DENNIS KUCINICH: 35 ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT AGAINST GEORGE W. BUSH

Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio In the United States House of Representatives
Monday, June 9th, 2008 A Resolution

INDEX

Article I Creating a Secret Propaganda Campaign to Manufacture a False Case
for War Against Iraq.

Article II Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the
Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security
Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of

Aggression.

Article III Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to
Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False
Case for War.

Article IV Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe
Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States.

Article V Illegally Misspending Funds to Secretly Begin a War of Aggression.

Article VI Invading Iraq in Violation of the Requirements of HJRes114.

Article VII Invading Iraq Absent a Declaration of War.

Article VIII Invading Iraq, A Sovereign Nation, in Violation of the UN
Charter.

Article IX Failing to Provide Troops With Body Armor and Vehicle Armor

Article X Falsifying Accounts of US Troop Deaths and Injuries for Political
Purposes

Article XI Establishment of Permanent U.S. Military Bases in Iraq

Article XII Initiating a War Against Iraq for Control of That Nation's
Natural Resources

Article XIIII Creating a Secret Task Force to Develop Energy and Military
Policies With Respect to Iraq and Other Countries

Article XIV Misprision of a Felony, Misuse and Exposure of Classified
Information And Obstruction of Justice in the Matter of Valerie Plame
Wilson, Clandestine Agent of the Central Intelligence Agency

Article XV Providing Immunity from Prosecution for Criminal Contractors in
Iraq

Article XVI Reckless Misspending and Waste of U.S. Tax Dollars in Connection
With Iraq and US Contractors

Article XVII Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge
Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives

Article XVIII Torture: Secretly Authorizing, and Encouraging the Use of
Torture Against Captives in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Other Places, as a Matter
of Official Policy

Article XIX Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will
to "Black Sites" Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to
Practice Torture

Article XX Imprisoning Children

Article XXI Misleading Congress and the American People About Threats from
Iran, and Supporting Terrorist Organizations Within Iran, With the Goal of
Overthrowing the Iranian Government

Article XXII Creating Secret Laws

Article XXIII Violation of the Posse Comitatus Act

Article XXIV Spying on American Citizens, Without a Court-Ordered Warrant,in
Violation of the Law and the Fourth Amendment

Article XXV Directing Telecommunications Companies to Create an Illegal and
Unconstitutional Database of the Private Telephone Numbers and Emails of
American Citizens

Article XXVI Announcing the Intent to Violate Laws with Signing Statements

Article XXVII Failing to Comply with Congressional Subpoenas and Instructing
Former Employees Not to Comply

Article XXVIII Tampering with Free and Fair Elections, Corruption of the
Administration of Justice

Article XXIX Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965

Article XXX Misleading Congress and the American People in an Attempt to
Destroy Medicare

Article XXXI Katrina: Failure to Plan for the Predicted Disaster of
Hurricane Katrina, Failure to Respond to a Civil Emergency

Article XXXII Misleading Congress and the American People, Systematically
Undermining Efforts to Address Global Climate Change

Article XXXIII Repeatedly Ignored and Failed to Respond to High Level
Intelligence Warnings of Planned Terrorist Attacks in the US, Prior to 911.

Article XXXIV Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September
11, 2001

Article XXXV Endangering the Health of 911 First Responders ____________

ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT FOR PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

Resolved, that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and
misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to
the United States Senate: Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of
Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of
the people of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of
its impeachment against President George W. Bush for high crimes and
misdemeanors.

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in
violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of
President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation
of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed, has committed the following abuses of power.

_____________

ARTICLE I

CREATING A SECRET PROPAGANDA CAMPAIGN TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE CASE FOR

WAR AGAINST IRAQ In his conduct while President of the United States, George
W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the
office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability,
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in
violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the
Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both
personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the
Vice President, illegally spent public dollars on a secret propaganda
program to manufacture a false cause for war against Iraq.

The Department of Defense (DOD) has engaged in a years-long secret domestic
propaganda campaign to promote the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This
secret program was defended by the White House Press Secretary following its
exposure. This program follows the pattern of crimes detailed in Article I,
II, IV and VIII.. The mission of this program placed it within the field
controlled by the White House Iraq Group (WHIG), a White House task-force
formed in August 2002 to market an invasion of Iraq tothe American people.
The group included Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Karen
Hughes, Mary Matalin, Stephen Hadley, Nicholas E. Calio, and James R.
Wilkinson.

The WHIG produced white papers detailing so-called intelligence of Iraq's
nuclear threat that later proved to be false. This supposed intelligence
included the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger as well as the
claim that the high strength aluminum tubes Iraq purchased from China were
to be used for the sole purpose of building centrifuges to enrich uranium.
Unlike the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002, the WHIG's white papers
provided "gripping images and stories" and used "literary license" with
intelligence. The WHIG's white papers were written at the same time and by
the same people as speeches and talking points prepared for President Bush
and some of his top officials.

The WHIG also organized a media blitz in which, between September 7-8, 2002,
President Bush and his top advisers appeared on numerous interviews and all
provided similarly gripping images about the possibility of nuclear attack
by Iraq. The timing was no coincidence, as Andrew Card explained in an
interview regarding waiting until after Labor Day to try to sell the
American people on military action against Iraq, "From a marketing point of
view, you don't introduce new products in August."

September 7-8, 2002:

NBC's "Meet the Press: Vice President Cheney accused Saddam of moving
aggressively to develop nuclear weapons over the past 14 months to add to
his stockpile of chemical and biological arms.

CNN: Then-National Security Adviser Rice said, regarding the likelihood of
Iraq obtaining a nuclear weapon, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a
mushroom cloud."

CBS: President Bush declared that Saddam was "six months away from
developing a weapon," and cited satellite photos of construction in Iraq
where weapons inspectors once visited as evidence that Saddam was trying to
develop nuclear arms.

The Pentagon military analyst propaganda program was revealed in an April
20, 2002, New York Times article. The program illegally involved "covert
attempts to mold opinion through the undisclosed use of third parties."
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recruited 75 retired military officers
and gave them talking points to deliver on Fox, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, and
MSNBC, and according to the New York Times report, which has not been
disputed by the Pentagon or the White House, "Participants were instructed
not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts
with the Pentagon."

According to the Pentagon's own internal documents, the military analysts
were considered "message force multipliers" or "surrogates" who would
deliver administration "themes and messages" to millions of Americans "in
the form of their own opinions." In fact, they did deliver the themes and
the messages but did not reveal that the Pentagon had provided them with
their talking points. Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and Fox
News military analyst described this as follows: "It was them saying, 'We
need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you.'"

Congress has restricted annual appropriations bills since 1951 with this
language: "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act
shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States
not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

A March 21, 2005, report by the Congressional Research Service states that
"publicity or propaganda" is defined by the U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO) to mean either (1) self-aggrandizement by public officials, (2)
purely partisan activity, or (3) "covert propaganda." These concerns about
"covert propaganda" were also the basis for the GAO's standard for
determining when government-funded video news releases are illegal:

"The failure of an agency to identify itself as the source of a prepackaged
news story misleads the viewing public by encouraging the viewing audience
to believe that the broadcasting news organization developed the
information. The prepackaged news stories are purposefully designed to be
indistinguishable from news segments broadcast to the public. When the
television viewing public does not know that the stories they watched on
television news programs about the government were in fact prepared by the
government, the stories are, in this sense, no longer purely factual -- the
essential fact of attribution is missing."

The White House's own Office of Legal Council stated in a memorandum written
in 2005 following the controversy over the Armstrong Williams scandal: "Over
the years, GAO has interpreted 'publicity or propaganda' restrictions to
preclude use of appropriated funds for, among other things, so-called
'covert propaganda.' ... Consistent with that view, the OLC determined in
1988 that a statutory prohibition on using appropriated funds for 'publicity
or propaganda' precluded undisclosed agency funding of advocacy by
third-party groups. We stated that 'covert attempts to mold opinion through
the undisclosed use of third parties' would run afoul of restrictions on
using appropriated funds for 'propaganda.'"

