Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (91159)	12/12/2004 10:43:38 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

As someone said on another thread- imagine what these guys will do if they get their hands on social security money... How Consultants Can Retire on Your Pension Christopher Berkey for The New York Times David R. Eichenthal says a former adviser to the pension fund for Chattanooga, Tenn., breached his trust. By GRETCHEN MORGENSON and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH Published: December 12, 2004 Jack Smith for The New York Times Diann Shipione, a volunteer trustee of the city retirement system in San Diego, has called for the resignation of its fund's consultant. Stephanie Bruce/The Tennessean William Keith Phillips faces questions over his role as a consultant to the general pension fund for the city of Chattanooga, Tenn. NINE years ago, William Keith Phillips, a top stockbroker at Paine Webber, met with the trustees of the Chattanooga Pension Fund in Tennessee to pitch his services as a consultant. He gave them an intriguing, if unusual, choice. They could pay for his investment advice directly, as pension funds often do, or they could save money by agreeing to allocate a portion of its trading commissions to cover his fees. Under a commission arrangement, Mr. Phillips told the trustees, the fund would be less likely to incur out-of-pocket expenses, leaving more money to invest for its 1,600 beneficiaries. Seven and a half years later, Chattanooga's pension trustees discovered just how expensive that money-saving plan had been. According to an arbitration proceeding they filed against Mr. Phillips, the agreement cost the fund $20 million in losses, undisclosed commissions and fees. And since 2001, Chattanooga has had to raise nearly $3.7 million from taxpayers to keep the $180 million fund fiscally sound. The Chattanooga trustees fired Mr. Phillips in 2003 and, last October, filed arbitration proceedings against him, UBS Wealth Management USA, formerly the Paine Webber Group, and his new firm, Morgan Stanley. The case, which is pending, accuses the consultant of, among other things, fraud and breach of fiduciary duty. The commission arrangement was central to the problem because it put Mr. Phillips's interests ahead of his client's, the fund said in its complaint. "The very important and in many ways unique relationship that a pension fund board has with its consultant is based on trust," said David R. Eichenthal, finance officer and chairman of the general pension plan for the city of Chattanooga. "To the extent that Phillips breached that trust, we thought it was important for the pension fund to do everything possible to hold him accountable for the results." Pension experts say the Chattanooga case is hardly rare among retirement funds. The Securities and Exchange Commission is concerned enough about conflicts of interest among consultants who advise pension funds on asset allocation, selection of money managers and other investment matters that it is conducting an industrywide inquiry. The results of the S.E.C.'s investigation are expected soon, and enforcement actions may follow. Aubrey Harwell, a lawyer for Mr. Phillips, declined to make him available for this article. Mr. Harwell said: "No. 1, these are allegations and not proven facts. And No. 2, the performance during the days that Keith Phillips was consulting were well beyond the benchmarks." Details of the commission arrangement, he added, were fully disclosed to the pension fund. But this is not the first time a pension client has sued Mr. Phillips. In 2000, the Metro Nashville Pension Plan filed an arbitration based on similar accusations. That arbitration was settled two years later, with UBS paying $10.3 million to the pension fund. As financial services conglomerates have added a wide array of operations in recent years, the possibility of conflicts of interest has also grown. And nowhere are the conflicts more potentially lucrative - and more obscure - than in the management of pension assets. "Recommendations to pension funds regarding asset allocation, money manager selection and securities brokerage policies are frequently driven by undisclosed financial arrangements," said Edward A. H. Siedle, president of Benchmark Financial Services Inc., in Ocean Ridge, Fla., and a former lawyer for the S.E.C. "Pensions often accept that poor investment performance is attributable to unfortunate investment assumptions when, in fact, more sinister forces were at work. Investment performance often is compromised as the result of conflicts of interest, undisclosed financial arrangements, excessive fees and fraud." An estimated $5 trillion sits in thousands of pension funds across the nation, run for the benefit of private company, state or municipal workers who rely on the funds for retirement income. Some funds are huge, with billions of dollars under management, and are overseen by a board of finance professionals. Many, however, are tiny, with just a few million dollars invested. These funds are often run by volunteers less versed in the ways of Wall Street. Pension fund boards typically hire a consultant to advise them on investment strategies and the hiring of money managers. Problems can crop up when these pension consulting firms, which have a fiduciary duty to the fund, put their own interests first. JUST as pension funds come in many sizes, so, too, do the consulting firms that serve them. Some are one-person operations while others work within a large financial-services firm. Among the biggest companies in pension consulting are Mercer Inc., a unit of Marsh & McLennan, and Callan Associates, a privately held company based in San Francisco. In recent years, however, Wall Street firms have played an increasingly large role in the world of pension consulting. Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney and Morgan Stanley are all big in this field. The potential for conflicts is greatest at firms with brokerage or trading operations, pension authorities say, and it almost always involves how the consultants are compensated. The trouble is, much of a consultant's pay can be hidden from view. The Chattanooga complaint said Mr. Phillips and his colleagues controlled and manipulated the information given to the pension board, keeping it in the dark about excessive fees and conflicts inherent in the recommendations they made to the fund. Mr. Phillips's reports on the pension fund's performance were misleading, the complaint said, because they did not take into consideration all of the fees and commissions it paid. Only when the Chattanooga board began considering rival consultants to advise it in 2002 did Mr. Phillips acknowledge the conflicts of interest in his previous arrangement with the pension fund, the complaint said. Arguing that the Chattanooga board should keep him on, Mr. Phillips said that under a new agreement conflicts would be removed, according to the complaint, and that there would be "full and fair disclosure of all brokerage practices and relationships." Money manager recommendations would be "based upon performance rather than revenue," he said, according to the complaint. Mr. Phillips ultimately lost the Chattanooga account to the Consulting Services Group of Nashville, an independent consultant with no brokerage firm operations. A spokesman for UBS said that the firm believes the case has no merit. "We are defending ourselves vigorously," he said. A Morgan Stanley spokeswoman said: "The Chattanooga Pension Board was a sophisticated and knowledgeable investor that was advised by its own counsel about all aspects of its relationship with us. Morgan Stanley acted properly and is confident that the board's claims will be rejected by the arbitrators." The compensation of consultants is so complex because it can come from many sources. "There are more ways for people to be compensated in the financial business than most people realize," said Joseph Bogdahn, principal of Bogdahn Consulting L.L.C., an independent consultant in Winter Haven, Fla. "The only way that you can determine if your consultant is truly independent is to audit their tax returns and their financials." Mr. Bogdahn said he recommends that pension fund trustees ask their consultants to open up their books to show how they are paid, and by whom. He says he makes his financial statements available to his clients. Because they have a fiduciary duty to their clients, consultants are required to disclose any potential conflicts of interest in their operations. But when they have affiliations with firms that conduct trades for the pension funds they advise, these relationships can undermine the fiduciary duty. Some consultants try to get around this by hiring money managers who agree to direct their trades through the brokerage firm with which the consultants are affiliated. Arrangements like the one in Chattanooga are the most common method used by pension consultants to ensure that commissions will go to them. In their contracts, they require the pension funds to pay their fee through commissions on trades steered to their brokerage units. This is known as directed brokerage, commission recapture or a soft-dollar arrangement. Ultimately, pension experts say, the commissions steered to the brokerage firm in such an arrangement are often worth far more than the upfront fee that is typically quoted by the consultant for his services. Pension fund trustees do not always receive a full accounting of the transactions and the commissions they generate. So the trustees do not know how much more they are paying as a result of the arrangement. For example, during its years with Mr. Phillips, Chattanooga wound up paying his firm $2 million in commissions and cash payments, an average of $270,000 annually. If it had paid the upfront fees quoted by Mr. Phillips, the fund would have paid $154,000 a year, on average, the lawsuit said. As a result of the commission arrangement, Mr. Phillips and his colleagues misappropriated more than $870,000 in undisclosed and unjustified fees, according to the complaint. When consultants steer trades to a particular firm, a pension fund can pay dearly in other ways, too. Money managers are supposed to provide best execution - the most favorable price - on their clients' trades. But when a