How George Bush Admitted His War Crimes
by Richard W. Behan
It was brilliantly deceptive, trumping even his orchestrated dishonesty in leading us to war.
Buried in the 94 pages of the Military Commissions Act of 2006-the "detainee act" or the "torture bill"-the Bush Administration tacitly admits it has committed war crimes.
There is no question war crimes have been committed. Corporal Charles Graner, Private First Class Lyndie England, and several of their teammates are serving time, for mistreating prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad.
At the time these soldiers were tried and sentenced many people felt the culpability must extend above the ranks of enlisted personnel, up some distance into the chain-of-command, perhaps to the top. Many still do.
There are two pairs of dots to be connected. One is a pair of small dots, the other two are huge.
On December 28, 2001, a memo to President Bush from his Office of Legal Counsel made two claims: the US court system had no jurisdiction regarding the detainees at Guantanamo, and the Geneva Conventions did not apply to them.
Acting on this advice, on February 7, 2002 President Bush suspended Common Article 3 of those conventions-which, among other things, prohibits torture. Two years later, thanks to CBS' 60 Minutes and the New Yorker magazine, the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light. Connect those dots. These are the small ones.
Subsequent lawsuits addressing the detainee issue were considered and resolved by the Supreme Court. Rasul v. Bush found the US courts did have jurisdiction over the detainees. Hamdi v. Rumsfeld said detainees have a right to contest their detention: they are entitled to habeas corpus protections. Hamdan v. Rumsfeld tested the military tribunals President Bush created to bring the detainees to justice. The Supreme Court found the tribunals in violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and their existence to be illegal, absent a basis in federal statute. The decision was handed down June 29, 2006.
Hamdan v. Rumsfeld put on display the Bush Administration's guilt in committing war crimes. This is one of the huge dots. It will be connected to another one shortly.
The Bush Administration wasted no time drafting a law to legalize the military "commissions," as they came to be called. Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham initially and vigorously opposed it-and then caved in.
A "compromise" was worked out in Vice President Cheney's office. Trivial tweaks.
The law signed by the President precludes federal courts from any jurisdiction whatsoever, in direct contradiction to the Supreme Court's finding. It denies habeas corpus protections, also in direct contradiction.
And it prohibits explicitly the detainees from claiming rights under the Geneva Conventions. Here is the language that does so:
No person may invoke the Geneva Conventions, or any protocols thereto, in any habeas or civil action or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or former officer, employee, member of the Armed Services, or other agent of the United States, is a party, as a source of rights in any court of the United States or its States or territories.
This means that no detainee can bring suit for any violation of the Geneva Conventions, and this is the other huge dot. The Bush Administration already stands accused by the Supreme Court of violating Common Article 3, but the Administration wrote a law, and bulldozed it through a compliant Congress, to render prosecution impossible.
This also means the US simply is not bound by the Geneva Conventions. If detainees cannot claim rights under them the Conventions are moot.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is retroactive. It shall ".take effect as of November 26, 1997, as if enacted.[on that date]." Nothing the Bush Administration has done can be called into question.
Why would the Bush people write these several requirements into a law? Only if they are guilty of committing war crimes and know they will face prosecution. Though ingeniously obscured, this is a de facto admission of guilt.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is mostly smokescreen. The law's primary purpose is to immunize the Bush Administration, which explains the Administration's frantic anxiety to have it passed. The thrust of the bill, relating to detainee trials, is hardly a matter of top priority: the detainees have been languishing for years. Elizabeth Holtzman saw through the smokescreen in a recent essay in the Chicago Sun-Times, "Bush Seeks Immunity for Violating War Crimes Act." Not many other commentators have noticed.
This new law shields the Bush Administration from their mistreatment of prisoners, but that issue is truly a marginal one. Still to be confronted is the illegality of the Iraq war writ large: sold to the American people on conscious lies and prosecuted at horrific expense in human lives and treasure. Crimes against humanity are involved here.
The Military Commissions Act was created by desperate people terrified of prosecution. Imagine George W. Bush taking the stand in The Hague, following in the footsteps of Slobodan Milosevic. Imagine Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice imprisoned. Imagine.
Saturday, September 30, 2006
How Mark Foley Represents The Entire Republican Party
Yesterday, Mark Foley the Republican Representative from Florida resigned from Congress. He had been caught sending dirty email messages to an underage Congressional page. One of the texts went like this:
"What are ya wearing?" - Republican Congressional Representative Mark Foley
"Tshirts and shorts." - Teenage boy
"Love to slip them off of you." - Republican Congressional Representative Mark Foley
Here's some things about Mark Foley. He had led Congressional efforts to protect children. He started a restaurant when he was only 20 years old. He was named a deputy whip by disgraced Republican Congressman Tom DeLay. He was a frequent guest on Bill O'Reilly. His name will still be on the ballot representing Republicans in the election this November.
What's illuminating here is not that a pedophile held Congressional office. That's just sad and awful, especially for the children he took advantage of and exploited. What's illuminating is the Congressman's behavior.
Sending text messages and emails? As if he could never be caught; as if he was invulnerable. And it's exactly the kind of arrogance and poor judgement that has come to dominate the Republican Party. Like Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham who brazenly accepted bribes and illegal campaign contributions. Same with Tom DeLay. Worse, like George Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, tirelessly insisting we're winning, things are getting better in Iraq, when anybody can see they're getting worse. As if the truth won't come out. It's a culture of corruption that believes it can never get caught.
The Republican Party (which turns out to have known about Foley's indiscretions for months) has become the nexus for bad judgement, criminality, hubris, and lies. Mark Foley got caught not because he's a pedophile, but because he's a dumb pedophile. Cunningham and Ney are doing jail time not because they took bribes but because they were blatant, too sure of themselves. It's the same kind of thinking that has turned everything else in this administration so bad.
Mark Foley is a sad, sick individual and I'm not capable of feeling sympathy for those that prey on the young so I won't pretend to. Frankly, I know too many people that have never recovered after becoming victims to people like Mr. Foley. But beyond all of that is his ignorance, the fact that he would leave a paper trail straight to his congressional office- he is also a symbol of everything wrong with a Republican Party that has rotted from within.
Foley pushed child porn bills, asked: "Do I make you a little horny?
Before he resigned from the House of Representatives today, Florida Rep. Mark Foley was the co-chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus and somebody who spoke out a lot about the risks young people face from adults who might sexually exploit them.
When Foley wasn't doing that, ABC News says, he was instant-messaging male House pages with questions like, "Do I make you a little horny?"
Among the other highlights from Foley's congressional career:
In July of this year, Foley's office issued a press release congratulating the U.S. Senate for passing the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, a bill Foley co-sponsored in the House. Among other things, the act expanded the definition of sex offenders who must register with state authorities to include those who "use ... the Internet to facilitate or commit a crime against a minor."
Also in July, Foley introduced the Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth (SAFETY) Act, a bill aimed at cracking down on child pornography on the Web. "We have to stop the supply of child pornography by attacking the source," Foley said in the press release. "Authorities tell us the Internet has made child pornography easier to disseminate, easier to produce, and easier to turn a profit on."
In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee in 2005, Foley said: "Sex offenders are not petty criminals. They prey on our children like animals and will continue to do it unless stopped. We need to change the way we track these pedophiles. ... It has often been noted that a society can be judged on how it best treats it children. We have a moral responsibility to do everything in our power to protect our kids from these animals. This bill will turn the tables and make prey out of these predators. Failing to act on this measure is just playing Russian roulette with our children's lives."
In July 2004, Foley celebrated Internet Safety Day by warning parents that the Web had become "a new medium for pedophiles to reach out to our most vulnerable citizens --America's children."
And in 2003, Foley held a press conference to denounce Democratic activists for engaging in a "repulsive" campaign to tag him with the "slur" of being gay.
-- Tim Grieve
GOP Leaders Admit Knowledge Of Foley’s Contact With Minors…
Friday, September 29, 2006
Book Says Bush Ignored Urgent Warning on Iraq
By DAVID E. SANGER
A new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author, describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.
By DAVID E. SANGER
A new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author, describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.
Why Bill Clinton Pushed Back
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Bill Clinton's eruption on "Fox News Sunday" last weekend over questions about his administration's handling of terrorism was a long time coming and has political implications that go beyond this fall's elections.
By choosing to intervene in the terror debate in a way that no one could miss, Clinton forced an argument about the past that had up to now been largely a one-sided propaganda war waged by the right. The conservative movement understands the political value of controlling the interpretation of history. Now its control is finally being contested.
How long have Clinton's resentments been simmering? We remember the period immediately after Sept. 11 as a time when partisanship melted away. That is largely true, especially because Democrats rallied behind President Bush. For months after the attacks, Democrats did not raise questions about why they had happened on Bush's watch.
But not everyone was nonpartisan. On Oct. 4, 2001, a mere three weeks and a couple of days after the twin towers fell and the Pentagon was hit, there was Rush Limbaugh arguing on the Wall Street Journal's op-ed page: "If we're serious about avoiding past mistakes and improving national security, we can't duck some serious questions about Mr. Clinton's presidency."
To this day I remain astonished at Limbaugh's gall -- and at his shrewdness. Republicans were arguing simultaneously that it was treasonous finger-pointing to question what Bush did or failed to do to prevent the attacks, but patriotic to go after Clinton. Thus did they build up a mythology that cast Bush as the tough hero in confronting the terrorist threat and Clinton as the shirker. Bad history. Smart politics.
Moreover, when Democrats, notably former House minority leader Richard Gephardt, finally put their heads up in the late spring of 2002 to ask questions about that Aug. 6, 2001, memo warning of the possibility of terrorist attacks, the Republican pushback was furious.
Vice President Cheney, addressing his Democratic "friends" in Congress, said on May 16, 2002, that "they need to be very cautious not to seek political advantage by making incendiary suggestions, as were made by some today, that the White House had advance information that would have prevented the tragic attacks of 9/11. Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war."
Boy, that was defensive, wasn't it? Funny that Cheney didn't respond that way when Limbaugh made his incendiary attack on Clinton. Opportunistic and inconsistent? Sure, but again, smart politics.
This is just a fragment of a long history of evasion and blame-shifting by the administration and its supporters. And the polemical distortions of history came roaring back earlier this month in ABC's fictionalized account of the Sept. 11 events that butchered the Clinton record.
