Tying Obama to Bush's Budget Mess

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Some people say that George W. Bush didn't solve any national problems during his eight years in office, but that's not exactly right.

Robert Parry
June 10, 2009 - Consortium News

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In 2001, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the Fed might have trouble influencing interest rates if the entire federal debt were paid off – an event that budget projections then forecast. Nailed that one, ex-President Bush can declare.

Indeed, no one will have to worry about the "problem" of a completely repaid federal debt anytime soon, if ever.  Before leaving office, Bush had transformed what was projected in 2001 to be a $848 billion surplus for fiscal 2009 into a $1 trillion deficit, nearly a $2 trillion swing from deep black to bright red, according to Congressional Budget Office figures.

But one of the ironies of the early Obama administration is that the Republicans and their many allies in the U.S. news media have succeeded in shifting much of the blame for the ocean of red ink onto Barack Obama, leading the new President to scale back programs and to scramble politically. A recent Gallup poll found 51 percent disapproving of Obama's handling of federal spending.

That GOP success is a reflection of the Right's massive investment in media over the past several decades and the audacity of Republicans to tick off talking points regardless of reality. A steady propaganda barrage, especially when it's ineffectively countered, can create perceptions that influence the electorate and thus constrain political options.

If Americans think Obama is responsible for the massive deficits, they will be less willing to support his recommendations for addressing a host of pressing problems, from the environment to health care to the economy.

And to the degree they forget or don't know about Bush's role in the deficit problem, they are more likely to turn back to Republicans, the same people who enabled Bush with his extravagant tax cuts and open-ended wars to chart the nation into that red-ink ocean.

So, it is useful to read Wednesday's New York Times analysis of the CBO budget projections, which revealed that Obama's stimulus plan and other domestic programs account for "only a sliver" of the deficits, about 10 percent of the projected $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009.

The Times analysis by David Leonhardt blamed 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing from surplus to deficit on the business cycle, including the bursting stock-market bubbles and related recessions. The Times traced about 33 percent of the deficit swing to legislation signed by Bush, including his signature tax cuts and his Medicare prescription drug plan.

Though Bush is now out of office, continuation of other of his key initiatives, such as the Wall Street bailout and the Iraq War, contributed significantly to the deficit under Obama, the Times found.

"Mr. Obama's main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq War and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000," the Times reported. "Such policies – together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama – account for 20 percent of the swing."

Obama's stimulus bill, signed in February, accounted for 7 percent of the deficit expansion, and his other early programs, including health care, education and energy, added 3 percent, the Times said. So, the tally would indicate that Bush's policies contributed to 53 percent of the 2009 deficit swing compared to 10 percent from Obama's plans.

Yet the Republicans have scored some important political points by repositioning themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility and tagging Obama as a spendthrift.

Ironically, too, in his efforts to show bipartisan continuity with the Bush administration – especially on the Wall Street financial crisis – Obama has opened himself to GOP attack lines.

Not the First Time

This is surely not the first time that the Republicans have relied on the powerful right-wing news media and the careerists in the mainstream press to turn political reality inside out.

One telling example was how GOP congressmen and right-wing operatives in 1999-2000 linked Vice President Al Gore to the compromising of U.S. nuclear secrets to China, when the secrets were compromised years earlier under Ronald Reagan. [See Consortiumnews.com's "How America Fell."]

But a striking fact of the early Obama era is that – with only a few exceptions – Washington has changed very little, systemically.

The right-wing media remains the dominant megaphone; the same inept talking heads fill the air on CNN, CNBC and – for much of the day – on MSNBC; Republicans will say or do anything to sabotage a Democratic administration; and Democrats are still mesmerized by the pleasant mirage of "bipartisanship."

The hard reality for Obama, the Democrats and the progressives is that as long as they ignore these systemic features, especially the power of America's right-tilted media, the Republicans will always have the edge in framing the issues – and thus limiting the choices for the future.