brokerage firm is guaranteed to receive most or all of a fund's trades, it need not work as hard on the execution of those trades as a firm that is competing for the business. Execution costs can skyrocket. A letter sent to a public pension client last January by Rittenhouse Asset Management Inc., a money manager in Radnor, Pa., described the matter succinctly: "Because we trade through your advisor, we have not selected broker-dealers or negotiated commission rates for your account and cannot actively ensure that directed brokerage terms are in your continuing best interests. Although cost is only one component of best execution analysis, many directed brokerage accounts pay effective rates of commissions that are higher than client accounts that do not have directed brokerage arrangements." Rittenhouse said it made this disclosure because industry practices were changing and the firm wanted to remind its clients of their specific arrangements. The potential for conflicts is driving some pension fund trustees to switch to independent consultants who have no brokerage firm affiliations and are therefore not tempted to ask money managers to steer trades to them. Michael Brown is a battalion chief of the fire department in Dania Beach, Fla., and a member of the police and fire pension board; the funds had $22.6 million in assets as of last December. For many years, the board employed Merrill Lynch Consulting Services in Jacksonville, Fla., as its pension consultant. But earlier this year, the board replaced Merrill with an independent consultant that did not have a brokerage unit in its operations. "I think they did a good job," Mr. Brown said, referring to Merrill. "But a lot of stuff had come out over the last year with reference to your big corporate money managers and consultants being at the same company. We thought it would be a better idea to have an independent consultant." Merrill Lynch Consulting Services in Jacksonville counts almost 100 pension funds in Florida as its clients. At the end of 2003, they included the $80 million fire and police funds of Cape Coral, the $40 million police fund of Fort Myers, the $26 million police fund of Miramar and the $27 million fire and police funds of Vero Beach. Pension consultants sometimes recommend that their smaller clients buy mutual funds. What a pension's trustees may not realize is that their consultant can receive compensation from the mutual fund companies on these trades. In 2000, at the advice of Merrill Lynch Consulting, the city of Sunrise, Fla., put $10.4 million of its pension assets into three international mutual funds with similar stock holdings. The pension fund bought shares worth $3.7 million in one fund, $3.1 million in the second and $3.6 million in the third. Merrill Lynch Consulting received commissions of 1 percent on each purchase from the mutual fund companies. But mutual funds often discount their commissions on larger trades, so if the fund had put all $10.4 million into one of the international mutual funds, Merrill Lynch Consulting would have received 0.69 percent. "Sunrise, not Merrill Lynch, selected the money managers from recommendations we provided," said Mark Herr, a Merrill spokesman. "During the five years we provided consulting services, Sunrise finished in the top quartile or quintile for results when compared to its peers." Brokerage commissions are not the only source of revenue for many pension consultants. They also receive payments from money managers who attend annual conferences at luxurious resorts set up by the consultants. The conferences are billed as opportunities for money managers to meet pension plan officials, but critics describe them as pay-to-play mechanisms. They contend that the money managers recommended by consultants to pension funds tend to be only those who paid to attend the conferences. Earlier this year, CRA RogersCasey, an investment consultant in Chicago, held two conferences, one at the American Club in Kohler, Wis., near two famous golf courses, and the other at the Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va. Celebrities often appear at CRA RogersCasey conferences: past speakers have included Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf; James Carville, the political consultant; and Robert B. Reich, the former secretary of labor. The cost to attend varies. At the conferences this year, "new members" paid $40,000 while return guests were charged $35,000 to $37,500. MONEY management firms that have attended past conferences of CRA RogersCasey include AIG Global Investment, Citigroup Asset Management, Strong Capital Management, Putnam Investments and Bear Stearns Asset Management. Matt McCormick, director of marketing at CRA RogersCasey, said that it would continue to sponsor conferences. "Our clients tell us that they add value," he said. "They tell us they have a very good comfort level that there is no impact or influence on our independent advice." Earlier this year, Mercer said it would stop conducting conferences. Callan Associates said it was continuing to hold its meetings. "An important part of our business model is educating all clients on their fiduciary