DEMOCRACY NOW!– Republicans and Democrats are already gearing up for the 2012 election, projected to be the most expensive in history. Obama is expected to formally kick off his re-election bid on April 14, and his campaign could raise as much as $1 billion. In a move criticized by progressives, Obama has appointed former White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina as his campaign manager. Obama’s move has drawn scrutiny over Messina’s ties to corporate America, his push to drop the public option from healthcare reform, and his lack of support for gay rights. We speak with journalist and author Ari Berman about his new profile of Messina in The Nation. “Messina has a ‘take no prisoners’ style; the problem is, the people he’s often taking prisoner are Democratic activists and grassroots organizers,” Berman says.

For the full transcript, click here.

© Copyright Democracy Now!, 2011

MEDIA ROOTS– Barack Obama is fighting wars on multiple fronts: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and now Libya. His cabinet just approved the biggest military budget since WW2 to fight the global “War on Terror”, and at this rate he will have spent over $8 trillion on defense alone if he serves a full eight year term (including the hidden costs of the war economy). Half of all US tax dollars is spent on US military actions, and the American government spends more on national defense than every other country’s military budget in the world combined.

Every American should ask themselves why it is necessary to spend such an outrageous amount of money on national defense. Is this government really trying to protect the people of this country from the ominous threat of terrorism, or could policy makers be more invested in resource control and profit maximization for their corporate financeers?

This video breaks down how Barack Obama is accelerating America’s descent into a war economy.

For more information and resources, please watch the brilliant film Lifting the Veil about Barack Obama and the failure of capitalist “democracy”: http://bit.ly/hH2BCH

Photo by flickr user Ethan

CNN– CIA operatives are providing intelligence from Libya, where opposition forces are on the run and the defiant government suffered the embarrassing defection of its foreign minister Wednesday.

The NATO-led coalition, which is enforcing a no-fly zone and protecting civilians from the intense fighting, got no help from the weather in its ongoing efforts to protect the fragile opposition movement.

“The weather conditions did not allow close combat support by aircraft in the last couple of days,” said Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Moammar Gadhafi’s government, for its part, kept up the war of words. State-run Libyan TV late Wednesday quoted a military source as saying a “civilian location was shelled tonight in the city of Tripoli by the colonizing crusader aggression.”

Amid debate on whether the allies will arm the retreating and undertrained rebels, a U.S. intelligence source told CNN the CIA is in the country to increase the “military and political understanding” of the situation. “Yes, we are gathering intel firsthand and we are in contact with some opposition entities,” said the source.

For more information, read CIA Operating in Libya, in Consultation with Opposition.

© Copyright CNN 2011

LIBERTY UNDERGROUND– The Former CIA Counter-terrorism analyst Michael Scheuer strongly opposed the Obama’s administration actions in Libya on CNN this morning. Scheuer believes that there isn’t a strong case for America’s intervention especially at a time when the country hasn’t even recovered from the recession. Also, Scheuer had doubts if the rebels that we are arming would really be any better than the Gadaffi regime: “I’m not sure that that the opposition, if it takes power, is going to be much better than was Gadaffi.” Moreover, Scheuer argues that the US involvement in Libya would serve as a recruitment tool for extremists. “In the muslim world, this is Americans killing Muslims again, and it looks like its for oil.”

Scheuer also suggested the rationale behind US involvement in yet another war “at a time when we’re nearly bankrupt.” to which the CNN host, Christine Romans, expressed disagreement suggesting that Libya and US economy are two distinct issues. Scheuer protested “they are not separate issues, ma’am, you’re just carrying the water for Mr. Obama.”

SALON– One of the most intense scandals the field of psychology has faced over the last decade is the involvement of several of its members in enabling Bush’s worldwide torture regime.  Numerous health professionals worked for the U.S. government to help understand how best to mentally degrade and break down detainees. At the center of that controversy was — and is — Dr. Larry James.  James, a retired Army colonel, was the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo in 2003, at the height of the abuses at that camp, and then served in the same position at Abu Ghraib during 2004.  

Today, Dr. James circulated an excited email announcing, “with great pride,” that he has now been selected to serve on the “White House Task Force entitled Enhancing the Psychological Well-Being of The Military Family.”  In his new position, he will be meeting at the White House with Michelle Obama and other White House officials on Tuesday.

For his work at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, Dr. James was the subject of two formal ethics complaints in the two states where he is licensed to practice: Louisiana and Ohio.  Those complaints — 50 pages long and full of detailed and well-documented allegations — were filed by the International Human Rights Clinic of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, on behalf of veterans, mental health professionals and others.  The complaints detailed how James “was the senior psychologist of the Guantánamo BSCT, a small but influential group of mental health professionals whose job it was to advise on and participate in the interrogations, and to help create an environment designed to break down prisoners.”  Specifically:

During his tenure at the prison, boys and men were threatened with rape and death for themselves and their family members; sexually, culturally, and religiously humiliated; forced naked; deprived of sleep; subjected to sensory deprivation, over-stimulation, and extreme isolation; short-shackled into stress positions for hours; and physically assaulted. The evidence indicates that abuse of this kind was systemic, that BSCT health professionals played an integral role in its planning and practice. . . .

Writing in 2009, Law Professor Bill Quigley and Deborah Popowski, a Fellow at the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program, described James’ role in this particularly notorious incident:

In 2003, Louisiana psychologist and retired Col. Larry James watched behind a one-way mirror in a US prison camp while an interrogator and three prison guards wrestled a screaming, near-naked man on the floor.

The prisoner had been forced into pink women’s panties, lipstick and a wig; the men then pinned the prisoner to the floor in an effort “to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown.” As he recounts in his memoir, “Fixing Hell,” Dr. James initially chose not to respond. He “opened [his] thermos, poured a cup of coffee, and watched the episode play out, hoping it would take a better turn and not wanting to interfere without good reason …”

Although he claims to eventually find “good reason” to intervene, the Army colonel never reported the incident or even so much as reprimanded men who had engaged in activities that constituted war crimes.

Read full article about Top Bush-era Psychologist Obama’s Newest Appointment.

Written by Glenn Greenwald

NATIONAL JOURNAL– With U.N. coalition forces bombarding Libyan leader Muammar el-Qaddafi from the sea and air, the United States’ part in the operation could ultimately hit several billion dollars — and require the Pentagon to request emergency funding from Congress to pay for it.

The first day of Operation Odyssey Dawn had a price tag that was well over $100 million for the U.S. in missiles alone. And the U.S. military, which remains in the lead now in its third day, has pumped millions more into air- and sea-launched strikes targeting air-defense sites and ground-force positions along Libya’s coastline.

The ultimate total that the United States spends will hinge on the length and scope of the strikes as well as on the contributions of its coalition allies. But Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said on Monday that the U.S. costs could “easily pass the $1 billion mark on this operation, regardless of how well things go.”

Read more on the Cost of Libya Bombing Piling Up.

© 2011 National Journal

photo by flickr user mshamma