Asked about the Pentagon's propaganda program at White House press briefing
in April 2008, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino defended it, not by
arguing that it was legal but by suggesting that it "should" be: "Look, I
didn't know look, I think that you guys should take a step back and look at
this look, DOD has made a decision, they've decided to stop this program.
But I would say that one of the things that we try to do in the
administration is get information out to a variety of people so that
everybody else can call them and ask their opinion about something. And I
don't think that that should be against the law. And I think that it's
absolutely appropriate to provide information to people who are seeking it
and are going to be providing their opinions on it. It doesn't necessarily
mean that all of those military analysts ever agreed with the
administration. I think you can go back and look and think that a lot of
their analysis was pretty tough on the administration. That doesn't mean
that we shouldn't talk to people."

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in
a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and
subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of
law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United
States.

Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an
impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article II

FALSELY, SYSTEMATICALLY, AND WITH CRIMINAL INTENT CONFLATING THE ATTACKS OF
SEPTEMBER 11, 2001 WITH MISREPRESENTATION OF IRAQ AS AN IMMINENT SECURITY
THREAT AS PART OF A FRAUDULENT JUSTIFICATION FOR A WAR OF AGGRESSION.

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in
violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of
President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation
of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution
"to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and
acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice
President, executed a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive the
citizens and Congress of the United States into believing that there was and
is a connection between Iraq and Saddam Hussein on the one hand, and the
attacks of September 11, 2001 and al Qaeda, on the other hand, so as to
falsely justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation
of Iraq in a manner that is damaging to the national security interests of
the United States, as well as to fraudulently obtain and maintain
congressional authorization and funding for the use of such military force
against Iraq, thereby interfering with and obstructing Congress's lawful
functions of overseeing foreign affairs and declaring war.

The means used to implement this deception were and continue to be, first,
allowing, authorizing and sanctioning the manipulation of intelligence
analysis by those under his direction and control, including the Vice
President and the Vice President's agents, and second, personally making, or
causing, authorizing and allowing to be made through highly-placed
subordinates, including the President's Chief of Staff, the White House
Press Secretary and other White House spokespersons, the Secretaries of
State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, and their deputies and
spokespersons, false and fraudulent representations to the citizens of the
United States and Congress regarding an alleged connection between Saddam
Hussein and Iraq, on the one hand, and the September 11th attacks and al
Qaeda, on the other hand, that were half-true, literally true but
misleading, and/or made without a reasonable basis and with reckless
indifference to their truth, as well as omitting to state facts necessary to
present an accurate picture of the truth as follows:

(A) On or about September 12, 2001, former terrorism advisor Richard Clarke
personally informed the President that neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq was
responsible for the September 11th attacks. On September 18, Clarke
submitted to the President's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice a
memo he had written in response to George W. Bush's specific request that
stated: (1) the case for linking Hussein to the September 11th attacks was
weak; (2) only anecdotal evidence linked Hussein to al Qaeda; (3) Osama Bin
Laden resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein; and (4) there was no
confirmed reporting of Saddam Hussein cooperating with Bin Laden on
unconventional weapons.

(B) Ten days after the September 11th attacks the President received a
President's Daily Briefing which indicated that the U.S. intelligence
community had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11th
attacks and that there was "scant credible evidence that Iraq had any
significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda."

(C) In Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary No. 044-02, issued in February
2002, the United States Defense Intelligence Agency cast significant doubt
on the possibility of a Saddam Hussein- Al Qaeda conspiracy: "Saddam's
regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements.
Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot
control."

(D) The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate gave a "Low Confidence"
rating to the notion of whether "in desperation Saddam would share chemical
or biological weapons with Al Qaeda." The CIA never informed the President
that there was an operational relationship between Al Qaeda and Saddam
Hussein; on the contrary, its most "aggressive" analysis contained in Iraq
and al-Qaeda Interpreting a Murky Relationship" dated June 21, 2002 was that
Iraq had had "sporadic, wary contacts with al Qaeda since the mid-1990s
rather than a relationship with al Qaeda that has developed over time."

(E) Notwithstanding his knowledge that neither Saddam Hussein nor Iraq was
in any way connected to the September 11th attacks, the President allowed
and authorized those acting under his direction and control, including Vice
President Richard B. Cheney and Lewis Libby, who reported directly to both
the President and the Vice President, and Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, among others, to pressure intelligence analysts to alter their
assessments and to create special units outside of, and unknown to, the
intelligence community in order to secretly obtain unreliable information,
to manufacture intelligence or reinterpret raw data in ways that would
further the Bush administration's goal of fraudulently establishing a
relationship not only between Iraq and al Qaeda, but between Iraq and the
attacks of September 11th.

(F) Further, despite his full awareness that Iraq and Saddam Hussein had no
relationship to the September 11th attacks, the President, and those acting
under his direction and control have, since at least 2002 and continuing to
the present, repeatedly issued public statements deliberately worded to
mislead, words calculated in their implication to bring unrelated actors and
circumstances into an artificially contrived reality thereby facilitating
the systematic deception of Congress and the American people. Thus the
public and some members of Congress, came to believe, falsely, that there
was a connection between Iraq and the attacks of 911. This was accomplished
through well-publicized statements by the Bush Administration which
contrived to continually tie Iraq and 911 in the same statements of grave
concern without making an explicit charge:

(1) " [If] Iraq regimes [sic] continues to defy us, and the world, we will
move deliberately, yet decisively, to hold Iraq to account…It's a new world
we're in. We used to think two oceans could separate us from an enemy. On
that tragic day, September the 11th,2001, we found out that's not the case.
We found out this great land of liberty and of freedom and of justice is
vulnerable. And therefore we must do everything we can -- everything we can
-- to secure the homeland, to make us safe."

Speech of President Bush in Iowa on September 16, 2002.

(2) "With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the
most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow.
And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist
allies, then the attacks of September 11th would be a prelude to far greater
horrors." March 6, 2003, Statement of President Bush in National Press
Conference.

(3) "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on
September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil
men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the
civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of
one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the 'beginning of the end of
America.' By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and
their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and
force our retreat from the world. They have failed." May 1, 2003, Speech of
President Bush on U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

(4) "Now we're in a new and unprecedented war against violent Islamic
extremists. This is an ideological conflict we face against murderers and
killers who try to impose their will. These are the people that attacked us
on September the 11th and killed nearly 3,000 people. The stakes are high,
and once again, we have had to change our strategic thinking. The major
battleground in this war is Iraq." June 28, 2007, Speech of President Bush
at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

(G) Notwithstanding his knowledge that there was no credible evidence of a
working relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda and that the
intelligence community had specifically assessed that there was no such
operational relationship, the President, both personally and through his
subordinates and agents, has repeatedly falsely represented, both explicitly
and implicitly, and through the misleading use of selectively-chosen facts,
to the citizens of the United States and to the Congress that there was and
is such an ongoing operational relationship, to wit:

(1) "We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts thatgo back
a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These
include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in
Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical
and biological attacks. We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members
in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases." September 28, 2002, Weekly
Radio Address of PresidentBush to the Nation.

(2) "[W]e we need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his
dirty work, to not leave fingerprints behind." October 14, 2002, Remarks by
President Bush in Michigan.

(3) "We know he's got ties with al Qaeda." November 1, 2002, Speech of
President Bush in New Hampshire.

(4) "Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and
statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and
protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda. Secretly, and without
fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or
help them develop their own." January 28, 2003, President Bush's State of
the Union Address.

(5) "[W]hat I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much
more sinister nexus between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus
that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder.
Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network…"

February 5, 2003, Speech of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the
United Nations.