responsibilities," a Callan spokeswoman said. Pension consultants aren't the only ones holding conferences where money managers can hobnob with pension officials. Robert D. Klausner, a lawyer at Klausner & Kaufman in Plantation, Fla., whose firm provides legal counsel to many pension funds in Florida and elsewhere in the south, runs similar meetings. Klausner & Kaufman's sixth annual client conference was in March at the Hyatt Regency in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Among the eight companies that paid to sponsor the 2003 conference were Merrill Lynch and Davis Hamilton Jackson & Associates, a money manager based in Houston that Merrill often recommends to its pension clients. According to documents detailing the various advisers to police and fire pension funds in Florida, Mr. Klausner's firm provides legal advice to 19 funds. Twelve of them employed Davis Hamilton as a money manager, or Merrill Lynch Consulting as a consultant, or both. Mr. Klausner did not return calls seeking comment. Davis Hamilton appears often among the pension fund clients of Merrill Lynch Consulting, even though the firm has produced less-than-stellar returns in recent years. Davis Hamilton has managed the Lake Worth Police Officers' Pension Fund, for example, and for the six years ending in 2003, it beat its benchmark index only one-third of the time. For the year ending 2003, the police fund's overall return, including both stocks and bonds, ranked in the bottom 26 percent of the peer group used by Merrill. A trustee at a public fund in Florida, who asked for anonymity because he feared reprisals from the firms involved, said his fund is advised by Merrill Lynch and has employed Davis Hamilton. Although the money manager's performance has been lackluster in recent years, this trustee said Merrill Lynch continued to recommend that the pension fund retain Davis Hamilton. The trustee said he was concerned that Merrill's support of Davis Hamilton had to do with the fact that Davis Hamilton steers "virtually all" of the pension fund's trades to Merrill. Davis Hamilton did not return calls seeking comment. Merrill's spokesman said: "We do not require any client or any manager to direct its trades to us. The choice always belongs to the client." The Merrill spokesman added: "We don't pay to play. We don't have conflicts of interest that injure or work against our clients. We fully disclose our fees face up on the table. The only reason we do well is because we provide excellent work for our clients." Trustees of the city retirement system in San Diego are in a battle over the practices of Callan Associates, one of its consultants. Diann Shipione, a volunteer trustee and a financial adviser, has called for the consultant's resignation because of payments Callan has received from money managers it has recommended to the fund. For example, Ms. Shipione said, one of the money managers recommended by Callan had only two full years of experience and a performance ranking in the bottom 30 percent of its peers nationwide. Only after she questioned the recommendation did it emerge that Callan had a significant economic relationship with the money manager, she said. Callan's spokeswoman said the performance of the San Diego pension fund spoke for itself. For the five years ended Sept. 30, she said, "San Diego was in the top 1 percent of our public fund universe and was in the top third in each of those five years." She added that in a typical year, less than half the investment managers recommended by Callan were its clients. But Ms. Shipione said: "These pay-to-play practices are systemic. A consultant's advice should come in the form of an objective recommendation, but in reality it may be the result of self-serving economic gain. Pension trustees need information about the business of investment consultants and their sources of revenue. It would at least give us information with which to test the consultant's objectivity." Indeed, among the documents requested of pension consultants by the S.E.C. in its investigation are a full accounting of the compensation received by consultants, not only from their pension plan clients, but also from the money managers they recommend. Mr. Siedle, who investigates money management abuses on behalf of pension fund clients, said these funds could be easily defrauded because they had no procedures in place to detect and prevent wrongdoing. "The greatest threat to pensions today is the widespread unwillingness to confront the truth about how investment firms have profited at the expense of funds and take corrective action," he said. Gary Findlay, executive director of the Missouri State Employees' Retirement System, said his organization had tackled the problem of conflicted consultants by using a consultant that receives no revenue beyond the direct fees it charges the fund. "Our consultant has no relationship with a broker dealer and they sell no services to money managers," Mr. Findlay said. "One of the things that we rely on from our consultant is to provide us with guidance on the basis of undivided loyalty. Their interests are aligned with our interests only, and I do believe that's what it's all about."