This history-as-attack-ad approach won praise from none other than Limbaugh, who described the film's screenwriter as a friend. Limbaugh was pleased that the film was "just devastating to the Clinton administration" and attacked its critics as "just a bunch of thin-skinned bullies." Pot-and-kettle metaphors don't begin to do justice to the hilarity of Limbaugh's saying such a thing.
And so Clinton exploded. My canvassing of Clinton insiders suggests two things about his outburst on "Fox News Sunday." First, he did not go into the studio knowing he would do it. There was, they say, a spontaneity to his anger. But, second, he had thought long and hard about comparisons between his record on terrorism and Bush's. He had his lines down pat from private musing about how he had been turned into a punching bag by the right. Something like this, one adviser said, was bound to happen eventually.
Sober, moderate opinion will say what sober, moderate opinion always says about an episode of this sort: Tut tut, Clinton looked unpresidential, we should worry about the future, not the past, blah, blah, blah.
But sober, moderate opinion was largely silent as the right wing slashed and distorted Clinton's record on terrorism. It largely stood by as the Bush administration tried to intimidate its own critics into silence. As a result, the day-to-day political conversation was tilted toward a distorted view of the past. All the sins of omission and commission were piled onto Clinton while Bush was cast as the nation's angelic avenger. And as conservatives understand, our view of the past greatly influences what we do in the present.
A genuinely sober and moderate view would recognize that it's time the scales of history were righted. Propagandistic accounts need to be challenged, systematically and consistently. The debate needed a very hard shove. Clinton delivered it.
I think I have seen everything.
posted by unhappycamper
In my 61 years on this planet, I thought I had seen most things.
I have been married and divorced. I have children and have seen a child die. I have grandchildren and have seen a grandchild die. I watched my Mother suffer with Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia for years before passing away in 2005.
I have spent 16 miserable days on a troopship from Oakland, California to Da Nang, Viet Nam.
I witnessed Tet of 1968 up close and personal.
In April 1970, I was in a forward base camp 100 meters inside the Cambodian border.
I have learned to fly a helicopter, shoot a 4.2 mortar, repair teletype machines, high frequency and tactical radios, land mine detectors and pretty much everything in between.
I have teed off a round of golf at midnight in Tronheim, Norway.
I was at the 1972 Olympics in Munich when the unthinkable happened.
Today I have been listening to the Senate debate about redefining Common Article Three of the Geneva Convention and revocation of habeas corpus. I have watched Senators argue that secret trials and secret evidence is good.
Today our values may be time warped to pre-1215 values.
I just can’t get my brain around what is being done to our dignity today. I can truthfully say I think I have seen everything.
Something is really, really wrong here.
posted by unhappycamper
In my 61 years on this planet, I thought I had seen most things.
I have been married and divorced. I have children and have seen a child die. I have grandchildren and have seen a grandchild die. I watched my Mother suffer with Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia for years before passing away in 2005.
I have spent 16 miserable days on a troopship from Oakland, California to Da Nang, Viet Nam.
I witnessed Tet of 1968 up close and personal.
In April 1970, I was in a forward base camp 100 meters inside the Cambodian border.
I have learned to fly a helicopter, shoot a 4.2 mortar, repair teletype machines, high frequency and tactical radios, land mine detectors and pretty much everything in between.
I have teed off a round of golf at midnight in Tronheim, Norway.
I was at the 1972 Olympics in Munich when the unthinkable happened.
Today I have been listening to the Senate debate about redefining Common Article Three of the Geneva Convention and revocation of habeas corpus. I have watched Senators argue that secret trials and secret evidence is good.
Today our values may be time warped to pre-1215 values.
I just can’t get my brain around what is being done to our dignity today. I can truthfully say I think I have seen everything.
Something is really, really wrong here.
Waterboarding Defined
David Corn writes that as the Senate passes a bill that legalizes torture, Americans should start getting familiar with what is being done in our name.
David Corn writes that as the Senate passes a bill that legalizes torture, Americans should start getting familiar with what is being done in our name.
The "We Have to Win" Myth
by Cenk Uygur
Bob Woodward's Bush/Iraq Book Will Further The Firestorm
by Brent Budowsky
by Cenk Uygur
Bob Woodward's Bush/Iraq Book Will Further The Firestorm
by Brent Budowsky
Photo Finish
How the Abu Ghraib photos morphed from scandal to law.
By Dahlia Lithwick
In April 2004, Americans awoke to the reality that the U.S. military was brutalizing prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The New Yorker and 60 Minutes II horrified us with the now-iconic images of Satar Jabar standing hooded on a box with wires attached to his hands and his penis, and threatened with electrocution if he fell off. They offered graphic photos of Pfc. Lynndie England dragging a collapsed prisoner on the floor with a leash, soldiers terrorizing prisoners with dogs, and a delighted Charles Graner giving a thumbs-up over the corpse of a man alleged to have been tortured to death at the prison.
At the time, we referred to Abu Ghraib as a "scandal." The images were a searing reproach to virtually any American with a soul and a conscience. With a handful of sick exceptions, people who could agree on nothing else could agree that this was an unacceptable way to treat prisoners—regardless of who they were, what they were accused of, or where they were being held.
But in hindsight, Abu Ghraib wasn't a scandal for the Bush administration. It was a coup. Because when the Senate passes the president's detainee bill today, we will, as a country, have yet more evidence that yesterday's disgrace is today's ordinary, and that—with a little time and a little help from the media—we can normalize almost anything in the span of a few short years. Lord Byron once wrote that "There are some feelings time cannot benumb/ Nor torture shake." He was, evidently, wrong as to both counts.
Look again at the images from Abu Ghraib. Most of those prisoners aren't being sodomized or water-boarded. They are largely being subject to stress positions, sexual humiliation, religious desecration, mock executions, and terrorization with dogs. And make no mistake: These are among the "alternative interrogation tactics" that will, along with sleep deprivation and exposure to extreme temperatures, likely be permitted by CIA interrogators under the new detainee legislation; or, to the extent there is a difference, that is how the president will construe the new law.
So, what happened between April 2004 and September 2006 that has so deadened American outrage? What has made Democratic senators who were prepared to filibuster over a judicial nomination unwilling to do so now, or even to express horror over the brutalization of enemy prisoners? Is it that in the intervening time we have made a hero out of 24's Jack Bauer, a man who tortures so that the rest of us may walk free? Is it that if you see enough "iconic" photos of a man in a hood with electrodes, they lose their ability to turn your stomach? Or is all the legalistic jive talk—the brazen congressional hairsplitting over abuse that results in "severe" vs. "serious" vs. "extreme" pain—numbing us to the reality of what remains unconscionable conduct?
It is all of these things, and also this: The legal "expectation of abuse" has been shaped by the new jurisprudence of abuse. The legal notion of what constitutes a "reasonable expectation of privacy" is often criticized as circular because the test for unreasonable government searches depends on one's subjective expectation of privacy, which is diminished as the government encroaches upon our privacy. So, too, the public notion of what constitutes reasonable abuse is diminished each time the government condones abuse. Thus the images from Abu Ghraib and the torture memos and the new detainee bill don't merely codify the boundaries of acceptable interrogation. They also shape them.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Condi Rice: Liar, Stupid, or Both?
by Larry C. Johnson
When it comes to the 9-11 blame game, Condi Rice is either a liar or stupid. No other logical possibility accounts for her delusional claim to the New York Post that, "We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda." Rice was responding to President Clinton, who told Chris Wallace last week that his Adminstration left the Bush Administration with a plan for dealing with the Al Qaeda threat.
But this ain't a case of "He said, She said". There is a documentary record and it is unambiguous. In fact there are two documents. First, is the strategy itself. Comprehensive and straightforward.
Second, is the memo from Clarke to Rice. For folks unaccustomed to the intricacies of bureaucracy, this memo, which was given to Rice on 25 Janaury 2001, is the equivalent of a smoking mushroom cloud. This is truly damning because it provides the road map for the actions the Bush team should have taken but didn't.
The first thing Clarke warns Rice about is the need for a comprehensive strategy to deal with Al Qaeda:
As we noted in our briefings for you, al Qida is not some narrow, little terrorist issue . . .Rather, several of our regional policies need to address centrally the transnational challenge to the US and our interests posed by the al Qida network. By proceeding with separate policy reviews on Central Asia, the GCC, North Africa, etc. we would deal inadequately with the need for a comprehensive multi-regional policy on al Qida.
Clarke then proceeds to lay out the history of Al Qaeda, why it is a threat, and highlights some key issues that the Clinton Administration had not solved. But he does not stop there. He does what any good soldier would do, he asked for specific guidance in four areas:
I recommend that you have a Principals discussion of al Qida soon and address the following issues:
1.Threat Magnitude: Do the Principals agree that the al Qida network poses a first order threat to US interesting a number or regions, or is this analysis a "chicken little" over reaching and can we proceed without major new initiatives and by handling this issue in a more routine manner?
2.Strategy: If it is a first order issue, how should the existing strategy be modified or strengthened? . . . .
3.FY02 Budget: Should we continue the funding increase into FY02 for State and CIA programs designed to implement the al Qida strategy?
4.Immediate CIA Decisions: Should we initiate CIA funding to the Northern Alliance and to the Uzbek's?
Please let us know if you would like such a decision/discussion paper or any modifications to the background paper.
So, did Condi immediately convene a meeting of the Principals (i.e., President, Vice President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, etc)? NO. She waited until September 4, 2001.
Did the Bush Administration adopt the position that "al Qida network poses a first order threat"? NO. Did Condi immediately decide on whether to modify or strengthen the "existing strategy" for taking on Al Qaeda? NO. Condi kicked the can down the road.
Condi can play all of the lawyerly word games she likes, but the cold facts expose her dissembling. Dealing with Al Qaeda did not become a priority for the Bush Administration until the morning of September 11, 2001. No effort to retaliate against Al Qaeda for the USS Cole bombing was made until after 9-11. The real irony is that the Bush Administration, in the wake of 9-11, implemented a plan/strategy very similar to the one Dick Clarke gave Condi in January 2001. So, Condi? Liar or stupid? You decide.
GOP Can’t Handle the 9/11 TruthBy Joe Conason
The most amusing part of the confrontation between former President Bill Clinton and “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace came in the immediate aftermath, when the bullies of cable and their wingnut gang shrieked about the mean, crazy man picking on them.
Waah! Waah! Waah! they wailed. Clinton planned it! Clinton tricked Fox! Clinton melted down! Clinton is responsible for 9/11!
