Military to be on high alert for inauguration
by Julian E. Barnes via rialator 2008-12-18 20:19:13

About 11,500 troops, including chemical attack experts, will join the security detail as Obama takes the oath of office.

Reporting from Washington — The U.S. military will be on high alert during Barack Obama's inauguration, increasing air defenses and deploying chemical attack experts and medical units, a general said Wednesday.

Air Force Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., who heads the military command that oversees security for North America, said the Defense Department had not been told of specific Inauguration Day threats. Nonetheless, he said, the armed services must be ready.

"It would make news for a terrorist element or rogue element to interrupt that event," Renuart said. "So it is prudent to plan for the possibility of that event and to deter it or to respond to it."

The preparations come amid heightened security concerns during the presidential transition. The Bush administration is planning to provide the president-elect with a series of contingency plans for potential international emergencies, including terrorist strikes and electronic attacks, that could occur after Obama takes the oath of office.

The Secret Service is in charge of security for the inauguration. The agency is coordinating with local police departments, as well as with 4,000 law enforcement officers from 96 jurisdictions. About 11,500 military personnel will take part.

Secret Service officials have established 23 planning teams but have provided few details. Inauguration organizers are considering a loudspeaker system to broadcast evacuation instructions in the event of an attack.

Renuart said the military's preparations were meant to support civilian-led efforts.

After 2001, the U.S. Northern Command, frequently called Northcom, was given broad responsibility for assisting with domestic security. Renuart is also the commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which guards U.S. airspace.

The military response is not unprecedented. Northern Command officials said they provided security for inaugural activities in 2005, as well as for national political conventions and major athletic events such as the Super Bowl.

Some military personnel will be part of the inauguration, playing in bands, marching in parades and conducting honor ceremonies. But Renuart said much of the force would have a security role.

About 4,000 National Guard members will provide support to local law enforcement, boosting security on the National Mall and around Washington, where millions of people are expected. There also will be 7,500 troops under federal control, including emergency medical teams and experts in chemical attacks.

Air defenses around Washington are always tight, but Renuart said the number of patrols would increase.

The contingencies to be conveyed by the White House to the Obama team are separate from the inaugural preparations. They are meant to ensure that the new administration is as prepared as possible on Jan. 20.

The White House briefing, first reported by the New York Times, is part of a larger transition effort by the National Security Council to identify international trouble spots for the new administration.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said: "We want to provide them, especially in the first few weeks, the basis for which they can have some information to make their decisions. This is a menu of contingencies and possible options."

Obama is trying to fill key national security jobs, hoping the Senate will confirm many of his appointments on the day of the inauguration or soon after.

Johndroe said the Bush administration would make sure there were career officials ready to act should a crisis develop before Obama's appointees were confirmed.

© 2008 Los Angeles Times

[If you wish to learn how the trick is performed, never allow the magician to guide your attention! We seriously doubt the inauguration would attract a major 'external' threat. Nevertheless, the murdering insiders that planned the (now exposed) anthrax letter and Pentagon attacks are completely INSANE and should not be underestimated. That is why it is IMPERATIVE that the criminal Bush regime is held to account!]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-obama-inauguration18-2008dec18,0,693338.story

Demands for War Crimes Prosecutions Are Now Growing in The Mainstream
by Glenn Greenwald via rialator 2008-12-20 00:05:20

For obvious reasons, the most blindly loyal Bush followers of the last eight years are desperate to claim that nobody cares any longer about what happened during the Bush administration, that everyone other than the most fringe, vindictive Bush-haters is eager to put it all behind us, forget about it all and, instead, look to the harmonious, sunny future. That's natural. Those who cheer on shameful and despicable acts always want to encourage everyone to forget what they did, and those who commit crimes naturally seek to dismiss demands for investigations and punishment as nothing more than distractions and vendettas pushed by those who want to wallow in the past.