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Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. He is the author of "Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush".

The GOP’s 100-Reactor/Trillion-Dollar Energy Plan Goes Radioactive

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Harvey Wasserman
June 11, 2009 - CommonDreams.org

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As the prospective price of new reactors continues to soar, and as the first "new generation" construction projects sink in French and Finish soil, Republicans are introducing a bill to Congress demanding 100 new nuclear reactors in the US within twenty years. It explicitly welcomes "alternatives" such as oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and "clean coal." Though it endorses some renewables such as solar and wind power, it calls for no cap on carbon emissions.

According to the New York Times, this is the defining GOP alternative to a Democratic energy plan headed for a House vote later this month.

But niggling questions like who will pay for these reactors, who will insure them, where will the fuel come from, where will waste go and who will protect them from terrorists are not on the agenda. Given recent certain-to-prove-optimistic estimates of approximately $10 billion per reactor, the plan envisions a trillion-plus dollar commitment to a newly nuke-centered nation.

With this proposed legislation the GOP makes atomic energy the centerpiece of its strategy to deal with climate change.

Nuclear power requires energy-intensive activities such as uranium mining, milling, fuel enrichment, plus other carbon expenditures for plant construction, waste management and more. Reactors also convert buried uranium ore into huge quantities of heat, much of which becomes hot water and steam emitted into the environment. Reactors in France and elsewhere have been forced to shut because adjacent rivers have been taken to 90 degrees Farenheit by hot water dumped from reactor cooling systems.

None of this troubled GOP hearings this week on the future of atomic energy. There were no answers to how new reactors would be insured. Since 1957 the federal treasury has been the underwriter of last resort for potential reactor disasters. Renewed in the 2005 Bush energy plan, the commitment applies to all new reactors.

So reactors licensed to operate through 2057---as would be virtually certain under the GOP plan---would extend to a full century the atomic industry's inability to cover its own risks. Neither the Obama Administration nor the GOP has presented detailed plans for dealing with such disasters, or explained how they would be paid for.

Despite the GOP's endless focus on the terror attacks of 9/11/2001, no significant structural upgrades have been made to protect the currently licensed 104 US reactors from an air attack. The new reactors will be required to demonstrate an ability to resist a jet crash, but testing that requirement remains an open issue.

The ability to fuel this new fleet of reactors remains questionable. Reprocessing used fuel into re-usable Mixed Oxide rods has proven dirty, expensive and dangerous.

The initial experience with building new reactors runs parallel. As reported in the New York Times and elsewhere, French-financed construction projects at Flamanville, France, and at Okiluoto in Finland have soared hugely over budget and behind schedule. Much of the economically catastrophic experience endured by utilities and rate payers in building the first generation of reactors in the 1960s-1990s appears to be repeating itself with even bigger deficits. The French government's front-group Areva, which is building the new plants, has sunk into serious financial and political chaos, with potentially devastating implications for this much-touted "new generation" technology.

Recent radioactive leaks in Vermont and Illinois have underscored bitter disputes over re-licensing the 104 "first generation" US reactors. Some could now operate past the 60-year mark, even though most were originally designed to operate just 30, and all have serious issues ranging from frequent leaks to structural decay, unworkable evacuation plans and much more.

Meanwhile, with the apparent cancellation of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, the industry is no closer to dealing with its radioactive waste than it was 50 years ago.

None of which seems to daunt the industry or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which has yet to turn down a proposed re-licensing. Two states---Florida and Georgia---have now passed rate hikes aimed at funding new reactor construction. And Obama's Department of Energy may soon dole out $18.5 billion in construction loan guarantees put in place by the Bush 2005 Energy Plan. The DOE has identified four prime candidates for the money.

Nonetheless, since 2007 reactor opponents have three times defeated proposals for $50 billion in loan guarantees for new reactor construction. There is no indication from Wall Street and what's left of the private banking community that without heavy government guarantees, investments in nuclear power plants are at all attractive.