(6) "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on
September the 11, 2001 — and still goes on. . . . [T]he liberation of Iraq .
. . removed an ally of al Qaeda." May 1, 2003, Speech of President Bush on
U.S. S. Abraham Lincoln

(H) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Whether Public
Statements Regarding Iraq By U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated By
Intelligence Information, which was released on June 5, 2008, concluded
that:

(1) "Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State
suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa'ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had
provided al-Qa'ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the
intelligence."

(2) "The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an
Iraqi intelligence officer

in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed."Through his
participation and instance in the breathtaking scope of this deception, the
President has used the highest office of trust to wage of campaign of
deception of such sophistication as to deliberately subvert the national
security interests of the United States. His dishonesty set the stage for
the loss of more than 4000 United States service members; injuries to tens
of thousands of soldiers, the loss of more than 1,000,000 innocent Iraqi
citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of approximately $527
billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt and the ultimate
expenditure of three to five trillion dollars for all costs covering the
war; the loss of military readiness within the United States Armed Services
due to overextension, the lack of training and lack of equipment; the loss
of United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely
blowback created by the invasion of Iraq.

In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in
a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and
subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of
law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United
States.

Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an
impeachable offense warranting removal from office.

Article III

MISLEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BELIEVE IRAQ
POSSESSED WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION, SO AS TO MANUFACTURE A FALSE CASE FOR
WAR

In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in
violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of
President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation
of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution
"to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and
acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice
President, executed instead a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to
deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States into believing that
the nation of Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify
the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq in a
manner damaging to our national security interests, thereby interfering with
and obstructing Congress's lawful functions of overseeing foreign affairs
and declaring war.

The means used to implement this deception were and continue to be
personally making, or causing, authorizing and allowing to be made through
highly-placed subordinates, including the President's Chief of Staff, the
White House Press Secretary and other White House spokespersons, the
Secretaries of State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, and their
deputies and spokespersons, false and fraudulent representations to the
citizens of the United States and Congress regarding Iraq's alleged
possession of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons that were half-true,
literally true but misleading, and/or made without a reasonable basis and
with reckless indifference to their truth, as well as omitting to state
facts necessary to present an accurate picture of the truth as follows:

(A) Long before the March 19, 2003 invasion of Iraq, a wealth of
intelligence informed the President and those under his direction and
control that Iraq's stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons had been
destroyed well before 1998 and that there was little, if any, credible
intelligence that showed otherwise. As reported in the Washington Post in
March of 2003, in 1995, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law Hussein Kamel had
informed U.S. and British intelligence officers that "all weapons—biological
chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed." In September 2002, the Defense
Intelligence Agency

issued a report that concluded: "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical
warfare agents, precursors, munitions and production equipment were
destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and
UNSCOM actions…[T]here is no reliable information on whether Iraq is
producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or whether Iraq has-or
will-establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities."
Notwithstanding the absence of evidence proving that such stockpiles existed
and in direct contradiction to substantial evidence that showed they did not
exist, the President and his subordinates and agents made numerous false
representations claiming with certainty that Iraq possessed chemical and
biological weapons that it was developing to use to attack the United
States, to wit:

