Guest blogged by Chris Floyd. Originally posted at Empire Burlesque, September 10, 2006.

Let us pause on this day of solemn remembrance and take stock of what our noble Leader has done in the world with the vast storehouse of "political capital" he received from the "new Pearl Harbor" that his noble captains Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Libby (and brother Jeb) once openly called for – in September 2000 – in a document published by their noble organization of selfless zealots for global altruism, The Project for a New American Century. Now, on this solemn occasion, as the noble Leader himself takes to the airwaves to remind us of his nobility in those dark days after the attack that his noble captains had so presciently yearned for, let us assay just one small gleaning of the great and noble crop of freedom the Leader has harvested with the seeds from what he has often called the "opportunity" provided by the murder of almost 3,000 American citizens and nationals from many other countries.

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd | Originally posted at Empire Burlesque

Kos comes up with this nice catch:

Top Bush counterterrorism official bashes ABC's 9/11 mockumentary

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd

A slightly expanded version of the column appearing in the July 28th edition of The Moscow Times, as posted at Empire Burlesque.

The history of almost every religion is a tragedy of betrayal: the betrayal of the radical, egalitarian vision of its founders by generations of powerful elites, who twist and pervert the original principles in order to augment their own status, wealth and dominion. It has always been thus, but is nowhere more marked than among the "People of the Book" – Christians, Muslims and Jews – whose elites have for centuries steadily led their followers away from the sparks of light that shone in their beginnings, dragging them deeper into darkness, into error, until today the world finds itself mired in a new Jahiliyyah: "the time of ignorance."

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd

Below is an expanded version of my column in today's edition of The Moscow Times.

Four years ago, George W. Bush quietly assumed dictatorial powers with a secret executive order granting himself the right to imprison anyone on earth indefinitely, without charges or trial or indictment or evidence, simply by declaring them an "enemy combatant," on his say-so alone. This week, the assemblage of bootlickers and bagmen that now befoul the U.S. Senate voted to codify the core of this global autocracy under the pretense of curtailing it.

With great self-fluffing fanfare, the Senate passed two measures ostensibly designed to stem the flood of torture and tyranny issuing from the White House. But the twinned amendments to a military spending bill have the curious effect of cancelling each other out: the anti-torture measure leaves Bush's tyranny intact, while the anti-tyranny measure will allow torture to continue unabated. This switcheroo, we are told by one of the scam's sponsors, "will reestablish moral high ground for the United States," the Washington Post reports.

But what can we actually see from this lofty moral promontory? We see that all foreign captives in Bush's worldwide gulag have now been stripped of the ancient human right of habeas corpus. They will not be allowed to challenge "any aspect of their detention" in court --- until they have already been tried and convicted by a "military tribunal" constituted under rules concocted arbitrarily by Bush and his minions. Only then, after years of incarceration without rights or legal protection, will they be given access to a single federal appeals court which can review their conviction --- subject to the usual "national security" restrictions on challenging evidence gathered by secret means from secret sources in secret places. Remarkably, the Supreme Court is expressly prohibited from any jurisdiction whatsoever over any aspect of gulag captivity, the Washington Post reports. And of course, Bush can simply skip the tribunal and keep anyone he pleases chained in legal limbo until they rot. Neither of the ballyhooed amendments affects this raw despotism.

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd

{Introduction by Winter Patriot: Chris Floyd joins us again for another guest spot, this time with news about Weapons Of Mass Destruction. Please note that Chris has a new website, Chris-Floyd.com. I suggest you modify your bookmarks accordingly. And without further ado... here's Chris:}

"Seen the arrow on the doorpost
Saying, "This land is condemned,
All the way from New Orleans
To Jerusalem." --- Dylan, "Blind Willie McTell"

From the Gulf of Mexico to the Persian Gulf, Bush is busy earning his new title: Master of Disaster. Here we catch up with one of his most sordid --- and unsung --- war crimes: using radioactive "dirty bombs" and chemical weapons in Iraq. The item below was published in the Sept. 2 edition of The Moscow Times.

It was the one great fear that trumped all the others, the nightmare scenario that overrode reason, skepticism, and all political debate, stampeding the nation into war: the thought of terrorists wielding weapons of mass destruction --- "dirty bombs" packed with cancerous nukestuff and gene-warping chemical poisons that would kill, maim and deform the innocent.

This was the horror that George W. Bush and his supporters held up --- and still hold up --- before the American people as the moral imperative behind his invasion of Iraq, and the justification for any so-called "abuses" that might be committed in his desperate, noble, no-holds-barred defense of the realm against this ungodly terror.

And despite all the critics and nay-sayers, the president has indeed proven to be a prophet: the nightmare has come true. There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq --- dirty bombs and poison shells --- and they are being used by terrorist leaders to kill and maim Americans, including newborn children. But the "liberal media" are completely burying the story, in a shameless act of treasonous complicity with these enemies of civilization.

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd

INTRODUCTION {by Winter Patriot} Once again I am honored to introduce a masterful contribution from one of the English-speaking world's most literate truth-tellers, the honorable Chris Floyd. An American journalist living in England, whose column on world affairs, "Global Eye", is published weekly in The Moscow Times, the proprietor of the excellent blog Empire Burlesque, and a good friend of both The BRAD BLOG and The Whispering Campaign, Chris Floyd joins us once again, to share a column that was published in Friday's Moscow Times. And this time he has brought a spark of hope.

