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Video: Alternative
Views
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Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
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Video: Alternative
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Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
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Doug's New Books & Related
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TV/Radio
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Saturday, December 31, 2005
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Saturday, December 24, 2005
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Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power - New York Times
ScAlito is big on wire-tapping, big on increasing presidential power, has advocated using the court to destray Roe vs Wade, and is a consistent rightwing ideologue; this guy must be strongly opposed and stopped
Alito's Zeal for Presidential Power - New York Times
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U.S. Airstrikes Take Toll on Civilians
Sy hersh was right that US is increasingly turning to Air War in Iraq and that intensified bombing is killing scores of civilians, more blood on Bush's hands
U.S. Airstrikes Take Toll on Civilians
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Mr. Cheney's Imperial Presidency - New York Times
while the NYT is right to attack Cheney's imperial (read fascist and antidemocratic) tendencies, Bush, Rove, Rumsfeld et al are equally guilty and complicit
Mr. Cheney's Imperial Presidency - New York Times
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Congress Never Authorized Spying Effort, Daschle Says - New York Times
Bush lied about authorization of spying operation. This past week I saw video clip after clip of Bush lying, claiming that all wire taps had a warrant, that they were only spying on foreign calls, only al Qaeda suspects, etc, the web of Big Lies that is Bushspeak is unfolding, will people care?
Congress Never Authorized Spying Effort, Daschle Says - New York Times
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Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times
The Bush-Cheney Gang spyed on multitudes, this story will just keep giving and growing as leaks come out concerning who they spied on...
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?hp&ex=1135486800&en=7e76956223502390&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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Thursday, December 22, 2005
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
latest political buzz from Salon=
"Does the president still want to talk about Iraq?
When PBS's Jim Lehrer tried to get George W. Bush to talk the other day about revelations that his administration has been spying on American citizens without obtaining warrants, the president snapped back: "It's not the main story of the day ... The main story of the day is the Iraqi election."
We're wondering if the president still feels that way today. Bush would no doubt like the press to be talking about something other than his surveillance program, but the Iraqi elections probably aren't high on his list, either. In Baghdad today, a number of secular Shiite and Sunni Arab groups said they'll boycott the legislature elected last week unless there's an international investigation into more than a thousand allegations of fraud and other shenanigans related to the voting.
Among those protesting the election: Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a man whose "courage" and "leadership" Bush has been known to praise in the past. A spokesman for Allawi told the Associated Press that the election was "fraudulent" and that the parliament that resulted from it will be "illegitimate."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [14:17 EST, Dec. 22, 2005]
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Could warrantless spying backfire on the war on terror?
We suggested yesterday that the Bush administration's decision to help itself to warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens might actually cause damage to its war on terror. From the Washington Post today comes evidence that we were right.
The Post reports that Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who presides over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, has asked top-ranking officials from the National Security Agency and the Justice Department to brief judges on the court about Bush's secret surveillance program. Depending on what they hear, the Post says, the judges could then "demand that the Justice Department produce proof that previous wiretaps were not tainted." Warrants obtained based on information obtained through warrantless surveillance could be called into question, the Post says. And one judge on the court said that there could even be calls -- from the judges themselves -- to disband the secret FISA court in protest of the president's actions.
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Dee Benson, a former staffer for Sen. Orrin Hatch who was appointed to the bench by the president's father, said he needs more information before deciding just how troubled he is by the revelations of warrantless spying. "But I wonder," he tells the Post, "if you've got us here, why didn't you go through us? They've said it's faster [to bypass FISA], but they have emergency authority under FISA, so I don't know."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [13:15 EST, Dec. 22, 2005]
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Now starring as the Grinch: Jack Abramoff
If you happen to be sharing Christmas morning with Tom DeLay, Bob Ney or any number of other Republicans in Congress, don't be surprised if they keep excusing themselves from the festivities to check Google News. The Justice Department seems to be fairly far along in wrapping up a plea agreement with indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- a deal that could involve Abramoff's providing testimony about his business dealings with members of Congress.
One participant in the plea discussions tells the New York Times that a deal could be announced early next week. The Associated Press says the deal could resolve both cases in which Abramoff is implicated -- the criminal case pending against him in Florida as well as the investigation into his lobbying activities in Washington.
Not since the 1992 House banking scandal has a corruption probe "struck fear in so many hearts on Capitol Hill," the AP's Pete Yost writes. Even without Abramoff's testimony, Yost says prosecutors are looking into the actions of as many as 20 members of Congress and their aides. Under any plea deal involving the Washington investigation, Abramoff would get a reduced -- but still lengthy -- prison sentence in exchange for telling everything he knows. "And," Yost writes ominously, "he knows a lot."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [11:36 EST, Dec. 22, 2005]
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Understatement of the day
Former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman on news that George W. Bush authorized warrantless spying on American citizens: "It seems to me that if you're the president, you have to proceed with great caution when you do anything that flies in the face of the Constitution."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:58 EST, Dec. 22, 2005]
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A conservative court tells Bush: Enough
When federal government agents arrested Jose Padilla at Chicago's O'Hare Airport in May 2002, then Attorney General John Ashcroft claimed that the government had just broken up a scheme to explode a "dirty bomb" inside the United States. But when it came time for the government to charge Padilla with that crime, George W. Bush deemed Padilla an "enemy combatant," and the government yanked him out of the criminal justice system and put him into the custody of the U.S. military.
That's where he has been for the past three and a half years, and the Bush administration has argued repeatedly that that's where he must stay. But with Padilla's case headed back to a clearly skeptical U.S. Supreme Court, the Bush administration decided last month to switch gears once again. It charged Padilla in an existing criminal case in Florida -- one that has nothing to do with any alleged dirty bomb -- and said it would be transferring him back to the criminal justice system for trial.