To: Grainne who wrote (91159)	12/12/2004 12:07:58 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

"God Is With Us": Hitler's Rhetoric and the Lure of "Moral Values" by Maureen Farrell "God does not make cowardly nations free." -- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf A couple weeks ago, while asserting that the Founding Founders intended for the U.S. government to be infused with Christianity, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that the Holocaust was able to flourish in Germany because of Europe's secular ways. "Did it turn out that, by reason of the separation of church and state, the Jews were safer in Europe than they were in the United States of America?" Scalia asked a congregation at Manhattan's Shearith Israel synagogue. "I don't think so." One might expect regular citizens to be ignorant of history, but a Supreme Court Justice? Does he imagine that the phrase "Gott mit Uns" was a German clothier's interpretation of "Got Milk"? If photographic evidence of the Third Reich's Christian leanings were not enough, Hitler's own speeches and writings prove, at the very least, that he presented many of the same faith-based arguments heard in America today. Religion in the schools? Hitler was for it. Intellectuals who practiced "anti-Christian, smug individualism"? According to Hitler, their days were numbered. Divine Providence's role in shaping Germany's ultimate victory? Who could argue? In other words, there is enough historical evidence to color Scalia deluded. Writing for Free Inquiry, John Patrick Michael Murphy explained: "Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church. Soldiers of the vermacht wore belt buckles inscribed with the following: "Gott mit uns" (God is with us). His troops were often sprinkled with holy water by the priests. It was a real Christian country whose citizens were indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical. Hitler, like some of the today's politicians and preachers, politicized "family values." He liked corporeal punishment in home and school. Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under his administration. While abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he took it to new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages. He openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it." For anyone wanting even more proof, Mein Kampf is chock full of the Fuhrer's musings on God. ("I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord," Hitler wrote). But anti-Semitic rants aside, some of Hitler's religious musings are interchangeable with Mr. Bush's. Hitler was raised a Catholic and spoke of his faith in God, yet, singling out his rants against religion, politicians and pastors continue to characterize him as a pagan barbarian. Such distortions are convenient -- particularly in an age where propaganda concerning "moral values" is readily gobbled up and Christian nation legislation waits in the wings -- but, to paraphrase the Bible, overlooking the truth will not make us free. Scalia, who also cited the Bible to claim that government "derives its moral authority from God," is hardly alone in his assertions. Leo Strauss, the philosopher who has influenced neoconservativism, and by proxy, George Bush's America, felt that religion, like deception, was crucial to maintaining social order. Meanwhile, neoconservative kingpin Irving Kristol has argued similar points -- bragging about how easy it is to fool the public into accepting the government's actions while arguing that America's Founding Fathers were wrong to insist on the separation of church and state. Why? According to Jim Lobe, it's because religion, as Strauss and his disciples see it, is "absolutely essential in order to impose moral law on the masses who otherwise would be out of control." Saying that neoconservatives believe that secular society is undesirable "because it leads to individualism, liberalism, and relativism, precisely those traits that may promote dissent that in turn could dangerously weaken society's ability to cope with external threats," Lobe explained why Kristol and other neocons have "allied themselves with the Christian Right" and, in some cases, have also denounced Darwin's theory of evolution. "Neoconservatives are pro-religion even though they themselves may not be believers," Reason magazine's Ronald Bailey explained, pointing to publications like Commentary which has espoused the virtues of religious fundamentalism and has questioned evolutionary science. (Hitler did the same. The book The German Churches Under Hitler includes his assertion that secular schools should not be tolerated while Hitler's Table Talk quotes him questioning the wisdom in teaching children both creationism and the theory of evolution. "The present system of teaching in schools permits the following absurdity: at 10 a.m. the pupils attend a lesson in the catechism, at which the creation of the world is presented to them in accordance with the teachings of the Bible; and at 11 a.m. they attend a lesson in natural science, at which they are taught the theory of evolution,"he said. "Yet the two doctrines are in