But while billing itself as the party of free enterprise---especially when it comes to health care---the GOP has made itself the unabashed champion of a technology that can't raise private capital without taxpayer backing, can't get private insurance, can't manage its wastes, and shows no sign of offering a meaningful solution to the problem of carbon emissions.

What the nuclear power industry does seem to have, however, is unlimited funding to push its product in the corporate media and Congress. This latest GOP proposal for 100 new nukes may not fly in this House session.

Sadly, Democratic-sponsored legislation is not nuke-free. The situation in Congress remains fluid and unpredictable, often changing from day to day. Various aspects of bills supported by various Democrats include hidden subsidies, disguised loan guarantees, counting nuclear power as "green" in proposed renewable portfolio standards, backdoor handouts and more. Sometimes the boosts are buried in obscure corners of sub-clauses that border on the indecipherable.

But surface they do, again and again. Thus far the anti-nuclear movement has done a remarkable job of blocking the worst of them. Continuing to do that will require eternal vigilance, endless grassroots action and the steadfast belief that in the long run, our species has the will and foresight to somehow avoid radioactive self-extinction.

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Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared

Zen 'Light, Sweet Crude' Moment of the Day

Clifford Krauss of the New York Times reported recently, gas prices have risen 41 days in a row, and yet the price at the pump is still "lagging behind the increase in the price of oil."

It's Official -- The Era of Cheap Oil Is Over

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Energy Department Changes Tune on Peak Oil

Michael T. Klare
June 11, 2009 - Tomgram

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Every summer, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy issues its International Energy Outlook (IEO) -- a jam-packed compendium of data and analysis on the evolving world energy equation. For those with the background to interpret its key statistical findings, the release of the IEO can provide a unique opportunity to gauge important shifts in global energy trends, much as reports of routine Communist Party functions in the party journal Pravda once provided America's Kremlin watchers with insights into changes in the Soviet Union's top leadership circle.

As it happens, the recent release of the 2009 IEO has provided energy watchers with a feast of significant revelations. By far the most significant disclosure: the IEO predicts a sharp drop in projected future world oil output (compared to previous expectations) and a corresponding increase in reliance on what are called "unconventional fuels" -- oil sands, ultra-deep oil, shale oil, and biofuels.

So here's the headline for you: For the first time, the well-respected Energy Information Administration appears to be joining with those experts who have long argued that the era of cheap and plentiful oil is drawing to a close. Almost as notable, when it comes to news, the 2009 report highlights Asia's insatiable demand for energy and suggests that China is moving ever closer to the point at which it will overtake the United States as the world's number one energy consumer. Clearly, a new era of cutthroat energy competition is upon us.

Peak Oil Becomes the New Norm

As recently as 2007, the IEO projected that the global production of conventional oil (the stuff that comes gushing out of the ground in liquid form) would reach 107.2 million barrels per day in 2030, a substantial increase from the 81.5 million barrels produced in 2006. Now, in 2009, the latest edition of the report has grimly dropped that projected 2030 figure to just 93.1 million barrels per day -- in future-output terms, an eye-popping decline of 14.1 million expected barrels per day.

Even when you add in the 2009 report's projection of a larger increase than once expected in the output of unconventional fuels, you still end up with a net projected decline of 11.1 million barrels per day in the global supply of liquid fuels (when compared to the IEO's soaring 2007 projected figures). What does this decline signify -- other than growing pessimism by energy experts when it comes to the international supply of petroleum liquids?

Very simply, it indicates that the usually optimistic analysts at the Department of Energy now believe global fuel supplies will simply not be able to keep pace with rising world energy demands. For years now, assorted petroleum geologists and other energy types have been warning that world oil output is approaching a maximum sustainable daily level -- a peak -- and will subsequently go into decline, possibly producing global economic chaos. Whatever the timing of the arrival of peak oil's actual peak, there is growing agreement that we have, at last, made it into peak-oil territory, if not yet to the moment of irreversible decline.

