

Robert Fisk
"Mission Accomplished": the Occupation, Year Two

Kevin Zeese
Concientious Objection on Trial: the Court Martial of Keith Benderman

Joshua Frank
Kerry Bashes Gay Marriage

Sasha Kramer
A Mother's Day Call for Justice in Haiti's Prisons

Andrew Wimmer
Create and Resist

Jeffrey Webber
Back to the Streets in Bolivia?

Jeffrey St. Clair
Straight to Bechtel

 

May 7 / 8, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Who Beat Hitler?

Gary Leupp
Biblical Prophecy and Christian Zionism

Saul Landau
Pope Torquemada: Purges, Pedophiles and Cover-Ups

Joe DeRaymond
Autumn of the Revolutionary: Another Look at Daniel Ortega

Daniela Ponce
Seeing Chile in Nepal

Heather Williams
Hollywood Does Enron

Gregory Elich
Zimbabwe's Fight for Justice

Anis Memon
To Cuba and Back

John Chuckman
The Peculiar State: "Criticism of Israel is a Form of Anti-Semitism"

Mike Whitney
Hard Right Rage Against the Truth

Ron Jacobs
Re-Reading "Born on the Fourth of July" as the Iraq War Grinds On

Colin Kalmbacher
Whither Disorder? Ann Coulter and the Texas Police State, Cont.

Lance Selfa
Uprising in Mexico City

Fred Gardner
"Getting High is a Little Like Cuba"

Ben Tripp
Letters on Wittgenstein

Mickey Z.
The Mother of All Days

Richard Joseph
Those Patriotic Magnets

Dr. Susan Block
Come As You Are: Masturbation 101

Poets' Basement
Smith-Ferri, Louise, Nettnin, Engel and Albert

 

 

May 6, 2005

Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad Diary: a Week of Bombs and Blood

Erin Yoshioka
Another "3 Strikes" Travesty: Why is Santo Reyes Facing Life in Prison?

Sam Husseini
Talking with Syrians

Dave Lindorff
Ernie Pyle Where Are You? When Reporters were Reporters

Kevin Zeese
Circus Trials of Abu Ghraib: When Even the Fall Girl Can't Plead Guilty

Joshua Frank
An Overextended US Military? It Won't Stop Another War

Dan Bacher
Tribes and Salmon Win One: Bush Backs Off Trinity River Water Raid

P. Sainath
India's Bloody Water Wars

 

 

May 5, 2005

Carles Mutaner
Is Chavez's Venezuela "Socialist" or "Populist?"

Carl G. Estabrook
Is There Any Hope for the Pope?

Farrah Hassen
The US's Syrian Obsession

Kevin Zeese
"Sent Into Combat Unequipped and Unprepared": an Interview with Patrick Resta

Michael Leonardi
May Day with an American Soldier in Rome

Bennett Ramberg
The Future of Nuclear Terror: Coming to a Reactor Near You

Ray McGovern
The Smoking Gun on White House Deceit

Norman Solomon
Nuclear Fundamentalism, the New York Times and Iran

Nicole Colson
The Back Alley Attack on Abortion Rights

Brian Concannon, Jr.
Clearing the Fences in Haiti

 

 

May 4, 2005

Colin Kalmbacher
Ann Coulter and the Police State: Heckle a Racist, Get Arrested

John Walsh
Al Franken is a Big Fat Phony: Lying on Air America to Support the War

Greg Moses
Vigilante Wedge: Schwarzenegger Reprises "Birth of a Nation"

Ali Khan
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Poised to Fall Apart

Chris Floyd
Ring Them Bells

Linda S. Heard
D-Day for Tony Blair: Bogeymen and Scare Tactics

Dave Zirin
The NFL, Congress and the Male Cheerleader Principle

William S. Lind
Fool's Paradise

Gary Leupp
Bolton's Proudest Moment: Breaking the UN's Anti-Zionist Resolution

Website of the Day
Kent State, May 4, 1970

 

May 3, 2005

Dave Lindorff
Bush has Grasped the Third Rail, Now Turn on the Juice

Brian Cloughley
Halliburton's War Loot

Ira Kurzban
Death Squad Diplomacy: How Bolton Armed Haiti's Thugs and Killers

Seth Sandronsky
Towards Debtors' Prisons?

Gilad Atzmon
The Labour Party Isn't an Option Any More

Michael Donnelly
Branding Eco Collapse

Alex Sanchez
Chile's Man at the OAS: a Blow to Bush?