complete contradiction. As a child, I suffered from this contradiction, and ran my head against a wall.") Professor Shadia B. Drury also noted the similarities between the methods endorsed by Hitler and neoconservatives' favorite philosopher. She explained: "Strauss loved America enough to try to save her from the errors and terrors of Europe. He was convinced that the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic led to the rise of the Nazis. That is a debatable matter. But Strauss did not openly debate this issue or provide arguments for his position in his writings. I am inclined to think that it is Strauss's ideas, and not liberal ideas, that invite the kinds of abuses he wished to avoid. It behooves us to remember that Hitler had the utmost contempt for parliamentary democracy. He was impatient with debate and dispute, on the grounds that they were a waste of time for the great genius who knew instinctively the right choices and policies that the people need. Hitler had a profound contempt for the masses - the same contempt that is readily observed in Strauss and his cohorts. But when force of circumstances made it necessary to appeal to the masses, Hitler advocated lies, myths, and illusions as necessary pabulum to placate the people and make them comply with the will of the Fuhrer. Strauss's political philosophy advocates the same solution to the problem of the recalcitrant masses. Anyone who wants to avoid the horrors of the Nazi past is well advised not to accept Strauss's version of ancient wisdom uncritically. But this is exactly what Strauss encouraged his students to do." Although several others, including the legendary Seymour Hersh, have noted the neoconservatives' belief that deception is essential, the religious aspect of their philosophy is especially unnerving. Religion may be the opium of the masses, but when zealots become so certain of their own righteousness that they ignore their own humanity, horror is the natural consequence. Islamic extremism offers the most glaring recent example, and now that Osama bin Laden has been granted permission to nuke America, the most extreme changes within the U.S. could very well come from the outside world. In the meantime, however, for those who have not yet noticed, our own homegrown zealots -- those who advocate hatred in the name of the Lord -- have made considerable headway, with gays and lesbians currently at the center of legislation which, should it pass, will alter this country forever. When the Marriage Protection Act passed the House in July, the New York Times called it "a radical assault on the Constitution. "If it passes in the Senate, the bill could obliterate the separation of powers and wipe out Constitutional protections for all minorities, stripping the courts and possibly paving the way for Christian nationhood. Other pieces of court stripping legislation bills designed to topple the wall between church and state are also in play. This encroaching infusion of church and state, combined with recent decrees concerning moral values, doesn't resonate with inclusive tolerance. "When was the last time a Western nation had a leader so obsessed with God and claiming God was on our side? If you answered Adolph Hitler and Nazi Germany, you're correct," Bob Fitrakis wrote. "Nothing can be more misleading than to categorize Hitler as a barbaric pagan or Godless totalitarian, like Stalin." While many of us reserve a soft spot for true Christian generosity and the warm teachings of Jesus, it's important to remember that Christianity can be (and has been) distorted for darker purposes. Whether you're talking about Nazi Germany, the pre-Civil War American South, or the atmosphere in the U.S. these past few years, whenever questions of conscience are vigorously denounced, you can bet there is trouble ahead -- and the hijacking of faith and the manipulation of religion should always arouse suspicion. Moral values as a mandate? What better way to foster civil obedience and "One nation Under God" unity in a time of preventative war, suppressed liberty and sanctioned torture. So, yes, despite tales of Hitler's atheism and Germany's Godlessness, the list of Hitler's religious assertions and Nazi Christian affiliations is long, and before Americans swallow more WMD-type baloney, it's best to comprehend this history and understand that no nation, including our own, is immune to faith-based fascism. Substituting "America" for "Germany," many of Hitler's religious assertions could have been uttered by Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson -- with Hitler even asserting that God punished Germany for turning away from Him -- before promising that renewed piety would protect the Fatherland and make it prosperous and successful once more. "Once the mercy of God shown upon us, but we were not worthy of His mercy. Providence withdrew its protection and our people fell, fell as scarcely any other people heretofore. In this deep misery we again learned to pray," Hitler said in 1936, sixty-five years before Falwell and Robertson blamed abortionists and feminists for the tragedies of Sept. 11. Hitler's religious phrases could have also come from the lips of George W. Bush. "Our prayer is: Lord God, let us never hesitate, let us never play the coward, let us never forget the duty which we have taken upon us,"Hitler said in March, 1933, sounding much like our president, who believes that God wants him to liberate the people in Middle East -- even if he has to torture, maim and kill tens of thousands in the process. "I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Bob Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty.. . . Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . ." Speaking in Berlin in March, 1936, Hitler said something remarkably similar. "I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany," he said, before launching the preventive war heard round the world. Both leaders also promised peace while planning for war. "We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended," Bush said, in his State of the Union address in Jan. 2003, two months before launching a preventative war in Iraq. "Never in these long years have we offered any other prayer but this: Lord, grant to our people peace at home, and grant and preserve to them peace from the foreign foe!"Hitler said in Nuremberg on Sept. 13, 1936. Yes, many of Hitler's faith-based comments could have come from George Bush himself, and are undoubtedly the kinds of sentiments many Americans not only agree with -- but take comfort in. This is not to say that Bush is Hitler or that religion is evil, but to serve as a reminder that things are not always what they seem. Christianity was used to justify everything from the Salem witch trials to slavery in America, and facilitated group-think in Germany -- when individuality and questions of conscience were needed the most. These are but a few of the Fuhrer's assertions: "Secular schools can never be tolerated because such a school has no religious instruction and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith." (The German Churches Under Hitler, p.241) "We must turn all the sentiments of the Volk, all its thinking, acting, even its beliefs, away from the anti-Christian, smug individualism of the past, from the egotism and stupid Phariseeism of personal arrogance, and we must educate the youth in particular in the spirit of those of Christ's words that we must interpret anew: love one another; be considerate of your fellow man; remember that each one of you is not alone a creature of God, but that you are all brothers! This youth will, with loathing and contempt, abandon those hypocrites who have Christ on their lips but the devil in their hearts." (Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant, page 140) "It will be the Government's care to maintain honest cooperation between Church and State; the struggle against materialistic views and for a real national community is just as much in the interest of the German nation as in that of the welfare of our Christian faith." (At the Reichstag, March 23, 1933) "Without pledging ourselves to any particular Confession [Protestantism or Catholicism], we have restored to faith its prerequisites because we were convinced that the people need and require this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." (Berlin, Oct. 24, 1933) "But there is something else I believe, and that is that there is a God. . . . And this God again has blessed our efforts during the past 13 years." (Munich, Feb. 24, 1940) "You [blue-collar workers] represent the most noble of slogans known to us: "God helps those who help themselves!' (Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, Vol. 2, page 1147) "Fifteen years ago I had nothing save my faith and my will. Today the Movement is Germany, today this Movement has won the German nation and formed the Reich. Would that have been possible without the blessing of the Almighty? Or do they who ruined Germany wish to maintain that they have had God's blessing? What we are we are, not against but with the will of Providence. And so long as we are loyal, honest, and ready to fight, so long as we believe in our great work and do not capitulate, we shall also in the future have the blessing of Providence." (Rosenheim, Aug. 11, 1935) "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. . . As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people." (Munich, April 12, 1922) "If positive Christianity means love of one's neighbor, i.e. the tending of the sick, the clothing of the poor, the feeding of the hungry, the giving of drink to those who are thirsty, then it is we who are the more positive Christians. For in these spheres the community of the people of National Socialist Germany has accomplished a prodigious work." (Feb. 24, 1939) "We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out." (Berlin, Oct. 24, 1933) "An educated man retains the sense of the mysteries of nature and bows before the unknowable. An educated man, on the other hand, runs the risk of going over to atheism (which is a return to the state of the animal)." (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944, page 59) In his book, They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayer interviewed Germans who discussed how their society