That was the plan, at least. But on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit -- the conservative, administration-friendly court that is Bush's venue of choice for terrorism cases -- issued a ruling in which it refused to let the Bush administration transfer Padilla out of military custody. The upshot of the court's opinion: The shell game has gone on long enough, and the courts aren't interested in being jerked around anymore.
Writing for the court, Judge J. Michael Luttig -- frequently mentioned as a potential Bush Supreme Court nominee -- described the Bush administration's judicial gamesmanship in unusually stark terms: "The government has held Padilla militarily for three and a half years, steadfastly maintaining that it was imperative in the interest of national security that he be so held. However, a short time after our decision issued on the government's representation that Padilla's military custody was indeed necessary in the interest of national security, the government determined that it was no longer necessary that Padilla be held militarily. Instead, it announced, Padilla would be transferred to the custody of federal civilian law enforcement authorities and criminally prosecuted in Florida for alleged offenses considerably different from, and less serious than, those acts for which the government had militarily detained Padilla."
Luttig complained that the government's request to transfer Padilla back to the criminal justice system "included no reference to, or explanation of, the difference in the facts asserted to justify Padilla's military detention and those for which Padilla was indicted." Luttig also noted that the government styled its request an "emergency application," despite the fact that Padilla had been in custody for almost four years and the only "emergency" facing the government seemed to be the upcoming Supreme Court proceedings in Padilla's case.
Allowing the administration to continue its game by transferring Padilla out of military custody, Luttig wrote, would leave, "in the absence of explanation, at least an appearance that the government may be attempting to avoid consideration of our decision by the Supreme Court."
In closing, Luttig delivered a final blow: The Bush administration's actions in the Padilla case, he said, may undermine the government's credibility with the courts and hurt the war on terror as well.
The Bush administration's actions "have left not only the impression that Padilla may have been held for these years, even if justifiably, by mistake -- an impression we would have thought the government could ill afford to leave extant," Luttig wrote. "They have left the impression that the government may even have come to the belief that the principle in reliance upon which it has detained Padilla for this time, that the president possesses the authority to detain enemy combatants who enter into this country for the purpose of attacking America and its citizens from within, can, in the end, yield to expediency with little or no cost to its conduct of the war against terror -- an impression we would have thought the government likewise could ill afford to leave extant. And these impressions have been left, we fear, at what may ultimately prove to be substantial cost to the government's credibility before the courts, to whom it will one day need to argue again in support of a principle of assertedly like importance and necessity to the one that it seems to abandon today. While there could be an objective that could command such a price as all of this, it is difficult to imagine what that objective would be."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [09:49 EST, Dec. 22, 2005]
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On the Patriot Act, Bush and Frist lose a game of chicken
Over the course of the last week, both the White House and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist have said that they would not accept a "short-term" extension of expiring provisions of the Patriot Act. "The president has made it very clear that he is not interested in signing any short-term renewal," said White House press secretary Scott McClellan.
But Wednesday night, the Senate approved -- with Frist's acquiescence and the president's approval -- a six-month extension of expiring provisions of the Patriot Act. Did Bill Frist and George W. Bush get beat, cave to pressure, flip-flop, even? Nope, says McCllelan: Six months is not "short-term."
Frist was a little more honest about the circumstances he faced. As we noted Wednesday, First had been playing a high-stakes game of chicken with the Patriot Act renewal, warning that the act would die -- and Americans would be less safe -- if the Senate didn't approve the version of the renewal legislation that emerged from a House-Senate conference committee. But when 52 senators said they'd agree to a short-term extension of the act in order to work out problems with the legislation, Frist's little game was pretty much over. He told reporters Wednesday night that he had no choice but to go along with the extension after all -- and seemed, finally, to acknowledge that he would have been the one killing the Patriot Act if he didn't. "I'm not going to let the Patriot Act die," he said. Sen. Russ Feingold translated: "They lost the game of chicken."
To be fair, Frist and the White House get something out of a six-month extension that the three-month extension that had been discussed wouldn't provide. Putting a decision off by six months moves the Patriot Act discussions a little farther away from the news that the Bush administration has been spying on American citizens without warrants -- and a little closer to the 2006 congressional elections, when the GOP can use the act, again, as a way to demagogue on national security.
-- Tim Grieve
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Who needs the Patriot Act, anyway?
As we noted earlier today, there's a lot of teeth gnashing and chicken playing going on as far as renewal of the Patriot Act is concerned. Atrios points us to the right question today: What does it matter?
If the president's commander-in-chief power and the congressional resolution authorizing use of force against al-Qaida give the Bush administration authority to spy on American citizens without a warrant, doesn't it follow that the administration has authority to do whatever else it wants to do in the war on terror, Patriot Act or not?
Reporters put that question to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this morning, and he didn't exactly answer it. Asked if the Bush administration will simply grant Patriot Act powers to itself if the Senate doesn't renew the act this week, Gonzales said: "What I will say is we continue to have hope that these provisions will be reauthorized. To the extent that they're not reauthorized, we will look at the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies throughout the government to see what authorities do exist. And we will do what we can do under existing authorities to continue to protect America."
-- Tim Grieve
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
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Salon.com News | Bush's impeachable offense
Bush should be impeached, but political will and a functional democracy is missing.... here's Michell Goldberg=
"Bush's impeachable offense
Yes, the president committed a federal crime by wiretapping Americans, say constitutional scholars, former intelligence officers and politicians. What's missing is the political will to impeach him.
By Michelle Goldberg
Dec. 22, 2005 | On Tuesday, Dec. 20, Washington Post polling editor Richard Morin participated in an online chat with readers. The liberal blog MyDD urged its users to take part, and evidently they did. In previous days, legal experts had declared that Bush had committed a federal crime by authorizing the surveillance of American citizens without a court order, and Morin was grilled about the issue of impeachment.