If Wallace didn’t want to provoke a tough answer, he shouldn’t have impersonated a tough interviewer. By insinuating that Clinton was somehow derelict in failing to eliminate Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban, he reopened a can of worms that he should have left shut.
That incident wasn’t the first time that the Republican Party’s media servants, at Fox and elsewhere, have tried to falsify the history of American conflict with Al Qaeda for partisan purposes. The smearing began within months after 9/11.
As Clinton sarcastically pointed out, his conservative critics show little concern about the Bush administration’s failure to act against the jihadist enemy for eight months after taking office. Not only did they refuse to do anything, but they and their top aides refused to even talk about doing anything.
What the Wallace interview and its aftermath proved is that the Republicans can be relied upon to take the path of political convenience—and to blame someone else for it later. In full confidence that nobody will look up the facts, they love to claim that they were courageous, steadfast and farsighted, when they actually displayed the opposite qualities.
Consider Wallace’s claim that “when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, [Osama] bin Laden said, ‘I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops,’ ” which suggests that Clinton had “cut and run.” Actually, he resisted Republican demands for an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Somalia—where President George Herbert Walker Bush had sent them—precisely because he wanted to preserve American credibility.
The Senate Republican leadership openly sought to weaken him by cutting off funding for the mission, which Clinton managed to sustain for another six months after the disastrous Black Hawk Down firefight in Mogadishu. (Among those who counseled retreat was Sen. John McCain.) But now the Republicans want to blame Clinton for doing what they forced him to do in 1993.
Or consider Clinton’s missile strikes against suspected Al Qaeda installations in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998, which the Republican politicians and the press ridiculed as “wag the dog” maneuvering in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Now those same frauds complain that he didn’t try to hit Osama bin Laden often enough, when all they cared about back then was the blue dress. Clinton’s recollection that he was mocked for his “obsession” with terrorism is accurate. Indeed, whenever he took resolute action, whether in Haiti or Kosovo or Sudan, the brave Republicans could be relied upon to behave unreliably.
Finally, consider Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s retort on the subject of which administration did more to thwart Al Qaeda. “What we did in the eight months,” she assured her pliant hosts at Fox News, “was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years.” That sentence must rank as one of the most brazen lies ever uttered by any Bush administration official, which is quite an achievement. She knows that the frequent actions and mobilizations of the Clinton years stand in sharp contrast to the mental vacation of the Bush era.
The hard truth is that Rice, the president and the vice president were warned repeatedly about the threat posed by Al Qaeda for months before 9/11. The departing Clinton officials warned them. So did former Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke and CIA Director George Tenet. But they dismissed the Clinton warnings, demoted Clarke, ignored Tenet and threw the Hart-Rudman report in the garbage. When the president asked Vice President Dick Cheney to convene a task force on terrorism, he literally did nothing until days before the attacks—and the president never bothered to find out why.
If Chris Wallace and his Fox News colleagues ever stop crying about being spanked by Clinton and want to prove that their network is indeed fair and balanced, here is a timely question they can pose to the president, the vice president or their old friend Tony Snow, the White House spokesman: When will the government release the secret joint testimony of Bush and Cheney before the 9/11 Commission?
Clinton vs. Bush: A foolish fight for the GOP to pick
There is a disturbingly strong willingness on the part of many Bush supporters to refuse to recognize even indisputable facts if those facts undermine their desire to believe that something is true. That is how, to cite just a few examples, they continue to believe that things are going well in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein really did have WMD, and that their unpopular views on war and terrorism are shared by a majority of Americans. But it is difficult to recall anything that more vividly illustrates this fact-denying dynamic than the reaction of Bush supporters to Bill Clinton's now-famous interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace.
One right-wing pundit after the next has claimed that the prominent reemergence of Bill Clinton into our nation's political debates is somehow harmful to Democrats generally, and to Hillary specifically, because it reminds Americans of Clinton's deficiencies as president. But that view is premised on a belief that is the opposite of reality. In stark contrast to George W. Bush and Republicans generally, Bill Clinton is highly popular among a wide cross section of Americans, without question one of the most admired living political figures in the country.
A July 2006 Time poll asked Americans: "Based on what you remember from President Clinton's administration, do you approve or disapprove of the job Bill Clinton did in handling his job as president?"
Seventy percent said they approved, while a mere 27 percent disapproved. Clinton was a very popular while in office and has become even more popular since. How could a rational person argue that the reemergence of such a popular Democratic figure could be harmful to Democrats and helpful to Republicans?
Republicans appear to have gravely miscalculated in provoking Bill Clinton into the debate over the Bush administration's terrorism policies. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, most Democrats have refrained from aggressively blaming the administration for the attacks, blame that could easily be assigned by exploiting two simple facts -- 1) the 9/11 attacks happened while Bush, not Clinton, was president and 2) Bush received the Aug. 6 presidential daily briefing embarrassingly titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" and apparently did nothing in response. With some scattered exceptions, both parties seemed content more or less to maintain a truce with regard to casting blame for the 9/11 attacks by agreeing that few people in either party recognized the magnitude of this threat until those attacks happened.
But ABC's broadcast of the right-wing propaganda film "Path to 9/11" forced into the public discourse a comparison of Bush vs. Clinton on the question of terrorism. And the subsequent attempts by right-wing pundits and "journalists" to heap the blame for terrorism on the Clinton administration left Clinton with no choice but defending himself aggressively. Following the Wallace interview, Condoleezza Rice accused Clinton of making statements about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 anti-terrorism efforts (or lack thereof), which Rice said were "flatly false," comments that in turn prompted an aggressive response from Hillary Clinton.
As Peter Baker put it in this morning's Washington Post: "The election year debate has triggered a full-blown spat between the camps of President Bush and former president Bill Clinton as the two sides trade barbs over who was more responsible for failing to disrupt al-Qaeda before it could attack the United States on Sept. 11, 2001." But it seems foolish on its face for Republicans to pit their highly unpopular president against a highly popular Democratic ex-president, particularly when it comes to assigning blame for attacks that occurred on the Republicans' watch. And polling data is beginning to illustrate just how foolish of a fight this was for the GOP to pick.
A new Gallup poll, released today, reveals that a solid majority of "the American public [53-36 percent] puts the primary blame on Bush rather than Clinton for the fact that [Osama] bin Laden has not been captured." And while Democrats and Republicans predictably split on this question along partisan lines, independents overwhelmingly blame Bush over Clinton (58-31 percent).
Not only is Clinton the most popular Democratic politician, he is also one of the smartest, shrewdest and most articulate. The last thing Republicans ought to want to do is force him into the public arena, particularly on the question of whether the Bush administration's anti-terrorism credentials -- its only perceived strength -- really are as sterling as the media generally depicts them to be. But it seems likely they will pay a substantial price for that decision.
-- Glenn Greenwald
There is a disturbingly strong willingness on the part of many Bush supporters to refuse to recognize even indisputable facts if those facts undermine their desire to believe that something is true. That is how, to cite just a few examples, they continue to believe that things are going well in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein really did have WMD, and that their unpopular views on war and terrorism are shared by a majority of Americans. But it is difficult to recall anything that more vividly illustrates this fact-denying dynamic than the reaction of Bush supporters to Bill Clinton's now-famous interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace.
One right-wing pundit after the next has claimed that the prominent reemergence of Bill Clinton into our nation's political debates is somehow harmful to Democrats generally, and to Hillary specifically, because it reminds Americans of Clinton's deficiencies as president. But that view is premised on a belief that is the opposite of reality. In stark contrast to George W. Bush and Republicans generally, Bill Clinton is highly popular among a wide cross section of Americans, without question one of the most admired living political figures in the country.
A July 2006 Time poll asked Americans: "Based on what you remember from President Clinton's administration, do you approve or disapprove of the job Bill Clinton did in handling his job as president?"
Seventy percent said they approved, while a mere 27 percent disapproved. Clinton was a very popular while in office and has become even more popular since. How could a rational person argue that the reemergence of such a popular Democratic figure could be harmful to Democrats and helpful to Republicans?
Republicans appear to have gravely miscalculated in provoking Bill Clinton into the debate over the Bush administration's terrorism policies. Ever since the 9/11 attacks, most Democrats have refrained from aggressively blaming the administration for the attacks, blame that could easily be assigned by exploiting two simple facts -- 1) the 9/11 attacks happened while Bush, not Clinton, was president and 2) Bush received the Aug. 6 presidential daily briefing embarrassingly titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" and apparently did nothing in response. With some scattered exceptions, both parties seemed content more or less to maintain a truce with regard to casting blame for the 9/11 attacks by agreeing that few people in either party recognized the magnitude of this threat until those attacks happened.
But ABC's broadcast of the right-wing propaganda film "Path to 9/11" forced into the public discourse a comparison of Bush vs. Clinton on the question of terrorism. And the subsequent attempts by right-wing pundits and "journalists" to heap the blame for terrorism on the Clinton administration left Clinton with no choice but defending himself aggressively. Following the Wallace interview, Condoleezza Rice accused Clinton of making statements about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 anti-terrorism efforts (or lack thereof), which Rice said were "flatly false," comments that in turn prompted an aggressive response from Hillary Clinton.
As Peter Baker put it in this morning's Washington Post: "The election year debate has triggered a full-blown spat between the camps of President Bush and former president Bill Clinton as the two sides trade barbs over who was more responsible for failing to disrupt al-Qaeda before it could attack the United States on Sept. 11, 2001." But it seems foolish on its face for Republicans to pit their highly unpopular president against a highly popular Democratic ex-president, particularly when it comes to assigning blame for attacks that occurred on the Republicans' watch. And polling data is beginning to illustrate just how foolish of a fight this was for the GOP to pick.
A new Gallup poll, released today, reveals that a solid majority of "the American public [53-36 percent] puts the primary blame on Bush rather than Clinton for the fact that [Osama] bin Laden has not been captured." And while Democrats and Republicans predictably split on this question along partisan lines, independents overwhelmingly blame Bush over Clinton (58-31 percent).
Not only is Clinton the most popular Democratic politician, he is also one of the smartest, shrewdest and most articulate. The last thing Republicans ought to want to do is force him into the public arena, particularly on the question of whether the Bush administration's anti-terrorism credentials -- its only perceived strength -- really are as sterling as the media generally depicts them to be. But it seems likely they will pay a substantial price for that decision.
