The Blog Brief

An Investigation of the Minotaur and his Labyrinth would Chill the CIA and Turn Into a Partisan Witch Hunt!

2009-08-28T09:34:00.008-04:00

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

These are the facts: the minotaur kept us safe, the minotaur had legal authorizations from top Justice Department lawyers before a single prisoner was lost in the maze and gored, and also, 9/11.

Torturing Detainees for False Confessions to Create a Pretext for War

2009-05-14T16:11:00.003-04:00

So... did the war criminals who engineered the Iraq War, ginned up false intelligence to justify their war, and authorized torture, use their torture program to try to establish a false link between Iraq and al Qaeda?

Looks like it.

Somebody want to take a stab at why this isn't a big deal and why there is no need for investigations and prosecutions?

Don't forget these are the same cowards who prosecuted the guards at Abu Ghraib and feigned a morally righteous tone about that whole scandal.

Update:

Also.

Declassified Documents Confirm Bush Administration Run by Radical Usurpers of the Constitution

2009-03-03T18:31:00.001-05:00

Send them all to jail. Among their numerous crimes they violated their oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Scott Horton reads through Bush's secret legal memos suspending the First and Fourth Amendments, justifying torture, and claiming power to detain American citizens in America indefinitely without a court order, and writes:

"We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it"

All of this, of course, confirms what many of us suspected: Bush and Cheney and their co-conspirators like John Yoo have spent the past eight years systematically and secretly destroying the American system of government. I'm certainly willing to hear the "conservative" case for letting the President unilaterally ignore all of the parts of the Constitution that restrain his or her power (i.e. the Bill of Rights), but something tells me its not a very conservative case. It should be obvious, but ex-President Bush and the current Republican Party are radicals, not conservatives. (And now we have to listen to braying from these same no-nothings about that damned socialist Obama!)

I hear a lot of talk about how investigations (and prosecutions) would be too distracting to the current government, and I sympathize. No one wants to be painted as a partisan looking to settle political grudges when there is important work to do like healthcare, ending two wars, and reviving the dying economy. However, somebody needs to conserve the constitutional structure and that is simply not going to happen unless there are clear consequences for egregiously violating it. If we just leave all of these crimes "in the past"--as was done with Nixon's crimes and Iran-Contra--they will only be repeated again. We cannot leave Bush's actions as a precedent for any of his successors, and it is time to permanently discredit the "conservative" argument against the Constitution.

Threats to the "homeland" are not new at all, and certainly no justification for finding new emergency powers. 9/11 was hardly the country's darkest day. The Constitution was born following a war with the world's greatest superpower, yet it purposely handicapped the very person that it gave the power to fight off such an adversary: the president. The constitutional limits on the presidency then endured yet another invasion and the burning of Washington, D.C., all during the lifetimes of the men who wrote the document.

Expedience cannot justify what Bush and his co-conspirators have done, and it should not justify allowing their example to stand.

The Torture President Attempts Comedy, Jokes About Punishment for War Crimes

2008-12-15T11:25:00.005-05:00

"Welcome to my hanging," Bush said, drawing laughs from the well-dressed audience in The Union League's ornate hall.

Har, har, har.

It's funny because he's a war criminal. Get it?

Between an illegal war of aggression ginned up with false "intelligence" he knew to be false and the normalization of torture as national policy, that Bush sure is funny with those crazy war crimes!

The low-level grunts who committed torture and abuses at Abu Ghraib were tried, convicted, demonized and many went to prison. As they should have. The Nuremburg trials established that "just following orders" is not an excuse for such things. But these kids got scapegoated so Bush could go free and make jokes about it. Bush and Rumsfeld and everyone in command responsibility who authorized, approved or allowed that torture program to continue and then tried to scapegoat a bunch of soldiers on the night shift should be there, too. And now we have confirmation from Congress:

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of “a few bad apples” acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.

That sure sounds a lot like what Seymour Hersh was saying in 2004, back when the war criminals were issuing their whitewash reports saying it was all the fault of a few bad apples:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Barack Obama, Our Next President

2008-11-05T01:59:00.002-05:00

Congratulations to President-Elect Barack Obama!

This is a special moment in America.

I have been hopeful and optimistic, but you just never know. Seeing it happen: Wow.

Go America.

Other blogs have better election analysis. Go read them. And now back to my blogging hiatus.

A Nation of Suspects

2008-05-20T19:22:00.004-04:00

We have become a nation of spies and criminal suspects, our private lives an open book to government bureaucrats sifting through data collected illegally on massive supercomputers.

I've written repeatedly about the clear signs that the illegal domestic spying program whose existence the President and Attorney General Gonzalez have admitted is almost certainly neither the beginning nor the end of the illegal spying that is being conducted. It seems we have only scratched the surface of the Bush Administration's criminal surveillance of its own citizens.

We now have a report from Radar’s Christopher Ketcham on an ominous program identified as “Main Core”:

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, "There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously." He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

8 million citizens pre-identified for detention? Obviously this article deserves a nice, slow read. Here is another disturbing graf:

A host of publicly disclosed programs, sources say, now supply data to Main Core. Most notable are the NSA domestic surveillance programs, initiated in the wake of 9/11, typically referred to in press reports as "warrantless wiretapping."

. . . According to the Journal, the government can now electronically monitor "huge volumes of records of domestic e-mails and Internet searches, as well as bank transfers, credit card transactions, travel, and telephone records." Authorities employ "sophisticated software programs" to sift through the data, searching for "suspicious patterns." In effect, the program is a mass catalog of the private lives of Americans. And it's notable that the article hints at the possibility of programs like Main Core. "The [NSA] effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called black programs whose existence is undisclosed," the Journal reported, quoting unnamed officials. "Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach."

The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.

Main Core also allegedly draws on four smaller databases that, in turn, cull from federal, state, and local "intelligence" reports; print and broadcast media; financial records; "commercial databases"; and unidentified "private sector entities." Additional information comes from a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which generates watch lists from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for use by airlines, law enforcement, and border posts. According to the Washington Post, the Terrorist Identities list has quadrupled in size between 2003 and 2007 to include about 435,000 names. The FBI's Terrorist Screening Center border crossing list, which listed 755,000 persons as of fall 2007, grows by 200,000 names a year. A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor antiwar protesters and environmental activists such as Greenpeace.

If previous FEMA and FBI lists are any indication, the Main Core database includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.

Many around the blogosphere have excellent takes on these revelations. Here are a few to get you started. Digby:

I don't know about you, but I sort of go with the assumption that there will be another terrorist attack on US soil at some point. I don't know if it will be Islamic or homegrown. (After all we've had big attacks from both in the last 15 years.) The difference now is that we have a big new police apparatus built up during the Bush years and an entire propaganda machine organized around the idea that the boogeyman is trying to kill us all in our beds. It's not a stretch to think that under pressure, any government could, (*ahem*) overreach just a tad and decide that certain political undesirables need to be dealt with. If they've built the capability, there is every chance they will use it. It's how these things work.

Meanwhile, some dillweed federal bureaucrat can rifle through all of your personal information whenever he feels like it.

Emptywheel:

This explanation . . . fits neatly with a lot of things we know about the Bush Administration.

Tristero (linking to this article by Naomi Klein in Rolling Stone about China's new electronic surveillance state and the big business that created it):

To make a long story short, but you really MUST read the long story, China is perfecting what Klein calls Market Stalinism, wedding a turbo-charged capitalist culture with the psychotic obsession for total control of a totalitarian state And now you know why the liberal blogosphere will never let the issue of American telcoms immunity go. Ever.

Getting the Republican establishment that set up these secret systems out of office is the absolute first priority. Priority two is keeping the current Democratic Congress from capitulating and giving amnesty to the big telecom companies for cooperating with the secret, illegal government surveillance programs -- which as the Radar article suggests, we know very little about. To that end, Glenn Greenwald and others are starting a campaign to begin pressuring House "Blue Dog" Democrats like Chris Carney from forcing the amnesty that Bush and his corporate allies are demanding.

Of bad apples and smoking guns

2008-05-08T10:33:00.005-04:00

The trail of bad apples always leads back to the Torture President:

Make no mistake, the bad apples are not completely innocent of wrongdoing, but they are not the ones truly responsible. We have punished many of them for taking pictures of abuse and have never punished the people who ordered and were responsible for the abuse.

While I was working on Standard Operating Procedure, many people asked about "the smoking gun." "Have you found the smoking gun? Have you found the smoking gun? -- presumably linking the abuses to the upper levels of the Defense Department and to the White House?" The question puzzles me. There are smoking guns everywhere but people don't see them, refuse to see them or pretend they don't exist. How many torture memos does an administration have to promulgate before the public gets the idea they are promulgating torture? Bush has recently admitted that he was present at these meetings and approved "harsh interrogation techniques." And yet this has scarcely been a news story. Well-documented attempts to subvert the Constitution, abrogation of the Geneva Conventions and simple human decency. What does it take?

We are surrounded by smoking guns on all sides. Crimes have been committed; we have ample evidence of them. But there can be no justice if there is a failure to stand up for it, if we fail to demand it. Here's the flip side of the torture memos. John Yoo can argue that the President can do anything. Let him do what he pleases, but does that mean he can't be held responsible for the things he has ordered or the things done in his name?

Water poured down a restrained man's throat is water forced down the throat

2008-04-24T17:42:00.001-04:00

Torture apologists deserve no mincing of words. They are war criminals.

There is nothing to distinguish between the torture they authorized and the torture that we have punished and criticized in the past. As Marty Lederman observes, John Ashcroft's latest attempt to make this distinction is as strained as the legal reasoning the Bush Justice Department engaged in to justify torture in the first place:

OK, but what about the very well-known fact that the "water treatment" was used by the Spanish Inquisition; by U.S. forces in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th Century; and by the Japanese in World War II -- and that in each case it was universally condemned as unlawful torture? Ashcroft's interlocutor the other day, one "Elsinora" at Knox College, asked him whether he was familiar with the judgment at the Tokyo Tribunal against Yukio Asano for having employed the "water treatment" in this manner, against American troops for purposes of obtaining intelligence information: "The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach." The allies sentenced Asano to fifteen years hard labor for this conduct. Here's the remarkable exchange between Elsinora and Ashcroft on the Asano precedent:
Elsinora: Since Yukio Asano was trying to get information to help defend his country--exactly what you, Mr. Ashcroft, say is acceptible for Americans to do--do you believe that his sentence was unjust?

ASHCROFT: Now, listen here. You're comparing apples and oranges, apples and oranges. We don't do anything like what you described.

Elsinora: I'm sorry, I was under the impression that we still use the method of putting a cloth over someone's face and pouring water down their throat...

ASHCROFT: "Pouring"! "Pouring"! Did you hear what she said?: "Putting a cloth over someone's face and pouring water on them."

That's not what you said before! Read that again, what you said before [about the Asano case]!

Elsinora: "The victim was bound or otherwise secured in a prone position; and water was forced through his mouth and nostrils into his lungs and stomach."

ASHCROFT: You hear that? You hear it? "Forced"! If you can't tell the difference between forcing and pouring...Does this college have an anatomy class? If you can't tell the difference between forcing and pouring...

If you can find any daylight between the practices, you are probably a Bush Administration official.

Update:

A Daily Kos diarist has further excerpts from Ashcroft's question and answer session. As Digby points out, it is notable that Ashcroft's arguments about the UN Convention Against Torture and alleged Senate "reservations" (that "it defines torture as something that leaves lasting scars or physical damage") are false. Here are the actual reservations:

(1) (a) That with reference to article 1, the United States understands that, in order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.

Who honestly wants to argue that controlled drowning, a technique that causes even the hardest operators to cry uncle in mere seconds--and which can and does actually kill people--does not meet this definition?

"A Few Bad Apples" Was A Lie of the Torture Administration

2008-04-15T12:02:00.000-04:00

We've known it for several years now, but it is now indisputable and confirmed by the man himself: Bush and his highest deputies debated and authorized torture in secret White House meetings. The war criminals include Bush, Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzalez, George Tenet, and Condoleeza Rice. They are still free after they sent low-level soldiers to jail who were carrying out their illegal directives and caught at a time the White House was still pretending in public that torture at Abu Ghraib was an aberration rather than (at best) a foreseeable consequence of their decisions.

These high-level criminals are only protected by political reluctance to pursue a serious investigation, "dig up the past," and play the "blame game," and a couple of shoddy and outrageous legal memos constructed by fellow criminals for the purpose of absolving the principals of their sins. No crooked lawyer's letter can whitewash what these people did. Ignoring these crimes will implicitly condone them and encourage their future repetition.

We must never forget that the torturer is the enemy of all mankind.

Rest in Peace

2008-01-04T15:15:00.000-05:00

It is with great sadness that I note the passing of Andy Olmstead, a blogger at Obsidian Wings as well as for the Rocky Mountain News. Major Olmstead died from small arms fire in Iraq's Diyala province yesterday. He wrote a blog post to be released in the event of his death, which you can read here. My deepest condolences to his family and friends. His voice will be missed.

The Times gets one right

2008-01-03T18:39:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, the Times could open almost all of their editorials these days with this same sentence: "There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country."

50 Loathsome People

2008-01-03T18:25:00.000-05:00

The Beast tallies America's most loathsome people of 2007. Pretty funny, if you ignore how unfunny most of the winners are. Sample entry:

31. Dana Perino

Charges: In a nation weary of White House press secretaries who feign ignorance, the Bush administration took an innovative step this year, appointing one who genuinely doesn't know anything. No more lies, America -- Dana Perino really can't answer your questions, honest! This slightly comely, over-promoted office wench not only didn't know what the Cuban missile crisis or the Bay of Pigs even were; she actually thought it was a funny story to tell on NPR.

Exhibit A: "This is an issue where I'm sure lots of people would love to ridicule me when I say this, but it is true that many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals."

Sentence: Sent back in time to '62; Strapped to bottom of U2 spy plane for extreme history lesson.