First, someone from Naperville, Ill., asked Morin why the Post hasn't polled on public support for impeaching Bush. "This question makes me mad," Morin replied. Someone else repeated the question and Morin typed, "Getting madder." It came up again, and he wrote, "Madder still."
Finally, a fourth person asked it, and he answered: "[W]e do not ask about impeachment because it is not a serious option or a topic of considered discussion -- witness the fact that no member of congressional Democratic leadership or any of the serious Democratic presidential candidates in '08 are calling for Bush's impeachment. When it is or they are, we will ask about it in our polls."
Morin was wrong. It may be exceedingly unlikely that President Bush will be impeached, but in the past few days, the I-word has become a topic of considered discussion among constitutional scholars, former intelligence officers and even a few politicians.
"If you listen carefully, you can hear the word 'impeachment,'" curmudgeonly commentator Jack Cafferty said on CNN. "Two congressional Democrats are using it. And they're not the only ones."
Indeed, speaking on the Diane Rehm show on public radio, Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said, "I think if we're going to be intellectually honest here, this really is the kind of thing that Alexander Hamilton was referring to when impeachment was discussed."
On Dec. 17, after the story of Bush's domestic spying broke in the New York Times, the president conceded that he had ordered the National Security Agency to intercept Americans' communications without seeking judicial approval. Unrepentant, the White House insisted that Bush had been granted such authority by the post-9/11 congressional resolution authorizing "all necessary force" in the fight against terrorism, and that the president would continue to order warrantless searches.
The next day, during a public discussion with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., former Nixon White House counsel John Dean called Bush "the first president to admit to an impeachable offense." Boxer took Dean seriously enough to consult four presidential scholars about impeachment.
"This startling assertion by Mr. Dean is especially poignant because he experienced firsthand the executive abuse of power and a presidential scandal arising from the surveillance of American citizens," she wrote to them. "Given your constitutional expertise, particularly in the area of presidential impeachment, I am writing to ask for your comments and thoughts on Mr. Dean's statement."
Boxer has not made public any of the responses yet. But other political scholars have weighed in. "The American public has to understand that a crime has been committed, a serious crime," Chris Pyle, a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College and an expert on government surveillance of civilians, tells Salon. "Looking at this controversy objectively, you inevitably end up with a question of impeachment," says Jonathan Turley, a professor at the George Washington University School of Law.
On Dec. 18, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, released a 250-page report detailing Bush's misconduct and, on his Web site, called for the creation of a select committee to investigate "those offenses which appear to rise to the level of impeachment." Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., said in a radio interview that he would support trying Bush. "If there is a move to impeach the president, I will sign that bill of impeachment," he said.
Assessing the controversy, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter wrote on Dec. 19, "This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974."
It was bracing to see impeachment mentioned as a possibility in the mainstream media. But experts say it's not unreasonable. According to Turley, there's little question Bush committed a federal crime by violating the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The act authorizes a secret court to issue warrants to eavesdrop on potential suspects, or anyone even remotely connected to them, inside the United States. The bar to obtain a FISA warrant is low; more than 15,000 have been granted, with only four requests denied since 1979. In emergency situations, the government can even apply for FISA warrants retroactively. Nevertheless, Bush chose not to comply with FISA's minimal requirements.
"The fact is, the federal law is perfectly clear," Turley says. "At the heart of this operation was a federal crime. The president has already conceded that he personally ordered that crime and renewed that order at least 30 times. This would clearly satisfy the standard of high crimes and misdemeanors for the purpose of an impeachment."
Turley is no Democratic partisan; he testified to Congress in favor of Bill Clinton's impeachment. "Many of my Republican friends joined in that hearing and insisted that this was a matter of defending the rule of law, and had nothing to do with political antagonism," he says. "I'm surprised that many of those same voices are silent. The crime in this case was a knowing and premeditated act. This operation violated not just the federal statute but the United States Constitution. For Republicans to suggest that this is not a legitimate question of federal crimes makes a mockery of their position during the Clinton period. For Republicans, this is the ultimate test of principle."
Of course, that may be exactly the problem. While noted experts -- including a few Republicans -- are saying Bush should be impeached, few think he will be. It's not clear that the political will exists to hold the president to account. "We have finally reached the constitutional Rubicon," Turley says. "If Congress cannot stand firm against the open violation of federal law by the president, then we have truly become an autocracy."
Similar fears are voiced by Bruce Fein, a former associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan. Fein is very much a member of the right. He once published a column arguing that "President George W. Bush should pack the United States Supreme Court with philosophical clones of Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and defeated nominee Robert H. Bork."
Suddenly, though, Fein is talking about Bush as a threat to America. "President Bush presents a clear and present danger to the rule of law," he wrote in the right-wing Washington Times on Dec. 20. "He cannot be trusted to conduct the war against global terrorism with a decent respect for civil liberties and checks against executive abuses. Congress should swiftly enact a code that would require Mr. Bush to obtain legislative consent for every counterterrorism measure that would materially impair individual freedoms."
What alarms Fein is not only that Bush has broken laws but also that he has repeatedly shown contempt for the separation of powers. Fein wants to see congressional hearings that would explore whether Bush accepts any constitutional limitation on his own authority.
"The most important thing to me, in terms of thinking about the issue of impeachment, is to recognize that the Constitution does place a value on continuity," Fein says. "We don't want to have a situation where you make a single error, and you're exposed to an impeachment proceeding."