-- Glenn Greenwald
At war, in denial
Sixteen U.S. intelligence agencies contributed to the NIE report that concludes Iraq "has become the cause célèbre for jihadists." Bush ignores them all.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Sep. 28, 2006 President Bush's first response to the report in the New York Times was to ridicule it for having "guessed" that the classified National Intelligence Estimate titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" stated that the war in Iraq was a major inspiration for jihadist terrorism. His second response, in the ensuing clamor after he declassified the NIE's key judgments confirming the accuracy of the initial Times report, was to dismiss those who accepted the NIE's conclusions as "naive." His next reaction was to declare, "I agree with their [the NIE's] conclusion that because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaida, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent" -- a cause and effect that is nowhere to be found in the NIE.
The collective product of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, the first on Iraq since the invasion in 2003, the NIE was delivered to the White House this April. "The Iraq conflict," it said, "has become the cause célèbre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of US involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement." Not only is the Iraq war inspiring terrorism, but the jihadist movement has metastasized into spontaneously generated cells apart from the original al-Qaida organization, which itself is vastly reduced. In this struggle U.S. policy is inadequate to the task of containing terrorism's spread. "We assess that the underlying factors fueling the spread of the movement outweigh its vulnerabilities and are likely to do so for the duration of the timeframe of this Estimate."
The disclosure of parts of the NIE by the Times prompted Bush's angry denunciation of its public knowledge as little more than a partisan ploy. "And here we are," he railed, "coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it's on the front page of your newspapers. Isn't that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes."
This latest episode indeed illumines the "political purposes" of intelligence, its suppression and distortion, and highlights the administration's intense pressures on the intelligence community, even in this NIE, whose findings on the consequences of the Iraq war have imploded Bush's carefully crafted rhetoric on terror.
Since Bush has possessed the NIE, he has spoken as though he had never received it. Yet, in the light of its revelation, it now seems that he was intent on refuting the report that the public did not know existed. "You know," said Bush at a press conference on Aug. 21, "I've heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived, and kind of 'we're going to stir up the hornet's nest' theory. It just doesn't hold water, as far as I'm concerned." Bush did not say where he had "heard this theory." Nor did he present evidence to oppose it. He simply asserted his authority against the phantom critic that unmasked turned out to be the entire intelligence community.
Once the NIE became known, Bush invented a conclusion in order to claim that any difficulties had their source in his success. He advanced a history of the past 20 years based on the tortured logic that because various acts of terror had happened in the absence of an invasion and occupation of Iraq, the invasion and occupation therefore could not be ascribed as a motive for terrorism now. "You know," he said, "to suggest that if we weren't in Iraq, we would see a rosier scenario with fewer extremists joining the radical movement requires us to ignore 20 years of experience. We weren't in Iraq when we got attacked on September the 11th."
Bush's sophistry obscured that he had received many warnings before the invasion that the consequences spelled out in the NIE would come to pass. His father's close associate, Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security advisor, who was a member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board before he was booted out in 2005, told Bush in stark terms that an invasion would lead to sectarian violence within Iraq and stoke terrorism. Scowcroft was not alone. Other former associates of the elder Bush confided in me that they also told President Bush to his face the same things that Scowcroft had.
Those were not the only cautions the Bush administration received at that time. One month before the invasion, in February 2003, the British government's Joint Intelligence Committee reported, "Al Qaeda and associated groups continue to represent by far the greatest threat to western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq." The British circulated the JIC report to U.S. intelligence and the Bush administration, which studiously ignored it.
Within months of the invasion, in August and November, the CIA station chief in Baghdad wrote urgent reports (called "aardwolfs") detailing how U.S. missteps had destabilized Iraq and fueled the insurgency. When Bush was briefed he was furious, not at the blunders or those committing them but at the CIA chief for having the insolence to catalog them. "What is he, some kind of defeatist?" Bush said. Soon, the station chief was replaced. "He had committed the unpardonable sin of telling the truth," writes James Risen, the New York Times correspondent, in his book "State of War."
The selective declassification of the NIE hardly clarifies its full contents and necessarily raises natural suspicion about them. The key judgments cover little more than three pages; the whole document is reportedly more than 30 pages. And the key judgments may be more toned down than parts of the analysis. Caveats, objections and conflicts may be lodged deep in the text or footnotes, as they were in the flawed October 2002 NIE on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The key judgments do not record what the various agencies, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency reported from the field, though that may be reflected elsewhere in the complete document.
Moreover, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has learned that another, new NIE on Iraq has been produced, and, despite her request for its public release, is being withheld by the administration, even from members of Congress, until January 2007, that is, until after the midterm elections.
Even the key judgments in the April 2006 NIE suggest unacknowledged political compulsions on intelligence by their glaring omissions. Whether these distortions appear as a result of direct pressure of the sort that Vice President Dick Cheney applied to CIA analysts before the invasion or have become assimilated as the modus operandi under Bush cannot be determined. But the static is apparent in the NIE's listing of causes of jihadism. Here are the exclusive reasons given:
"Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement: (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq jihad; (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-US sentiment among most Muslims all of which jihadists exploit."
What are obviously missing are 1) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Bush's neglect of the peace process, and 2) the failure of Bush's policy and calls for "democracy" to reduce violence or terrorism -- instead contributing to the rise of Hamas and Hezbollah, followed by his refusal to deal with them as political actors.
These fundamental factors must certainly have occurred to the analysts of the 16 intelligence agencies. Their absence must be attributed to their directors and the political leadership of the administration. These omissions combined with the empty but stentorian rhetoric about "democracy" that pervades the key judgments indicate that the NIE suffers from ideological buffeting, yet another untold story that will perhaps someday surface in a comprehensive history of Bush's abuse of intelligence.
Just before the existence of the NIE was reported, Bush gave an interview in which he offered his historical judgment that the sectarian violence in Iraq will be seen in retrospect as an insignificant passing phase in the glorious march of freedom. "I like to tell people," said Bush, "when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy."
Bush's phrase, "just a comma," may just be a signifier to his religious-right base. "Never put a period where God has put a comma" is a common admonition among the faithful. What authority could a National Intelligence Estimate have in comparison with God's will? But Bush's signal to dismiss the disturbances of the external world also points to an underlying premise of his policy. Bush's state of war is a state of denial.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
New News Is Bad News
by Molly Ivins
Noshing on the news ...
-- The National Intelligence Estimate, agreed upon by 16 Bush-controlled spy services within the U.S. government, says the war in Iraq is making the war on terrorism harder and worse. It gives the phrase “leaking intelligence” a new meaning (a line not original with me).
We’ve been having a debate in this country about whether to continue the war—or “the comma,” as the president calls it—until it has become a semicolon. Now, the debate is over, and what we need to discuss is the best way out. This war is not a goddamn comma.
-- According to the Associated Press, the directors of the Legal Services Corp., a program for poor people, have been trying to get rid of their inspector general, who has clocked them for, among other things, expensive meals, using limousine services and wasting money on a ritzy headquarters.
The board members said the inspector general had a “fetish” for independence (how horrible) and that he’s a character assassin backed by a delusional staff, and so forth. While this was going on, one half of the poor clients applying for legal services were rejected.
-- The AP reports the Education Department has ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wants. The billion-dollar-a-year Reading First program is apparently riddled with problems, including political favoritism, conflicts of interest and mismanagement.
In a hair-raising memo, the director of Reading First, Chris Doherty, wrote members of the staff at the Department of Education regarding one company, “They are trying to crash our party, and we need to beat the (expletive) out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags.”
Doherty recently resigned from the department “to return to the private sector,” a spokeswoman said. Isn’t that nice? I kind of wish he was back in government helping to answer the eternal mystery, “Is our children learning?”
-- For the second time since August, the Army is ordering the combat tours of thousands of soldiers past the promised 12 months. This time, it’s nearly 4,000 soldiers in the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored.
Again in Iraq, the Army chief of staff is refusing to submit a budget because he says he needs billions more dollars before the Army can meet its obligations. He will surely get help from ol’ “Anything They Ask For” Bush.
The question is: Can these people run anything right? The other question is: Is there anything they can’t screw up?
I don’t know about you, but I think the Education deal has me more upset. I mean, we already knew the Big Comma was producing a backlash, didn’t we, really? Where are we now—2,700 dead Americans, nearly 50,000 dead Iraqis ... come on, that’s at least familiar, what Donald Rumsfeld would call a “known-known.” But stealing money from little kids’ reading programs? What is that about?
Iraq—Bush made a horrible mistake because he knows relatively little. But stacking the bidding in favor of a reading program that may not be the best available? I suppose the answer is that Republicans (except for Bush) never did think having the feds in education was a good idea.
I’m ready to settle for a bar of common decency. Lead us into an insane war, get the troops killed, lie about whatever you want, eat fancy meals on the government tab ($14 for a chocolate dessert?), but please, oh please, do not rig the bids for reading material for our adorable little children, who will soon be appearing with President Bush in a rainbow of colors in ads dreamed up by Karl Rove. They’re really great for photo ops.
by Molly Ivins
Noshing on the news ...
-- The National Intelligence Estimate, agreed upon by 16 Bush-controlled spy services within the U.S. government, says the war in Iraq is making the war on terrorism harder and worse. It gives the phrase “leaking intelligence” a new meaning (a line not original with me).
We’ve been having a debate in this country about whether to continue the war—or “the comma,” as the president calls it—until it has become a semicolon. Now, the debate is over, and what we need to discuss is the best way out. This war is not a goddamn comma.
-- According to the Associated Press, the directors of the Legal Services Corp., a program for poor people, have been trying to get rid of their inspector general, who has clocked them for, among other things, expensive meals, using limousine services and wasting money on a ritzy headquarters.
The board members said the inspector general had a “fetish” for independence (how horrible) and that he’s a character assassin backed by a delusional staff, and so forth. While this was going on, one half of the poor clients applying for legal services were rejected.
-- The AP reports the Education Department has ignored the law and ethical standards to steer money how it wants. The billion-dollar-a-year Reading First program is apparently riddled with problems, including political favoritism, conflicts of interest and mismanagement.
In a hair-raising memo, the director of Reading First, Chris Doherty, wrote members of the staff at the Department of Education regarding one company, “They are trying to crash our party, and we need to beat the (expletive) out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags.”
Doherty recently resigned from the department “to return to the private sector,” a spokeswoman said. Isn’t that nice? I kind of wish he was back in government helping to answer the eternal mystery, “Is our children learning?”