Did Bush Watch the Torture Tapes?

2008-01-03T12:34:00.000-05:00

“President Bush has no present recollection of having seen the tapes.” That's a non-denial perjury dodge. Scott Horton speculates that Bush watched the torture videos personally, and they were destroyed after discussions with his top lawyers because they are evidence of obvious war crimes that he personally authorized and witnessed. Larry Johnson thinks so too, and wants to know what Bush was snacking on at the time.

Welcome to the Dark Side

2008-01-03T12:11:00.000-05:00

Tom Engelhardt discusses How Bush Took Us to the Dark Side, and just how normalized the whole sick mess has become.

No charges, no lawyers, no judge. This is increasingly the norm of -- and a legacy of -- George Bush's world. In this way, the snarl at the borders melds with the screams of terror in cells worldwide. . . . Americans have, since September 2001, been "embedded," largely willingly, in a new lockdown universe defined by a general acceptance of widespread acts of torture and abuse, as well as of the right to kidnap (known as "extraordinary rendition"), and the creation and expansion of an offshore Bermuda Triangle of injustice, all based on the principle that a human being is guilty unless proven (sometimes even if proven) innocent. What might originally have seemed like emergency measures in a moment of crisis is now an institutionalized way of life. Whether we like it or not, these methods increasingly define what it means to be an American. In this manner, despite the "freedom" rhetoric of the Bush administration, the phrase "the price of freedom" has been superseded by the price of what passes for "safety" and "security."

Read the whole thing, a chilling summary of what we have learned so far about what is being done in our names.

2007's Worst Legal Arguments

2008-01-02T11:01:00.000-05:00

Dahlia Lithwick has compiled a list of the Bush Administration's most idiotic legal arguments this year:

10. The NSA's eavesdropping was limited in scope.

9. Scooter Libby's sentence was commuted because it was excessive.

8. The vice president's office is not a part of the executive branch.

7. The Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy more legal rights than any prisoners of war in history.

6. Water-boarding may not be torture.

5. Everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.

4. Nine U.S. attorneys were fired by nobody, but for good reason.

3. Alberto Gonzales, the "the lying-est attorney general in recent history"

2. State secrets, "a doctrine of blanket immunity for any conduct the administration wishes to hide"

1. The United States does not torture.

Click here for the full run-down.

"It's like mugging the postman and then complaining that the mail isn't delivered on time."

2007-12-20T08:09:00.000-05:00

Republican minority in the Senate breaks filibuster record in only half a term, and then complains about Democratic majority getting nothing done. "Upperdownvote!"

Gonzalez Stripped of "Lawyer of the Year" Title; Blog Brief's Honorable Mention Rendered Less Impressive

2007-12-14T18:10:00.000-05:00

What a year for Mr. Gonzalez! Earlier this week, the ABA named the disgraced former Attorney General the "Lawyer of the Year," to much derision (including here). Two days later, the ABA responds by re-naming his title "Newsmaker of the Year." Much better. Unfortunately, the honorable mention "lawyer bloggers" received for Lawyer of the Year was also downgraded. Maybe next year.

No fair re-outlawing the things we aren't doing!

2007-12-14T17:26:00.000-05:00

Bush still implausibly claims "America does not torture," yet he threatens to veto a new bill making clear that the CIA must follow the same anti-torture laws as the Army (of course laws against torture were already perfectly clear before this wave of reading miscomprehension took hold of the attorneys at the DOJ). I agree with Sullivan's take:

Bush is now fully owning Abu Ghraib. That, I guess, is one helpful result of flushing out what this president has done. At the time, of course, he expressed shock at the techniques exposed by the photographs at Abu Ghraib. Now he is declaring them legal and necessary. They are not legal - and the president operating under the rule of law cannot simply invent or reinvent what is or is not the law. But of course, he is not operating under the rule of law. He is operating under the rules of the Decider.

Second QOTD

2007-12-13T17:30:00.000-05:00

From Unsolicited Opinion:

Everybody “supports” the troops, so much so that they are a political football to be bandied about in favor of particular political agendas. I’m no different; I have my own agenda. I define supporting the troops as sending them into harm’s way only when absolutely necessary and making every effort to help them return to something approaching a normal life when they return. By that definition America fails on both counts. We’ve sent our forces to a wholly unnecessary war in Iraq and we have provided nowhere near the resources to assist them and their families when failed them miserably upon their return. . . . That’s the political agenda I have in mind when I say support the troops: give them a mission worthy of their sacrifice and make them whole (or as close to whole as possible) after that sacrifice.

via skippy

Quote of the day

2007-12-13T13:15:00.000-05:00

"If I had to guess, the tapes were destroyed because obstruction-of-justice charges are no big deal compared to war crimes charges."

Alberto Gonzalez Is Most "Talked-About" Lawyer of 2007

2007-12-13T13:01:00.000-05:00

Well, if I (and you) get to be Time's Person of the Year for no apparent reason, then I guess its fair for the American Bar Association to name a disgrace to the office of Attorney General as its "Lawyer of the Year" because he was so "talked-about." Yes, when the nation's highest law enforcement officer lies, prevaricates, and repeatedly authorizes violations of the law and Constitution, then people do tend to talk about that.

As a side note, we "lawyer bloggers" earned an Honorable Mention, putting me beside such notorious attorneys as Michael Nifong (the disgraced Duke lacrosse prosecutor), "Scooter" Libby (the guy convicted of obstructing the investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, likely to protect Bush and Cheney; Bush commuted his sentence), Howard K. Stern (of the Anna Nicole Smith custody battle), Monica Goodling (embroiled in the Bush Administration's improper firing of U.S. Attorneys), David Addington (Dick Cheney's consigliare), and fictional lawyer Michael Clayton (as played by TV's George Clooney). The only non-ironic runners-up are Patrick Fitzgerald (the prosecutor who nailed Libby) and Edwin Chemerinsky (the constitutional law scholar who was un-hired and then re-hired as founding dean of the new Donald Bren School of Law in Orange County).

U.S. Official: Maybe It's OK to Torture U.S. Troops

2007-12-12T22:39:00.000-05:00

This has gone too far for too long. The Administration's unsupportable stance that waterboarding by the U.S. is not torture is leading them to the logical, reciprocal conclusion that waterboarding of U.S. persons by our enemies is not torture either. This is what happens when your President and his idiot legal advisors believe the Geneva Conventions are "quaint." Watering down these clear historical treaty obligations enshrined in U.S. law serves no purpose other than to excuse and define away the war crimes authorized by the highest levels of the current Administration, while simulatenously increasing risks to our troops in the future.

Update:

I was wrong. Another purpose these bad faith legal positions and euphemisms (i.e. "enhanced interrogation techniques") serve is to get so many people criticizing you that you ironically win "Lawyer of the Year."

Head of Guantanamo Bay Hearings Resigns Over "Evidence" Obtained by Torture

2007-12-11T15:42:00.000-05:00

Morris D. Davis, the former chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, recently resigned. He explains why in an op-ed column in the LA Times, concluding "that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system," and "that the system had become deeply politicized." While Davis complains of the lack of transparancy in these closed hearings and the convening authority's improper involvement in preparing the prosecution's case, the event that directly precipitated his resignation was the placement of a torture advocate above him in the chain of command after Davis had insisted that prosecutors not attempt to use evidence obtained by torture.

Democratic Complicity with the Bush Torture Regime

2007-12-10T10:03:00.001-05:00

What good is an opposition party when it never actually opposes the party in power? It looks like Senator Jay Rockefeller and Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Jane Harman have known about the illegal torture for years but never bothered to do anything about it. When your job is oversight your job is to speak up when something so illegal is happening. Instead, they played dumb. And now Rockefeller has the gall to suggest that his Intelligence Committee is the appropriate body to investigate the wrongdoing that he himself had been ignoring.

Corrente is appropriately shrill:

Since the voters put them back in power, the Democrats have taken impeachment off the table, punted on the war, never figured out a way to hold Republicans accountable for filibusters and obstructionism, so legislation is in the toilet, and never managed to use oversight power to do anything more than chip away around the edges of the Bush regime—though they have written a great number of Sternly Worded Letters.

And now, top Democrats turn out to be enablers of war crimes by our lawless executive. What a surprise. Harry, Nancy, nice work.

What do we got on the spacecraft that’s good?

Please, can we give Leader Nance the heave-ho? She’s a fuckup, and an enabler. Everything Barney Frank isn’t. Barney Frank for Speaker!

U.S. Claims Unilateral Right to Kidnap...

2007-12-05T09:54:00.000-05:00

...and the kidnappee doesn't even have to be a terrorist.

America has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States. A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

The admission will alarm the British business community after the case of the so-called NatWest Three, bankers who were extradited to America on fraud charges. More than a dozen other British executives, including senior managers at British Airways and BAE Systems, are under investigation by the US authorities and could face criminal charges in America.

"We don't need no stinkin extradition!"

U.S. Intelligence: Iran Has No Nukes

2007-12-03T18:37:00.000-05:00

Pretty big news, eh? Maybe we can make it through this Administration without starting another war. 414 more days...

(the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) can be read here)

Update:

Bush claims this information doesn't change anything, and then lies about when he learned it (says he was only briefed about it last week for some unbelievable reason).

Various crazy people get mad at the CIA and other intelligence services for ruining one of the bogus bases for their next really stupid war. The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, is vindicated.

Juan Cole speculates that CENTCOM commander Admiral William J. Fallon and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen may have been behind getting the document written and released.

George W. Bush Is No George Washington

2007-11-21T16:11:00.000-05:00

In 1937, the playwright Maxwell Anderson wrote of President George Washington: There are some men who lift the age they inhabit, til all men walk on higher ground in their lifetime.

Mr. President, you are such a man.

While the above statement is perhaps the most sycophantic tribute to Bush's delusions of historical grandeur, it has competition:

It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.

A true classic.

Only torture-advocates need apply

2007-11-02T17:18:00.000-04:00

Bush is now on record that he will not nominate any person to the position of Attorney General unless they agree that Bush is allowed to torture people. It is Judge Mukasey or nobody. No one nominated by Bush will be allowed to admit the obvious, that waterboarding is torture.

Scott Horton, who was initially an advocate for Mukasey's nomination, is now troubled by this new "litmus test":

[A] new litmus test for its attorney general: he must be prepared to wink at torture publicly, and behind the scenes to issue opinions giving the authors of the program comfort.

There has been no shortage of litmus tests in the past: abortion, gay marriage, the flag amendment—whatever hot-button issue the G.O.P. cooks up for its next election campaign. But the torture litmus test is new, and it seems to be key for lawyers. It really is an exercise in Kool Aid drinking. If you’re prepared to hedge on whether waterboarding is torture, then you might be counted upon to do anything. Indeed, there is no question about it. Waterboarding is torture and has been understood to be torture in a formal sense for over a hundred years. Soldiers who used it were court-martialed, and the attempted defense of military necessity was smacked down by the Army’s Judge Advocate General in 1903. There is no shortage of other precedent. This is why Mukasey’s dodge on the issue—first a very primitive dodge, and then a more sophisticated one—is so troubling.

(emphasis added). That really is the key issue: Bush is completely invested in his illegal, despicable, torture regime, as well as numerous other travesties that his "legal counsel" have been justifying for him. Jack Balkin points out that

The real reason why Judge Mukasey cannot say that waterboarding is illegal is that Administration officials have repeatedly insisted that they do not torture, and that they have acted both legally and honorably. If Judge Mukasey said that waterboarding is illegal, it would require the Bush Administration to admit that it repeatedly lied to the American people and brought shame and dishonor on the United States of America. If Judge Mukasey were to say waterboarding is illegal and not just "a dunk in the water" in Vice President Cheney's terminology, he would have announced that, as incoming Attorney General, he is entering an Administration of liars and torturers.

Several Republican Senators, who are living in a fool's paradise, have pleaded with Judge Mukasey to declare waterboarding illegal after he becomes Attorney General and has time to study the matter thoroughly. But the Administration would be no happier with such an announcement after confirmation than before. One can be quite certain that enormous pressure will be brought to bear on Mukasey after he enters the Administration never to make that particular pronouncement.

Which places any Attorney General nominee in a difficult bind: The Bush Admininstration will not nominate anyone to be Attorney General who will state publicly that what the Administration did was illegal or dishonorable. That means that the only persons who can be nominated are those who are willing to be complicit in its illegality and dishonor. For if the nominee admitted that the Administration had repeatedly misled the American people about the legality of its actions, he would not be welcome in the Bush Administration.

Update:

Yay, torture! Democratic senators Schumer and Feinstein have announced that they will vote for Mukasey, making his approval by the Judiciary Committee and confirmation by the full Senate an almost certainty. Feinstein's rationale: "first and foremost, Michael Mukasey is not Alberto Gonzales." Talk about lowering the bar...

Bush Administration's electronic spying programs pre-dated 9/11

2007-11-02T15:20:00.000-04:00

9/11 did not change everything. For some things, it just provided an excuse.

Waterboarding is torture, period.

2007-10-31T17:36:00.000-04:00

Confused about waterboarding? Don't know if its actually torture?

Ask somebody who trained U.S. servicemen to resist our enemies' torture at SERE: Yes, it is torture. Period.

This is an excellent and timely piece. Give it a read here.

Won't get fooled again

2007-10-31T12:07:00.000-04:00

Don't buy the "hypothetical" dodge from a Bush-appointed AG nominee. Torture is not a hypothetical for this crew. It is actually happening.

Mukasey needs to repudiate the specific acts of torture that we already know are occurring, however the Administration characterizes them ("Enhanced interrogation"? Give me a break.). Waterboarding is NOT a close case. If it is not torture, then almost NOTHING is torture.

As Marty Lederman puts it, quoting H.L.A. Hart, while a "No Vehicles in the Park" law may be ambiguous as to whether it applies to a baby stroller or bicycle, if "one arrives at the conclusion that a souped-up Corvette may be driven through the center of the park, then that's a pretty good clue that you need to find yourself some new interpretive principles."