Fein says Congress should probe Bush on whether he plans to keep "skating the edge" of federal law by trying to concentrate power in the executive branch. "That's the key. It's that probing that's essential to knowing whether we're dealing with somebody who's really a dangerous guy. If he maintains this disregard or contempt for the coordinate branches of government, it's that conception of an omnipotent presidency that makes the occupant a dangerous person. We just can't sacrifice our liberties for ourselves and our posterity by permitting someone who thinks the state is him, and nobody else, to continue in office."
In fact, though, that may be exactly what America is permitting Bush to do. "Politically, I see no possibility that impeachment will succeed," says Jonathan Entin, a professor of political science and law at Case Western Reserve University.
"The Democrats are a minority in both houses of Congress," Entin says. "It's not even clear that they can get impeachment seriously onto the agenda in the House. Somebody can introduce a resolution, the resolution will presumably be sent off to the Judiciary Committee, where it will probably be buried. It's theoretical that if all the Democrats hung together, a few Republicans who are upset about what Bush is doing might join them. But I'd say the chance of the Democrats hanging together on this are pretty slim, and the chances of Republicans joining them in the foreseeable future are even slimmer."
"The only question here is the political one," says Pyle of Mount Holyoke College. A former military intelligence officer, Pyle blew the whistle on the U.S. Army's domestic spying program during the Vietnam War. He believes that Bush has committed an impeachable offense -- and that right now there's no prospect he will be impeached. "This president has admitted committing the crime. He just claims he's above the law," Pyle says. "So the issue is: Is the president above the law?"
If so, Pyle continues, "then we need not argue over the PATRIOT Act. We do not need the PATRIOT Act, because the president can do anything he wants in time of war. He can ignore all the criminal laws of the United States, including the laws against indefinite detention and against torture. I don't think we want to go down that road."
But aren't we already down that road? "We may be," Pyle says. "Maybe it's time to call a halt."
-- By Michelle Goldberg
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/12/22/impeach/print.html
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Wednesday, December 21, 2005
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Tuesday, December 20, 2005
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
Salon summary of Bush lies and crimes of the day and calls for investigation and even impeachment....
"Bush lie about wiretaps to cover up his spying program?
Sometimes we wonder why the White House maintains a Web site, let alone one where it's awfully easy to search prior statements and speeches for "gotcha" moments. Once George W. Bush admitted that he signed an executive order authorizing warrantless wiretaps on American citizens, it didn't take the blogosphere long to find statements from the past in which Bush seemed to insist that he never did any such thing.
At an event aimed at talking up the Patriot Act in April 2004, Bush addressed the question of wiretaps. "Now, by the way," he said, "any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think 'Patriot Act,' constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution."
That certainly seems to be different from what Bush is saying now -- that over the past three years, he has authorized and repeatedly reauthorized the "interception" of communications without warrants. John Kerry, among others, wants an explanation. In a statement issued today, the once-and-future Democratic presidential candidate said that prior statements by Bush and Dick Cheney "no doubt were designed to leave the impression with Americans that the government wasn't authorizing the wiretapping of our own citizens without any warrant or oversight by a court," when in fact it was doing just that.
Was Bush lying when he said "nothing" had "changed" and suggested that his administration was continuing to obtain warrants for its wiretaps? Maybe, but maybe he was just choosing his words carefully. We still don't know much about the secret spying program the president authorized. And, as many commentators have pointed out, the program could have involved some sort of widespread communications monitoring or data mining rather than simple "wiretaps," at least as that term is commonly understood. The repeated references to "technical" issues -- in the New York Times report, in the defenses mounted by administration officials, in the extraordinary letter Jay Rockefeller sent to Dick Cheney -- suggest that there's something more than garden-variety listening in going on here.
That's the kind of thing that a congressional investigation could and should uncover. As Kerry said today, "Congress needs a full accounting and real oversight, not executive power run amok without checks and balances and Congress kept in the dark. Americans deserve an honest debate, not more misleading talk, not another public relations offensive when our security and our constitutional rights hang in the balance."
In a message to supporters today, Howard Dean put it even more bluntly. "We need to know whether George Bush went beyond the limits of the law, and whether he and his administration believe that there are any limits at all." In pushing for the release of documents related to the spying program, Dean invoked memories of Richard Nixon, who once said: "If the president does it, it can't be illegal." Nixon learned the hard way that his ideas about the law weren't necessarily true. "This administration," Dean says, "may need a reminder."
-- Tim Grieve
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Bush: Happy holidays to all, and thanks to some
At the end of his press conference Monday, George W. Bush thanked reporters for coming, then wished them all "Happy holidays." We thought maybe it was some sort of capitulation in the war on Christmas, but it turns out that the president was simply being multicultural.
Shortly after the president finished speaking, the White House posted on its Web site the presidential messages for Christmas, Chanukah and Kwanzaa. They're about what you'd expect from this White House: The Christmas message accepts the birth of the Messiah as a matter of fact -- "More than 2,000 years ago, a virgin gave birth to a Son, and the God of heaven came to Earth" -- while the president merely "sends greetings to those" celebrating the other holidays.
But this is where things get a little odd. In the president's Christmas message, he asks God to "watch over all of our men and women in uniform," including those "serving in distant lands, helping to advance the cause of freedom and peace." In his Chanukah message, the president expresses gratitude "for the courage and commitment of America's men and women in uniform" and prays "for their safety as they serve around the world to spread peace and liberty." But in his Kwanzaa message, Bush says nothing at all about men in women in uniform, about spreading freedom or liberty or peace, or about the war in Iraq. Instead, he offers a sort of generalized acknowledgment of the "many contributions African Americans have made to our country's character."