(1) "[T]he notion of a Saddam Hussein with his great oil wealth, with his
inventory that he already has of biological and chemical weapons . . . is, I
think, a frightening proposition for anybody who thinks about it." Statement
of Vice President Cheney on CBS's Face the Nation, March 24, 2002. (2) "In
defiance of the United Nations, Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical
weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those
weapons." Speech of President Bush, October 5, 2002. (3) "All the world has
now seen the footage of an Iraqi Mirage aircraft with a fuel tank modified
to spray biological agents over wide areas. Iraq has developed spray devices
that could be used on unmanned aerial vehicles with ranges far beyond what
is permitted by the Security Council. A UAV launched from a vessel off the
American coast could reach hundreds of miles inland." Statement by President
Bush from the White House, February 6, 2003. (B) Despite overwhelming
intelligence in the form of statements and reports filed by and on behalf of
the CIA, the State Department and the IAEA, among others, which indicated
that the claim was untrue, the President, and those under his direction and
control, made numerous representations claiming and implying through
misleading language that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger
in order to falsely buttress its argument that Iraq was reconstituting its
nuclear weapons program, including: (1) ""The regime has the scientists and
facilities to build nuclear weapons, and is seeking the materials needed to
do so." Statement of President Bush from White House, October 2, 2002. (2)
"The [Iraqi] report also failed to deal with issues which have arisen since
1998, including: . . attempts to acquire uranium and the means to enrich
it." Letter from President Bush to Vice President Cheney and the Senate,
January 20, 2003. (3) "The British Government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa ."
President Bush Delivers State of the Union Address, January 28, 2003. (C)
Despite overwhelming evidence in the form of reports by nuclear weapons
experts from the Energy, the Defense and State Departments, as well from
outside and international agencies which assessed that aluminum tubes the
Iraqis were purchasing were not suitable for nuclear centrifuge use and
were, on the contrary, identical to ones used in rockets already being
manufactured by the Iraqis, the President, and those under his direction and
control, persisted in making numerous false and fraudulent representations
implying and stating explicitly that the Iraqis were purchasing the tubes
for use in a nuclear weapons program, to wit: (1) "We do know that there
have been shipments going . . . into Iraq . . . of aluminum tubes that
really are only suited to -- high-quality aluminum tools [sic] that are only
really suited for nuclear weapons Page 11 programs, centrifuge programs."
Statement of then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on CNN's Late
Edition with Wolf Blitzer, September 8, 2002. (2) "Our intelligence sources
tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes
suitable for nuclear weapons production." President Bush's State of the
Union Address, January 28, 2003. (3) "[H]e has made repeated covert attempts
to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from 11 different countries,
even after inspections resumed. …By now, just about everyone has heard of
these tubes and we all know that there are differences of opinion. There is
controversy about what these tubes are for. Most US experts think they are
intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium." Speech
of Former Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations, February 5,
2003. (D) The President, both personally and acting through those under his
direction and control, suppressed material information, selectively
declassified information for the improper purposes of retaliating against a
whistleblower and presenting a misleading picture of the alleged threat from
Iraq, facilitated the exposure of the identity of a covert CIA operative and
thereafter not only failed to investigate the improper leaks of classified
information from within his administration, but also failed to cooperate
with an investigation into possible federal violations resulting from this
activity and, finally, entirely undermined the prosecution by commuting the
sentence of Lewis Libby citing false and insubstantial grounds, all in an
effort to prevent Congress and the citizens of the United States from
discovering the fraudulent nature of the President's claimed justifications
for the invasion of Iraq. (E) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq By U.S. Government
Officials Were Substantiated By Intelligence Information, which was released
on June 5, 2008, concluded that: (1) "Statements by the President and Vice
President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding
Iraq's chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect
the intelligence community's uncertainties as to whether such production was
ongoing." (2) "The Secretary of Defense's statement that the Iraqi
government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to
conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was
not substantiated by available intelligence information." (3) Chairman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller concluded: "In making the
case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact
when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent.
As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from
Iraq was much greater than actually existed." The President has subverted
the national security interests of the United States by setting the stage
for the loss of more than 4000 United States service members and the injury
to tens of thousands of US soldiers; the loss of more than 1,000,000
innocent Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of
approximately $500 billion in war costs which has increased our Federal debt
with a long term financial cost of between three and five trillion dollars;
the loss of military readiness within the United States Armed Services due
to overextension, the lack of training and lack of equipment; the loss of
United States credibility in world affairs; and the decades of likely
blowback created by the invasion of Iraq. In all of these actions and
decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his
trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional
government, to the Page 12 prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to
the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President
George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense
warranting removal from office. Article IV MISLEADING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
AND MEMBERS OF CONGRESS TO BELIEVE IRAQ POSED AN IMMINENT THREAT TO THE
UNITED STATES In his conduct while President of the United States, George W.
Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the
office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability,
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in
violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the
Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both
personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, together with the
Vice President, executed a calculated and wide-ranging strategy to deceive
the citizens and Congress of the United States into believing that the
nation of Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States in order to
justify the use of the United States Armed Forces against the nation of Iraq
in a manner damaging to our national security interests, thereby interfering
with and obstructing Congress's lawful functions of overseeing foreign
affairs and declaring war. The means used to implement this deception were
and continue to be, first, allowing, authorizing and sanctioning the
manipulation of intelligence analysis by those under his direction and
control, including the Vice President and the Vice President's agents, and
second, personally making, or causing, authorizing and allowing to be made
through highly-placed subordinates, including the President's Chief of
Staff, the White House Press Secretary and other White House spokespersons,
the Secretaries of State and Defense, the National Security Advisor, and
their deputies and spokespersons, false and fraudulent representations to
the citizens of the United States and Congress regarding an alleged urgent
threat posed by Iraq, statements that were half-true, literally true but
misleading, and/or made without a reasonable basis and with reckless
indifference to their truth, as well as omitting to state facts necessary to
present an accurate picture of the truth as follows: (A) Notwithstanding the
complete absence of intelligence analysis to support a claim that Iraq posed
an imminent or urgent threat to the United States and the intelligence
community's assessment that Iraq was in fact not likely to attack the United
States unless it was itself attacked, President Bush, both personally and
through his agents and subordinates, made, allowed and caused to be made
repeated false representations to the citizens and Congress of the United
States implying and explicitly stating that such a dire threat existed,
including the following: (1) "States such as these [Iraq, Iran and North
Korea] and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to
threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction,
these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms
to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could
attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these
cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic." President Bush's
State of the Union Address, January 29, 2002. (2) "Simply stated, there is
no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. He is amassing
them to use against our friends our enemies and against us." Speech of Vice
President Cheney at VFW 103rd National Convention, August 26, 2002. (3) "The
history, the logic, and the facts lead to one conclusion: Saddam Hussein's
regime is a grave Page 13 and gathering danger. To suggest otherwise is to
hope against the evidence. To assume this regime's good faith is to bet the
lives of millions and the peace of the world in a reckless gamble. And this
is a risk we must not take." Address of President Bush to the United Nations
General Assembly, September 12, 2002. (4) "[N]o terrorist state poses a
greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the
regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq." Statement of Former Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to Congress, September 19, 2002. (5) "On its present course,
the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency. . . . it has developed
weapons of mass death." Statement of President Bush at White House, October
2, 2002. (6) "But the President also believes that this problem has to be
dealt with, and if the United Nations won't deal with it, then the United
States, with other likeminded nations, may have to deal with it. We would
prefer not to go that route, but the danger is so great, with respect to
Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, and perhaps even
terrorists getting hold of such weapons, that it is time for the
international community to act, and if it doesn't act, the President is
prepared to act with likeminded nations." Statement of Former Secretary of
State Colin Powell in interview with Ellen Ratner of Talk Radio News,
October 30, 2002. (7) "Today the world is also uniting to answer the unique
and urgent threat posed by Iraq. A dictator who has used weapons of mass
destruction on his own people must not be allowed to produce or possess
those weapons. We will not permit Saddam Hussein to blackmail and/or
terrorize nations which love freedom." Speech by President Bush to Prague
Atlantic Student Summit, November 20, 2002. (8) "But the risk of doing
nothing, the risk of the security of this country being jeopardized at the
hands of a madman with weapons of mass destruction far exceeds the risk of
any action we may be forced to take." President Bush Meets with National
Economic Council at White House, February 25, 2003. (B) In furtherance of
his fraudulent effort to deceive Congress and the citizens of the United
States into believing that Iraq and Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat
to the United States, the President allowed and authorized those acting
under his direction and control, including Vice President Richard B. Cheney,
former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Lewis Libby, who reportedly
directly to both the President and the Vice President, among others, to
pressure intelligence analysts to tailor their assessments and to create
special units outside of, and unknown to, the intelligence community in
order to secretly obtain unreliable information, to manufacture
intelligence, or to reinterpret raw data in ways that would support the Bush
administration's plan to invade Iraq based on a false claim of urgency
despite the lack of justification for such a preemptive action. (C) The
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report on Whether Public Statements
Regarding Iraq By U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated By
Intelligence Information, which was released on June 5, 2008, concluded
that: (1) "Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating
that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to
terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by
available intelligence information." Thus the President willfully and
falsely misrepresented Iraq as an urgent threat requiring immediate action
thereby subverting the national security interests of the United States by
setting the stage for the loss of more than 4000 United States service
members; the injuries to tens of thousands of US soldiers; Page 14 the
deaths of more than 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens since the United States
invasion; the loss of approximately $527 billion in war costs which has
increased our Federal debt and the ultimate costs of the war between three
trillion and five trillion dollars; the loss of military readiness within
the United States Armed Services due to overextension, the lack of training
and lack of equipment; the loss of United States credibility in world
affairs; and the decades of likely blowback created by the invasion of Iraq.
In all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in
a manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and
subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of
law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United
States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of
an impeachable offense warranting removal from office. Article V. ILLEGALLY
MISSPENDING FUNDS TO SECRETLY BEGIN A WAR OF AGGRESSION In his conduct while
President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his
constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the
United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend
the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his
constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take
care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting
through his agents and subordinates, together with the Vice President,
illegally misspent funds to begin a war in secret prior to any Congressional
authorization. The president used over $2 billion in the summer of 2002 to
prepare for the invasion of Iraq. First reported in Bob Woodward's book,
Plan of Attack, and later confirmed by the Congressional Research Service,
Bush took money appropriated by Congress for Afghanistan and other programs
and—with no Congressional notification -- used it to build airfields in
Qatar and to make other preparations for the invasion of Iraq. This
constituted a violation of Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, as
well as a violation of the War Powers Act of 1973. In all of these actions
and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to
his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of
constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice
and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore,
President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable
offense warranting removal from office. Article VI. INVADING IRAQ IN
VIOLATION OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF HJRes114. In his conduct while President of
the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath
to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to
the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of
the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article
II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed", exceeded his Constitutional authority to wage war by invading
Iraq in 2003 without meeting the requirements of HJRes 114, the
"Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002" to
wit: (1) HJRes 114 contains several Whereas clauses consistent with
statements being made by the White House at the time regarding the threat
from Iraq as evidenced by the following: Page 15 (A) HJRes 114 states
"Whereas Iraq both poses a continuing threat to the national security of the
United States and international peace and security in the Persian Gulf
region and remains in material and unacceptable breach of its international
obligations by, among other things, continuing to possess and develop a
significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a
nuclear weapons capability, and supporting and harboring terrorist
organizations;"; and (B) HJRes 114 states "Whereas members of Al Qaeda, an
organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its
citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September
11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;". (2) HJRes 114 states that the President
must provide a determination, the truthfulness of which is implied, that
military force is necessary in order to use the authorization, as evidenced
by the following: (A) Section 3 of HJRes 114 states: "(b) PRESIDENTIAL
DETERMINATION.—In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in
subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or
as soon thereafter as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after
exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of
Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his
determination that— (1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic
or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the
national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed
by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United
Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and (2) acting pursuant
to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other
countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international
terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations,
organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the
terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." (3) On March 18,
2003, President George Bush sent a letter to Congress stating that he had
made that determination as evidenced by the following: (A) March 18th, 2003
Letter to Congress stating: Consistent with section 3(b) of the
Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002
(Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including
that in the enclosed document, I determine that: (1) reliance by the United
States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A)
adequately protect the national security of the United States against the
continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all
relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and (2)
acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent
with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary
actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations,
including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized,
committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11,
2001. Page 16 (4) President George Bush knew that these statements were
false as evidenced by: (A) Information provided with Article I, II, III, IV
and V. (B) A statement by President George Bush in an interview with Tony
Blair on January 31st 2003: [WH] Reporter: "One question for you both. Do
you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and
the men who attacked on September the 11th?" President Bush: "I can't make
that claim" (C) An article on February 19th by Terrorism expert Rohan
Gunaratna states "I could find no evidence of links between Iraq and Al
Qaeda. The documentation and interviews indicated that Al Qaeda regarded
Saddam, a secular leader, as an infidel." [InternationalHeraldTribune] (D)
According to a February 2nd, 2003 article in the New York Times: [NYT] At
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, some investigators said they were
baffled by the Bush administration's insistence on a solid link between Iraq
and Osama bin Laden's network. "We've been looking at this hard for more
than a year and you know what, we just don't think it's there," a government
official said. (5) Section 3C of HJRes 114 states that "Nothing in this
joint resolution supersedes any requirement of the War Powers Resolution."
(6) The War Powers Resolution Section 9(d)(1) states: (d) Nothing in this
joint resolution-- (1) is intended to alter the constitutional authority of
the Congress or of the President, or the provision of existing treaties; or
(7) The United Nations Charter was an existing treaty and, as shown in
Article VIII, the invasion of Iraq violated that treaty (8) President George
Bush knowingly failed to meet the requirements of HJRes 114 and violated the
requirement of the War Powers Resolution and, thereby, invaded Iraq without
the authority of Congress. Page 17 In all of these actions and decisions,
President George W. Bush has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as
President and Commander in Chief, and subversive of constitutional
government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the
manifest injury of the people of the United States. Wherefore, President
George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense
warranting removal from office. Article VII. INVADING IRAQ ABSENT A
DECLARATION OF WAR In his conduct while President of the United States,
George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully
execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United
States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II,
Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully
executed", has launched a war against Iraq absent any congressional
declaration of war or equivalent action. Article I, Section 8, Clause 11
(the War Powers Clause) makes clear that the United States Congress holds
the exclusive power to decide whether or not to send the nation into war.
"The Congress," the War Powers Clause states, "shall have power…To declare
war…" The October 2002 congressional resolution on Iraq did not constitute a
declaration of war or equivalent action. The resolution stated: "The
President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he
deems necessary and appropriate in order to 1) defend the national security
of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and 2)
enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding
Iraq." The resolution unlawfully sought to delegate to the President the
decision of whether or not to initiate a war against Iraq, based on whether
he deemed it "necessary and appropriate." The Constitution does not allow
Congress to delegate this exclusive power to the President, nor does it
allow the President to seize this power. In March 2003, the President
launched a war against Iraq without any constitutional authority. Page 18 In
all of these actions and decisions, President George W. Bush has acted in a
manner contrary to his trust as President and Commander in Chief, and
subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of
law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United
States. Wherefore, President George W. Bush, by such conduct, is guilty of
an impeachable offense warranting removal from office. Article VIII INVADING
IRAQ, A SOVEREIGN NATION, IN VIOLATION OF THE UN CHARTER AND INTERNATIONAL
CRIMINAL LAW In his conduct while President of the United States, George W.
Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the
office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability,
preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in
violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the
Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", violated
United States law by invading the sovereign country of Iraq in violation of
the United Nations Charter to wit: (1) International Laws ratified by
Congress are part of United States Law and must be followed as evidenced by
the following: (A) Article VI of the United States Constitution, which
states "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be
made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made,
under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the
Land;" (2) The UN Charter, which entered into force following ratification
by the United States in 1945, requires Security Council approval for the use
of force except for self-defense against an armed attack as evidenced by the
following: A) Chapter 1, Article 2 of the United Nations Charter states:
"3.All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means
in such a manner that Page 19 international peace and security, and justice,
are not endangered. "4.All Members shall refrain in their international
relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity
or poli