Torture Harms National Security

2007-10-30T20:58:00.001-04:00

Sullivan: Torture is evil. It also leads to false confessions, which lead to bad intelligence, which can lead to more torture, more false confessions, and more bad intelligence.

The War President Doesn't Negotiate

2007-10-26T15:11:00.000-04:00

New sanctions announced by the Bush Administration against Iran "signif[y] that President Bush has given up on multilateral diplomacy with Tehran. He's back to going his own way." Froomkin continues:

"The Bush administration still refuses to meet with Iranian leaders face to face. True diplomacy requires a willingness to talk.

"The White House maintains it is still devoted to diplomacy, but we've heard that before. And without patience or dialogue, "diplomacy" isn't really diplomacy -- it's a charade."

Colbert for President!

2007-10-25T10:25:00.000-04:00

Colbert is "running" for President as both a Democrat and Republican, but only in his native South Carolina, where he is a self-declared "favorite son." If the FEC tries to crack down based on federal campaign laws, the joke will only get better: a First Amendment fight would be a no brainer win for Colbert, and he could (rightfully) play the martyr besieged by the awful federal government bureaucracy every night until he grows tired of it.

Update: Adam B at Daily Kos disagrees: "I've wrestled with this one, and the way I see it, if Colbert makes real efforts to get on the ballot, then he's a candidate -- and it's not for the FEC to say who's a "serious" candidate." I just don't see it. He isn't running in any state other than South Carolinia; his character is running, not him; he's a comedian for a living; and it is obvious parody.

The Iran War Rollout Continues

2007-10-23T09:30:00.000-04:00

No surprises here. Bush and Cheney continue their warmongering with Iran. I have little doubt that we will be at war with Iran very soon if these two get their way.

Barnett Rubin has more here on the selling of the fall Iran War product that his sources predicted last month. Anonymous Liberal examines the contradictions between the Bush Administration's competing rationales for war with Iran.

In a sign of just how serious things are getting, high-ranking officers in the military appear to now be asking themselves how they will react if ordered to undertake an illegal, aggressive war against Iran without congressional approval. General Pace, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, previously stated that "It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral."

Frankly, it is an indictment of Congress and its failure to exercise its power to affirmatively check and restrain the president that this country is in a disturbing position where generals disobeying civilian command now seems to be the only real brakes on such a war.

Do NOT Confirm Mukasey

2007-10-19T17:23:00.000-04:00

I don't care if he *sounds* more reasonable than disgraced former Attorney General Gonzalez. The fact is that he will not rule out things that are torture as torture, and he has committed himself to the notion that the President can violate the law at will during the neverending "war on terror." Mukasey is essentially telling the Senators at the confirmation hearings that he will be just as bad as Gonzalez, and its up to those Senators to believe him: he will do what Bush asks, regardless of legality, and if it's time to torture someone, then it's just time to redefine what we mean by the word torture.

This is not hard. It is simply unacceptable for the Senate to confirm someone who holds such odious, unconstitutional and frankly unAmerican views. It is time for the Justice Department to live up to its name, and that starts at the top.

Updated on 10/23/07:

Take a look at this op-ed article in the New York Times by Jed Rubenfeld, a constitutional law professor at Yale Law School. Here are the key excerpts:

AT his confirmation hearings last week, Michael B. Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, was asked whether the president is required to obey federal statutes. Judge Mukasey replied, “That would have to depend on whether what goes outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the president to defend the country.”

. . . [B]efore voting to confirm him as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, the Senate should demand that he retract this statement. It is a dangerous confusion and distortion of the single most fundamental principle of the Constitution — that everyone, including the president, is subject to the rule of law.

It is true that a president may in rare cases disregard a federal statute — but only when Congress has acted outside its authority by passing a statute that is unconstitutional. . . .

But that is not what Judge Mukasey said. What he said, and what many members of the current administration have claimed, would radically transform this accepted point of law into a completely different and un-American concept of executive power.

According to Judge Mukasey’s statement, as well as other parts of his testimony, the president’s authority “to defend the nation” trumps his obligation to obey the law. Take the federal statute governing military commissions in Guantánamo Bay. No one, including the president’s lawyers, argues that this statute is unconstitutional. The only question is whether the president is required to obey it even if in his judgment the statute is not the best way “to defend the nation.”

If he is not, we no longer live under the government the founders established.

Under the American Constitution, federal statutes, not executive decisions in the name of national security, are “the supreme law of the land.” It’s that simple. So long as a statute is constitutional, it is binding on everyone, including the president.

The president has no supreme, exclusive or trumping authority to “defend the nation.” In fact, the Constitution uses the words “provide for the common defense” in its list of the powers of Congress, not those of the president.

Beginning with Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court has enforced the principle that laws trump presidential authority, not the reverse. In 1952, the court ruled that President Harry Truman’s takeover of the nation’s steel mills — justified by Truman as necessary, because of a threatened steelworkers’ strike, to defend the nation in its armed conflict in Korea — was unconstitutional because the president had flouted federal statutes. And in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Supreme Court’s recent decision on military commissions, the justices reaffirmed that the president must comply with a valid federal statute.

Even President Bush’s Justice Department, added the court, “does not argue otherwise.” But evidently Attorney General Mukasey would argue otherwise — he just did.

. . .

If Judge Mukasey cannot say plainly that the president must obey a valid statute, he ought not to be the nation’s next attorney general.

A Massive Hedge

2007-10-19T10:42:00.001-04:00

The nominee for Attorney General, Judge Mukasey, is not exactly inspiring confidence that he will stand up to President Bush's pro-torture policies. Here he is not knowing whether a mock execution is torture:

WHITEHOUSE: Is waterboarding constitutional?

MUKASEY: I don’t know what is involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.

WHITEHOUSE: "If waterboarding is constitutional" is a massive hedge.

MUKASEY: No, I said, "If it's torture." I'm sorry. I said, "If it's torture."

WHITEHOUSE: "If it's torture." That's a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn’t. Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding, which is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces, and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning. Is that constitutional?

MUKASEY: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.

WHITEHOUSE: I'm very disappointed in that answer — I think it is purely semantic.

MUKASEY: I’m sorry.

This is just a re-tread of the President's completely unacceptable statements that "we don't torture," always given without bothering to ever let us know what he thinks "torture" is.

Depends on what the meaning of "is" is

2007-10-08T18:52:00.000-04:00

Responding to news of his secret memos authorizing torture (more here), President Bush continued to fulfill his campaign pledge of bringing "honor and integrity" back to the White House: "This government does not torture people," he said. Of course, neither the President, nor his spokespeople, nor the Justice Department will actually define what THEY think the word "torture" means.

Blue Texan makes the obvious point:

This position is untenable.
If they're saying categorically they don't torture they need to define torture. Saying, "We don't torture, but we won't tell you what exactly that means" is the same as saying nothing.

Indeed.

Pathological

2007-10-08T18:32:00.000-04:00

This is grade-A crazy here, folks. Up is down, black is white, and right on Iraq is soft on defense:

You know, I've thought for a long time that Obama's not in quite as strong a position on the war in Iraq as he really thinks he is. Remember, when he famously came out against the war, it was back in a time when the entire world believed that Saddam Hussein in Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that he would probably be willing to use them himself at some time or pass them along to terrorists who would use them. And yet, Barack Obama was against going to the war at that point. I don't think that shows that he is very strong on national security, which he needs to be. But that argument's not going to be used against him in the Democratic primaries. It would, however, by Republicans in a general election.

Fred Barnes literally believes that being right about the predominant national security issue in recent memory shows more weakness on national security than being wrong about it, because being wrong was more popular amongst the people who were also all wrong.

The Coming Iran War Pretext

2007-10-01T12:00:00.000-04:00

Here it comes: the Iran War. And its going to be sold as "protecting the troops." And the politicians, media, and military brass will be unable or unwilling to stop it because nobody wants to be the one against "protecting the troops." And who wants to stick up for Iran? A bunch of Iran-lovers and troop-haters, that's who!

Obvious topics of debate that will be conveniently ignored until it is too late (at which point we will then hear the chorus of "nobody could have foreseen..."):

Is Iran actually doing what the Administration claims it is doing (whatever the accusation happens to be at the time)?

Can our military simultaneously manage yet another conflict while Iraq and Afghanistan continue to fester? (What if efforts to limit an Iran war to just airstrikes fails, and ground troops are needed in large numbers?)

What are the likely consequences of a new war with Iran? (And are we prepared for them?)

What are the unlikely consequences? (Are we prepared for those?)

Even if Iran is actually guilty of whatever accusation is eventually lodged against it, is punishing Iran worth the risk of both the likely and unlikely consequences of a war with Iran?
How would Iraqis (both in and out of government, but particularly the majority Shi'ite population) react?

How many more decades of war in the middle east and how many new grudges do we really want to buy?

Does anybody REALLY believe that things would be going great in Iraq if only its biggest neighbor, Iran, had a real reason to be pissed off at us?

Judge Mukasey and the Justice Department

2007-09-27T16:30:00.000-04:00

My latest column can be read over at the Legal Intelligencer. Here is the lede:

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has resigned his position, and President Bush has now nominated Judge Michael Mukasey to take over a department in disarray.

Mukasey, recently retired from the Southern District of New York, would be stepping into the Justice Department at perhaps its most controversial moment, with significant concerns still being raised about inappropriate politicization of U.S. attorney investigations and the Justice Department as a whole, stalled congressional inquiries, unfulfilled document requests, and embarrassingly strained arguments from government lawyers defending torture, indefinite detention of U.S. citizens, and illegal wiretapping and electronic surveillance.

Gonzalez has left the Justice Department in a state of disrepair, and Congress would do well to ask Mukasey many deep, probing questions about his position on that legacy.

The Spanish Downing Street Papers

2007-09-27T11:06:00.000-04:00

Yet more confirmation that Bush was determined to go to war with Iraq in March 2003, regardless of diplomacy, and despite his public statements to the contrary. What is more, Bush apparently sent our troops to war to remove Saddam Hussein from power despite receiving an offer from Saddam Hussein to go into exile.

Quote of the day

2007-09-24T14:25:00.000-04:00

Bartnett Rubin from the Global Affairs Blog:

As a wonky, moderate, highly respected, and thoroughly analytical scholar, I do not express myself in simplistic partisan formulae. But politicians do. That's their job. If I were a politician, for instance, I might say something like this:

The Bush-Cheney administration has surrendered much of Afghanistan to the Taliban and much of Pakistan to al-Qaida. They have turned most of Iraq over to Iran, creating the very danger over which they now threaten another disastrous war; they have strained the U.S. Armed Forces to the point of exhaustion, turned the Defense Department over to private contractors, the Justice Department over to the Republican National Committee, and the national debt over to foreign creditors, while leading a party whose single most basic belief is supposed to be that individuals must take personal responsibility for their actions. And they dare to lecture us on national security?

Rubin then goes on to "illustrate these (slight) overstatements with a few current reports." Take a look.

Well that's one way to put it, Bob

2007-09-24T10:47:00.000-04:00

With the Justice Department in disarray and mired in scandals, was Bush wrong to nominate Judge Mukasey as Attorney General? According to Bob Novak, YES:

"You need someone who knows where the bodies are buried, like Ted Olson."

"Thank you for the pleasure of serving today"

2007-09-21T19:24:00.000-04:00

Would you say something like that to your boss every morning? Would you accept that kind of sycophancy from your employee every day for years on end?

Well, Bush is an odd fellow. Check out this review of the new Bush biography by Robert Draper, Dead Certain:

Nonetheless, Draper's unusual access enabled him to collect valuable anecdotes as well as to put a microphone in front of a president who, when interrupted by an aide, told him not to worry because the interview was "worthless." Letting down his guard, Bush does not understand what he reveals.

In his interviews with Draper, he is constantly worried about weakness and passivity. "If you're weak internally? This job will run you all over town." He fears being controlled and talks about it relentlessly, feeling he's being watched. "And part of being a leader is: people watch you." He casts his anxiety as a matter of self-discipline. "I don't think I'd be sitting here if not for the discipline ... And they look at me -- they want to know whether I've got the resolution necessary to see this through. And I do. I believe -- I know we'll succeed." He is sensitive about asserting his supremacy over others, but especially his father. "He knows as an ex-president, he doesn't have nearly the amount of knowledge I've got on current things," he told Draper.

Bush is a classic insecure authoritarian who imposes humiliating tests of obedience on others in order to prove his superiority and their inferiority. In 1999, according to Draper, at a meeting of economic experts at the Texas governor's mansion, Bush interrupted Rove when he joined in the discussion, saying, "Karl, hang up my jacket." In front of other aides, Bush joked repeatedly that he would fire Rove. (Laura Bush's attitude toward Rove was pointedly disdainful. She nicknamed him "Pigpen," for wallowing in dirty politics. He was staff, not family -- certainly not people like them.)

Bush's deployed his fetish for punctuality as a punitive weapon. When Colin Powell was several minutes late to a Cabinet meeting, Bush ordered that the door to the Cabinet Room be locked. Aides have been fearful of raising problems with him. In his 2004 debates with Sen. John Kerry, no one felt comfortable or confident enough to discuss with Bush the importance of his personal demeanor. Doing poorly in his first debate, he turned his anger on his communications director, Dan Bartlett, for showing him a tape afterward. When his trusted old public relations handler, Karen Hughes, tried gently to tell him, "You looked mad," he shot back, "I wasn't mad! Tell them that!"