Surprisingly, though, demands that Bush officials be held accountable for their war crimes are becoming more common in mainstream political discourse, not less so. The mountain of conclusive evidence that has recently emerged directly linking top Bush officials to the worst abuses -- combined with Dick Cheney's brazen, defiant acknowledgment of his role in these crimes (which perfectly tracked Bush's equally defiant 2005 acknowledgment of his illegal eavesdropping programs and his brazen vow to continue them) -- is forcing even the reluctant among us to embrace the necessity of such accountability.

It's almost as though everyone's nose is now being rubbed in all of this: now that the culpability of our highest government officials is no longer hidden, but is increasingly all out in the open, who can still defend the notion that they should remain immune from consequences for their patent lawbreaking? As Law Professor Jonathan Turley said several weeks ago on The Rachel Maddow Show: "It's the indictment of all of us if we walk away from a clear war crime." And this week, Turley pointed out to Keith Olbermann that "ultimately it will depend on citizens, and whether they will remain silent in the face of a crime that has been committed in plain view. . . . It is equally immoral to stand silent in the face of a war crime and do nothing."

That recognition, finally, seems to be spreading -- beyond the handful of blogs, civil liberties organizations and activists who have long been trumpeting the need for this accountability. The New York Times Editorial Page today has a lengthy, scathing decree demanding prosecutions: "It would be irresponsible for the nation and a new administration to ignore what has happened . . . . A prosecutor should be appointed to consider criminal charges against top officials at the Pentagon and others involved in planning the abuse." Today, Politico -- of all places -- is hosting a forum which asks: "Should the DOJ consider prosecuting Bush administration officials for detainee abuse as the NYT and others have urged?" Even Chris Matthews and Chris Hitchens yesterday entertained (albeit incoherently and apologetically) the proposition that top Bush officials committed war crimes.

Perhaps most notably of all -- and illustrating the importance of finally having someone like Rachel Maddow occupy such a prominent place in an establishment media venue -- Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, one of the Senate's most restrained, influential and Serious members, was prodded by Maddow last night into going about as far as someone like him could be expected to go, acknowledging the necessity of appointing a Prosecutor to investigate top Bush officials for the war crimes they committed and to determine if prosecutions are warranted:

To be sure, the political class still desperately wants to avoid meaningful investigations and prosecutions, in no small part because every key component of it -- including the leaders in both parties -- are implicated by so much of it. But as more undeniable evidence emerges of just how warped and criminal and heinous the conduct of our top political leaders has been -- and the more Dick Cheney and comrades resort to openly admitting what they did and proudly defending it, rather than obfuscating it behind euphemisms and secrecy claims -- the more difficult it will be to justify doing nothing meaningful. That is why, even as the desire to forget about the Bush era intensifies with the Promise of Obama ever-more-closely on the horizon, the recognition continues to grow of the need for real accountability.

The weapons used to prevent such accountability are quite familiar and will still be potent. Those who demand accountability will be derided as past-obsessed partisans who want to impede all the Glorious, Transcendent Gifts about to be bestowed on us by our new leaders. The manipulative claim will be endlessly advanced that our problems are too grand and pressing to permit the luxury of living under the rule of law. When all else fails in the stonewalling arsenal, impotent "fact-finding" commissions will be proposed to placate the demand for accountability but which will, in fact, be designed and empowered to achieve only one goal: to render actual prosecutions impossible.

But with these new, unprecedentedly stark revelations, this facade will be increasingly difficult to maintain. It is already the case, as the Times Editorial today notes, that "all but President Bush's most unquestioning supporters [i.e., this] recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services." That leaves only two choices: (1) treat these crimes as the serious war crimes they are by having a Prosecutor investigate and, if warranted, prosecute them, or (2) openly acknowledge -- to ourselves and the world -- that we believe that our leaders are literally entitled to commit war crimes at will, and that we -- but not the rest of the world -- should be exempt from the consequences. The clearer it becomes that those are the only two choices, the more difficult it will be to choose option (2), and either way, there is great benefit just from having that level of clarity and candor about what we are really doing.

© 2008 Salon.com

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/19-7