11:31 PM - 2 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Lawmakers say Capitol computers hacked by Chinese

By PETE YOST and LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Multiple congressional computers have been hacked by people working from inside China, lawmakers said Wednesday, suggesting the Chinese were seeking lists of dissidents.
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Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing's record on human rights, said the compromised computers contained information about political dissidents from around the world. One of the lawmakers said he'd been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other U.S. officials.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said four of his computers were compromised beginning in 2006. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said two of the computers at his global human rights subcommittee were attacked in December 2006 and March 2007.

Wolf said that following one of the attacks, a car with license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident in Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington and photographed it.

During the same time period, The House International Relations Committee — now known as the House Foreign Affairs Committee — was targeted at least once by someone working inside China, said committee spokeswoman Lynne Weil.

Wednesday's disclosures came as U.S. authorities continued to investigate whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce Department computers.

The Pentagon last month acknowledged at a closed House Intelligence committee meeting that its vast computer network is scanned or attacked by outsiders more than 300 million times each day.

Wolf said the FBI had told him that computers of other House members and at least one House committee had been accessed by sources working from inside China. The Virginia Republican suggested that Senate computers could have been attacked as well.

He said the hacking of computers in his Capitol Hill office began in August 2006, that he had known about it for a long time and that he had been discouraged from disclosing it by people in the U.S. government he refused to identify.

"The problem has been that no one wants to talk about this issue," he said. "Every time I've started to do something I've been told 'You can't do this.' A lot of people have made it very, very difficult."

The FBI and the White House declined to comment.

The Bush administration has been increasingly reluctant publicly to discuss or acknowledge cyber attacks, especially ones traced to China.

In the Senate, the office of Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who chairs the Senate's subcommittee on humanitarian issues, asked the sergeant at arms to investigate whether Senate computers have been compromised.

Wolf said the first computer hacked in his office belonged to the staffer who works on human rights cases and that others included the machines of Wolf's chief of staff and legislative director.

"They knew which ones to get," said Dan Scandling, who currently is on leave of absence from his job as Wolf's chief of staff. "It was a very sophisticated operation," he said. "The FBI verified that it had been done."

Smith said the attacks on his office computers were "very much an orchestrated effort."

He said that after the first intrusion in December 2006, "that was the last time" his office put the names of dissidents on its computers.

Smith said the intrusions were discovered when House technicians found a virus that seemed designed to take control of the computers. Technical experts who cleaned the computers reported that the attacks seemed to come from the People's Republic of China.

In Beijing, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no immediate comment on the allegations by Wolf and Smith.

Last week, China denied the accusations regarding Gutierrez's laptop and the alleged effort to hack Commerce Department computers.

Wolf said he was introducing a House resolution that would help ensure protection for all House computers and information systems.

It calls for the chief administrative officer and sergeant at arms of the House, in consultation with the FBI, to alert members and their staffs to the danger of electronic attacks. Wolf also wants lawmakers to be fully briefed on ways to safeguard official records from electronic security breaches.

"My own suspicion is I was targeted by China because of my long history of speaking out about China's abysmal human rights record," Wolf said in a draft of remarks he prepared to give on the House floor.

He said Congress should hold hearings, specifically the House Intelligence Committee, Armed Services Committee and Government Operations Committee.

Speaking generally in May 2006, Wolf called Chinese spying efforts "frightening" and said it was no secret that the United States is a principal target of Chinese intelligence services.

Wolf thinks that President Bush should stay away from the Olympics because of China's human rights record.

He also has been outspoken on the subject of violence in the Darfur region of Sudan, where China has major oil interests.

Smith has introduced the Global Online Freedom Act which would prohibit U.S. Internet companies from cooperating with countries such as China that restrict information about human rights and democracy on the Internet.

Wolf and Smith both traveled to Beijing 17 years ago seeking the release of 77 people imprisoned or under house arrest because of their religious activities.

___

Associated Press writers Ted Bridis and Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.

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LA obscenity trial suspended over judge’s Web site

By GREG RISLING,
Associated Press

PASADENA, Calif. - A federal judge overseeing a case exploring the extreme fringe of pornography suspended the obscenity trial after a newspaper reported he had posted sexually explicit photos and videos on his own Web site.
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Judge Alex Kozinski, chief judge of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, granted a joint prosecution and defense motion to suspend the trial after prosecutors said they needed time to look into the issue. The jury was ordered to return on Monday.