At a political strategy meeting in May 2004, when Matthew Dowd and Rove explained to him that he was not likely to win in a Reagan-like landslide, as Bush had imagined, he lashed out at Rove: "KARL!" Rove, according to Draper, was Bush's "favorite punching bag," and the president often threw futile and meaningless questions at him, and shouted, "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Those around him have learned how to manipulate him through the art of flattery. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld played Bush like a Stradivarius, exploiting his grandiosity. "Rumsfeld would later tell his lieutenants that if you wanted the president's support for an initiative, it was always best to frame it as a 'Big New Thing.'" Other aides played on Bush's self-conception as "the Decider." "To sell him on an idea," writes Draper, "aides were now learning, the best approach was to tell the president, This is going to be a really tough decision." But flattery always requires deference. Every morning, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, greets Bush with the same words: "Thank you for the privilege of serving today."

End the War by Not Funding It

2007-09-21T13:31:00.000-04:00

All the talk by the Democratic leadership and the press of continual Republican filibusters and presidential vetoes and unattainable 60 vote or 67 vote threshholds seems to be missing a rather big point: Republican filibusters and presidential vetoes CANNOT stop Congress from ending the war, if the political courage to end it can be mustered. All Congress needs to do is DON'T PASS A SPENDING BILL FOR THE IRAQ WAR PAST A DATE CERTAIN. The power of the purse is the greatest power Congress has, and the power not to spend doesn't require any votes at all.

Yep

2007-09-21T13:12:00.000-04:00

Kurtz said it:

"[M]ore U.S. senators (72) voted today to condemn a newspaper ad attacking Gen. Petraeus than voted yesterday (56) to lengthen the time off troops get from the frontlines in Iraq, thereby reducing individual soldiers exposure to actual attacks. Am I missing something, or is that about right?"

Yglesias too:

"The whole fracas of Petraeus, Crocker, MoveOn, etc. has had, to a good first approximation, no impact whatsoever on anything of any significance. Bush continues to be stubborn. Republicans continue to back Bush. The war continues to go poorly and continues to be unpopular. There was nothing else that ever could have happened. A bunch of editors and politicians talked themselves into believing that this September showdown was crucially significant, but they were all wrong and their theory never made any sense.

"The only showdown that mattered happened months ago. Democrats passed a war appropriation that funded the phased withdrawal of troops. Bush vetoed that appropriation and said he would only sign an appropriation that funded open-ended war. Bush sought to portray a congressional refusal to appropriate money for an open-ended military involvement in Iraq as some kind of plot to leave the troops starving and without bullets in Iraq. The press largely bought into this frame, which was re-enforced by the fact that many leading Democrats immediately decided to buy into as well. The party then decided not to try to fight to reframe the issue but, instead, to accept it. Given that framing of the question, the only thing to do was surrender and give Bush his money. And given that precedent, the only thing to do is to keep on surrendering any time Bush rhetorically holds the troops' well-being hostage to his preference for perpetual war.

"That was a blunder -- a decision that condemned hundreds of Americans to die in Iraq -- and one that appears to have resulted from a total failure of the leadership to do any advance planning about their legislative tactics. All of September 2007 has been a meaningless sideshow."

Media Matters

2007-09-17T12:02:00.000-04:00

The media and the "surge." Just as bad as ever.

What the hell kind of plan is this?

2007-09-14T14:37:00.000-04:00

Here is one of Petraeus's slides. A brilliant strategy! (note the multiple prominent question marks):

Yet another underpants gnome plan.

Here's the previous nonsense chart from the old "stand up/stand down" strategy for Iraq, which is no longer operative:

Stage three is profit!

A blogger has a better chart here.

Also, Slate actually managed a decent article on the President's speech last night.

No Checks, No Balances

2007-09-12T22:26:00.000-04:00

Prof Jack Balkin says:

The sad lesson of the past year is that the modern Presidency-- armed with control over military intelligence and a large standing army-- can have its way in matters of war even if the President's policies are very unpopular, and there is very little Congress can do to stop it.

This lesson should be abstracted from one's feelings about the current occupant of the White House. George W. Bush is a failure-- I won't mince words-- but even a failed President can do pretty much what he wants in war given the way our constitutional system has developed following the Second World War and the rise of the National Security State. The ascendant National Surveillance State, if anything, makes the President's hand even stronger.

We are moving, or more correctly, we have already moved, toward a system of one person rule on matters of war and peace. It is a very dangerous tendency in American constitutionalism. If you think that the Iraq episode has been a disaster, imagine an even more foolhardy and reckless President taking even greater and more dangerous risks. The Iraq war demonstrates that, in the context of modern politics and contemporary security threats, the framers' original system of checks and balances has utterly failed us.

Read the whole thing.

U.C. Irvine Law: Infringing Academic Freedom Before the Doors Ever Open

2007-09-12T22:06:00.000-04:00

This is not exactly a propitious start for a new law school. Apparently U.C. Irvine, which is opening the doors to its brand new law school in 2009, offered its deanship to Professor Chemerinsky -- and then revoked it because of complaints that he is liberal.

Update 9/17/07: Chemerkinsky has now been re-hired by Irvine. Weird, wild stuff.

The Bush and Petraeus Show and 9/11

2007-09-11T21:10:00.000-04:00

Bush's man in Iraq, General Petraeus, testified yesterday and today before Congress. Despite months of anticipation and promises of a "Petraeus Report," no such report was ever produced. All we got instead was a bunch of flashy charts and statistics (the methodology behind which is classified and which are contradicted by other governmental and nongovernmental sources), statements about success and progress that are not borne out by reality, and some new excuses and talking points for the Republican Party and its leader, President Bush, to continue their disaster of a war for the foreseeable future. None of them can clearly explain what "success" is, or when we can actually leave. We do know that Bush has every intention of leaving his mess for his successor to clean up.

Gary Kamiya discusses the real lessons of 9/11, the date shamelessly chosen for this testimony (despite the complete disconnect between the 9/11 attacks and Iraq). Ezra Klein shares his thoughts on the continued exploitation of today's tragic anniversary. Dan Froomkin helpfully rounds up reactions to Petraeus's testimony from the mainstream press as well as the blogs. Glenn Greenwald has a video online explaining just how compromised Petraeus's judgments are, as well as an article documenting the shameless propaganda that he engaged in with Brit Hume on Fox News yesterday. Kevin Drum takes on the "chaos hawks." Andrew Tilghman writes an important article in the Washington Monthly on Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Another Iraqi refugee

2007-09-07T09:01:00.000-04:00

Riverbend, who has been blogging from Baghdad, Iraq since just after the invasion, has now fled with her family to Syria. Somehow I doubt she shares General Petreaus' upbeat assessment on the "surge."

100,000 troops for 20 years buys you a "long-shot gamble" in Iraq

2007-09-07T08:58:00.000-04:00

Now they tell us!

The surge myth

2007-09-07T08:50:00.000-04:00

Read Prof. Cole, On How al-Anbar isn't that Safe and on How its "Calm" is Artificially Produced

Update: Also read Dan Froomkin on how the surge's "success" depends quite a bit on whose "facts" you choose to believe.

Convenient Myths

2007-09-07T08:45:00.000-04:00

Good article in the Washington Monthly on the convenient fictions regarding Al Qaeda in Iraq, titled The Myth of AQI: Fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq is the last big argument for keeping U.S. troops in the country. But the military's estimation of the threat is alarmingly wrong:

Five years ago, the American public was asked to support the invasion of Iraq based on the false claim that Saddam Hussein was somehow linked to al-Qaeda. Today, the erroneous belief that al-Qaeda's franchise in Iraq is a driving force behind the chaos in that country may be setting us up for a similar mistake.

Iran Rumblings

2007-08-30T12:50:00.001-04:00

Rumors of a new war with Iran keep circulating. Barnett Rubin (via Prof. Cole) has the latest.

Bush invokes "nuclear holocaust"

2007-08-28T19:44:00.001-04:00

His "legacy" in shatters and his current pointless war continuing to be pointless, Bush seems to think he can make another gamble to save it using other peoples' lives. The Worst President Ever is again beating the war drum on Iran, only this time he is making his fear mongering about nuclear annihilation more explicit, warning that:

"Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. And that is why the United States is rallying friends and allies around the world to isolate the regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late."

We'll never know if Iran really has nuclear weapons if we don't invade, right?

Update: Expanded quote for clarity. Also see Glenn Greenwald's take on this.

Gonzalez < Ashcroft

2007-08-28T17:03:00.001-04:00

Here's a bit from Scott Lemieux:

One of the few contrarian arguments ever to turn out to be right was Yglesias's qualified defense of John Ashcroft. The Bush administration has not only pursued poor-to-catastrophic policy outcomes, but is also frequently unable and/or unwilling to carry out the basic functions of government, adhere to the law, etc. Ashcroft was, at least, competent and unwilling to push the Bush administration's lawlessness past a certain point. Gonzales failed utterly on all counts. And whether or not he was personally more moderate than Ashcroft, it certainly didn't discernibly affect the policy agenda of his office. All that matters is whether you're willing to carry out the administration's dirtiest work, and he certainly was. Maybe this is the best way of summarizing Gonzales: he's the man who could make you miss John Ashcroft.

One Bad Law-Talking-Guy

2007-08-28T15:45:00.000-04:00

Balkin on Gonzalez:

As for Mr. Gonzales, he was a disgrace to the office. There are many roles he could have competently filled-- and did fill-- in his career. The Nation's chief law enforcement officer was not one of them. He abused his office for political gain, repeatedly misled Congress under oath --and probably out and out lied on more than one occasion-- and turned a once proud institution of government into an object of deep suspicion.

No one person can cure what ails the Justice Department these days. It will take determined leadership and reform by a large number of individuals. I have no confidence that the current Administration will put the right people in place. We may have to wait for a new Administration, and even then to fix what Alberto Gonzales did to the United States Department of Justice may take many years.

Seen on the internets

2007-08-28T15:18:00.000-04:00

Scarecrow's take on (former) Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez:

Excuse me, but it is an attorney’s job to tell his/her client when they’re crossing the line and to stop. And that’s really important when your client is the President of the United States, because when the President crosses the line into illegality, he can get the country into serious trouble and cause lots of damage.

When Alberto Gonzales said “the President has the inherent authority under the Constitution as commander in chief to engage in [warrantless spying on Americans]” he failed to do his job. He was not supporting “the President’s war policies.” He was sanctioning the commission of felonies. And he continues to this day to sanction the commission of felonies and to participate in a cover up preventing lawful investigations by Congress and his own DoJ of the scope of those felonies and how they came to be committed. When Gonzales said it was okay to kidnap people, render them to other countries to be interrogated, to use “aggressive interrogation techniques,” hold people indefinitely without charges, deny detainees rights guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions, let alone those guaranteed by our Constitution, statutes and treaties, he was not “holding firm on the President’s war policies.” He was sanctioning war crimes.

AT&T, the NSA, and spying on your phone calls

2007-08-24T16:27:00.000-04:00

Its Alice in Wonderland at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal in California, and Wired's blog has the story here. (some previous Blog Brief items can be seen here and here)

Some highlights from the proceedings:

In response to the claim that courts should simply accept that state secrets are involved when the state claims they are, Judge Pregerson asked, "What does utmost deference mean? Bow to it?"
Even whether a warrant was obtained for the surveillance is a state secret.
Whether surveillance occurred that documents accidentally produced by the government confirm occurred is also a state secret.
AT&T's lawyer: "The government has said that whatever AT&T is doing with the government is a state secret," Kellogg says. He adds, "As a consequence, no evidence can come in whether the individuals' communications were ever accepted or whether we played any role in it."
Also, even though there is clear evidence that AT&T has a suspicious room with suspicious equipment capable of routing data to the government illegally, "Something else could be going on in that room. Just to pick one, it could be FISA court surveillance in that room." Get that? The government can suggest the possibility that it is not breaking the law as evidence that it is not breaking the law, without telling the court that it is actually conducting LEGAL surveillance under FISA.
"[T]he secret document that the government accidentally gave the foundation is so secret that it is outside of the case," and the lawyers for the plaintiffs (who actually saw the document and know what it says) cannot testify about what it says because "the only way to test the veracity of their recollections is to compare it to the document."
How secret is the document? "This document is totally non-redactable and non-segregable and cannot even be meaningfully described."
Judge McKeown: "I feel like I'm in Alice and Wonderland."
Bondy, one of the gov't lawyers, on the plaintiffs and their attorneys: "It's entirely possible that everything they think they know is entirely false."

Bush: "I am a Weimar propagandist"

2007-08-23T20:46:00.000-04:00

Above: "How do I suggest that a majority of Americans are traitorous America-haters in a single-panel cartoon?"

Our glorious Decider has decided to speak for the troops, and further decided that the troops share his vision of his political enemies as traitors who want to stab them in the back:

"Our troops are seeing this progress on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they are gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq?"

And that is different from the Dolchstosslegende how, exactly?

I mean yeah, one involves sharp cutlery and the other involves people with a distaste for carpeting, but the cut of Bush's gib is unmistakable: "We lost Vietnam because traitors in our midst stabbed the troops in the back before they could finish the job (ed.: with what, nukes? who knows how he thinks Vietnam was going to be 'won'), and we can only lose Iraq if the traitors make us leave."

Sully's reader gets it exactly right: Bush and his followers have already given up on Iraq, and are just going through the motions of setting up their excuses for future political use. Realizing that they screwed up their own war, they now need some scapegoats so they can score some points about who "lost Iraq" for the next fifty years. They've been feeding this revisionist garbage about losing the winnable Vietnam War down America's throat for decades, but that usually came from movies like Rambo, not out of the President's mouth. Not anymore.

Here's Sully again to nail it down:

You might think that, in wartime, a president would acknowledge what no one denies is a terribly grim decision in front of us - whether to pursue a clearly unwinnable war in order to govern a clearly ungovernable country - or withdraw and redeploy in ways that will doubtless lead to even more bloodshed. But no. There is no gray here; no awful decision for the least worst option; not acknowledgment of his own moral culpability for such a disaster. There is instead an accusation that those who reach a different judgment about the course of the war are, in fact, enemies of the troops. . . .