Until recently, Energy Information Administration officials scoffed at the notion that a peak in global oil output was imminent or that we should anticipate a contraction in the future availability of petroleum any time soon. "[We] expect conventional oil to peak closer to the middle than to the beginning of the 21st century," the 2004 IEO report stated emphatically.

Consistent with this view, the EIA reported one year later that global production would reach a staggering 122.2 million barrels per day in 2025, more than 50% above the 2002 level of 80.0 million barrels per day. This was about as close to an explicit rejection of peak oil that you could get from the EIA's experts.

Where Did All the Oil Go?

Now, let's turn back to the 2009 edition. In 2025, according to this new report, world liquids output, conventional and unconventional, will reach only a relatively dismal 101.1 million barrels per day. Worse yet, conventional oil output will be just 89.6 million barrels per day. In EIA terms, this is pure gloom and doom, about as deeply pessimistic when it comes to the world's future oil output capacity as you're likely to get.

The agency's experts claim, however, that this will not prove quite the challenge it might seem, because they have also revised downward their projections of future energy demand. Back in 2005, they were projecting world oil consumption in 2025 at 119.2 million barrels per day, just below anticipated output at that time. This year -- and we should all theoretically breathe a deep sigh of relief -- the report projects that 2025 figure at only 101.1 million barrels per day, conveniently just what the world is expected to produce at that time. If this actually proves the case, then oil prices will presumably remain within a manageable range.

In fact, however, the consumption part of this equation seems like the less reliable calculation, especially if economic growth continues at anything like its recent pace in China and India. Indeed, all evidence suggests that growth in these countries will resume its pre-crisis pace by the end of 2009 or early 2010. Under those circumstances, global oil demand will eventually outpace supply, driving up prices again and threatening recurring and potentially disastrous economic disorders -- possibly on the scale of the present global economic meltdown.

To have the slightest chance of averting such disasters means seeing a sharp rise in unconventional fuel output. Such fuels include Canadian oil sands, Venezuelan extra-heavy oil, deep-offshore oil, Arctic oil, shale oil, liquids derived from coal (coal-to-liquids or CTL), and biofuels. At present, these cumulatively constitute only about 4% of the world's liquid fuel supply but are expected to reach nearly 13% by 2030. All told, according to estimates in the new IEO report, unconventional liquid production will reach an estimated 13.4 million barrels per day in 2030, up from a projected 9.7 million barrels in the 2008 edition.

But for an expansion on this scale to occur, whole new industries will have to be created to manufacture such fuels at a cost of several trillion dollars. This undertaking, in turn, is provoking a wide-ranging debate over the environmental consequences of producing such fuels.

For example, any significant increase in biofuels use -- assuming such fuels were produced by chemical means rather than, as now, by cooking -- could substantially reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, actually slowing the tempo of future climate change. On the other hand, any increase in the production of Canadian oil sands, Venezuelan extra-heavy oil, and Rocky Mountain shale oil will entail energy-intensive activities at staggering levels, sure to emit vast amounts of CO2, which might more than cancel out any gains from the biofuels.

In addition, increased biofuels production risks the diversion of vast tracts of arable land from the crucial cultivation of basic food staples to the manufacture of transportation fuel. If, as is likely, oil prices continue to rise, expect it to be ever more attractive for farmers to grow more corn and other crops for eventual conversion to transportation fuels, which means rises in food costs that could price basics out of the range of the very poor, while stretching working families to the limit. As in May and June of 2008, when food riots spread across the planet in response to high food prices -- caused, in part, by the diversion of vast amounts of corn acreage to biofuel production -- this could well lead to mass unrest and mass starvation.

A Heavy Energy Footprint on the Planet

The geopolitical implications of this transformation could well be striking. Among other developments, the global clout of Canada, Venezuela, and Brazil -- all key producers of unconventional fuels -- is bound to be strengthened.