Among those contributions, of course, is service in the U.S. armed forces. According to a recent report, African-Americans comprise 25 percent of the enlisted ranks in the U.S. Army even though they make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population. Why doesn't Bush's Kwanzaa message mention the African-Americans serving in the military? Maybe the White House is being sensitive to the losses the African-American community has suffered in Iraq. Or maybe it's just that Bush figures that the war isn't the kind of thing he'd want to mention in a message aimed at African-Americans. As Pew pollster Michael Dimock said recently, "It would be hard to find a group where the war in Iraq is less popular."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [14:56 EST, Dec. 20, 2005]
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Conyers calls for select committee to study impeachment
While some Democrats are raising the specter of impeachment with respect to the president's secret spying program, Rep. John Conyers has quietly introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a House select committee to determine whether Bush should be impeached for encouraging the torture of detainees, misusing and misrepresenting intelligence about Iraq, misleading Americans about the reasons for war there and retaliating against critics, like former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who called his actions into question.
In addition, Conyers has introduced resolutions calling for the censure of both Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for failing to respond to congressional inquiries about the Downing Street memos and other issues related to the Iraq war.
The Conyers resolutions, first reported in Raw Story and confirmed by Conyers' office, are tied to the release of "The Constitution in Crisis," an "investigative status report" by the staff to Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee. In its executive summary, the report states that there is "substantial evidence the president, the vice president and other high ranking members of the Bush administration misled Congress and the American people regarding the decision to go to war with Iraq; misstated and manipulated intelligence information regarding the justification for such war; countenanced torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and other legal violations in Iraq; and permitted inappropriate retaliation against critics of their administration." Further, the report says, there is a prima facie case that the administration's actions "violated a number of federal laws, including (1) Committing a Fraud against the United States; (2) Making False Statements to Congress; (3) The War Powers Resolution; (4) Misuse of Government Funds; (5) federal laws and international treaties prohibiting torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment; (6) federal laws concerning retaliating against witnesses and other individuals; and (7) federal laws and regulations concerning leaking and other misuse of intelligence."
The report's authors say that the charges "clearly rise to the level of impeachable conduct," but they say that stonewalling by the Bush administration and a lack of interest by Republicans in Congress mean that more work must be done "before recommendations can be made regarding specific articles of impeachment." The creation of a House select committee -- a move House Republicans will no doubt block -- would be the first step to completing that work.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [13:08 EST, Dec. 20, 2005]
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From both sides of the aisle, a call to investigate
During his press conference Monday, George W. Bush suggested that congressional hearings into his secret spying program would only serve to aid al-Qaida. "Any public hearings on programs will say to the enemy, here's what they do; adjust," Bush said. Even if his syntax was broken, his meaning was clear: "This is war," he said.
Today, it's clear that even some members of the president's party aren't taking his claims seriously. Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter, a Republican, has already said he will hold hearings on Bush's secret program early next year. And now two Republicans -- Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Olympia Snowe of Maine -- are joining Democrats in calling for a joint investigation by the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees. In a letter to the chairmen and ranking members of the two committees, Hagel and Snowe join Democrats Dianne Feinstein, Ron Wyden and Carl Levin in expressing "profound concern" that the Bush administration "may have engaged in domestic surveillance without appropriate legal authority." The five senators, all members of the Intelligence Committee, say that the allegations, "which the president, at least in part, confirmed this weekend, require immediate inquiry and action by the Senate."
The senators say the Senate must determine, "as quickly as possible, exactly what collection activities were authorized, what were actually undertaken, how many names and numbers were involved over what period, and what was the asserted legal authority for such activities." "In sum," they say, "we must determine the facts."
Although Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Pat Roberts has indicated that he believes that Bush acted properly in authorizing the secret spying program, he may not be able to avoid addressing the subject further. According to Feinstein's office, the Intelligence Committee's rules allow five senators to call a meeting of their committee on their own if the chairman fails to act on their request for one.
Still, when push comes to shove, there will be plenty of Republicans lining up behind the president, even as conservatives like George Will say that he has finally gone too far. Texas Sen. John Cornyn has already blamed the New York Times for making America less safe, and now the office of Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum says he has no qualms about Bush's spying program. "The senator recognizes that in times of war, the president has the constitutional oversight or the constitutional ability to do whatever is necessary to protect the American people," Santorum spokesman Robert L. Traynham tells the Philadelphia Inquirer.
-- Tim Grieve
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
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Sunnis Challenge Early Iraqi Election Results - New York Times
the Iraq election is highly touted by the Bush administration and some in the media has created conditions for an Islamic theocracy and Sunnis challenging results and perhaps intensifying opposition, no happy endings here....
Sunnis Challenge Early Iraqi Election Results - New York Times
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AlterNet: A Time to Impeach
there are definitely multiple grounds for impeachment but no major forces demanding it so he just keeps getting away with murder, lying, torture and the like....
http://www.alternet.org/story/29826/
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Monday, December 19, 2005
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
There have been serious media discussions over the weekend on whether or not Bush broke the law in authorizing spying on US citizens and his other justifications of torture, "renditions," and Iraq invasion. For the first time on the mainstream media there have been serious debates over Bush Iraq policy. Here's good summaries from Salon:
"Deconstructing the president's defense
As we noted earlier today, the White House is making a two-pronged argument to defend a secret spying program that violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. First, George W. Bush and his attorney general say, the president has inherent authority as commander in chief to do what he thinks is necessary to protect Americans from an enemy attack. Second, they say, Congress somehow implicitly repealed FISA when it adopted a use-of-force authorization in the days after the attacks of 9/11.
For the White House, the first of these arguments ought to be at least a little embarrassing. The president has said he would have "moved mountains" to prevent the attacks of 9/11. But doesn't the administration's argument about the secret spying program suggest that Bush did less than he could have done before the planes struck?