-- For the second time since August, the Army is ordering the combat tours of thousands of soldiers past the promised 12 months. This time, it’s nearly 4,000 soldiers in the 1st Brigade, 1st Armored.
Again in Iraq, the Army chief of staff is refusing to submit a budget because he says he needs billions more dollars before the Army can meet its obligations. He will surely get help from ol’ “Anything They Ask For” Bush.
The question is: Can these people run anything right? The other question is: Is there anything they can’t screw up?
I don’t know about you, but I think the Education deal has me more upset. I mean, we already knew the Big Comma was producing a backlash, didn’t we, really? Where are we now—2,700 dead Americans, nearly 50,000 dead Iraqis ... come on, that’s at least familiar, what Donald Rumsfeld would call a “known-known.” But stealing money from little kids’ reading programs? What is that about?
Iraq—Bush made a horrible mistake because he knows relatively little. But stacking the bidding in favor of a reading program that may not be the best available? I suppose the answer is that Republicans (except for Bush) never did think having the feds in education was a good idea.
I’m ready to settle for a bar of common decency. Lead us into an insane war, get the troops killed, lie about whatever you want, eat fancy meals on the government tab ($14 for a chocolate dessert?), but please, oh please, do not rig the bids for reading material for our adorable little children, who will soon be appearing with President Bush in a rainbow of colors in ads dreamed up by Karl Rove. They’re really great for photo ops.
Republicans Are Losers, So Make Sure They Lose
By: Pachacutec
Karl Rove is not a genius. He’s an asshole.
Look at all this shit we’ve been through these last five and a half years. The NIE tells us what we already knew. Not only has every rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq been discredited (I’m with Atrios: I still want to know why we really went), but it’s now official that we’ve made our security situation worse by going. You know the litany: more terrorists that we train for the bad guys with our guys and gals as live targets, more ill will and terrorist recruiting based on our imperialistic occupation, an overstretched and crumbling military insufficiently supported by our government, a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. . . should I stop there?
Bill Clinton is a flawed man and too clever a habitual triangulator by half, but he did pull back the curtain last weekend on the cowardice and mendacity of Republicans and their claims to being the party of the big, swinging national security phallus. Equally as important, he attacked the cowardice and dishonesty of the our media establishment. Good for him, but that does not give him a pass for when he thinks he can provide cover to bad people and their agendas.
Let’s hope other Democrats continue to figure out that picking a real fight with the media and with these loser Republicans is not only good on the substance, it’s damned good politics. When you attack the media and make those self-absorbed guardians of the national discourse part of the story, you break through their habitually snickering, narcissistic filter. They can’t help but go with the story, if only to clutch the pearls and tut tut about your passion. Just ask Sid Blumenthal.
Fuck ‘em.
Republicans are losers, so let’s make sure they lose. Though I live in Virginia and write for this blog, I stayed out of the VA Senate primary because the campaigns of both Dems were a muddle to me. I always hated the functionally, mentally disabled bigot George Allen, but I had not seen enough of Webb to feel that I could really get behind him, or explain to readers here why he was worth fighting for in the trenches. That’s over now. As I did for Tim Kaine, I’ll put some time in phone banking for Webb. He’s not one of our Blue America candidates, but I’m getting behind him, with my time and here in public: not just against Allen, but for Webb. Why? One word: accountability.
I’m with Christy: I’m asking everyone reading this to grab a pitchfork, pick a candidate and phone bank, volunteer, walk precincts, become a poll watcher, register voters, whatever you can do, but do something.
It’s not enough to read anymore: we must continue to do, as thousands of you reading this already are.
Time magazine thinks we’re just figuring this out, though we’ve been doing it all along. The only difference now is we’re significantly multiplying our numbers, adding energized participants to the political process, and training little guerrilla forces of progressives to get active and connected all across the country. Be afraid, David Broder, be very fucking afraid, or just retire your saggy ass.
None of this means we’re compromising on torture. Here’s a public service announcement to any Dem presidential hopeful for ‘08: if you get wrong on this torture vote, don’t come knocking on my door for support next year. You think I’m kidding? Try me.
Until November, we need to beat the snot out of loser Republicans, making sure they lose. After that, we’ll hold hearings and simultaneously deal with some of our own (ahem) family business. Republicans are losers, baby, and the way to kill a political movement starts at the ballot box, and especially before, as we organize to get others to the ballot box.
Who’s with me?
Karl Rove is not a genius. He’s an asshole.
Look at all this shit we’ve been through these last five and a half years. The NIE tells us what we already knew. Not only has every rationale for the invasion and occupation of Iraq been discredited (I’m with Atrios: I still want to know why we really went), but it’s now official that we’ve made our security situation worse by going. You know the litany: more terrorists that we train for the bad guys with our guys and gals as live targets, more ill will and terrorist recruiting based on our imperialistic occupation, an overstretched and crumbling military insufficiently supported by our government, a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. . . should I stop there?
Bill Clinton is a flawed man and too clever a habitual triangulator by half, but he did pull back the curtain last weekend on the cowardice and mendacity of Republicans and their claims to being the party of the big, swinging national security phallus. Equally as important, he attacked the cowardice and dishonesty of the our media establishment. Good for him, but that does not give him a pass for when he thinks he can provide cover to bad people and their agendas.
Let’s hope other Democrats continue to figure out that picking a real fight with the media and with these loser Republicans is not only good on the substance, it’s damned good politics. When you attack the media and make those self-absorbed guardians of the national discourse part of the story, you break through their habitually snickering, narcissistic filter. They can’t help but go with the story, if only to clutch the pearls and tut tut about your passion. Just ask Sid Blumenthal.
Fuck ‘em.
Republicans are losers, so let’s make sure they lose. Though I live in Virginia and write for this blog, I stayed out of the VA Senate primary because the campaigns of both Dems were a muddle to me. I always hated the functionally, mentally disabled bigot George Allen, but I had not seen enough of Webb to feel that I could really get behind him, or explain to readers here why he was worth fighting for in the trenches. That’s over now. As I did for Tim Kaine, I’ll put some time in phone banking for Webb. He’s not one of our Blue America candidates, but I’m getting behind him, with my time and here in public: not just against Allen, but for Webb. Why? One word: accountability.
I’m with Christy: I’m asking everyone reading this to grab a pitchfork, pick a candidate and phone bank, volunteer, walk precincts, become a poll watcher, register voters, whatever you can do, but do something.
It’s not enough to read anymore: we must continue to do, as thousands of you reading this already are.
Time magazine thinks we’re just figuring this out, though we’ve been doing it all along. The only difference now is we’re significantly multiplying our numbers, adding energized participants to the political process, and training little guerrilla forces of progressives to get active and connected all across the country. Be afraid, David Broder, be very fucking afraid, or just retire your saggy ass.
None of this means we’re compromising on torture. Here’s a public service announcement to any Dem presidential hopeful for ‘08: if you get wrong on this torture vote, don’t come knocking on my door for support next year. You think I’m kidding? Try me.
Until November, we need to beat the snot out of loser Republicans, making sure they lose. After that, we’ll hold hearings and simultaneously deal with some of our own (ahem) family business. Republicans are losers, baby, and the way to kill a political movement starts at the ballot box, and especially before, as we organize to get others to the ballot box.
Who’s with me?
A Case for Impeachment
by Elizabeth Holtzman
The framers knew that sooner or later someone like George W. Bush would appear on the scene. They told us what to do about such a president: Impeach him.
by Elizabeth Holtzman
The framers knew that sooner or later someone like George W. Bush would appear on the scene. They told us what to do about such a president: Impeach him.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Rice Falsely Claims Bush’s Pre-9/11 Anti-Terror Efforts Were ‘At Least As Aggressive’ As Clinton’s
This morning, in the Fox-owned New York Post, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reacts angrily to President Clinton’s criticisms of how the Bush administration approached the terrorist threat during their first eight months in office. (The Post headlines the article “Rice Boils Over Bubba“) An excerpt:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making “flatly false” claims that the Bush administration didn’t lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.
… “What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,” Rice added.
The 9/11 Commission Report contradicts Rice’s claims. On December 4, 1998, for example, the Clinton administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.” Here’s how the Clinton administration reacted, according to the 9/11 Commission report:
The same day, [Counterterrorism Czar Richard] Clarke convened a meeting of his CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] to discuss both the hijacking concern and the antiaircraft missile threat. To address the hijacking warning, the group agreed that New York airports should go to maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports. The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York area airports. [pg. 128-30]
On August 6, 2001, the Bush administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.” Here’s how the Bush administration reacted, according to the 9/11 Commission report:
[President Bush] did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so.[p. 260]
We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford, Texas, on August 17 and participated in the PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. [p. 262]
Rice acknowledged that the 9/11 Commission report is the authoratative source on this debate: “I think this is not a very fruitful discussion. We’ve been through it. The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock and we know exactly what they said.”
This morning, in the Fox-owned New York Post, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reacts angrily to President Clinton’s criticisms of how the Bush administration approached the terrorist threat during their first eight months in office. (The Post headlines the article “Rice Boils Over Bubba“) An excerpt:
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday accused Bill Clinton of making “flatly false” claims that the Bush administration didn’t lift a finger to stop terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.
… “What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years,” Rice added.
The 9/11 Commission Report contradicts Rice’s claims. On December 4, 1998, for example, the Clinton administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Ladin Preparing to Hijack US Aircraft and Other Attacks.” Here’s how the Clinton administration reacted, according to the 9/11 Commission report:
The same day, [Counterterrorism Czar Richard] Clarke convened a meeting of his CSG [Counterterrorism Security Group] to discuss both the hijacking concern and the antiaircraft missile threat. To address the hijacking warning, the group agreed that New York airports should go to maximum security starting that weekend. They agreed to boost security at other East coast airports. The CIA agreed to distribute versions of the report to the FBI and FAA to pass to the New York Police Department and the airlines. The FAA issued a security directive on December 8, with specific requirements for more intensive air carrier screening of passengers and more oversight of the screening process, at all three New York area airports. [pg. 128-30]
On August 6, 2001, the Bush administration received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike U.S.” Here’s how the Bush administration reacted, according to the 9/11 Commission report:
[President Bush] did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so.[p. 260]
We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisers of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States. DCI Tenet visited President Bush in Crawford, Texas, on August 17 and participated in the PDB briefings of the President between August 31 (after the President had returned to Washington) and September 10. But Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat during this period. [p. 262]
Rice acknowledged that the 9/11 Commission report is the authoratative source on this debate: “I think this is not a very fruitful discussion. We’ve been through it. The 9/11 commission has turned over every rock and we know exactly what they said.”