Canada is becoming increasingly important as the world's leading producer of oil sands, or bitumen -- a thick, gooey, viscous material that must be dug out of the ground and treated in various energy-intensive ways before it can be converted into synthetic petroleum fuel (synfuel). According to the IEO report, oil sands production, now at 1.3 million barrels a day and barely profitable, could hit the 4.4 million barrel mark (or even, according to the most optimistic scenarios, 6.5 million barrels) by 2030.

Given the IEA's new projections, this would represent an extraordinary addition to global energy supplies just when key sources of conventional oil in places like Mexico and the North Sea are expected to suffer severe declines. The extraction of oil sands, however, could prove a pollution disaster of the first order. For one thing, remarkable infusions of old-style energy are needed to extract this new energy, huge forest tracts would have to be cleared, and vast quantities of water used for the steam necessary to dislodge the buried goo (just as the equivalent of "peak water" may be arriving).

What this means is that the accelerated production of oil sands is sure to be linked to environmental despoliation, pollution, and global warming. There is considerable doubt that Canadian officials and the general public will, in the end, be willing to pay the economic and environmental price involved. In other words, whatever the IEA may project now, no one can know whether synfuels will really be available in the necessary quantities 15 or 20 years down the road.

Venezuela has long been an important source of crude oil for the United States, generating much of the revenue used by President Hugo Chávez to sustain his social experiments at home and an ambitious anti-American political agenda abroad. In the coming years, however, its production of conventional petroleum is expected to fall, leaving the country increasingly reliant on the exploitation of large deposits of bitumen in the eastern Orinoco River basin. Just to develop these "extra-heavy oil" deposits will require significant financial and energy investments and, as with Canadian oil sands, the environmental impact could be devastating. Nevertheless, successful development of these deposits could prove an economic bonanza for Venezuela.

The big winner in these grim energy sweepstakes, however, is likely to be Brazil. Already a major producer of ethanol, it is expected to see a huge increase in unconventional oil output once its new ultra-deep fields in the "subsalt" Campos and Santos basins come on-line. These are massive offshore oil deposits buried beneath thick layers of salt some 100 miles off the coast of Rio de Janeiro and several miles beneath the ocean's surface.

When the substantial technical challenges to exploiting these undersea fields are overcome, Brazil's output could soar by as much as three million barrels per day. By 2030, Brazil should be a major player in the world energy equation, having succeeded Venezuela as South America's leading petroleum producer.

New Powers, New Problems

The IEO report hints at other geopolitical changes occurring in the global energy landscape, especially an expected stunning increase in the share of the global energy supply consumed in Asia and a corresponding decline by the United States, Japan, and other "First World" powers. In 1990, the developing nations of Asia and the Middle East accounted for only 17% of world energy consumption; by 2030, that number, the report suggests, should reach 41%, matching that of the major First World powers.

All recent editions of the report have predicted that China would eventually overtake the United States as number one energy consumer. What's notable is how quickly the 2009 edition expects that to happen. The 2006 report had China assuming the leadership position in a 2026-2030 timeframe; in 2007, it was 2021-2024; in 2008, it was 2016-2020. This year, the EIA is projecting that China will overtake the United States between 2010 and 2014.

It's easy enough to overlook these shifting estimates, since the reports don't emphasize how they have changed from year to year. What they suggest, however, is that the United States will face ever fiercer competition from China in the global struggle to secure adequate supplies of energy to meet national needs.

Given what we have learned about the dwindling prospects for adequate future oil supplies, we are sure to face increased geopolitical competition and strife between the two countries in those few areas that are capable of producing additional quantities of oil (and undoubtedly genuine desperation among many other countries with far less resources and power).

And much else follows: As the world's leading energy consumer, Beijing will undoubtedly play a far more critical role in setting international energy policies and prices, undercutting the pivotal role long played by Washington. It is not hard to imagine, then, that major oil producers in the Middle East and Africa will see it as in their interest to deepen political and economic ties with China at the expense of the United States. China can also be expected to maintain close ties with oil providers like Iran and Sudan, no matter how this clashes with American foreign policy objectives.