"I'm not going to say anything. The trial is ongoing," Kozinski told a reporter as he left.

The suspension came after jurors spent hours at the Pasadena offices of the 9th Circuit watching videos of bestiality and extreme fetishes that are evidence in the trial of a Los Angeles businessman who sold them.

Kozinski indicated to the attorneys he would be willing to recuse himself but noted that the trial had already begun and jurors had already seen two of the graphic movies.

Earlier, as the jury was hearing opening statements in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, the Los Angeles Times reported on its Web site that Kozinski had posted sexual material on his Web site and then blocked access after being interviewed about it Tuesday evening.

The images included a video of a "half-dressed man cavorting with a sexually aroused farm animal," the newspaper reported.

Kozinski told the Times that he thought the material on his Web site couldn't be seen by the public. He said he didn't believe the images were obscene.

"Is it prurient? I don't know what to tell you," he told the newspaper. "I think it's odd and interesting. It's part of life."

Kozinski, 57, was assigned to oversee the trial in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles under a program in which appellate judges occasionally handle criminal trials at the district court level.

Kozinski became the youngest federal appeals court judge in the nation when he was appointed at age 35 to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan in 1985. He is known as a strong defender of free speech and First Amendment rights.

Before the site was blocked, visitors to http://alex.kozinski.com saw a message: "Ain't nothin' here. Y'all best be movin' on, compadre." Visitors who knew about a subdirectory could see the sexually explicit materials, as well as some of Kozinski's legal writings and personal photos, the Times said.

Jurors in the obscenity case were being asked to decide whether or not the films businessman Ira Isaacs distributed are obscene under federal law.

They must decide if the films appeal to a loathsome or degrading type of sexual intercourse and whether the sexual conduct is "patently offensive," judging by the community's standards.

Isaacs, 57, is charged with four counts, including importation or transportation of obscene material for sale. He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. Prosecutors also are seeking forfeiture of assets obtained through his video sales. Two of the original six counts in his indictment were dropped.

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Pentagon blocked Cheney’s attack on Iran

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JF10Ak01.html

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W Bush administration official.

J Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defense Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposal several weeks earlier "launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran ", citing two officials involved in Iran policy.

According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think-tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation for such an attack. Carpenter said the DoD officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make "a policy decision about how far the administration would go - what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks".

The question of escalation posed by DoD officials involved not only the potential of Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army in Iraq to attack, Carpenter said, but possible responses by Hezbollah and by Iran itself across the Middle East .

Carpenter suggested that DoD officials were shifting the debate on a limited strike from the Iraq-based rationale, which they were not contesting, to the much bigger issue of the threat of escalation to full-scale war with Iran , knowing that it would be politically easier to thwart the proposal on that basis.

The former State Department official said DoD "knew that it would be difficult to get interagency consensus on that question".

The Joint Chiefs were fully supportive of the position taken by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the Cheney proposal, according to Carpenter. "It's clear that the military leadership was being very conservative on this issue," he said.

At least some DoD and military officials suggested that Iran had more and better options for hitting back at the United States than the United States had for hitting Iran , according to one former Bush administration insider.

Former Bush speechwriter and senior policy adviser Michael Gerson, who had left the administration in 2006, wrote a column in the Washington Post on July 20, 2007, in which he gave no hint of Cheney's proposal, but referred to "options" for striking Iranian targets based on the Cheney line that Iran "smuggles in the advanced explosive devices that kill and maim American soldiers".

Gerson cited two possibilities: "Engaging in hot pursuit against weapon supply lines over the Iranian border or striking explosives factories and staging areas within Iran ." But the Pentagon and the military leadership were opposing such options, he reported, because of the fear that Iran has "escalation dominance" in its conflict with the United States .

That meant, according to Gerson that, "in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs".

Carpenter's account of the Pentagon's position on the Cheney proposal suggests, however, that civilian and military opponents were saying that Iran 's ability to escalate posed the question of whether the United States was going to go to a full-scale air war against Iran .

Pentagon civilian and military opposition to such a strategic attack on Iran had become well-known during 2007. But this is the first evidence from an insider that Cheney's proposal was perceived as a ploy to provoke Iranian retaliation that could used to justify a strategic attack on Iran.

The option of attacking nuclear sites had been raised by Bush with the Joint Chiefs at a meeting in "the tank" at the Pentagon on December 13, 2006, and had been opposed by the Joint Chiefs, according to a report by Time magazine's Joe Klein last June.

After he become head of the Central Command (Centcom) in March 2007, Admiral William Fallon also made his opposition to such a massive attack on Iran known to the White House, according Middle East specialist Hillary Mann, who had developed close working relationships with Pentagon officials when she worked on the National Security Council staff.

It appeared in early 2007, therefore, that a strike at Iran 's nuclear program and military power had been blocked by opposition from the Pentagon. Cheney's proposal for an attack on IRGC bases in June 2007, tied to the alleged Iranian role in providing both weapons - especially the highly lethal explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) - and training to Shi'ite militias appears to have been a strategy for getting around the firm resistance of military leaders to such an unprovoked attack.

Although the Pentagon bottled up the Cheney proposal in inter-agency discussions, Cheney had a strategic asset which could he could use to try to overcome that obstacle: his alliance with General David Petraeus.

As Inter Press Service reported earlier last week, Cheney had already used Petraeus' takeover as the top commander of US forces in Iraq in early February 2007 to do an end run about the Washington national security bureaucracy to establish the propaganda line that Iran was manufacturing EFPs and shipping them to the Mahdi Army militiamen.

Petraeus was also a supporter of Cheney's proposal for striking IRGC targets in Iran, going so far as to hint in an interview with Fox News last September that he had passed on to the White House his desire to do something about alleged Iranian assistance to Shi'ites that would require US forces beyond his control.

At that point, Fallon was in a position to deter any effort to go around DoD and military opposition to such a strike because he controlled all military access to the region as a whole. But Fallon's forced resignation in March and the subsequent promotion of Petraeus to become Centcom chief later this year gives Cheney a possible option to ignore the position of his opponents in Washington once more in the final months of the administration.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam , was published in 2006.

(Inter Press Service)

2:54 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Lil Jon Shawty putt dat baby [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywSr5AdEM8c

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Frustration and Fury: Take It. It’s Free.

Ian Dickson/Redferns-Retna

Trent Reznor in concert before sobriety.

TRENT REZNOR'S home is on the outskirts of Beverly Hills, up a maze of climbing one-lane roads that baffle a rental car's GPS navigation. It's perched on a dizzyingly steep slope with a panoramic view of smoggy downtown.

At the moment Mr. Reznor isn't living there. The place has become a full-scale construction site after a kitchen renovation somehow spread to the entire house. But one room remains neat and dust-free. It's the studio where Mr. Reznor, recording as Nine Inch Nails, made the two albums he has delivered this year: the instrumental package "Ghosts I-IV" and the latest set of Nine Inch Nails songs, "The Slip," which was released as a free download from nin.com on May 5.

"This one's on me," Mr. Reznor announces on that Web page. The album was downloaded more than a million times before the end of May, according to him. A retail CD version of "The Slip" is due shortly before Nine Inch Nails starts its tour on July 25 in Vancouver.

"Aside from any kind of monetization of it, I'm glad to know that a million people have it on their iPods," Mr. Reznor said. "If you paid for it, great, but I want everyone to hear it, you know? I want to blow people's minds."

He has joined the superstar exodus from major labels. Acts with large audiences and established brands like Radiohead, Madonna and the Eagles no longer need the labels' star-making clout. They have calculated that they can do better, and have more options, outside the old system.