Clinton vs. Fox's Chris Wallace: Condi Rice offers different spin
By media girl
The Bush Administration and their conservative cheerleaders have been doing it for more than five years now: If something goes wrong, pass the buck to Bill Clinton.
Condoleezza Rice is now spinning to blame Bill Clinton
'The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false - and I think the 9/11 commission understood that," Rice said during a wide-ranging meeting with Post editors and reporters.
This coming from the former National Security Advisor who pushed aside Richard Clarke, the in-house expert on al-Qaeda. This coming from the White House staffer who pretty much ignored the presidential briefing memo about Osama bin Laden's plans to strike within the U.S. This coming from a key player in the Bush Administration, which fought against even having a 9/11 Commission look into 9/11. They didn't want anyone looking into it.
"What we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years," Rice added.
She also whines about analyses by our own U.S. intelligence agencies that what the Bush Administration is doing is making things worse.
Transitioning to the global war on terror, an animated Rice questioned, "When are we going to stop blaming ourselves for the rise of terrorism?"
This is the perspective problem the entire Bush Administration seems to have: More concern about criticism of them, more concern about the political prospects of the GOP, more concern about spinning themselves into hero status, than any concern in actually doing something effective or at least making sure they're not just making things worse.
When, Condi? When you stop being a major cause of the rise of terrorism.
Asked about recently leaked internal U.S. intelligence estimates that claimed the Iraq war was fueling terrorist recruiting, Rice said: "Now that we're fighting back, of course they are fighting back, too."
"I find it just extraordinary that the argument is, all right, so they're using the fact they're being challenged in the Middle East and challenged in Iraq to recruit, therefore you've made the war on terrorism worse.
"It's as if we were in a good place on Sept. 11. Clearly, we weren't," she added.
Except, Condi, that the terrorists weren't even in Iraq until you and Bush invaded there. The terrorists were in Afghanistan.
Remember Afghanistan? That's the place where Osama has been, by many accounts, all this time. That's where al-Qaeda planned 9/11. That's where the Taliban government sheltered these terrorists.
Remember the Taliban, Condi? They're the guys who are now gaining ground in Afghanistan. (Wouldn't all those troops mired in Iraq come in handy in Afghanistan now?) You try to conflate Iraq and Afghanistan, as if they were the same place.
And you're supposed to be so sophisticated!
"It's a longer-term strategy, and it may even have some short-term down side, but if you don't look at the longer term, you're just leaving the problem to somebody else," she said.
"Some short-term down side." I believe that's what the President calls a "comma".
Olbermann’s Special Comment: Are YOURS the actions of a true American?
And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.
It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."
Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.
The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."
Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.
The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.
The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.
The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."
The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—
Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest "pass" for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history!
President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs — some of them, 17 years old — before Pearl Harbor.
President Hoover was correctly blamed for — if not the Great Depression itself — then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.
Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War — though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.
But not this President.
To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.
That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.
But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.
Except… for this:
After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.
Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.
As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.
Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon.
Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is — not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!
The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.
It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired — but a propagandist, promoted:
Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.
And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for "e-mailing" you the question.
Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.
He told the great truth un-told… about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about Bin Laden.
He was brave.
Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I — in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist — and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.
The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.
Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to 9/11."
Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new and improved history.
The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.
The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it — who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews — have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.
Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for Bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense — why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20th of that year? For mentioning Bin Laden by name as he did so?
That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."
Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.
Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri — the future Attorney General — echoed Coats.
Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.
And of course, were it true Clinton had been "distracted" by the Lewinsky witch-hunt — who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt? Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?
Who corrupted the political media?
Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?
Who preempted them… in order to strangle us with the trivia that was… "All Monica All The Time"?
Who… distracted whom?
This is, of course, where — as is inevitable — Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.
The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.
But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.
The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton… but by the same people who got you… elected President.
Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it… we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.
Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.
We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.
And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush — you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles… wrong.
Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:
You did not try.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.
Then, you blamed your predecessor.
That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.
To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.
That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair — writing as George Orwell — gave us in the novel "1984."
The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…
"Power is not a means; it is an end.
"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
"The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power."
Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.
"We must disenthrall ourselves."
Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence. He might well have.
"We must disenthrall ourselves — and then… we shall save our country."
And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date… to save… our… country.
—
The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush…
You did not act to prevent 9/11.
We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.
You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.
You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.
And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.
And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture — which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.And there it is, sir:
Are yours the actions of a true American?
I’m K.O., good night, and good luck.
And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton’s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong. It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.
It is not important that the current President’s "portable public chorus" has described his predecessor’s tone as "crazed."
Our tone should be crazed. The nation’s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation’s "marketplace of ideas" is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would’ve quit. Nonetheless.
The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years. He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
"At least I tried," he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. "That’s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now. They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried."
Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr. Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.
The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.
The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.
The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S."
The Bush Administration… did… not… try.—
Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest "pass" for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history!
President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs — some of them, 17 years old — before Pearl Harbor.
President Hoover was correctly blamed for — if not the Great Depression itself — then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.
Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War — though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.
But not this President.
To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 — or the nearly eight months that preceded it.
That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.
But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.
Except… for this:
After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts — that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr. Clinton’s.
Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.
As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.
Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon.
Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is — not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!
The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.
It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired — but a propagandist, promoted:
Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.
And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for "e-mailing" you the question.
Mr. Clinton responded as you have seen.
He told the great truth un-told… about this administration’s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about Bin Laden.
He was brave.
Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I — in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist — and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.
The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.
Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with "The Path to 9/11."
Of that company’s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr. Bush’s new and improved history.
The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.
The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it — who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr. Clinton with it at news interviews — have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.
Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for Bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense — why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed Bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20th of that year? For mentioning Bin Laden by name as he did so?
That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie "Wag The Dog."
Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton’s judgment.
Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri — the future Attorney General — echoed Coats.
Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.
And of course, were it true Clinton had been "distracted" by the Lewinsky witch-hunt — who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt? Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?
Who corrupted the political media?
Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr. Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?
Who preempted them… in order to strangle us with the trivia that was… "All Monica All The Time"?
Who… distracted whom?
This is, of course, where — as is inevitable — Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.
The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.
But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it’s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.
The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr. Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton… but by the same people who got you… elected President.
Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it… we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.
Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us "safe" ever since — a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.
We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.
And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush — you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles… wrong.
Thus was it left for the previous President to say what so many of us have felt; what so many of us have given you a pass for in the months and even the years after the attack:
You did not try.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.
Then, you blamed your predecessor.
That would be the textbook definition… Sir, of cowardice.
To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.
That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair — writing as George Orwell — gave us in the novel "1984."
The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.
"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power…
"Power is not a means; it is an end.
"One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
"The object of persecution, is persecution. The object of torture, is torture. The object of power… is power."
Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr. Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln’s State of the Union address from 1862.
"We must disenthrall ourselves."
Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr. Lincoln’s sentence. He might well have.
"We must disenthrall ourselves — and then… we shall save our country."
And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date… to save… our… country.
—
The "free pass" has been withdrawn, Mr. Bush…
You did not act to prevent 9/11.
We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.
You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.
You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.
And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.
And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture — which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.And there it is, sir:
Are yours the actions of a true American?
I’m K.O., good night, and good luck.
Fascism at the Gate
Read the line about US citizens....The political and legal justifications are all laid out.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Due Process, Bulldozed - New York Times
The New York Times
Printer Friendly Format Sponsored By fox/LKOS_ONESHEET_88x31
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 25, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Due Process, Bulldozed
By
BOB HERBERT
Until five months ago, Bilal Hussein was part of a team of Associated Press
photographers that had won a Pulitzer Prize for photos documenting the
fighting
and carnage in Iraq.
Now he's a prisoner, having been seized by the U.S. government.
You might ask: What's he been charged with?
The answer: Nothing.
There was a flurry of interest last week in the case of Maher Arar, a terror
suspect who was shipped to Syria and tortured before it was learned that,
alas,
he was not a terrorist. Mr. Hussein got a little news coverage last week, as
well. People who still think there is a place in this world for fairness,
justice and due process are calling on the authorities to either charge him
with a crime or release him.
Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi hired by The A.P., was taken into custody by U.S.
forces in Ramadi last April 12. As in many similar cases, U.S. officials
have been
saying - without disclosing evidence to back up their comments - that he had
improper ties to the insurgents.
But neither the Americans nor the Iraqis have officially charged Mr. Hussein
with anything.
Scott Horton, a prominent New York lawyer called in by The A.P. to work on
the case, said: "The administration always starts with a broad-brush tarring
of these individuals. You'll have officials saying: 'Oh, they're bad dudes.
They're evil. We have evidence we can't show you that would demonstrate just
how terrible these people are.'
"Well, sometimes they do. But very frequently, alarmingly frequently, they
don't."
Mr. Hussein's case closely resembles that of Abdul Ameer Hussein, a
cameraman hired by CBS News who was wounded while covering an attack on an
American
convoy in Mosul on April 5, 2005. He was shot by a U.S. soldier, a sniper
who was more than 200 yards away.
Mr. Hussein was taken to a hospital. His camera and videotapes were seized.
And despite his CBS press credentials, which were checked out and found to
be
legitimate, he was arrested by U.S. authorities and imprisoned. Much of his
time over the course of the next year was spent in solitary confinement at
the Abu Ghraib prison, where he was subjected to coercive interrogation and
other indignities.
For what?
American officials were telling reporters, without offering any evidence,
that Mr. Hussein had been collaborating with insurgents. He hadn't been. It
turned
out he was completely innocent. In fact, he was a kind of timid guy who was
less than thrilled about having a job that required him to shoot combat
footage.
This is a spooky time in history. It's one thing for tyrannical regimes like
the old Soviet Union and Communist China to bulldoze the very idea of human
rights and human decency by engaging in such atrocities as detention without
trial, torture and other forms of state terror. It's something else
completely
when the United States, the greatest symbol of liberty that the world has
ever known, begins to head down that hellish road.
Abdul Ameer Hussein ultimately was able to escape the clutches of the
authorities because of the persistent legal effort pushed by CBS News on his
behalf.
Scott Horton was part of that effort. A year after he was taken into
custody, Mr. Hussein, manacled and wearing an orange jumpsuit, was walked
into a Baghdad
courtroom for a trial. It was quickly determined that the case against him
was ludicrous.