At first glance, the International Energy Outlook for 2009 hardly looks different from previous editions: a tedious compendium of tables and text on global energy trends. Looked at another way, however, it trumpets the headlines of the future -- and their news is not comforting.

The global energy equation is changing rapidly, and with it is likely to come great power competition, economic peril, rising starvation, growing unrest, environmental disaster, and shrinking energy supplies, no matter what steps are taken. No doubt the 2010 edition of the report and those that follow will reveal far more, but the new trends in energy on the planet are already increasingly evident -- and unsettling.

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Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, and the author of "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy" and "Blood and Oil".

Pentagon Travel Policies Criticized by Watchdogs

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Ann Scott Tyson 
June 11, 2009 - Washington Post

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Pentagon personnel took more than 22,000 trips paid for by foreign countries, private companies and other nongovernmental sources over the past decade, raising conflict-of-interest concerns, according to watchdog groups that yesterday released the first public database of such travel.

The trips, which took place from 1998 to 2007, cost at least $26 million and often involved companies or governments paying for travel by defense officials who were in a position to influence purchasing decisions that could benefit those footing the bill, according to a year-long investigation of ethics documents by the Center for Public Integrity and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.

Defense officials say the travel was legal and took place in conformity with existing regulations, but those leading the investigation said it created relationships that had the potential to distort Pentagon spending and therefore should be curtailed.

"The Pentagon itself should be paying for these trips," said Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity. He described the travel as being "riddled with conflicts of interest."

For example, he said, the biggest source of free travel was the medical industry, which funded about 8,700 trips worth $10 million for military doctors, pharmacists and others involved with the Pentagon's purchases of prescription drugs.

In one case, the investigation found that an Army doctor took at least 15 trips worth $13,000 to places such as Florida and Arizona that were paid for by the medical technology company Medtronic, and then wrote a journal article that overstated the benefits of a drug sold by Medtronic to treat bone injuries.

Foreign governments paid for 1,500 trips worth about $2.6 million. In one case in 2005, a senior official at the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the Pentagon body responsible for approving weapons purchases by foreign governments, took his wife on a $24,000, eight-day trip to Saudi Arabia paid for by a Saudi prince. The prince was a commander of the Saudi national guard, and from 2003 to 2006 the Saudi government was involved in billions of dollars in weapons purchases through DSCA programs.

Another large category involved manufacturers of retail goods -- such as Nike, Sony and Mattel -- that paid about $470,000 for 500 trips, many of them by military personnel in charge of purchasing for outlets on military bases. The trips included thousands of jaunts to vacation destinations such as Honolulu, Paris and Rio de Janeiro, with spouses of defense personnel taking part in hundreds of such trips, the investigation found.

Pentagon officials said the trips were necessary, saved taxpayer money, and in the case of foreign governments were customary and if refused could have caused offense, according to the study.

"When we visit other countries at their invitation, it is common for the host country to pay for ground transportation, local security needs and officially hosted meals for the principal and perhaps one or two staff members," said Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "We do the same here in the U.S. when foreign military dignitaries accept our invitation to visit," he said, adding: "All costs either expended or accepted by the U.S. government for these trips are approved."

Although acknowledging that some outside-funded travel may be beneficial, Buzenberg and others involved with the research said it has the potential to generate unnecessary spending of taxpayer money and should at a minimum be opened to public scrutiny.

"The real point of this is to shed light on a little-known practice," said Ellen Shearer, director of Medill's Washington Program. The probe into Pentagon travel followed a similar investigation that turned up $55 million in lobbyist-funded congressional travel and led to rule changes in 2007.

What to do with enemy prisoners?