Here's Chris:

In his inaugural speech last January, President George W. Bush repeatedly invoked images of unbridled, ravaging destruction as the emblem of his crusade for "freedom." Fire was his symbol, his word of power, his incantation of holy war. Mirroring the rhetoric of his fundamentalist enemies, Bush moved the conflict from the political to the spiritual, from the outer world to the inner soul, claiming that he had lit "a fire in the minds of men."

But words are recalcitrant things; they have their own magic, and they will often find their own meanings, outside the intentions of those who use them. Bush has indeed inflamed the minds of men --- and women --- with his military crusade. But it is not the "untamed fire of freedom" that scorches them: it is the fire of grief and outrage at the lies that have consumed the bodies of their loved ones. This bitter flame burns in the rubble of blasted houses in Iraq and in the quiet, leafy suburbs of America, where the dead are mourned and the mutilated are left as the enduring legacy of Bush's cruel, wilful and unnecessary war.

This "fire in the mind" has now found its own symbol, in the unlikely figure of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain American soldier. Here again, Bush's war-rousing words have gotten away from him. Sheehan's campaign --- which began as a lonely vigil outside Bush's vacation ranch and has now spread across the country --- centers on a single, simple request: that Bush explain to her what he means when he describes the war as "a noble cause."

Sheehan is no professional activist, no savvy insider or political junkie. She's an ordinary citizen, whose unadorned speech has none of the sweep and grandeur of Bush's expensively tailored rhetoric. But she has one thing that his professional scripters can never put in the presidential mouth: truth.

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd

INTRODUCTION {by Winter Patriot} Once again we are honored to present a massive contribution from one of the English-speaking world's most literate truth-tellers, the honorable Chris Floyd. An American journalist living in England, whose column on world affairs, "Global Eye", is published weekly in The Moscow Times, proprietor of the excellent blog Empire Burlesque, and a good friend of both The BRAD BLOG and The Whispering Campaign, Chris Floyd joins us here for the third time. In July, his excellent essay, "The Dream Of Unlimited Swag", inspired a very interesting thread. The same sort of thing happened last week when we featured his newest column from The Moscow Times, Grease Monkeys: The Speaker, The Spigot and the Slitherer-in-Chief.

Here's Chris:

What would you call people who paid sadistic torturers for the information they had gleaned from macabre medical experiments on their helpless captives � and then used these evil findings to make biological weapons?

Why, you'd call them members of "the greatest generation," of course!

As we learn from ABC News (Australia) this week, the American victors in World War II "gave money and other benefits to former members of a Japanese germ warfare unit two years after the end of World War II to obtain data on human experiments the unit conducted in China.

U.S. military intelligence showered millions of dollars on these Mengeles � along with "food, gifts, entertainment and other kinds of rewards" (emphasis added). One shudders to think what this unnamed largesse entailed � "comfort women," perhaps? It seems nothing was too good for these "top-flight pathologists" who murdered more than 3,000 Chinese, Russians and others in their torture chambers.

Their patron was Brigadier General Charles Willoughby, head of the G2 intelligence unit of the US occupation forces in Japan. In his reports to his superiors, Willoughby waxed lyrical on the cost-efficient benefits of his war-criminal wooing. The killers' "data on human experiments may prove invaluable," and was "only obtainable through the skilful, psychological approach" to the torturers � i.e., buying them off.

"All of these actions did not amount to more than 200,000 yen, netting the [United States] the fruit of 20 years' laboratory tests and research," Willoughby wrote. The cost of obtaining the data, said the general, was "a mere pittance."

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd

INTRODUCTION {by Winter Patriot} Once again I have the pleasure of introducing one of my favorite writers for a spot of guest blogging. An American journalist living in London [England], whose column on world affairs, "Global Eye", is published weekly in The Moscow Times, proprietor of the excellent blog Empire Burlesque, and a good friend of both The BRAD BLOG and The Whispering Campaign, the redoubtable Chris Floyd joins us for a second time. Back in July, his excellent essay, "The Dream Of Unlimited Swag", inspired a truly excellent thread.

The following essay is a slightly expanded version of the column published earlier today, August 12, in The Moscow Times. And here's the best part: Chris has offered to stop by from time to time, to answer your questions or respond to your comments. Please welcome a truth-teller of exceptional passion and skill, a journalist whom we are very proud to call our friend. Here's Chris Floyd:

One of the grubby little secrets of the Great Potomac Grease Pit --- otherwise known as the government of the United States - is that the massive amount of bribes given and taken there often has little effect on the final outcome of policy decisions and legislation.

Cynics --- and you know you who are --- tend to believe that Washington is overrun with sleazy bagmen prowling the halls of Congress and slithering down White House corridors, proffering baubles, trinkets, sweetmeats and other enticements to plucky public servants, drawing them away from the straight and narrow to do the bidding of rapacious elites. But like so many of the hateful canards issuing from the foul stithy of the liberal imagination these days, this fantasy contains scarcely a shred of truth.

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd

But that was then; this is now. The following contribution from Chris Floyd is a BRAD BLOGATHON EXCLUSIVE. In his words, it's:

something went weeeerd on me when I was trying to set up this page and I eventually moved Chris over to another thread. oh well.

(A guest post in honor and support of BradBlog from American journalist Chris Floyd, columnist for The Moscow Times and perpetrator of the blog "Empire Burlesque".)

Between October 2003 and July 2004, almost $9 billion went missing from the accounts of the Iraqi "interim government." Despite investigations by Congress, the Pentagon, the General Accountability Office, the International Advisory and Monitoring Board and the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, no one knows exactly where the money went.