Let's walk through this one step at a time. In an interview to be aired on "Nightline" tonight, Dick Cheney says pretty unequivocally that the Bush administration might have been able to prevent 9/11 if it had had the capability that Bush's executive order on spying gave it in 2002. "It's the kind of capability [that], if we'd had before 9/11, might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11," Cheney says. "We had two 9/11 terrorists in San Diego prior to the attack in contact with al-Qaida sources outside the U.S. We didn't know it. The 9/11 Commission talks about it. If we'd had this capability, then we might well have been able to stop it."
At the same time, however, Cheney and Alberto Gonzales and Condoleezza Rice and Bush himself are all insisting that Bush has the power, as part of his inherent authority as commander in chief, to sign the executive order that he signed. If they're right about that, doesn't it follow that Bush could have signed his executive order some time before 9/11 -- say, on the day that he was warned that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States? And if he didn't, isn't it the case that Bush really didn't do everything he could have done to prevent Sept. 11 from becoming anything other than another date on the calendar?
Maybe that's why administration officials are careful to make a two-part argument on the spying order. Bush had inherent authority to sign his executive order, they say, but he also obtained additional authority from Congress when it approved a measure authorizing the use of force against al-Qaida.
This second argument is ridiculous on its face. Congress knows how to repeal a law when it wants to do so, and it didn't give any clue that it was repealing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when it authorized the president to use force against al-Qaida. While the congressional resolution authorized Bush to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons" who participated in the attacks of 9/11 or helped or harbored those who did, it didn't authorize Bush to violate FISA any more than it authorized him to violate laws against murder, insider trading or jaywalking.
But arguments that seem ridiculous sometimes carry the day in court anyway, and this one has before. When lawyers for Yaser Hamdi argued that the president lacked the authority to order the indefinite detention of American citizens he deemed "enemy combatants," the Justice Department countered with the same arguments the White House is floating now: Bush has inherent authority to detain combatants in time of war, and Congress gave him additional authority with its use-of-force authorization. Only Clarence Thomas bought the first argument, but five justices -- Thomas, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Kennedy and Breyer -- accepted the idea that the power to detain "enemy combatants" should be read into the use-of-force authorization. Indeed, O'Connor, writing for a four-judge plurality in the Hamdi case, insisted that the use-of-force authorization was "explicit" authorization for Bush to hold detainees even though the authorization itself was silent on the subject.
Was the Hamdi case different? In this way, it was: It went to court. By taking it upon himself to rewrite FISA through executive order, Bush has avoided that inconvenience. The Constitution's checks and balances just aren't necessary, he insisted during his press conference today: The president and his lawyers have sworn to uphold the law, and the American people can trust that they're doing so. "I disagree with your assertion of 'unchecked power,'" the president shot back when a reporter raised the question today. "To say 'unchecked power' basically is ascribing some kind of dictatorial position to the president, which I strongly reject."
But it isn't the reporter who was ascribing "some kind of dictatorial position" to the president. It's Bush who has taken it for himself. In a sign of just how far this administration has come from the first principles of conservatism, even Antonin Scalia seems troubled by the powers that Bush and his lawyers have assumed for themselves. Dissenting in the Hamdi case last year, Scalia quoted Alexander Hamilton on the dangers of trading away liberty for safety, then wrote words that seem entirely applicable today: "Many think it not only inevitable but entirely proper that liberty give way to security in times of national crisis -- that, at the extremes of military exigency, inter arma silent leges. Whatever the general merits of the view that war silences law or modulates its voice, that view has no place in the interpretation and application of a Constitution designed precisely to confront war and, in a manner that accords with democratic principles, to accommodate it."
Those are big words, and they remind of some other ones that occurred to us today: Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about blow jobs.
-- By Tim Grieve
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Bush: Trust me on spying
In a press conference from the White House this morning -- his third live televised event in three days -- George W. Bush tried to defend his decision to engage in warrantless spying on Americans citizens, all the while condemning those government officials who exposed the controversial program to public view in the first place.
Bush said it was a "shameful act" for anyone to reveal that he had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on telephone calls without warrants, and he said he assumed that the Justice Department was taking the steps necessary to begin an investigation into leaks of classified information. At the same time, he suggested that he would oppose any congressional investigation into the spying program itself. "The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy," Bush said.
The president didn't explain -- the president can't explain -- why. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the executive branch to monitor telephone calls and other electronic communications so long as it obtains a warrant for doing so. If al-Qaida is paying as much attention as Bush suggests, it already knew that much, and it has "adjusted" -- Bush's term -- to that knowledge accordingly. What Bush's program for spying did was remove the warrant requirement FISA imposes. How does that change anything for al-Qaida? How would terrorists communicate differently if they knew that the National Security Agency might be monitoring them without a warrant instead of with one? There's no good answer to that question, and Bush didn't give one.
Bush also failed to explain, at least in any way that made sense, why he needed to evade FISA's requirements. Bush said repeatedly that the war on terror is a new kind of war that requires fast action by the United States. "This is a different era, a different war, it's a war where people are changing phone numbers and phone calls, and they're moving quick," he said. "We've got to be able to prevent and detect. It requires quick action."
But the FISA process was designed for quick action. And indeed, FISA allows the executive branch to begin monitoring communications immediately and then seek a warrant after the fact. How isn't that "fast" or "quick" or "agile" enough? Bush couldn't say. Instead, he suggested again and again that the FISA process is for "long-term monitoring" and that, after the attacks of 9/11, he saw the need to "detect." He never explained what he meant by that or how the FISA process couldn't be used both to "monitor" and to "detect."