"There was absolutely no evidence against this guy," said Mr. Horton. "Even
the attorney general of Iraq said there was no basis for proceeding against
him."
The case was dismissed.
Several Iraqi journalists working for international news organizations have
been held without charge by American and Iraqi forces. The absence of
concrete
evidence in so many of the cases is disturbing, to say the least.
"I am absolutely convinced," said Mr. Horton, "that the ton of bricks fell
on these two guys - Bilal Hussein and Abdul Ameer Hussein - because they
were
working as professional journalists. They were the eyes of the world,
covering things that the Pentagon doesn't want people in America to see."
A legitimate news organization can't help but experience a shudder at
hearing that one of its employees may have been collaborating with the
enemy. It's
a chilling, devastating allegation. To make that charge recklessly is
reprehensible.
Posted by Miriam V.
To the terrorists' level
By Joseph Galloway
The torture of prisoners is not only illegal under American and international law -- it is, put simply, immoral and unjust. It is also un-American.
It is amazing that we are still hung up in a debate about President Bush's insistence that we bend and break our laws and the Geneva Conventions so that our agents can do everything short of murder to make a man talk.
The president's bill -- blocked in the Senate by three Republicans who know war and know the law and know what's right -- would allow Central Intelligence Agency operatives to subject prisoners to water-boarding, or near-death by drowning; to being forced to stand for 40 hours at a time; to sleep deprivation; to being tossed naked into a freezing-cold cell for days at a time.
I saw water-boarding long ago in Vietnam. A half-naked young man, suspected of being a local Viet Cong guerrilla, was handed over by his American captors to South Vietnamese troops.
Four of them held him down. An old, dirty rag was coiled around his face, covering his nose and mouth. A fifth held a five-gallon tin of water slowly pouring it into the coiled rag.
The water took the place of air for that prisoner. His chest heaved violently as he sought the air and took in only water. I turned away before I could see whether he talked or drowned. An American captain shrugged; it was a Vietnamese thing.
There were other field expedient tortures in Vietnam, including the infamous telephone generator, where wires were clamped on genitals and the handle cranked at increasing speeds, and wattage, as the victim screamed and bucked.
Those abominations existed in Vietnam, but they were rarely carried out by Americans.
From the beginning of this war on terrorism, our president and his counsel (now our attorney general) insisted that those we captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere were not prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions; were not entitled to the meager protections of that international treaty; were not entitled to any of the legal protections of our own justice system; and could be subjected to the tortures discussed above.
The reaction was slow to come. It was only last year that Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham overcame White House objections and passed a law barring cruel and inhumane interrogation methods.
Then the Supreme Court threw out the president's plan to try the captives before drumhead military tribunals and impose sentences including death without benefit of their seeing the evidence against them; without benefit of appeal; without any of the legal protections accorded American citizens.
The fact that the CIA maintained secret prisons in countries around the world where even more draconian tortures presumably were put in practice -- where prisoners were held incognito with no rights, no names and no hope -- became known.
Then the panic set in. If all these illegalities, if all this immoral and un-American conduct, were not set right and somehow made legal in some hasty legislation, it would not be only the agents who poured the water and beat the prisoners who someday might face war crimes charges -- it could also be those who bent and broke the laws and the treaties.
Thus we are treated to the spectacle of a president declaring that if Congress did not pass the law he wanted, allowing the torture of prisoners, we would cease interrogating prisoners in the war on terrorism.
When the three Republican senators craft their own bill on this subject, their own GOP leadership vows to filibuster and block the bill during the last nine working days of a do-little Congress eager to adjourn so that its members can go try to explain their behavior to the voters.
We once stood for something good in this world. We once took the high moral ground in our struggle with the evil that exists. We once upheld the Geneva Conventions, not only because we expected our enemies to apply them in their treatment of American prisoners but because they were the law, and they were right.
Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda boys hiding in their caves in Waziristan are surely laughing over all of this. They have succeeded in dragging us down to their level of barbarity and inhumanity.
The torture of prisoners is not only illegal under American and international law -- it is, put simply, immoral and unjust. It is also un-American.
It is amazing that we are still hung up in a debate about President Bush's insistence that we bend and break our laws and the Geneva Conventions so that our agents can do everything short of murder to make a man talk.
The president's bill -- blocked in the Senate by three Republicans who know war and know the law and know what's right -- would allow Central Intelligence Agency operatives to subject prisoners to water-boarding, or near-death by drowning; to being forced to stand for 40 hours at a time; to sleep deprivation; to being tossed naked into a freezing-cold cell for days at a time.
I saw water-boarding long ago in Vietnam. A half-naked young man, suspected of being a local Viet Cong guerrilla, was handed over by his American captors to South Vietnamese troops.
Four of them held him down. An old, dirty rag was coiled around his face, covering his nose and mouth. A fifth held a five-gallon tin of water slowly pouring it into the coiled rag.
The water took the place of air for that prisoner. His chest heaved violently as he sought the air and took in only water. I turned away before I could see whether he talked or drowned. An American captain shrugged; it was a Vietnamese thing.
There were other field expedient tortures in Vietnam, including the infamous telephone generator, where wires were clamped on genitals and the handle cranked at increasing speeds, and wattage, as the victim screamed and bucked.
Those abominations existed in Vietnam, but they were rarely carried out by Americans.
From the beginning of this war on terrorism, our president and his counsel (now our attorney general) insisted that those we captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere were not prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions; were not entitled to the meager protections of that international treaty; were not entitled to any of the legal protections of our own justice system; and could be subjected to the tortures discussed above.
The reaction was slow to come. It was only last year that Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham overcame White House objections and passed a law barring cruel and inhumane interrogation methods.
Then the Supreme Court threw out the president's plan to try the captives before drumhead military tribunals and impose sentences including death without benefit of their seeing the evidence against them; without benefit of appeal; without any of the legal protections accorded American citizens.
The fact that the CIA maintained secret prisons in countries around the world where even more draconian tortures presumably were put in practice -- where prisoners were held incognito with no rights, no names and no hope -- became known.
Then the panic set in. If all these illegalities, if all this immoral and un-American conduct, were not set right and somehow made legal in some hasty legislation, it would not be only the agents who poured the water and beat the prisoners who someday might face war crimes charges -- it could also be those who bent and broke the laws and the treaties.
Thus we are treated to the spectacle of a president declaring that if Congress did not pass the law he wanted, allowing the torture of prisoners, we would cease interrogating prisoners in the war on terrorism.
When the three Republican senators craft their own bill on this subject, their own GOP leadership vows to filibuster and block the bill during the last nine working days of a do-little Congress eager to adjourn so that its members can go try to explain their behavior to the voters.
We once stood for something good in this world. We once took the high moral ground in our struggle with the evil that exists. We once upheld the Geneva Conventions, not only because we expected our enemies to apply them in their treatment of American prisoners but because they were the law, and they were right.
Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda boys hiding in their caves in Waziristan are surely laughing over all of this. They have succeeded in dragging us down to their level of barbarity and inhumanity.
To the terrorists' level
By Joseph Galloway
The torture of prisoners is not only illegal under American and international law -- it is, put simply, immoral and unjust. It is also un-American.
It is amazing that we are still hung up in a debate about President Bush's insistence that we bend and break our laws and the Geneva Conventions so that our agents can do everything short of murder to make a man talk.
The president's bill -- blocked in the Senate by three Republicans who know war and know the law and know what's right -- would allow Central Intelligence Agency operatives to subject prisoners to water-boarding, or near-death by drowning; to being forced to stand for 40 hours at a time; to sleep deprivation; to being tossed naked into a freezing-cold cell for days at a time.
I saw water-boarding long ago in Vietnam. A half-naked young man, suspected of being a local Viet Cong guerrilla, was handed over by his American captors to South Vietnamese troops.
Four of them held him down. An old, dirty rag was coiled around his face, covering his nose and mouth. A fifth held a five-gallon tin of water slowly pouring it into the coiled rag.
The water took the place of air for that prisoner. His chest heaved violently as he sought the air and took in only water. I turned away before I could see whether he talked or drowned. An American captain shrugged; it was a Vietnamese thing.
There were other field expedient tortures in Vietnam, including the infamous telephone generator, where wires were clamped on genitals and the handle cranked at increasing speeds, and wattage, as the victim screamed and bucked.
Those abominations existed in Vietnam, but they were rarely carried out by Americans.
From the beginning of this war on terrorism, our president and his counsel (now our attorney general) insisted that those we captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere were not prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions; were not entitled to the meager protections of that international treaty; were not entitled to any of the legal protections of our own justice system; and could be subjected to the tortures discussed above.
The reaction was slow to come. It was only last year that Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham overcame White House objections and passed a law barring cruel and inhumane interrogation methods.
Then the Supreme Court threw out the president's plan to try the captives before drumhead military tribunals and impose sentences including death without benefit of their seeing the evidence against them; without benefit of appeal; without any of the legal protections accorded American citizens.
The fact that the CIA maintained secret prisons in countries around the world where even more draconian tortures presumably were put in practice -- where prisoners were held incognito with no rights, no names and no hope -- became known.
Then the panic set in. If all these illegalities, if all this immoral and un-American conduct, were not set right and somehow made legal in some hasty legislation, it would not be only the agents who poured the water and beat the prisoners who someday might face war crimes charges -- it could also be those who bent and broke the laws and the treaties.
Thus we are treated to the spectacle of a president declaring that if Congress did not pass the law he wanted, allowing the torture of prisoners, we would cease interrogating prisoners in the war on terrorism.
When the three Republican senators craft their own bill on this subject, their own GOP leadership vows to filibuster and block the bill during the last nine working days of a do-little Congress eager to adjourn so that its members can go try to explain their behavior to the voters.
We once stood for something good in this world. We once took the high moral ground in our struggle with the evil that exists. We once upheld the Geneva Conventions, not only because we expected our enemies to apply them in their treatment of American prisoners but because they were the law, and they were right.
Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda boys hiding in their caves in Waziristan are surely laughing over all of this. They have succeeded in dragging us down to their level of barbarity and inhumanity.
The torture of prisoners is not only illegal under American and international law -- it is, put simply, immoral and unjust. It is also un-American.
It is amazing that we are still hung up in a debate about President Bush's insistence that we bend and break our laws and the Geneva Conventions so that our agents can do everything short of murder to make a man talk.
The president's bill -- blocked in the Senate by three Republicans who know war and know the law and know what's right -- would allow Central Intelligence Agency operatives to subject prisoners to water-boarding, or near-death by drowning; to being forced to stand for 40 hours at a time; to sleep deprivation; to being tossed naked into a freezing-cold cell for days at a time.