To place all the troops into the position of favoring one strategy ahead of us rather than another, and to accuse political opponents of trying to "pull the rug out from under them," is a, yes, fascistic tactic designed to corral political debate into only one possible patriotic course. It's beneath a president to adopt this role, beneath him to coopt the armed services for partisan purposes.

On a related topic, Bill Kristol is a vile creature unsuitable for polite company.

Determined to do good, not to any individual, but to a country, a continent, a world

2007-08-23T20:19:00.000-04:00

In the same address where he butchered history attempting to argue that more U.S. servicepeople should have died in Vietnam and that we were THIS CLOSE to winning the Vietnam War before Congress wimped out, it seems Bush also butchered one of the main themes of a modern classic, The Quiet American. In the novel, set in 1950s Vietnam, Alden Pyle is a CIA officer who screws everything up because of his "good intentions." Pyle's naivite and propensity to harm more than he helps is a common and obvious analogue to Bush and Iraq... leading to the obvious question of how Bush could possibly think the analogy cuts in his favor.

If I may quote a passage:

He didn’t even hear what I said; he was absorbed already in the dilemmas of Democracy and the responsibilities of the West; he was determined—-I learnt that very soon—-to do good, not to any individual person but to a country, a continent, a world. Well, he was in his element now with the whole universe to improve.

Bush is completely blind to the costs of his grand ideas.

Bush is his own court historian

2007-08-22T17:52:00.000-04:00

and not a very good one. He has again completely mixed up the lessons of Vietnam, the second-biggest foreign policy blunder in recent history.

As Froomkin observes, "the obvious lesson of Vietnam is not that leaving a quagmire leads to disaster, but that staying only makes things worse. (And oh yes: that we shouldn't get into them in the first place.)."

This cynical attempt by the self-described "Decider" and "War President" to pawn off responsibility for his Iraq War onto the protestors who were against it from the beginning is really just sick. The Iraq War and its consequences are entirely of Bush's (and his many enablers') ownership. Hundreds of thousands of people are dead or displaced from their homes because of Bush's War. He wanted the war, pushed it, lied for it, had others lie for it, and celebrated it. It was used as a cudgel for the congressional elections in 2002, and he basically ran for reelection on it in 2004. For as long as it was popular, he shamelessly politicized it to his and his party's advantage, strutting around on an aircraft carrier, attacking his political opponents' patriotism and "seriousness" whenever possible, and questioning whether we had sufficiently "learned the lessons of 9/11."

Of course, Bush only cares about "learning the lessons" of any historical event to the extent his speechwriters can distort and manipulate history for his own gain. If he has his druthers, he won't even bother to "learn the lessons of the Iraq War" before he starts another war in Iran, an even bigger and just as complicated, country, which would have just as easily-predictable complications as Iraq did.

There was certainly no interest in history before the war from those who could utilize history's lessons. Even putting aside the still-unexplained forgeries and the outright lies about WMD and al Qaeda connections that helped get us into Iraq, even the most basic research would have revealed that our government already knew in 1991 that a post-invasion Iraq would be bloody and chaotic (just ask Dick Cheney), the British had their own humiliating experience with attempts to colonize Iraq in the early 1900s, and the cross-cutting religious and ethnic cleavages in Iraqi society were plain to anyone who looked. They didn't just ignore history, they marginalized and ridiculed those who actually bothered to look into the matter and raised clear warnings.

These guys screwed everything up, and did not bother to plan for even the most easily-predicted contingencies. They recklessly invaded, destroyed Iraqi society, allowed its treasures to be looted, ravaged its infrastructure, disbanded its army, encouraged sectarian strife between Arab and Kurd and between Shiite and Sunni, put loyal sycophants and ideologues in charge rather than competent managers, failed to ever put enough boots on the ground, failed to acknowledge and correct their mistakes when they quickly became apparant -- and now, they have the gall to try to pass the buck for the eminently-predictable deaths and chaos they sowed, with a self-serving and inaccurate history lesson from people who never before showed any interest in history.

As in Vietnam, there is nothing for us to "win" in Iraq, and the only justification for staying is the possible consequences of leaving a country where we shouldn't be in the first place. Stopping a civil war from occurring appears to be a moot point. Yes, there are serious concerns about retribution being visited upon Iraqis who have assisted us, but those concerns should be met by massively expanding asylum opportunties (which are currently and inexplicably highly restricted), not extending our troop commitments indefinitely, or trying to referee (or worse, pick sides in) a civil war. There are also serious concerns about potential regional conflicts involving Iraq and Turkey and some of its other neighbors(Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia to name a few), but those are also not a good reason for an endless occupation.

For further reading, Josh Marshall has more here, seven servicemen in Iraq have their own thoughts on the current situation, while Robert Scheer wrote about this whole Iraq/Vietnam topic at greater length back in November 2006, when Bush first made clear his ignorance about Vietnam. See also my related post from last November.

Update: More historians pile on the ahistorical view that Vietnam could have been "won" if we only spent more years, sacrificed more troops, and built a much bigger black memorial on the Washington Mall.

White House Manual Details How to Squelch Anti-Bush Protestors

2007-08-22T11:54:00.000-04:00

Here are some tips (from the previously-secret "Presidential Advance Manual") on how to keep the President (or the news media) from seeing or hearing protestors at presidential events:

Require tickets
Place protestors in "free speech zones" that are out of site of the President and the media
Search/screen ticketholders for secret signs
Make sure people in VIP sections or near the stage are "extremely supportive of the Administration"
Form strategically-placed "rally squads" (no, really) to shout down any anti-Bush demonstrators who infiltrate an event (for example, shout "USA! USA! USA!")
If the above does not work, throw them out. (Typically, this has involved arresting the protestor on bogus charges, followed by a quick release after the event ends)

Lawyers and Doctors to Bush: Stop the Torture

2007-08-16T12:03:00.001-04:00

Give a read to Scott Horton's latest, "The Professions Strike Back." Lawyers who try to justify torture and doctors who help interrogators to employ it should be shunned and shamed by all, and particularly their peers.

As was well-stated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (630 F.2d at 890), like the pirate and slave trader before him, the torturer is hostis humani generis, the enemy of all mankind.

Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies about 9/11

2007-08-15T19:19:00.001-04:00

Rudy is full of it. Learn why.

(Also, Rudy is crazy. I mean, did you read his completely insane foreign policy manifesto?)

No New Wars

2007-08-15T18:53:00.001-04:00

Your other ones are more than enough, Mr. Bush.

Rove's Ugly Legacy

2007-08-15T11:23:00.001-04:00

Rove's legacy according to Andrew Sullivan, the man who only a few years ago was taken to calling people like me "fifth columnists" and traitors, but who had a change of heart somewhere down the line:

The man's legacy is a conservative movement largely discredited and disunited, a president with lower consistent approval ratings than any in modern history, a generational shift to the Democrats, a resurgent al Qaeda, an endless catastrophe in Iraq, a long hard struggle in Afghanistan, a fiscal legacy that means bankrupting America within a decade, and the poisoning of American religion with politics and vice-versa. For this, he got two terms of power - which the GOP used mainly to enrich themselves, their clients and to expand government's reach and and drain on the productive sector. In the re-election, the president with a relatively strong economy, and a war in progress, managed to eke out 51 percent. Why? Because Rove preferred to divide the country and get his 51 percent, than unite it and get America's 60. In a time of grave danger and war, Rove picked party over country. Such a choice was and remains despicable.

Rove is one of the worst political strategists in recent times. He took a chance to realign the country and to unite it in a war - and threw it away in a binge of hate-filled niche campaigning, polarization and short-term expediency. His divisive politics and elevation of corrupt mediocrities to every branch of government has turned an entire generation off the conservative label. And rightly so. It will take another generation to recover from the toxins he has injected, with the president's eager approval, into the political culture and into the conservative soul.

And let's not forget mangling Hurricane Katrina's aftermath (how could such a "genius" have let Bush miss the political opportunities that could have come with him riding in on a white horse to save the day?), trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare with disingenuous scare tactics, injecting the federal government into the Schiavo family's decisions (yeah that was a good political issue for Republicans), stirring up the immigration hornet's nest (bringing all the rightwing racist crazies front and center for everyone to see), mostly ignoring Al Qaeda (except for the ones who followed us to Iraq), rampant illegal and unconstitutional spying, outing for petty political gain a CIA agent who worked on controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction, choosing tax cuts for the rich over the nation's fiscal health, and generally screwing up the entire Middle East even worse than when they found it.

Karl "Turdblossom" Rove will forever share credit with Bush and Cheney for the Worst Presidency Ever.

Expect Nothing But Another Friedman from the Petraeus Report

2007-08-15T10:42:00.000-04:00

Ever since the great and glorious "surge" was announced, all the wise and serious men and women of Washington have been proclaiming that we only needed to give this war one last chance until September, and THEN we could finally start talking about pulling out of Iraq. "Wait for Petraeus' report," they'd say.

Big surprise that the Petraeus report will actually be written by the White House, those same folks who let us know long ago that President Bush has no intention of leaving as long as he is President:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

The senior administration official said the process had created "uncomfortable positions" for the White House because of debates over what constitutes "satisfactory progress."

During internal White House discussion of a July interim report, some officials urged the administration to claim progress in policy areas such as legislation to divvy up Iraq's oil revenue, even though no final agreement had been reached. Others argued that such assertions would be disingenuous.

"There were some in the drafting of the report that said, 'Well, we can claim progress,' " the administration official said. "There were others who said: 'Wait a second. Sure we can claim progress, but it's not credible to . . . just neglect the fact that it's had no effect on the ground.' "

The Defense official skeptical of the troop buildup said he expected Petraeus to emphasize military accomplishments, including improving security in Baghdad neighborhoods and a slight reduction in the number of suicide bomb attacks. But the official said he did not believe such security improvements would translate into political progress or improvements in the daily lives of most Iraqis.

"Who cares how many neighborhoods of Baghdad are secured?" the official said. "Let's talk about the rest of the country: How come they have electricity twice a day, how come there is no running water?"

Anyone want to take bets that the report finds signs of "progress" in every major area, and that we just need to stick with it for another "6 months" for everything to progress even further?

Too Many Friedmans

2007-08-08T15:48:00.000-04:00

The Friedman Rule: The Iraq War's end is always six months down the road, no matter when that prediction is being made. Now you can prove it with a handy timeline, with pictures!

See also Friedman (unit).

Better Democrats, please

2007-08-08T13:35:00.000-04:00

Howie Klein puts it well, Firedoglake more bluntly. Jack Balkin says it too. Yes, nearly the entire Republican delegation in Congress backed the eerily-titled Protect America Act of 2007, but they had a nice assist from 41 craven Democrats, as well as the Democratic leadership that allowed this travesty to even make it to a vote.

Next on the legalizing illegal conduct agenda: liability protection for "alleged" protectors of America who allegedly broke the law. As Jack Balkin explains in another post, "Apparently 'allegedly helped us stay safe' is Bush Administration code for telecom companies and government officials who participated in a conspiracy to perform illegal surveillance. Because what they did is illegal, we do not admit that they actually did it, we only say that they are alleged to have done it."

Torture, Inc.

2007-08-08T09:57:00.000-04:00

Torture has been systematically perfected by the CIA since 9/11, according to this New Yorker article by Jane Mayer, one of the most disturbing things I've read on the subject (and there has been quite a bit of disturbing reporting over the last three years or so):

Accurately or not, Bush Administration officials have described the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo as the unauthorized actions of ill-trained personnel, eleven of whom have been convicted of crimes. By contrast, the treatment of high-value detainees has been directly, and repeatedly, approved by President Bush. The program is monitored closely by C.I.A. lawyers, and supervised by the agency’s director and his subordinates at the Counterterrorism Center. While Mohammed was being held by the agency, detailed dossiers on the treatment of detainees were regularly available to the former C.I.A. director George Tenet, according to informed sources inside and outside the agency. Through a spokesperson, Tenet denied making day-to-day decisions about the treatment of individual detainees. But, according to a former agency official, “Every single plan is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the highest possible level—-meaning the director of the C.I.A. Any change in the plan—even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added—was signed off by the C.I.A. director.”

On September 17, 2001, President Bush signed a secret Presidential finding authorizing the C.I.A. to create paramilitary teams to hunt, capture, detain, or kill designated terrorists almost anywhere in the world. Yet the C.I.A. had virtually no trained interrogators. A former C.I.A. officer involved in fighting terrorism said that, at first, the agency was crippled by its lack of expertise. “It began right away, in Afghanistan, on the fly,” he recalled. “They invented the program of interrogation with people who had no understanding of Al Qaeda or the Arab world.” The former officer said that the pressure from the White House, in particular from Vice-President Dick Cheney, was intense: “They were pushing us: ‘Get information! Do not let us get hit again!’ ” In the scramble, he said, he searched the C.I.A.’s archives, to see what interrogation techniques had worked in the past. He was particularly impressed with the Phoenix Program, from the Vietnam War. Critics, including military historians, have described it as a program of state-sanctioned torture and murder. A Pentagon-contract study found that, between 1970 and 1971, ninety-seven per cent of the Vietcong targeted by the Phoenix Program were of negligible importance. But, after September 11th, some C.I.A. officials viewed the program as a useful model. A. B. Krongard, who was the executive director of the C.I.A. from 2001 to 2004, said that the agency turned to “everyone we could, including our friends in Arab cultures,” for interrogation advice, among them those in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, all of which the State Department regularly criticizes for human-rights abuses.

. . .

Many officials inside the C.I.A. had misgivings. “A lot of us knew this would be a can of worms,” the former officer said. “We warned them, It’s going to become an atrocious mess.” The problem from the start, he said, was that no one had thought through what he called “the disposal plan.” He continued, “What are you going to do with these people? The utility of someone like K.S.M. is, at most, six months to a year. You exhaust them. Then what? It would have been better if we had executed them.”