It wasn't at all clear that he knew. And if he knew, he certainly wasn't saying. Bush said he wouldn't get into details about the secret spying program because doing so would help al-Qaida. Americans would simply have to trust him, he said, trust that he's doing everything he can to protect them from attack while respecting their civil liberties.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [11:25 EST, Dec. 19, 2005]
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Gonzales: Bush had "inherent" authority to violate spying law
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has just launched the administration's legal defense of the president's decision to order warrantless spying on American citizens.
It's breathtaking, even if it's not unexpected.
While acknowledging that the president's program would be illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, Gonzales says that the president has inherent authority as commander in chief to do what he thinks needs to be done in the war on terror. Moreover, Gonzales says, Congress essentially overturned FISA when it authorized the president to use force against Afghanistan in 2001.
The first of Gonzales' arguments -- familiar to anyone who has heard the administration defend its views on detainees and torture -- is alarming in that it knows no limits. If the president's "inherent" authority as commander in chief allows him to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during times of war, what other laws is he free to ignore, rewrite or violate at his pleasure?
As for Gonzales' second argument? It probably goes without saying -- but the Washington Post says it anyway -- that the 2001 use-of-force authorization didn't say anything about electronic surveillance or FISA or spying on Americans without getting warrants. That legislation authorized Bush to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
How is listening in on telephone calls without a warrant the use of "necessary and appropriate force"? Gonzales didn't say, exactly. And the answer is, it isn't. As Sen. Russ Feingold explained during a television appearance this morning, "Nobody, nobody, thought when we passed a resolution to invade Afghanistan and to fight the war on terror, including myself who voted for it, thought that this was an authorization to allow a wiretapping against the law of the United States."
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [10:27 EST, Dec. 19, 2005]
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Cheney on spying: 9/11, 9/11, 9/11
In an interview that will air on ABC's "Nightline" tonight, Dick Cheney defends the Bush administration's program of spying on Americans by wrapping it up in 9/11.
It's not the least bit unexpected: Even as it becomes clearer and clearer and clearer that there never was any operational link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, Cheney continues to justify the war in Iraq by recalling the attacks of Sept. 11. In his speech at the Al-Asad Air Base Sunday, Cheney turned to 9/11 repeatedly, invoking it both as a reason for invading Iraq in 2002 and as a reason for staying there now.
So it's no surprise that Cheney will use 9/11 -- and the specter of another 9/11 -- to justify the administration's decision to spy on American citizens. It's just dishonest.
In his interview with ABC's Terry Moran, Cheney says the president's secret spying program represents "the kind of capability" that "might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11" if the administration had had that sort of capability before 9/11. But the thing is, it did. As we have already noted, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows the executive branch to monitor electronic communications in exactly the way it has been doing for the past three years -- so long as it gets a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court along the way. It doesn't even have to get the warrant first: As we explained earlier, the National Security Agency can begin eavesdropping the second it wants to do so, as long as it goes to the intelligence court within 72 hours to get approval after the fact.
Cheney laments that the administration "didn't know" before 9/11 that there were "two 9/11 terrorists in San Diego prior to the attack in contact with al-Qaida sources outside the United States." Maybe that's right. But what Cheney doesn't explain -- what he can't explain -- is how FISA's none-too-onerous warrant requirement stood in the way of the administration's obtaining such knowledge. To defend what appears to be a violation of both federal law and the U.S. Constitution -- and even this wouldn't be so much of a defense as a justification -- the administration needs to say, "We needed to be able to engage in spying without a warrant because ..." If Cheney has a way to finish that sentence, we sure haven't heard it yet.
-- Tim Grieve
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Bush, on bended knee but firing back
The papers are filled this morning with talk of the "humble" George W. Bush who went before the nation Sunday and all but begged Americans to support his war in Iraq. To be sure, there was some sense of humility in the president's speech: He said that he understands that the war is "controversial"; he said that some of his decisions have led to "terrible loss"; and he said that he needs the patience of the American people. "Do not give in to despair," he said. "And do not give up on this fight for freedom."
But even in his moment of something like contrition, the president managed to make time for minimizing his errors and marginalizing his critics. "We have learned from our experiences," Bush said, avoiding the word that starts with "M" and usually follows the phrase, "We have learned from our ..." He dismissed those who question the war as advocates of "defeatism," which he said "may have its partisan uses" but is "not justified by the facts." And when he spoke directly to those who believe that the troops should come home as soon as possible, he did so in a way that seemed to minimize the breadth of the doubt he faces. Bush said he wanted to speak "to those of you who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq: I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt." What Bush didn't acknowledge -- what his words seemed to mask -- is that a lot of people who did support Bush's decision to send troops to Iraq in 2002 believe that both the United States and Iraq would be better off if those troops came home soon.
And then there was Dick Cheney. As the president was preparing for his bended-knee act in the Oval Office, the vice president was making an unannounced tour of Iraq, where he was trumpeting the usual "everything's coming up roses" line. When a Marine told Cheney that troops on the ground "don't see much as far as gains," the vice president set him straight: "Iraq's looking good," he said. "We've turned the corner. I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we'll see that the year '05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq."
During a speech at the Al-Asad Air Base, Cheney was all 9/11, all the time. And in an interview for "Nightline," Cheney made it clear that he wasn't going to be admitting to any "experiences" that might call for a change of course in Iraq. Asked by ABC's Terry Moran to explain how or why he "got it wrong" when he predicted, on the eve of the war, that American troops would be "greeted as liberators," Cheney shot back: "I don't think I got it wrong. I think the vast majority of the Iraqi people are grateful for what the U.S. did. I think they believe overwhelmingly that they're better off today than they were when Saddam Hussein ruled."
-- Tim Grieve
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Spying on Americans: Did Bush break the law?
The New York Times reported Friday that, in 2002, George W. Bush authorized the National Security Agency to begin monitoring -- without warrants -- telephone calls and e-mail messages originating in the United States. After an initial dodge, the president has now admitted as much.