changed right before their eyes, and how, despite Hitler's rhetoric, God was nowhere to be found. As one interviewee put it: "The world you live in -- "your nation, your people" -- is not the world you were in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way." Of course, America has hardly "gone all the way" and is unlikely to become as psychotic as Nazi Germany any time soon. But what do you suppose God thinks of preventative war based upon deception? Or about the use of depleted uranium? Or about dropping napalm on civilians? Are Iraqi insurgents are any less certain that God is on their side than our own Evangelical Marines? Yes, Saddam Hussein was a brutal thug, but why do so many insist on forgetting that the U.S. helped him to power in the first place? Does God see our role in all of this as lightly as we do? And how many U.S. citizens do you know, who, mired in fear, readily dismiss America's use of torture and rationalize our disregard for international law? What else might they overlook? In 1937, Hitler said that because of Germany's belief in God and God's favoritism towards Germany, the country would prevail and prosper. "We, therefore, go our way into the future with the deepest belief in God. Would all we have achieved been possible had Providence not helped us? I know that the fruits of human labor are hard-won and transitory if they are not blessed by the Omnipotent. Work such as ours which has received the blessings of the Omnipotent can never again be undone by mere mortals,"he said. While attempting to solidify his power, Hitler also denounced those who denounced religion -- as if he were talking about Hollywood or blue states or Noam Chomsky. "For eight months we have been conducting a fearless campaign against that Communism which is threatening our entire nation, our culture, our art, and our public morals, "Hitler said in a speech in Oct. 1933. "We have made an end of denials of the Deity and the crying down of religion." There will be no more crying down of religion in George Bush's America, either. Though oft-repeated assertions made by the media in the immediate aftermath of the election have proven to be nothing more than myth, propagandists would have you believe that the American people have spoken: "Moral values" reign supreme. But how can any one of us know God's desires -- especially when our enemies claim to have God on their side as well? And doesn't it seem that religious hubris -- believing that God sanctions one's own inhumane treatment of others -- always invites a fall? "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever," Thomas Jefferson said, of the price America would eventually pay for slavery. "Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions," Ulysses S. Grant advised, describing karmic retribution without pointing hateful fingers at lesbians. And long before that, the poet John Milton tried to "justify the ways of God to Man." But yet, the world, with its conflicting visions of morality, ethics and truth, still struggles to comprehend. Perhaps Truth, for want of a better definition, is what God sees when he looks at any given situation. And perhaps it is ultimately impossible for us to know God's mind. After all, it's obvious that Hitler wasn't telling the truth when he spoke of God and country -- and by the same token, it's difficult to look at Najaf or Fallujah or Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay and see God's hand in any of it. After one of Bush's operatives promised to "export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation" Bob Woodward wrote: "The president was casting his mission and that of the country in the grand vision of God's Master Plan." And sure enough, when Woodward asked Bush if he had discussed the impending invasion of Iraq with his father, President George H.W. Bush (who could have offered sage advice), the President responded: "He is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength; there is a higher father that I appeal to." But, without knowing God's mind, most of us have only History to help us judge. And the fact is, without the benefit of History, some of the "moral values" Hitler embraced sound eerily like those being peddled today. George Bush is not Hitler. America is not Nazi Germany. But buying into religious assertions or thinking that God is on your side is not wise when it comes to matters of war -- particularly when that war is an aggressive preventative war based on false premises and assumptions. So, aside from Jerry Falwell, who speaks with hate-filled authority, most of us do not know how God will judge us. We will have to settle for History's imperfect record. All of this begs the question, however. Given his assertions regarding God's role in helping him decide policy ("I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible" Bush told Woodward. . . "I felt so strongly that [invading Iraq] was the right thing to do") how does Bush view the more mundane, secular implications of his actions? When asked by Woodward how History would judge the war in Iraq, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead." I challenge anyone to find the moral value in that.