. . . Lacking in-house specialists on interrogation, the agency hired a group of outside contractors, who implemented a regime of techniques that one well-informed former adviser to the American intelligence community described as “a ‘Clockwork Orange’ kind of approach.” The experts were retired military psychologists, and their backgrounds were in training Special Forces soldiers how to survive torture, should they ever be captured by enemy states. The program, known as SERE—an acronym for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape—was created at the end of the Korean War. It subjected trainees to simulated torture, including waterboarding (simulated drowning), sleep deprivation, isolation, exposure to temperature extremes, enclosure in tiny spaces, bombardment with agonizing sounds, and religious and sexual humiliation. The SERE program was designed strictly for defense against torture regimes, but the C.I.A.’s new team used its expertise to help interrogators inflict abuse. “They were very arrogant, and pro-torture,” a European official knowledgeable about the program said. “They sought to render the detainees vulnerable—to break down all of their senses. It takes a psychologist trained in this to understand these rupturing experiences.”

The use of psychologists was also considered a way for C.I.A. officials to skirt measures such as the Convention Against Torture. The former adviser to the intelligence community said, “Clearly, some senior people felt they needed a theory to justify what they were doing. You can’t just say, ‘We want to do what Egypt’s doing.’ When the lawyers asked what their basis was, they could say, ‘We have Ph.D.s who have these theories.’ ” He said that, inside the C.I.A., where a number of scientists work, there was strong internal opposition to the new techniques. “Behavioral scientists said, ‘Don’t even think about this!’ They thought officers could be prosecuted.”

Nevertheless, the SERE experts’ theories were apparently put into practice with Zubaydah’s interrogation. Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he was not only waterboarded, as has been previously reported; he was also kept for a prolonged period in a cage, known as a “dog box,” which was so small that he could not stand. According to an eyewitness, one psychologist advising on the treatment of Zubaydah, James Mitchell, argued that he needed to be reduced to a state of “learned helplessness.” (Mitchell disputes this characterization.)

Steve Kleinman, a reserve Air Force colonel and an experienced interrogator who has known Mitchell professionally for years, said that “learned helplessness was his whole paradigm.” Mitchell, he said, “draws a diagram showing what he says is the whole cycle. It starts with isolation. Then they eliminate the prisoners’ ability to forecast the future—when their next meal is, when they can go to the bathroom. It creates dread and dependency. It was the K.G.B. model. But the K.G.B. used it to get people who had turned against the state to confess falsely. The K.G.B. wasn’t after intelligence.”

As the C.I.A. captured and interrogated other Al Qaeda figures, it established a protocol of psychological coercion. The program tied together many strands of the agency’s secret history of Cold War-era experiments in behavioral science. . . . According to Alfred McCoy, a history professor at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison, who has written a history of the C.I.A.’s experiments in coercing subjects, the agency learned that “if subjects are confined without light, odors, sound, or any fixed references of time and place, very deep breakdowns can be provoked.”

Agency scientists found that in just a few hours some subjects suspended in water tanks—or confined in isolated rooms wearing blacked-out goggles and earmuffs—regressed to semi-psychotic states. Moreover, McCoy said, detainees become so desperate for human interaction that “they bond with the interrogator like a father, or like a drowning man having a lifesaver thrown at him. If you deprive people of all their senses, they’ll turn to you like their daddy.” McCoy added that “after the Cold War we put away those tools. There was bipartisan reform. We backed away from those dark days. Then, under the pressure of the war on terror, they didn’t just bring back the old psychological techniques—they perfected them.”

The C.I.A.’s interrogation program is remarkable for its mechanistic aura. “It’s one of the most sophisticated, refined programs of torture ever,” an outside expert familiar with the protocol said. “At every stage, there was a rigid attention to detail. Procedure was adhered to almost to the letter. There was top-down quality control, and such a set routine that you get to the point where you know what each detainee is going to say, because you’ve heard it before. It was almost automated. People were utterly dehumanized. People fell apart. It was the intentional and systematic infliction of great suffering masquerading as a legal process. It is just chilling.”

. . .

. . . [D]etainees were “taken to their cells by strong people who wore black outfits, masks that covered their whole faces, and dark visors over their eyes.” (Some personnel reportedly wore black clothes made from specially woven synthetic fabric that couldn’t be ripped or torn.) A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the “takeout” of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location.

A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to “sodomy.” He said, “It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone’s sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation.” The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, “because it’s demoralizing.” The person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of the C.I.A.’s quality-control process. They were passed back to case officers for review.

A secret government document, dated December 10, 2002, detailing “SERE Interrogation Standard Operating Procedure,” outlines the advantages of stripping detainees. “In addition to degradation of the detainee, stripping can be used to demonstrate the omnipotence of the captor or to debilitate the detainee.” The document advises interrogators to “tear clothing from detainees by firmly pulling downward against buttoned buttons and seams. Tearing motions shall be downward to prevent pulling the detainee off balance.” The memo also advocates the “Shoulder Slap,” “Stomach Slap,” “Hooding,” “Manhandling,” “Walling,” and a variety of “Stress Positions,” including one called “Worship the Gods.”

In the process of being transported, C.I.A. detainees such as Mohammed were screened by medical experts, who checked their vital signs, took blood samples, and marked a chart with a diagram of a human body, noting scars, wounds, and other imperfections. As the person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry put it, “It’s like when you hire a motor vehicle, circling where the scratches are on the rearview mirror. Each detainee was continually assessed, physically and psychologically.”

. . .

According to sources familiar with interrogation techniques, the hanging position is designed, in part, to prevent detainees from being able to sleep. The former C.I.A. officer, who is knowledgeable about the interrogation program, explained that “sleep deprivation works. Your electrolyte balance changes. You lose all balance and ability to think rationally. Stuff comes out.” Sleep deprivation has been recognized as an effective form of coercion since the Middle Ages, when it was called tormentum insomniae. It was also recognized for decades in the United States as an illegal form of torture. An American Bar Association report, published in 1930, which was cited in a later U.S. Supreme Court decision, said, “It has been known since 1500 at least that deprivation of sleep is the most effective torture and certain to produce any confession desired.”

Under President Bush’s new executive order, C.I.A. detainees must receive the “basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care.” Sleep, according to the order, is not among the basic necessities.

In addition to keeping a prisoner awake, the simple act of remaining upright can over time cause significant pain. McCoy, the historian, noted that “longtime standing” was a common K.G.B. interrogation technique. In his 2006 book, “A Question of Torture,” he writes that the Soviets found that making a victim stand for eighteen to twenty-four hours can produce “excruciating pain, as ankles double in size, skin becomes tense and intensely painful, blisters erupt oozing watery serum, heart rates soar, kidneys shut down, and delusions deepen.”

. . .

The former officer said that the C.I.A. kept a doctor standing by during interrogations. He insisted that the method was safe and effective, but said that it could cause lasting psychic damage to the interrogators. During interrogations, the former agency official said, officers worked in teams, watching each other behind two-way mirrors. Even with this group support, the friend said, Mohammed’s interrogator “has horrible nightmares.” He went on, “When you cross over that line of darkness, it’s hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but it’s well outside the norm. You can’t go to that dark a place without it changing you.” He said of his friend, “He’s a good guy. It really haunts him. You are inflicting something really evil and horrible on somebody.”

. . .

“All these methods produced useful information, but there was also a lot that was bogus.” When pressed, one former top agency official estimated that “ninety per cent of the information was unreliable.” Cables carrying Mohammed’s interrogation transcripts back to Washington reportedly were prefaced with the warning that “the detainee has been known to withhold information or deliberately mislead.” Mohammed, like virtually all the top Al Qaeda prisoners held by the C.I.A., has claimed that, while under coercion, he lied to please his captors.

Capital Hill Capitulation

2007-08-08T09:49:00.000-04:00

So now the Democrat-controlled Congress gave Bush the new spying law he wanted.

I'll let Russ Feingold take this one (and once you are done, go read what Digby says):

Last week law-abiding Americans were once again forced to surrender their rights and freedoms. The event was eerily similar to the unwise passage of the PATRIOT Act some six years ago. We once again had a power hungry executive and a Senate controlled by Democrats. The only difference was that the House of Representatives is now under the control of Democrats - which makes what happened all the more troubling.

The Democratic-led Congress voted to allow the President and his administration to intercept the phone calls and emails of American citizens, without a warrant, with virtually zero judicial oversight, and no reporting whatsoever to Congress. The government is now allowed to grab any communication believed to be from outside the U.S. That includes American citizens who live overseas, service members such as those in Iraq, journalists reporting from overseas, or even Members of Congress who are abroad and call home to the United States - all without any sort of court oversight. This goes far beyond the identified problem of foreign-to-foreign communications that we all agree needed to be fixed.

We cannot allow these abuses to go unchallenged. With your help and valuable input over the last two weeks, late last Friday I formally introduced two censure resolutions to hold President Bush, and his administration, responsible for undermining the rule of law time and time again, and for misleading this country into an unwise war in Iraq and mismanaging the situation that followed.

The first censure resolution addresses the administration's numerous attacks on our Constitution and the rule of law. The President and Attorney General have violated the foundation of our government. This censure resolution will condemn the President and Attorney General for the administration's illegal domestic wiretapping program, for redefining torture, for its extreme positions on the legal status of detainees that has been rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court more than once, and for its refusal to cooperate with Congress' responsibility to conduct adequate oversight as mandated in the Constitution.

The second censure resolution holds the President and Vice President responsible for both leading our country into Iraq under false pretenses and for leading our country into a war without adequate planning. The administration exaggerated the threat from Iraq, overstated the case that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and falsely linked Iraq to al Qaeda and the horrific attacks of September 11th, 2001. They must be held to account for leading our nation down a path that has made America less safe and has hurt our ability to fight terrorism around the world.

Congress cannot continue to stand by and allow the actions of this President and his administration to go unchallenged. The legislation that passed last week expires in six months, and at that point we will likely see a fight similar to the one that took place last week. We cannot let this President, or any President, continue to thumb their nose at the Constitution and the rule of law.

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has joined me in this effort and has introduced both censure resolutions in the House - but we cannot do it alone. Please sign on as a Citizen Co-Sponsor of Censure so we can show other elected officials in Congress that the American people will not give up in their demand for accountability.

Sincerely,

Russ Feingold
United States Senator
Honorary Chair, Progressive Patriots Fund

Holy crap!

2007-08-07T16:48:00.000-04:00

I found three points where I agree with Newt Gingrich.

Gonzalez Must Go

2007-07-26T11:16:00.001-04:00

Here's a summary of the latest reasons why.

More Katrina-Related B.S.

2007-07-26T08:50:00.000-04:00

After complaints that the Small Business Administration was too slow to pay out loans granted for Hurricane Katrina relief, they are now arbitrarily taking away previously-granted small business loans "to cut the number of applicants whose loans had been approved but not paid out."

Bush Torture Ban Full of Loopholes

2007-07-26T08:35:00.000-04:00

Prof. David Cole: "We have learned that when President Bush says, "We don't torture," it's important to read the fine print. . . . The actual tactics the CIA is authorized to use remain classified. . . . [T]he president's order appears to permit cutting or bruising a suspect so long as the injury does not risk death, significant functional impairment or 'extreme physical pain,' an entirely subjective term. . . . [T]he order creates no rights enforceable by any victim against the United States or its employees, while expressly offering CIA employees a defense against any attempt to hold them liable for abuse. The ultimate purpose of the law, in other words, is to protect the potential perpetrators, not the potential victims."

The President who will not remain nameless

2007-07-23T10:55:00.001-04:00

Two local attorneys in Media, Pennsylvania filed pretrial motions to keep opposing counsel from mentioning President Bush by name at trial. The theory was that he is so unpopular, that it would prejudice the jury against them at a false arrest trial stemming from the arrest of a local doctor who was holding an anti-war sign at a Bush campaign event.

Check it out:

Apparently President George W. Bush is now so unpopular that some lawyers believe the mere mention of his name in front of a jury could tip the scales against them.

Attorneys Michael P. Laffey and Robert P. DiDomenicis of Holsten & Associates in Media, Pa., are defending Upper Darby Township, Pa., in a civil rights suit brought by Harold Lischner, an 82-year-old doctor who claims he was falsely arrested for displaying an anti-war sign at a Bush campaign event in September 2003.

With the case set to go to trial on July 23, the defense lawyers recently filed a flurry of motions, including one that asked Eastern District of Pennsylvania Judge Gene E.K. Pratter to prohibit the plaintiff from mentioning Bush's name.

The motion in Lischner v. Upper Darby Township said that according to the latest Newsweek poll, Bush has "the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation," and that 62 percent of Americans believe that Bush's handling of the war in Iraq shows that he is "stubborn and unwilling to admit his mistakes."

Laffey and DiDomenicis argued that "the identity of George W. Bush has no relevance to plaintiff's claim and should not be admitted."

Any "probative value" of Bush's identity, they argued, "is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice to defendant."

Bush's identity, they argued, "in and of itself, presents the danger that the jury will favor plaintiff."

As a result, the defense lawyers said, "it will be sufficient for plaintiff to testify that he displayed a sign in opposition of a 'presidential candidate.'"

In the end, Judge Pratter was not convinced:

Now Pratter has sided with the plaintiffs lawyers, saying "the court disagrees that what Upper Darby proposes is a viable approach."

Pratter found that the message on Lischner's sign and Bush's identity, as well as the circumstances surrounding his visit -- including the war in Iraq and Bush's bid for re-election -- are "relevant to the determination of probable cause and to the adequacy of Upper Darby's training and policies."

All relevant evidence is "generally admissible," Pratter said, and "the president's identity and Dr. Lischner's opposition to the war in Iraq -- presumably as evidenced by the text on his sign -- are relevant because they are part of the circumstances weighing on the probable cause analysis conducted by Officer [Michael] Kehrle."

. . .