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Richard Reeves – Yahoo News

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On Sept. 14, 1948, Capt. Kenneth Slaker of Lincoln, Neb., was making his sixth flight as a Berlin Airlift pilot, bringing food and fuel to the World War II enemy capital, which was blockaded on land and on rivers by the army of the Soviet Union. The United States Air Force, along with Great Britain's Royal Air Force, was trying to keep alive more than 2 million people in West Berlin, which was surrounded by East Germany and hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the Red Army.

Slaker knew the way. He had flown 50 bombing runs over Berlin in 1944. The briefing this day, as the Soviet-American alliance of the war was deteriorating into "Cold War," had ended:

"The Russians say they will shoot down any aircraft that strays out of the Berlin air corridor, and that captured airlift pilots will be treated as spies. ... If you should find yourself down in the Soviet Zone, we cannot say that you should turn yourself in, or that you should try to escape. There is no published or firm policy on this, and it would be up to you or your crew as to what action you would want to take."

Both engines of Slaker's C-47 cut out over East Germany's Harz mountains. He and his co-pilot, Lt. Clarence Steber of Memphis, Tenn., bailed out less a thousand feet above the ground. Slaker landed in a potato field and was unconscious for four or five hours. He heard German voices when he came to at dawn and crawled into a forest. Standing and turning, in great pain, he walked straight into an East German farmer.

"I'm an American pilot on the airlift," said Slaker, who spoke some German. The German, whose name was Rudolph Schnabel, reached into a coat pocket and showed the pilot the discharge papers he received after two years as a prisoner of war in an American camp outside Kearney, Neb.

"Americans were good to me," Schnabel said in workable English. "Americans capture me, save my leg." He pulled up his pants to show scars on his leg, which had been put back together in an American field hospital after he was run over by a tank. To make a long story short, Schnabel recruited friends and smuggled Slaker across the border to an American checkpoint in West Berlin.

It seems to me that there is something to be learned about the handling of the 240 enemy combatants at Guantanamo by remembering how we handled more than 400,000 prisoners of war inside the United States from 1942 to 1947.

Schnabel, a corporal in the Wehrmacht, the German Army, was one of more than 380,000 German prisoners of war kept in 511 POW camps in the United States. Most of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps ended up in Texas for years, working for local farmers, building roads, being paid 80 cents an hour to buy cigarettes and beer in their own canteens. Many Texans, in fact, resented the camps, built strictly according to international law and the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners, calling them "Fritz Ritzes."

A few prisoners escaped -- it wasn't hard -- but were usually found on the main street of the nearest town, looking in store windows or at girls. Many later came back and became American citizens. When locals complained to the press or to their congressmen, according to "The Handbook of Texas": "The War Department defended its policy by pointing out the strategic reward of treating prisoners well: Enemy troops were surrendering rather than fighting."

There were also tens of thousands of Japanese and Italian POWs in the camps, mostly in the Midwest and South. More than a few American towns, Houlton, Maine, for one, invited the prisoners back in later years for joint celebrations of those years.

That is not to say that Americans are angels or that there was no mistreatment or torture or murdering of captured enemies in the past, particularly after American GIs saw Nazi concentration camps. West German investigators concluded in 1971 that tens of thousands of German prisoners were beaten and starved -- and 5,000 to 20,000 died -- in U.S. Army open air camps run near Cologne. Interestingly, those men were officially denied POW status and Geneva Conventions protections simply by reclassifying them as "disarmed enemy forces."

Now, of course, we have another name for some prisoners, "enemy combatants" -- and some argue that a couple of hundred of them are so dangerous they are not covered by any legal protections and that the United States is not strong enough to allow them to be tried or incarcerated on our own soil. Torture and illegal detention are not the tools of greatness, and if we could handle hundreds of thousands of uniformed prisoners, including 35 German generals and hundreds of fanatic U-Boat officers, we should be able to figure out how to deal with the bad guys and maybe some not-so-bad guys locked up all these years in Cuba.

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Richard Reeves is a syndicated columnist, he also has made award-winning documentary films. His books include "President Kennedy: Profile of Power."