Peter Linebaugh
Magna Carta and May Day

 

May 2, 2005

Ron Jacobs
Toward an Anti-Imperialist Movement

Stan Goff
The Case of Hasan Akbar

Karyn Strickler
Achieving Gender Balance in US Politics

Joshua Frank
Leaked UK Memo Indict's Blair's Iraq Folly

Kevin Zeese
Getting Out of Iraq will Prove Tougher Than Getting Out of Vietnam

Vicente Navarro
Pope Benedict: a Rightwing Politician

 

 

 

April 30 / May 1, 2005

Alexander Cockburn
Marla Ruzicka, Rachel Corrie and "Credibility"

Gabriel Kolko
Lessons from a Total Defeat: the End of the Vietnam War, 30 Years Later

Jennifer Loewenstein
The Disengaged: Gaza and the Fragmentation of Palestinian Nationhood

Lee Sustar
City for Sale: Richard Daley's Chicago

Saul Landau
The Bush-DeLay Axis of Naked Power

T.W. Croft
The Undiscovered Country: the High Tide of the Neo-Con Confederacy

Nikolas Kozloff
Fox News v. Hugo Chavez

William Blum
Never-Ending Double Standards

Dave Lindorff
Judicial Jury Tampering in Philly

Joshua Frank
The Bi-Partisan Assault on Teenage Girls

Doug Giebel
Saving Jane Fonda

Steven Erlanger
A Response to Kathy Christison, from the NYT Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Fred Gardner
Washington State Doctor Harassed

Mike Whitney
Another Mad Bush Press Conference

Kurt Nimmo
Putin Pussyfoots in Palestine

Joe DeRaymond
A Short History of the 15th Congressional District of Pennsylvania

Michael Dickinson
Flags

Mickey Z.
May Day at Yankee Stadium

Justin Taylor
The Crawling Chaos: HP Lovecraft's Polymorphous Legacy

Poets Basement
Krieger, Engel, Albert, St. Clair

Website of the Weekend
Save Barbados's Cowpastor

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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June 6, 2005

Federal Bureau of Entrapment

Orchestrating Terrorism

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The US has a vast and very expensive Homeland Security bureaucracy with nothing to do. There hasn't been a terrorist attack in America since 2001.

There have been a vast quantity of terror alerts, the purpose of which was to scare Americans into supporting an unnecessary and illegal aggressive attack on Iraq.

As very few, if any, real terrorists have turned up, the FBI has resorted to creating terrorists by soliciting Muslim-Americans and appealing to them with schemes to aid "jihadists." Recently, two American citizens were caught in a FBI sting. One, an Ivy-League educated physician, is charged with agreeing to provide medical care to wounded holy warriors in Saudi Arabia. The other, a famous jazz musician, is charged with agreeing to train jihadists in martial arts.

According to the Washington Times (June 1) the FBI began its sting in 2003, so it took two years of work and cajoling to manufacture the case against these two Americans.

What the FBI has done to Dr. R.A. Sabir and to Tarik Shah was once known as entrapment. Judges would throw out entrapment cases, because crime was believed to require intent to commit a crime. If the intent was given to the accused by the police through enticement or threats, it was not regarded as criminal intent on the accused person's part.

Unfortunately, "law and order" conservatives used fear of crime to "give our police more effective measures to clear criminals off our streets" and managed to eliminate the entrapment defense.

Some years ago the FBI, posing as Arab oil sheiks, entrapped US Representatives in a sting operation.

The FBI handed out large bundles of cash to Congressmen who accepted the offer to represent the fake sheiks' interests. Film footage of the Congressmen stuffing their pockets with money was all the FBI needed to convict the members. The fact that campaign contributions come from interest groups that expect to be represented did not count in the stung US Representatives' favor.

Note that the two latest victims, Sabir and Tarik, could not have offered their services to jihadists, because no jihadists were present. Note also that Sabir and Tarik are not accused of actually performing an act of service. Sabir and Tarik had no contact with real jihadists, and they committed no act of service to jihadists. Yet, both face $250,000 fines and 15 years in prison.

All that happened was that two productive American citizens were deceived by government agents for no other purpose than those agents having to show "results" in the "war on terror."

How does it make us safer to put a medical doctor and a jazz musician in prison? Why did the FBI spend two years entrapping these two American citizens?

Both men have wives and children. Suppose both men agreed to provide some service to jihadists. (We don't know that they did. We only have the FBI's word for it, a word that is not worth much.) The reason could easily be fear of reprisals.

Suppose you are a Muslim-American and FBI agents misrepresenting themselves as dangerous jihadists demanded services of you? Neither of the accused agreed to participate in a terrorist act: no bombs, no shootings, no hijackings. A doctor agreed to keep his Hippocratic oath if presented with wounded people in Saudi Arabia. A jazz musician agreed to teach martial arts. When was the last time a terrorist attacked with judo or karate?

Many years ago there was a movie about a British medical doctor who treated a man wounded in an act of rebellion against England. The English judge, portrayed in the movie as unjust in the extreme, ruled that being humane was tantamount to being a rebel and the doctor was sold into slavery to the Spanish. Unless memory fails, the movie was "Capital Blood" with Errol Flynn.

In the movie, the doctor did actually treat the wounded man. The charge against Dr. Sabir is that he agreed to treat a wounded man if presented with one in Saudi Arabia in the future. There is no way of knowing if he would have done so. But if the US is prepared to deny medical treatment to its opponents, why does anyone doubt the torture stories?

The FBI is so desperate to capture a terrorist that it spent two years setting up a doctor on this specious charge.

Like the police who find it easier to frame people than to convict them on the evidence, the FBI will find it easier to manufacture "terrorists" with entrapment than to catch real terrorists.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com