"The facts that the political candidate was not only a candidate for arguably the most important office in our government, but also the current president participating in a campaign for re-election, were important to the court's determination that the condition imposed by Drexelbrook was illegal and, thus, relevant to the probable cause determination."

The text of Lischner's sign is also legally significant, Pratter found, because "the fact that Dr. Lischner's sign was not blatantly offensive or disrespectful, and certainly not aimed at inciting violence or some other physical disruption, is relevant to whether probable cause existed."

Bush Orders Justice Department Not to Enforce Laws against Bush

2007-07-20T18:12:00.001-04:00

The imperial president has again set himself above the law.

Let's review: Congress receives evidence and testimony suggesting that the Bush Administration politicized the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney offices in its hiring and firing decisions. Congress, investigating those allegations, subpoenas Bush Administration officials for their testimony. Bush Administration tells its officials not to testify to Congress and to ignore the subpoenas. Congress refers contempt of Congress charges to the Justice Department. President Bush orders the Justice Department not to do anything with those charges.

What further need is there to prove that Bush has politicized the Justice Department? We can see him doing it right now in real time, and hear him saying that he is doing it.

The ball is back in Congress's court. As Greenwald explains:

There is nothing new here. As has long been known, this administration believes themselves to reside above and beyond the reach of the law. What else would they need to do in order to make that as clear as can be? They got caught red-handed committing multiple felonies -- by eavesdropping on Americans in precisely the way the law we enacted 30 years ago prohibited -- and they not only admitted it, but vowed to continue to break our laws, and asserted the right to do so. And nothing happened.

. . .

There is no magic force that is going to descend from the sky and strike with lighting at George Bush and Dick Cheney for so flagrantly subverting our constitutional order. The Founders created various checks for confronting tyrannical abuses of power, but they have to be activated by political will and the courage to confront it. That has been lacking. Hence, they have seized omnipotent powers with impunity.

It's the next war too

2007-07-20T01:49:00.000-04:00

As Congress debates an end to the Iraq war, a nagging question keeps coming back: Is war with Iran inevitable? Or will Congress step back, take a deep breath, and put on the brakes before it is too late?

I've written before about my suspicions on where things are heading, and Sy Hersh has been indispensible on the subject. Now, Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo offers plenty more reasons to be worried about the present course. Put simply, we have three aircraft carriers that we recently parked near Iraq (and Iran) in the relatively tiny Persian Gulf (think high potential for accident that sparks international incident). We have alleged Iranian diplomats captured and being held in Iraq under suspicion of espionage. We have accusations flying around about covert Iranian involvement in its unstable neighoring country (duh), and worse, Iranian weapons killing our soldiers. The Senate has already passed a unanimous resolution condemning Iran for killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq. Or there's the WMDs argument.

It seems like we've already watched a powder keg get set up, and are now just waiting for something to happen. The stage seems to be set for the big outrage or the incredible secret evidence or the tragically-mistaken forgery that all the wise people in Washington will agree to mean that we absolutely must, MUST attack Iran, and anyone who disagrees... fifth columnnist traitors. Remember, we've seen this play out not that long ago, and this time we have three aircraft carriers and a whole mess of troops in Iraq just sitting around right next door. And maniacs and fools who talk about how we can "do Iran" with only air strikes. Really.

As stupid as the whole concept of another war may be to most of us right now, and as we wonder how the heck we get out of Iraq without creating even more chaos, the guys still in charge are the crew that brought us the present middle eastern disaster. Will they really be deterred by the fact that their new middle eastern plans make no sense at all, and would likely result in a catastrophically bigger disaster? Or will they try to salvage the "legacy" and make a "bold move" before whatever weenie who wins the next election takes office and goes soft. These are the guys that "create their own reality," after all.

Having seen this all play out already only a few short years ago, and watching its tragic results and costs before our eyes, one would hope that there would now be enough people in Congress or counseling the President with the sense to stop this course from repeating.

If the new war actually comes to a vote before it's already fait accompli, I assume there would be quite a few more dissenters this time around (I'm looking at you, John Kerry). But can we honestly trust that 50% of Congress would be able to resist the temptation of going along with it, assuming that the big outrage is big enough or the scary evidence scary-sounding enough? The ranks of the gullible and the cynical are ever-refreshed in politics, and just like last time, for many politicians, the real questions will be 'how does it play on the teevee,' and 'will I get killed at the polls next year if the war goes really great and I was on the damned dirty hippies' side?'

And who really expects the media to do their crucial job and act the role of the skeptic and factchecker when the time comes, beyond a handful of outraged editorials, obscure reports buried on the back pages, and debates between three yelling pro war pundits and either Janeane Garofalo or Scott Ritter? By contrast, who expects that they will immediately go into breathless 24/7 hysterics and White House/Department of Defense stenography (complete with countdown clock) as soon as they catch a whiff of the next war?

To put it simply, I would not be surprised to see that the Iraq exit strategy turn out to be an Iran entry strategy, with tragic results. Now is the time to stop it.

The pieces are in place and the intention has been long known: "Anyone can go to Baghdad. Real men go to Tehran."

It's the War, Stupid

2007-07-08T13:21:00.000-04:00

Even the newspaper that helped start the war and foolishly supported every crackpot "last ditch" effort to "save" it (in six-month "Friedman" increments), now wants to end it. The Times now says, "Enough":

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.

At first, we believed that after destroying Iraq’s government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs — after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bush’s plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost.

. . .

Continuing to sacrifice the lives and limbs of American soldiers is wrong. The war is sapping the strength of the nation’s alliances and its military forces. It is a dangerous diversion from the life-and-death struggle against terrorists. It is an increasing burden on American taxpayers, and it is a betrayal of a world that needs the wise application of American power and principles.

A majority of Americans reached these conclusions months ago. Even in politically polarized Washington, positions on the war no longer divide entirely on party lines. When Congress returns this week, extricating American troops from the war should be at the top of its agenda.

That conversation must be candid and focused. Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave. There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide. Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate.

The administration, the Democratic-controlled Congress, the United Nations and America’s allies must try to mitigate those outcomes — and they may fail. But Americans must be equally honest about the fact that keeping troops in Iraq will only make things worse. The nation needs a serious discussion, now, about how to accomplish a withdrawal and meet some of the big challenges that will arise.

. . .

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have used demagoguery and fear to quell Americans’ demands for an end to this war. They say withdrawing will create bloodshed and chaos and encourage terrorists. Actually, all of that has already happened — the result of this unnecessary invasion and the incompetent management of this war.

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as possible to stop the chaos from spreading.

Read the whole thing, there is quite a bit of detail in there for an editorial. Hopefully, the Times can learn enough from recent history to stop starting the next war, in Iran.

Dead or Alive

2007-07-08T13:08:00.000-04:00

Isn't this why we invaded Afghanistan, to get a bunch of bad guys who attacked us that another country wouldn't let us get?

WASHINGTON, July 7 — A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

Read the rest of the story here.

What an interesting coincidence

2007-07-05T16:34:00.000-04:00

Josh Marshall and emptywheel both take note of an interesting coincidence: right about the time that the prosecutors in the Rep. Duke Cunningham corruption case were looking into efforts by top Department of Defense appointees "to set up their own domestic surveillance and spying operations . . . quite likely well outside the bounds of American law," including potential domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens through a program called TALON, in which key contracts went to Cunningham's bribers, "somehow the entire record of the TALON program, every report that had been collected, was scrubbed."

Obstructor in Chief

2007-07-05T15:04:00.000-04:00

"[I]n America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other." - Thomas Paine, Common Sense

"[I]n a republic . . . every magistrate ought to be personally responsible for his behavior in office." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #70

"I guess I don't know what you mean by equal justice under the law." - Scott Stanzel, White House Press Briefing, 7/5/2007

President Bush commuted the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a man duly convicted by a jury of his peers of perjury, lying to investigators and obstruction of justice, all relating to an independent investigation (that President Bush pretended to support) concerning the leaking of a covert CIA agent's identity. After decrying the "severity" of Libby's sentence, President Bush has instead substituted it with NOTHING, to the cheers and applause of the press and the Washington elite.

With this move, President Bush has furthered the criminal conspiracy and cover-up, and himself obstructed justice. He has sabotaged an ongoing investigation that reaches into the doorstep of the White House. He has ensured that Libby will never "flip" and testify against either he or the Vice President, and by failing to fully pardon him, he has ensured that Libby can continue to invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify about his crimes before Congress. This is an outrage.

Add this to the impeachment bill that will never be passed (despite support from a growing majority of Americans), but would never be more deserving, add it together with his illegal war in Iraq (and the criminal conspiracy to lie and forge our way into it), his unconstitutional detentions of American citizens and civilians without due process, his international torture ring, and his illegal and unconstitutional spying on Americans, among numerous other offenses.

Segregation May Not Be Remedied

2007-06-28T12:10:00.000-04:00

Essentially overturning the holding of Brown v. Board of Education, the Roberts Supreme Court held today in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, that racial considerations may not be used to remedy racial segregation in primary and secondary schools. This seems like a huge mistake to me; there is a big difference between using race to segregate students from each other, and using race to try to integrate them. Attempts to ignore that distinction seem like so much disingenuous sophistry. One separates the races, another joins them.

More initial reaction on this decision here from Adam B at the Daily Kos. As he notes, Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, a Reagan appointee, explained well why the Supreme Court got this so wrong:

When the government seeks to use racial classifications to oppress blacks or other minorities, no conceivable justification will be sufficiently compelling.... When government seeks to segregate the races [], the courts will look with great skepticism at the justifications offered in support of such programs, and will reject them when they reflect assumptions about the conduct of individuals based on their race or skin color.... Programs seeking to help minorities by giving them preferences in contracting, see, e.g., Adarand, and education, see, e.g., Bakke, benign though they may be in their motivations, pit the races against each other, and cast doubts on the ability of minorities to compete with the majority on an equal footing.

The Seattle plan suffers none of these defects. It certainly is not meant to oppress minorities, nor does it have that effect. No race is turned away from government service or services. The plan does not segregate the races; to the contrary, it seeks to promote integration. There is no attempt to give members of particular races political power based on skin color. There is no competition between the races, and no race is given a preference over another. That a student is denied the school of his choice may be disappointing, but it carries no racial stigma and says nothing at all about that individual’s aptitude or ability. ...

It is difficult to deny the importance of teaching children, during their formative years, how to deal respectfully and collegially with peers of different races. Whether one would call this a compelling interest or merely a highly rational one strikes me as little more than semantics. The reality is that attitudes and patterns of interaction are developed early in life and, in a multicultural and diverse society such as ours, there is great value in developing the ability to interact successfully with individuals who are very different from oneself. It is important for the individual student, to be sure, but it is also vitally important for us as a society. ... The school environment forces students both to compete and cooperate in the classroom, as well as during extracurricular activities ranging from football to forensics. Schoolmates often become friends, rivals and romantic partners; learning to deal with individuals of different races in these various capacities cannot help but foster the live-and-let-live spirit that is the essence of the American experience. I believe this is a rational objective for an educational system—every bit as rational as teaching the three Rs, advanced chemistry or driver’s education. Schools, after all, don’t simply prepare students for further education, though they certainly can and should do that; good schools prepare students for life, by instilling skills and attitudes that will serve them long after their first year of college.

Update:

Lyle Denniston at the SCOTUS blog has more here, and Christy Hardin Smith has commentary at FireDogLake here.

Second Update:

Jack Balkin points out that the actual holding of the case is more limited than my post above suggests, because Justice Kennedy's concurrence did not agree with some of the more difficult portions of Chief Justice Roberts' lead opinion. Take a look at his analysis. Armando has additional thoughts at TalkLeft. Eric Muller opines that Justice Kennedy essentially got the case right at Is That Legal?.

Scott Lemieux notes that "Given the modesty of the Seattle program -- which used race only as a tiebreaker, making the potential injustices of the classification particularly dubious -- it is clear that no affirmative action program is going to survive an encounter with the Roberts Court in its current configuration." He goes on to emphasize the Breyer dissent, including this graf:

Today, almost 50 years later, attitudes toward race in this Nation have changed dramatically. Many parents, white and black alike, want their children to attend schools with children of different races. Indeed, the very school districts that once spurned integration now strive for it. The long history of their efforts reveals the complexities and difficulties they have faced. And in light of those challenges, they have asked us not to take from their hands the instruments they have used to rid their schools of racial segregation, instruments that they believe are needed to overcome the problems of cities divided by race and poverty. The plurality would decline their modest request.

The plurality is wrong to do so. The last half-century has witnessed great strides toward racial equality, but we have not yet realized the promise of Brown. To invalidate the plans under review is to threaten the promise of Brown. The plurality's position, I fear, would break that promise. This is a decision that the Court and the Nation will come to regret.

Finally, do not miss the Stevens dissent, also noted by Lemieux:

There is a cruel irony in The Chief Justice’s reliance on our decision in Brown v. Board of Education, The first sentence in the concluding paragraph of his opinion states: “Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin.” This sentence reminds me of Anatole France’s observation: “[T]he majestic equality of the la[w], forbid[s] rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." The Chief Justice fails to note that it was only black schoolchildren who were so ordered; indeed, the history books do not tell stories of white children struggling to attend black schools. In this and other ways, The Chief Justice rewrites the history of one of this Court’s most important decisions.

New Column: Reactions to al-Marri Decision

2007-06-28T11:36:00.000-04:00

My latest column for the Legal Intelligencer, written with my co-worker Jeremy, touches on the Fourth Circuit's recent decision granting habeas relief to Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a man who was long subjected to indefinite military detention without any due process, despite his lawful residence in the United States. It can be read here. Here is the intro:

"For over two centuries of growth and struggle, peace and war, the Constitution has secured our freedom through the guarantee that, in the United States, no one will be deprived of liberty without due process of law." So begins the Fourth Circuit's June 11 decision, al-Marri v. Wright, the most recent legal setback for the Bush administration's anti-terrorism program.