Now that Mr. Reznor has finished his contract with Interscope Records, he is following his impulses on when to release music. "I don't have to ask permission," he said. The situation suits his business sense and his temperament. In "Head Like a Hole," the climax of countless Nine Inch Nails concerts, he sings, "I'd rather die than give you control."

Mr. Reznor, 43, is an unlikely combination of recluse, showman, tortured Romantic, workaholic and tech geek — which may just be an effective personality for a musician in the digital age. His songs have become perennial adolescent anthems because they blurt out frustration, fury and self-loathing in a dramatic balance of pop melodies and ominous, lacerating noise. And in conversation, he doesn't hide negative thoughts. "Fear has governed my life, if I think about it," he said. "I don't even know why I'm saying this in an interview situation, but I always feel like I'm not good enough for some reason. I wish that wasn't the case, but left to my own devices, that voice starts speaking up."

He wonders, in the songs on "The Slip," whether he is irrelevant. The music revives Nine Inch Nails' past, from stomping hard rock to dance-club beats to piano ballad to inexorably building instrumentals. Yet amid walloping drums and distorted guitars — the sounds of angry youth — Mr. Reznor ponders his place in the present. "Start it up again like it matters anymore/I don't know if it does," he sings in "1,000,000." Nine Inch Nails, Mr. Reznor said, is "an aggressive, honest, naked, angry, ugly thing. I don't hear anybody doing anything like that right now that I'm aware of. Maybe there are, but it doesn't seem like it's the flavor of today."

As a musician and fan, Mr. Reznor is an old-school rocker who is devoted to the album as a creative unit to be savored and pondered as a whole. But he has also reinvented himself as a digital-era adept. Unlike the Eagles and Radiohead he's not taking years to make albums; he has recognized that while he grew up treating an album like a novel, younger listeners, freely downloading music and setting their iPods on shuffle, are more likely to treat it like a magazine.

Mr. Reznor lets his music travel freely at Internet speed, extending album concepts into parallel online universes. He's familiar with file-sharing sites and music blogs, including those that irk him by taking potshots at Nine Inch Nails. Playing live, his laptop now replaces pedals and effects. Mr. Reznor even posts online all the raw digital tracks from Nine Inch Nails albums for anyone to remix. "I'm done with them," he said. "Why not?"

"Ghosts I-IV" grew out of ideas after a 2007 tour, which Mr. Reznor set out to record "with very little forethought," he said. He released the album in March, making it available in multiple formats, from a bargain downloadable version for $5 to standard CDs and LPs to a luxury $300 limited-edition boxed set of CDs, vinyl, DVDs and artwork. (The 2,500 copies of that set sold out immediately, for a quick gross of $750,000, and now fetch $500 on eBay.)

"The Slip" was knocked out in three weeks of studio time after a month of songwriting. During the sessions he sent one song, "Discipline," to rock radio stations, which have given it Top 10 airplay. The new music, Mr. Reznor acknowledged, relies more often on reflexes than does an album like "The Fragile" (1999), on which every sound is painstakingly shaped; he said he expects his next project to take more "editorial time." With "The Slip," however, he finished recording the songs on a Wednesday and completed mixing, mastering and graphics to release the album five days later. "That was fun," Mr. Reznor said. "You never could have done that before."
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Ethan Miller/Reuters

Reznor is experimenting with nontraditional, online pricing and distribution plans outside the major-label system, as are other acts like Radiohead.
Multimedia

To release "Ghosts I-IV" and "The Slip" online Mr. Reznor found he needed software to distribute digital files, assemble databases and connect easily with other applications. That too will soon be available free. "We've spent the money to make it," Mr. Reznor said. "Take it."

Going independent "was a weird feeling," he said. "It was bittersweet. It was happiness: 'We're finally, finally free of this bureaucracy. Oh, no, now what are we going to do?' "

Nine Inch Nails' recent booming, ferocious and desolate sounds emerge from a studio the size of a comfortable living room. It has burgundy brocade curtains over red velvet drapes over plywood-lined walls: soundproofing with a Goth touch. Analog synthesizers and digital keyboards each have their corners, with guitars racked in between. A recording console and speakers take up one full wall, alongside a computer atop a cabinet of hard drives holding sound libraries and albums.

Since Mr. Reznor owns the studio, recording costs are mostly payments to engineers, visual artists and a handful of guest musicians — low enough to keep him self-sufficient. The setup is central to Mr. Reznor's new phase as a free agent. "This is ground zero," he told a visitor.

Mr. Reznor has no global solution for how to sustain a long-term career as a recording musician, much less start one, when listeners take free digital music for granted. "It's all out there," he added. "I don't agree that it should be free, but it is free, and you can either accept it or you can put your head in the sand."

He knows what he doesn't want to do: make his music a marketing accessory. "Now just making good music, or great music, isn't enough," Mr. Reznor said. "Now I have to sell T-shirts, or I have to choose which whorish association is the least stinky. I don't really want to be on the side of a bus or in a BlackBerry ad hawking some product that sucks just so I can get my record out. I want to maintain some dignity and self-respect in the process, if that's possible these days."

Nine Inch Nails was a multimillion-selling band throughout the 1990s and has steadily replenished one of rock's most loyal followings, filling arenas on tour.

Last year Mr. Reznor produced and bankrolled an album for the socially conscious hip-hop poet Saul Williams, "The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust." When record labels didn't want it, Mr. Reznor put it online: free to the first 100,000 downloaders as good-quality MP3 files or $5 for more high-fidelity files. He had thought that fans would willingly pay the price of a latte to support musicians directly. But fewer than 20 percent did so. "I think I was just naïve."

At the time he called the project a failure, but he has reconsidered. "The numbers of the people that paid for that record, versus the people that paid for his last record, were greater," he said. "He made infinitely more money from that record than he did from his other one. It increased his name value probably tenfold. At the end of the day, counting free downloads, it was probably five or six or seven times higher than the amount sold on his last record. I don't know how you could look at that as a failure."

Mr. Reznor had a head start at being a digital do-it-yourselfer. He has recorded most of Nine Inch Nails' music virtually alone as a studio band. Under his recording contract at Interscope, Mr. Reznor maintained full control, submitting finished master recordings, artwork, ads and videos to the label. His last Interscope album, "Year Zero," used its $2 million budget to go further, extending its vision of a dystopian future to elaborately linked materials online and off- for fans to find and decode. Mr. Reznor has been working with Lawrence Bender, Quentin Tarantino's longtime producing partner, to create a cable TV series to tell the entire story.

Now Mr. Reznor is more immersed than ever in every detail. Over a few days in Los Angeles in mid-May he was not only rehearsing his latest live band but also minutely plotting its stage production.

Before the full band's first rehearsal, at a complex in Burbank, Mr. Reznor had an hourlong conference call with Moment Factory, a high-tech production company in Montreal. Mr. Reznor's eye for technology keeps colliding with his budget. "I don't make any money because I spend it on the production," he said. "But I can't afford to go lose money to play shows."

With his longtime graphics co-conspirator, Rob Sheridan, at his side and an e-mail memo on his Mac laptop screen, Mr. Reznor went through a prospective set list, song by song, with Moment Factory, explaining where three giant video screens would be and which disorienting effects he wanted from the programmers and hardware makers — like being able to move a video frame across a musician that also changed the sound of his guitar. "What I'm trying to do is use the stage as an interactive instrument," Mr. Reznor said. "I'm in the world of science fiction now."

Nine Inch Nails has been on the arena circuit since the mid-1990s. As Mr. Reznor's audience grew, so did his ambitions and his self-destructive side: alcoholism and heroin addiction. He went through rehab in 1997, but he backslid as he labored over "The Fragile" for two years. " 'The Fragile' ended me," he said.

After the tour for "The Fragile," Mr. Reznor went silent for half a decade. He has been sober, he said, since 2001, but he did not release another album until "With Teeth" in 2005. He had feared that without his addictions he'd no longer be creative; he had also feared obsolescence. "I know how old I am," he said. "I'm not trying to fool anybody."