I saw water-boarding long ago in Vietnam. A half-naked young man, suspected of being a local Viet Cong guerrilla, was handed over by his American captors to South Vietnamese troops.
Four of them held him down. An old, dirty rag was coiled around his face, covering his nose and mouth. A fifth held a five-gallon tin of water slowly pouring it into the coiled rag.
The water took the place of air for that prisoner. His chest heaved violently as he sought the air and took in only water. I turned away before I could see whether he talked or drowned. An American captain shrugged; it was a Vietnamese thing.
There were other field expedient tortures in Vietnam, including the infamous telephone generator, where wires were clamped on genitals and the handle cranked at increasing speeds, and wattage, as the victim screamed and bucked.
Those abominations existed in Vietnam, but they were rarely carried out by Americans.
From the beginning of this war on terrorism, our president and his counsel (now our attorney general) insisted that those we captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere were not prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions; were not entitled to the meager protections of that international treaty; were not entitled to any of the legal protections of our own justice system; and could be subjected to the tortures discussed above.
The reaction was slow to come. It was only last year that Sens. John Warner, John McCain and Lindsey Graham overcame White House objections and passed a law barring cruel and inhumane interrogation methods.
Then the Supreme Court threw out the president's plan to try the captives before drumhead military tribunals and impose sentences including death without benefit of their seeing the evidence against them; without benefit of appeal; without any of the legal protections accorded American citizens.
The fact that the CIA maintained secret prisons in countries around the world where even more draconian tortures presumably were put in practice -- where prisoners were held incognito with no rights, no names and no hope -- became known.
Then the panic set in. If all these illegalities, if all this immoral and un-American conduct, were not set right and somehow made legal in some hasty legislation, it would not be only the agents who poured the water and beat the prisoners who someday might face war crimes charges -- it could also be those who bent and broke the laws and the treaties.
Thus we are treated to the spectacle of a president declaring that if Congress did not pass the law he wanted, allowing the torture of prisoners, we would cease interrogating prisoners in the war on terrorism.
When the three Republican senators craft their own bill on this subject, their own GOP leadership vows to filibuster and block the bill during the last nine working days of a do-little Congress eager to adjourn so that its members can go try to explain their behavior to the voters.
We once stood for something good in this world. We once took the high moral ground in our struggle with the evil that exists. We once upheld the Geneva Conventions, not only because we expected our enemies to apply them in their treatment of American prisoners but because they were the law, and they were right.
Osama bin Laden and the al Qaeda boys hiding in their caves in Waziristan are surely laughing over all of this. They have succeeded in dragging us down to their level of barbarity and inhumanity.
Demonizing Chávez
Love him, hate him, fear him, revere him, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is an elected world leader who can't simply be ignored, writes Katrina vanden Heuvel. So when he criticized Bush at the United Nations, why did the press--and some Democrats--pile on?
Love him, hate him, fear him, revere him, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is an elected world leader who can't simply be ignored, writes Katrina vanden Heuvel. So when he criticized Bush at the United Nations, why did the press--and some Democrats--pile on?
Challenging the Culture of Obedience by Ross C. Anderson
Through lies, ineptitude and immoral policies, the Bush Administration has led the nation to the brink of disaster, ruined our reputation and sowed hatred that will take generations to uproot.
If you want to know why the Media is fucked up
by Attaturk
And why Jon Meachem is justifiably facing my ire this morning then look at this.Look no further than Newsweek's cover this week by geographical region:
A cover story about Annie Leibovitz. Nothing personal against her, but JEEBUS!!
by Attaturk
And why Jon Meachem is justifiably facing my ire this morning then look at this.Look no further than Newsweek's cover this week by geographical region:
A cover story about Annie Leibovitz. Nothing personal against her, but JEEBUS!!
CIA Deal Reveals Shirker and Cipher
by Les Payne
The White House compromise over legislation for the treatment of terror suspects was hardly worth the ink that scribbled the deal on Thursday. More ironic still was the venue for this military pact: the vice president's office in the Senate Office Building.
Dick Cheney has certified every jot and tittle of the U.S. invasion of Iraq - and been proved tragically wrong to the tune of $1 trillion and more than 2,600 American lives. The war policies of this most powerful of all vice presidents have been as inaccurate as his shotgun aim. Cheney said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wrong. The United States would cakewalk over Baghdad. Wrong. The Iranians would greet GIs as liberators. Ditto. The war is winding down. Ditto, double damned.
Undiplomatic as Hugo Chávez's UN attack on a sitting U.S. president might have been, it is unfortunate that the Venezuelan leader did not include Cheney in his remarks. Not even Rep. Charles Rangel, who rushed to defend his president against Chávez, could have denied the sulfuric fumes to be whiffed in the wake of the former Halliburton chairman.
While viewing President George W. Bush as an amiable cipher, Rangel has publicly denounced Cheney as a troubled force. In an interview with NY 1 last year, the Harlem Democrat said, "Sometimes I don't think Cheney is awake enough to know what's going on. He's a sick man. He's got heart disease, but the disease is not restricted to that part of his body. He grunts a lot, so you never know what he's thinking." In a follow-up interview, he said: "I would like to believe he's sick rather than just mean and evil."
Former military men such as Rangel, or Sen. John McCain for that matter, seem to be roiled by the notion that Cheney is the helmsman of U.S. military policy. When able-bodied men were subject to the military draft, Dick Cheney maneuvered himself five deferments to avoid meeting this obligation. If not a flat-out coward, he possibly is a mere shirker and, at 64, a chicken hawk void of military sense or caution.
The vice president's office was the site of the high-powered, super-intense confrontation to decide how the Bush administration will proceed with the trial of the 14 suspected terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The compromise was necessitated by the U.S. government's push to avoid further scandal on the eve of the trial. Military and intelligence interrogators petitioned the White House and Congress for clear instructions to protect against charges of unauthorized torture and possible war crimes. Already, the Supreme Court had ruled that methods in play violated existing laws.
No stranger to tough talk, the Bush White House planned to try the suspects without allowing them to hear secret evidence allegedly gathered against them. Some might even have been executed without ever knowing the full extent of what brought them to the gallows. Additionally, Bush took the CIA's bait for clear interrogation directives and pressed for rewriting Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which deals with humane treatment of prisoners of war.
So reckless was the president's move to redraft the Geneva accords that even former Secretary of State Colin Powell rose in opposition. He was joined by McCain, who persuaded two other GOP senators to sustain Article 3 as protection, as well as reassurance, for U.S. soldiers who may be captured and held as prisoners of war. Having been held by the North Vietnamese as a POW for about five years, McCain knows about torture.
As a casual-duty goldbrick in the Texas Air National Guard, Bush knows nothing of war, honor or duty. Like so much of his balderdash and war swagger, Bush's toughness on torture seems more a son's determined attempt to escape the shadow of his father's executive reputation as a "wimp." It is most unfortunate that America's honor and resources are being drained away at the expense of this sick play staged by a member of one of the elite ruling-class families on his last legs.
Somehow, the republic must rise up and save itself from this spoiled cipher.
by Les Payne
The White House compromise over legislation for the treatment of terror suspects was hardly worth the ink that scribbled the deal on Thursday. More ironic still was the venue for this military pact: the vice president's office in the Senate Office Building.
Dick Cheney has certified every jot and tittle of the U.S. invasion of Iraq - and been proved tragically wrong to the tune of $1 trillion and more than 2,600 American lives. The war policies of this most powerful of all vice presidents have been as inaccurate as his shotgun aim. Cheney said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Wrong. The United States would cakewalk over Baghdad. Wrong. The Iranians would greet GIs as liberators. Ditto. The war is winding down. Ditto, double damned.
Undiplomatic as Hugo Chávez's UN attack on a sitting U.S. president might have been, it is unfortunate that the Venezuelan leader did not include Cheney in his remarks. Not even Rep. Charles Rangel, who rushed to defend his president against Chávez, could have denied the sulfuric fumes to be whiffed in the wake of the former Halliburton chairman.
While viewing President George W. Bush as an amiable cipher, Rangel has publicly denounced Cheney as a troubled force. In an interview with NY 1 last year, the Harlem Democrat said, "Sometimes I don't think Cheney is awake enough to know what's going on. He's a sick man. He's got heart disease, but the disease is not restricted to that part of his body. He grunts a lot, so you never know what he's thinking." In a follow-up interview, he said: "I would like to believe he's sick rather than just mean and evil."
Former military men such as Rangel, or Sen. John McCain for that matter, seem to be roiled by the notion that Cheney is the helmsman of U.S. military policy. When able-bodied men were subject to the military draft, Dick Cheney maneuvered himself five deferments to avoid meeting this obligation. If not a flat-out coward, he possibly is a mere shirker and, at 64, a chicken hawk void of military sense or caution.
The vice president's office was the site of the high-powered, super-intense confrontation to decide how the Bush administration will proceed with the trial of the 14 suspected terrorists being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The compromise was necessitated by the U.S. government's push to avoid further scandal on the eve of the trial. Military and intelligence interrogators petitioned the White House and Congress for clear instructions to protect against charges of unauthorized torture and possible war crimes. Already, the Supreme Court had ruled that methods in play violated existing laws.
No stranger to tough talk, the Bush White House planned to try the suspects without allowing them to hear secret evidence allegedly gathered against them. Some might even have been executed without ever knowing the full extent of what brought them to the gallows. Additionally, Bush took the CIA's bait for clear interrogation directives and pressed for rewriting Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which deals with humane treatment of prisoners of war.
So reckless was the president's move to redraft the Geneva accords that even former Secretary of State Colin Powell rose in opposition. He was joined by McCain, who persuaded two other GOP senators to sustain Article 3 as protection, as well as reassurance, for U.S. soldiers who may be captured and held as prisoners of war. Having been held by the North Vietnamese as a POW for about five years, McCain knows about torture.
As a casual-duty goldbrick in the Texas Air National Guard, Bush knows nothing of war, honor or duty. Like so much of his balderdash and war swagger, Bush's toughness on torture seems more a son's determined attempt to escape the shadow of his father's executive reputation as a "wimp." It is most unfortunate that America's honor and resources are being drained away at the expense of this sick play staged by a member of one of the elite ruling-class families on his last legs.
Somehow, the republic must rise up and save itself from this spoiled cipher.
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