In a 2-1 ruling, the court ruled that the government did not have the authority to detain indefinitely without process Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari national who had come to the United States on a student visa and who was living in Peoria, Ill.

Al-Marri lawfully entered the United States the day before the Sept. 11 attacks. Three months later, FBI agents arrested him as a material witness in the government's investigation of the attacks. Subsequently, he was charged with various criminal counts, including making false statements to the FBI.

Al-Marri's criminal trial was scheduled for July 20, 2003. Prior to his trial, the president ordered that the indictment against al-Marri be dismissed and that he be transferred to military custody. The president determined that al-Marri was an "enemy combatant" and that his detention was necessary to prevent him from aiding al-Qaeda.

In accordance with the order, al-Marri was transferred to a naval brig in South Carolina. He was detained by the military for nearly four years - without criminal charge or process. As the 4th Circuit explained: "He has been so held although the government has never alleged that he is a member of any nation's military, has fought alongside any nation's armed forces, or has borne arms against the United States anywhere in the world. And he has been so held, without acknowledgment of the protection afforded by the Constitution, solely because the executive believes that his military detention is proper."

For the first 16 months of al-Marri's military confinement, the government did not permit him any communication with the outside world, including his attorneys, his wife, or his children. He alleges that he was denied basic necessities, interrogated through measures creating extreme sensory deprivation, and threatened with violence.

Al-Marri petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus to secure his release from military imprisonment. In the petition, al-Marri claimed that the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person living in this country can be deprived of liberty without due process of law. He maintained that even if he did commit the acts the government alleged, he is not a combatant but a civilian protected by the Constitution, and thus not subject to military detention.

The column goes on to highlite some of the recent blog commentary on the decision, including that of Glenn Greenwald, Andrew McCarthy, Anonymous Liberal, Orin Kerr, Ken Ashford, Marty Lederman, and SCOTUSblog.

We do not torture (depending on who defines "torture")

2007-06-26T12:45:00.000-04:00

Bush lied to American high school students about whether we are engaged in torturing detainees. Fifty high school honors students presented him with a petition:

"We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants."

Of course, he pretended that their fears have no foundation. (via Andrew Sullivan).

Bush refuses to level with the American people about what he is doing on their behalf, insisting instead on tortured definitions of "torture" and "abuse," intentionally vague pronouncements of our principles, and straight-out dishonesty. We have become a laughingstock and continue to lose the respect of the international community, preaching human rights to our enemies while disappearing others to secret prisons or handing them over to countries we know will torture them. We say "no torture" but we mean "nothing equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." We claim that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were a mistake, but we fire anybody who takes investigation of its genesis seriously. We deride international law while claiming its support whenever it is to our advantage. We hope that President Bush's embrace of torture (and shallow euphemisms for torture like "enhanced interrogation techniques") is an aberration, but Republican candidates for President all jockey to see who is most pro-torture. Only the chosen scapegoats in the lowest ranks of the military receive any punishment.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald takes issue with a New York Times Op-Ed by U.S. Air Force Col. Morris D. Davis, the chief prosecutor in the Defense Department's Office of Military Commissions, which relies in large part on the coerced statement extracted as a condition for releasing former Australian Guanatamo Bay detainee David Hicks, which stated that he had not been abused. Greenwald takes you step-by-step through just how dishonest this argument is, and summarizes it thusly:

So, to recap: we imprison someone for life with no charges, muffle their claims that they were tortured in captivity, agree to let them go after five years provided they sign a statement "stipulating" they were treated properly and vow to remain silent about the mistreatment to which they were subjected, and then send military official parading in public, waving the signed "stipulation" around in the air as proof of the sterling, professional and humane conditions at Guantanamo.

Greenwald, author of one of my favorite recent books, How Would a Patriot Act, has authored a new book, "A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency," which was released today. An excerpt can be read here.

Finally, Part 3 of the Washington Post's four-part series on Vice President Dick Cheney can be read here. Part 1. Part 2.

On Bomb Throwers and Dismantlers

2007-06-25T20:27:00.000-04:00

Jack Balkin looks at the Supreme Court's decisions announced today, and distinguishes the judicial activism of Scalia and Thomas with that of Alito and Roberts. (And Justice Kennedy just does whatever he wants.)

Bad apples, rotten to the core, with no accountability

2007-06-25T00:47:00.000-04:00

The Bush Administration's "bad apples" defense has seen better days. Last week's story by Seymour Hersh revealed yet further proof that the Administration has been lying from the beginning about its torture and abuse of detainees.

Now, the usually inscrutable Vice President Cheney is the subject of a comprehensive four-part front-page Washington Post series by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker on his role in the Bush Administration and his authorship of some of its most unforgivable abuses. Parts 1 and 2 are now online, and provide a devastating contemporary history of the past six years of Mr. Cheney's abuses of office, crimes against both domestic and international law, and enormous influence with and power over President Bush's decisionmaking, particularly concerning the lawless and unconstitutional regime of interrogation and torture instituted at Guantanamo Bay and deliberately transferred to Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.

Bush and Cheney even kept their decisions on detainees secret from members of their own team, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, then-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and former Attorney General John Ashcroft. The line as to which war crimes were now permissible appears to have been completely arbitrary:

According to a source with direct knowledge, that opinion approved as lawful a long list of specific interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA -- including waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that the U.S. government classified as a war crime in 1947. The opinion drew the line against one request: threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

When the project's depravity finally reached the light of day, these evil men chose to scapegoat the low-ranking soldiers in the photographs as "bad apples," covering up their own responsibility for the crimes with hollow words of contrition, all the while keeping the system in place to continue the torture and abuse.

George W. Bush on the Abu Ghraib scandal, 5/5/2004:

"There will be investigations, people will be brought to justice."

"We want to know the truth."

"The actions of these few people do not reflect the hearts of the American people."

"[T]he people in Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent."

"They must also understand that what took place in that prison does not represent America that I know."

President Bush on 5/10/2004:

"[B]ecause America is committed to the equality and dignity of all people, there will be a full accounting for the cruel and disgraceful abuse of Iraqi detainees. The conduct that has come to light is an insult to the Iraqi people, and an affront to the most basic standards of morality and decency. One basic difference between democracies and dictatorships is that free countries confront such abuses openly and directly."

"Some soldiers have already been charged, and those involved will answer for their
conduct in an orderly and transparent process. We will honor rule of law. All prison operations in Iraq will be thoroughly reviewed to make certain that such offenses are not repeated."

"Those responsible for these abuses have caused harm that goes well beyond the walls of a prison. It has given some an excuse to question our cause and to cast doubt on our motives. Yet, who can doubt that Iraq is better for being free from one of the most bloodiest tyrants the world has ever known?"

"I know how painful it is to see a small number dishonor the honorable cause in which so many are sacrificing."

"Anyone, any American who sees the photographs that we have seen has to feel apologetic to the Iraqi people who were abused, and recognize that that is something that is unacceptable and certainly un-American." Donald Rumsfeld, 5/5/2004

"As you know, full investigations into the abuses at Abu Ghraib are ongoing, and those engaged in this conduct will be held accountable." - White House Briefing by Alberto Gonzalez, 6/22/2004

Brig. General Mark Kimmitt: “Frankly, I think all of us are disappointed by the actions of the few,” says Kimmitt. “Every day, we love our soldiers, but frankly, some days we're not always proud of our soldiers."

Bush and Cheney may never have had pictures taken while holding a prisoner's leash, or giving their thumbs up to a pile of naked prisoners, or participating in mock executions such as waterboarding, but they cannot deny their responsibility. Be sure to read the whole Washington Post series.
Part 1. Part 2. Here is a brief excerpt:No longer was the vice president focused on procedural rights, such as access to lawyers and courts. The subject now was more elemental: How much suffering could U.S. personnel inflict on an enemy to make him talk? Cheney's lawyer feared that future prosecutors, with motives "difficult to predict," might bring criminal charges against interrogators or Bush administration officials.

Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony. The best defense against such a charge, Addington wrote, would combine a broad presidential directive for humane treatment, in general, with an assertion of unrestricted authority to make exceptions.

The vice president's counsel proposed that President Bush issue a carefully ambiguous directive. Detainees would be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of" the Geneva Conventions. When Bush issued his public decision two weeks later, on Feb. 7, 2002, he adopted Addington's formula -- with all its room for maneuver -- verbatim.

In a radio interview last fall, Cheney said, "We don't torture." What he did not acknowledge, according to Alberto J. Mora, who served then as the Bush-appointed Navy general counsel, was that the new legal framework was designed specifically to avoid a ban on cruelty.

Law , honor, the Vice President, and our defective Constitution

2007-06-22T11:34:00.000-04:00

Go read Sandy Levinson, discussing the Vice President's outrageous claim to be subject to oversight from neither Congress nor the President (as he is both President of the Senate and a member of the Executive branch), and the dangerous idea that an official must be caught actually breaking the law to warrant social opprobrium and serious political consequences.

Ashcroft contradicts Gonzalez

2007-06-22T11:13:00.001-04:00

Contra A.G. Gonzalez's sworn testimony from 2006, John Ashcroft has confirmed that there was serious disagreement over the President's secret, illegal surveillance programs. Of course, this became evident in James Comey's recent testimony concerning his Godfather-ish visit to Ashcroft's hospital room.

Are you being served?

2007-06-22T09:59:00.000-04:00

So will they take "no" for an answer?

The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted 13 to 3 to issue subpoenas for key NSA spying documents, relating to the President's illegal warrantless surveillance program. Notably, Republican senators Specter, Hatch and Grassley voted with the Democrats to authorize the subpoenas, which seems odd, given that they largely ignored or minimized the issue throughout Specter's chairmanship of the committee.

Digby revealed!

2007-06-20T12:43:00.000-04:00

The indominitable Digby, proprietress of Hullabaloo, a long-time pseudonymous blogger, and my favorite blogger around (a much easier call since the untimely shuttering of Billmon's Whiskey Bar and Fafblog), emerged from her Santa Monica bunker and stepped forward to accept an award at the Take Back America conference. Here's her speech, and here's a short interview with her.

Torture investigator: "I thought I was in the Mafia"

2007-06-18T10:03:00.000-04:00

So says Army Major General Antonio Taguba, the official charged with investigating the Abu Ghraib abuses, in a chilling New Yorker interview with Seymour Hersh. General Taguba reveals that he was threatened and forced to retire early because his investigation was not a proper whitewash job, with problematic findings such as "Numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees . . . systemic and illegal abuse," and testimony that often contradicted the self-serving statements of Rumsfeld and other top military officers.

Taguba retired in January, 2007, after thirty-four years of active service, and finally agreed to talk to me about his investigation of Abu Ghraib and what he believed were the serious misrepresentations by officials that followed. “From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” Taguba told me. His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command. “These M.P. troops were not that creative,” he said. “Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.”

. . .

“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

Cases Dismissed by Military Tribunals

2007-06-06T11:51:00.000-04:00

Hamdan, the man in Guantanamo who took his case challenging his detention all the way to the Supreme Court, and another man, Khadr, had their charges dismissed based on lack of jurisdiction.

Basically, the law establishing the tribunals required a finding that the detainees were alien "unlawful enemy combatants," but these individuals had only been determined to be "enemy combatants," who can be either lawful or unlawful. Lots of technicalities that I do not really understand are at play here, so take a look at the more-educated discussions going on at Balki nization, National Security Advisors, and from Prof. Arend at Georgetown (go Hoyas!).

Libby Sentenced, Architects of Bogus Iraq War Rationales Still Free

2007-06-06T11:35:00.000-04:00

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced yesterday to 30 months in prison, with a $250,000 fine. Comments from Judge Walton appear to indicate that the sentence will likely not be stayed pending his appeal.

For a quick, illustrated recap of the entire Bush/Cheney/Libby/Plame/Wilson/Iraq/yellowcake/Niger forgeries story, see this post from Prof. Juan Cole from earlier this year.

Steve Gilliard

2007-06-06T09:13:00.000-04:00

I was away from blogging the last few days, so I missed this unfortunate announcement: Steve Gilliard, founder of the News Blog and the first guest-poster at the Daily Kos, died last weekend. He was 42.

Steve was one of the strongest voices in the left-blogosphere, and extremely influential on my own views, though I never met the man or corresponded at length. I read his page almost every day, from his early days at Kos, and often found myself consciously and unconsciously parroting arguments I first read on his site.

His analyses of the greater implications of an Iraq war--written before the invasion and continuing until his untimely death--were prescient and far more accurate than almost anything found in the mainstream media. He was influential throughout the online Left, and respected by many on the Right. "He was one of the first bloggers to put forth the idea that civility in maintenance of the status quo was a sucker's game, and he was never shy about letting others know when they had been suckered." He was a "fighting liberal."

His New York Times obituary can be read here, Kos's can be seen here, and collections of remembrances throughout the blog world can be found here and here.

Steve will be missed.

Meet the new torture, same as the old torture

2007-05-30T18:53:00.000-04:00

A few items are floating around the b'sphere today on our country's disturbing embrace of torture (euphemistically referred to as "enhanced interrogation techniques").

These are particularly apt given the Republican candidates' embrace of torture (so long as it is given a euphemistic name):

[Brit] Hume [asked] the candidates . . . How aggressively would you interrogate" . . . captured suspects?

Rudy Giuliani — . . . "I'd say every method they could think of," affirmed Giuliani.

Mitt Romney . . . "Enhanced interrogation techniques have to be used."

First, Andrew "Fifth Columnist" Sullivan notes some uncomfortable similiarities between the enhanced interrogation techniques being employed under order of President Bush, and those permitted by the Third Reich. For example, both regimes used the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques" to describe their torture that is not torture, and both used many of the same techniques--techniques labeled as torture following the war, and for which Nazis were executed.

Second, reactions to a lecture, "Legal Policy in a Twilight War," delivered by Philip Zelikow, Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, and former advisor to the Secretary of State, can be found here.