There was other turbulence: dueling lawsuits with his first manager, during which Mr. Reznor realized he had unthinkingly agreed to commissions of 20 percent of his gross earnings, not the customary net. In 2005 a jury awarded him $2.85 million in lost earnings and damages. "With Teeth," which he said sounds "very cautious" to him now, gave him a new start and has sold half a million copies amid plummeting CD sales.

"These days I work too much, I think, because it makes me feel good," Mr. Reznor said. "I don't know how to do that in a relationship. I don't have a family. I'd like to have one. I just haven't somehow gotten around to it yet. But I know that if I work, it's likely I'll come up with something I'm proud of and that gives me a sense of worth. Not for money or fame — it's, I feel good about it. So like any good addict, if I find something that feels good, if that feels good, maybe doing twice as much feels twice as, you know. ..."

His day was just beginning. There was a photo shoot, a band rehearsal, more stage plotting. "Make me look cool," he said by way of goodbye. He caught himself, and laughed.

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NY Times: Moving Mountains With the Brain, Not a Joystick

STILL using a mouse, keyboard, joystick or motion sensor to control the action in a video game? It may be time to try brain power instead.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

A new headset system picks up electrical activity from the brain, as well as from facial muscles and other spots, and translates it into on-screen commands. This lets players vanquish villains not with a click, but with a thought.

Put on the headset, made by Emotiv Systems in San Francisco, and when a giant boulder blocks the path in a game you are playing, you can levitate it — not by something as crude as a keystroke, but just by concentrating on raising it, said Tan Le, Emotiv's president. The headset captures electrical signals when you concentrate; then the computer processes these signals and pairs a screen action with them, like lifting a stone or repairing a falling bridge.

The headset is the consumer cousin of brain-computer interfaces developed in research labs and used, for example, by monkeys who manipulate prosthetic arms with thoughts. The monkeys' intentions are detected by sensors, translated into machine language and used to move the arm. In general, some interfaces use sensors implanted directly in the brain; others use electrode-studded caps.

For humans, Emotiv plans to have its noninvasive, wireless EPOC headset ($299) on sale in time for Christmas, Ms. Le said. With 16 sensors that lightly touch the head, it uses a standard technology, electroencephalography, or EEG, to pick up electrical signals from the scalp's surface and convert them to actions that control or enhance what happens on screen.

To help players master the art of moving on-screen objects solely through concentration, the headset will come bundled with a game, set on a magical mountain, that includes practice exercises, said Geoffrey Mackellar, Emotiv's research and development manager. "You clear the mind," he said, and then do 30 to 40 seconds of training, by concentrating, for instance, on visualizing a block lifting from the earth. "On the first or second attempt, you can lift it at will."

Other, harder challenges follow. In constant feedback, he said, the machine learns more about how users think just as users grow more skillful at concentrating.

Many game developers are incorporating the EPOC's biofeedback abilities into their applications, Ms. Le said.

The system doesn't just lift boulders. It can also detect some of a player's facial expressions and emotional responses: smile, frown or wink, for instance, and an avatar on screen can do so, too. Grow bored during a battle, and the system can detect ennui and supply a few dragons, or change the music. The device tracks a total of about 30 responses.

A chip inside the headset collects the signals and sends them wirelessly to a receiver plugged into a U.S.B. port of the computer, where most of the processing occurs, Dr. Mackellar said.

The sleek Emotiv headset is a version of the EEG cap used for decades to record brain electrical activity, said Nathan Fox, a professor of human development at the University of Maryland.

"There can be as many as 256 electrodes at one time in a cap," he said. 'The placement corresponds in some rough approximation to brain areas that are underneath the scalp."

Medical-grade EEG caps are used in research to eavesdrop on the brain as it plans motion and to translate these plans, for example, into cursor actions on a screen so paralyzed people can control a computer to write messages.

The Emotiv headset, too, taps the power of the mind, as well as using feedback from muscles, Dr. Mackellar said.

"We definitely read brain waves — no doubt about it — but we also read other things," he said. "In classical EEG, movements of the face and muscles are regarded as noise. But we use some of it, rather than discard it."

Anton Nijholt, a professor of computer science at the University of Twente in the Netherlands who does research on innovative interfaces for games, looks forward to the extra means of interaction that EEG headsets will provide. But he doesn't think that all consumers will be able to use them to raise mountains.

"Not all people are able to display the mental activity necessary to move an object on a screen," he said. "Some people may not be able to imagine movement in a way that EEG can detect."

So far, Dr. Mackellar said, all 200 testers of the headset had indeed been able to move on-screen objects mentally.

ANOTHER headset, the Neural Impulse Actuator ($169), just released by the OCZ Technology Group in Sunnyvale, Calif., has three sensors in a headband that pick up electrical activity primarily from muscles and convert it into commands, said Michael Schuette, vice president for technology development. Players of shooting games, for instance, may use eye movement to trigger a shot, shaving milliseconds off of their response time and sparing their hands.

The exact source of the electrical activity the headset is picking up may not be important, said Dr. Jonathan Wolpaw, chief of the laboratory for nervous system disorders at the Wadsworth Center of the New York State Department of Health in Albany. He uses EEG caps as part of brain-computer interfaces for severely paralyzed people. His systems record brain activity alone, but for a consumer game device, a cap that picks up a mixture of brain and muscle activity may be acceptable.

"In a lot of these commercial uses, people don't care if the activity is coming from the brain or forehead muscles," he said. "It doesn't matter to them so long as they can play the game."

E-mail: novelties@nytimes.com.
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Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered

Jeanna Bryner
Senior Writer
LiveScience.com Mon Jun 2, 9:50 AM ET

Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur.

And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions.

Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York says it starts with a neural lag that most everyone experiences while awake. When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world.

Scientists already knew about the lag, yet they have debated over exactly how we compensate, with one school of thought proposing our motor system somehow modifies our movements to offset the delay.

Changizi now says it's our visual system that has evolved to compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly through a crowd. His research on this topic is detailed in the May/June issue of the journal Cognitive Science,

Explaining illusions

That same seer ability can explain a range of optical illusions, Changizi found.

"Illusions occur when our brains attempt to perceive the future, and those perceptions don't match reality," Changizi said.

Here's how the foresight theory could explain the most common visual illusions - geometric illusions that involve shapes: Something called the Hering illusion, for instance, looks like bike spokes around a central point, with vertical lines on either side of this central, so-called vanishing point. The illusion tricks us into thinking we are moving forward, and thus, switches on our future-seeing abilities. Since we aren't actually moving and the figure is static, we misperceive the straight lines as curved ones.

"Evolution has seen to it that geometric drawings like this elicit in us premonitions of the near future," Changizi said. "The converging lines toward a vanishing point (the spokes) are cues that trick our brains into thinking we are moving forward - as we would in the real world, where the door frame (a pair of vertical lines) seems to bow out as we move through it - and we try to perceive what that world will look like in the next instant."

Grand unified theory

In real life, when you are moving forward, it's not just the shape of objects that changes, he explained. Other variables, such as the angular size (how much of your visual field the object takes up), speed and contrast between the object and background, will also change.

For instance, if two objects are about the same distance in front of you, and you move toward one of the objects, that object will speed up more in the next moment, appear larger, have lower contrast (because something that is moving faster gets more blurred), and literally get nearer to you compared with the other object.

Changizi realized the same future-seeing process could explain several other types of illusions. In what he refers to as a "grand unified theory," Changizi organized 50 kinds of illusions into a matrix of 28 categories. The results can successfully predict how certain variables, such as proximity to the central point or size, will be perceived.

Changizi says that finding a theory that works for so many different classes of illusions is "a theorist's dream."

Most other ideas put forth to explain illusions have explained one or just a few types, he said.
The theory is "a big new player in the debate about the origins of illusions," Changizi told LiveScience. "All I'm hoping for is that it becomes a giant gorilla on the block that can take some punches."