Two questions follow. Did the president break the law? And why did he do what he did? The answer to the first question seems self-evident. The answer to the second does not.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 sets out the rules for monitoring electronic communications. Those rules are clear. Except during the first 15 days after a declaration of war by Congress, the executive branch cannot monitor electronic communications that originate in the United States without obtaining a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Members of the Bush administration may have thought FISA's warrant requirement foolish or even "quaint" in the days after 9/11. They may have thought -- as they apparently did -- that the warrant requirement represented a constitutionally impermissible limit on the president's power as commander in chief. There were ways to address such concerns. The administration could have gone to Congress to ask that FISA's warrant requirement be amended. Or the administration could have gone to the courts to ask that the warrant requirement be overturned.
It did neither. The administration simply ignored the other branches of government and took it upon itself to do what it wanted to do. It violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And in the process, it obliterated the notion of separated powers built into the U.S. Constitution. As Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican, said over the weekend: "Even in a time of war, you have to follow the process, because that is what a democracy is all about: a process." Graham said he couldn't think of any legal justification for making an end run on FISA. Another Republican, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, proclaimed Bush's actions "wrong, clearly and categorically wrong."
Specter said his committee will hold hearings on the spying program early next year, and that the legality of the president's actions is a matter that will need to be "examined." As we said at the outset, there's another question to examine: Why did Bush do it?
In his weekly radio address Saturday, the president said that monitoring electronic communications is "a vital tool in our war against the terrorists" and "critical to saving American lives." We don't doubt that, and neither did Congress in 1978: In adopting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it gave the executive branch the power to engage in electronic surveillance. What the president hasn't explained so far is why the FISA process isn't good enough. And indeed, it is hard to see how it isn't.
Maybe the president thought it was too hard to get warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. But as Josh Marshall notes, it wasn't hard: In more than 25 years, the court has rejected a tiny handful of the thousands upon thousands of warrants the executive branch has requested. So maybe the president thought it took too long to get warrants from the court. But as Knight Ridder notes, the FISA allows the executive branch to begin eavesdropping immediately so long as it seeks a warrant from the court within 72 hours afterward.
So what did the president think? Why did he think he needed to go around the rules set forth by Congress in order to achieve the objective of keeping Americans safe? It's hard to come up with an answer to that question. And in fact, it doesn't matter. If the procedures set forth in FISA weren't good enough for this administration, there were ways to change them. Ignoring them -- and in the process, the courts, Congress and the Constitution -- wasn't one of them.
-- Tim Grieve
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http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/print.html
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Saturday, December 17, 2005
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Friday, December 16, 2005
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
latest political scuttlebutt from Salon:
"The president, on message
For a guy who claims not to read newspapers -- or at least not much -- George W. Bush sure seems to have a strong view about what ought to be in them. When Bush tried to sidestep questions today about the New York Times' report on his secret spying program, PBS's Jim Lehrer protested that the story is on "the front page of the New York Times, the Washington Post, every newspaper in America today, and it's ... it's the main story of the day." Bush cut him off and said: "It's not the main story of the day ... The main story of the day is the Iraqi election."
-- Tim Grieve
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Novak is out at CNN, but questions about him linger
Mediabistro has the news that Robert Novak's tenure at CNN is done as of the end of the year.
Novak was suspended over the summer after he stormed off the "Inside Politics" set when questions about his role in the Valerie Plame case were just about to get too close for comfort. Now, it appears that CNN has decided not to renew his contract. In a statement, CNN's Jon Klein said Novak has been a "valued contributor" who has offered "incisive analysis for much of CNN's programming" over the years, but that he won't work for the network after Dec. 31. Klein didn't mention Novak's role in the Plame case -- or his charge this week that George W. Bush knows the truth about who first leaked Valerie Plame's identity to him.
Speaking of which, as we've noted, Scott McClellan has brushed off Novak's claim that Bush knows by saying, "I don't know what he's basing that on." After we wrote about McClellan's nondenial denial Thursday, we remembered that it was McClellan himself who said, way back in 2003, that "the president knows" that Karl Rove wasn't involved in outing Plame. Isn't it fair to ask what McClellan was basing that on?
-- Tim Grieve
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How long did the Times hold its news?
As we noted earlier today, the New York Times is out with a story in which it says the Bush administration has been monitoring -- without warrants -- telephone calls and e-mail messages originated in the United States. What we didn't mention, and should have, is this snippet from the piece: "The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting."
Our question: When did the White House make its request, and what does "a year" mean? The Times is awfully light on details here, leaving itself open for speculation from the left as to whether the Times sat on the story through last year's presidential election. At the same time, the right is free to speculate about the Times' decision to run the story now, just as the Senate was about to take up and -- as it turns out -- vote down the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act.
We put the question of timing to Times reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen, whose names appear at the top of the story. Lichtblau's response: "I'm afraid we're referring all calls to Catherine Mathis in corporate PR." So we put the question to Mathis' office, which faxed us a long statement from Times editor Bill Keller in response. It doesn't answer the question of timing -- Mathis said she'd look into that and get back to us -- but here's what it does say about the delay in publishing more generally:
"We start with the premise that a newspaper's job is to publish information that is a matter of public interest. Clearly a secret policy reversal that gives an American intelligence agency discretion to monitor communications within the country is a matter of public interest. From the outset, the question was not why we would publish it, but why we would not.
"A year ago, when this information first became known to Times reporters, the administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security. Officials also assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions. As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time.
"We also continued reporting, and in the ensuing months two things happened that changed our thinking.
"First, we developed a fuller picture of the concerns and misgivings that had been expressed during the life of the program. It is not our place to pass judgment on the legal or civil liberties questions involved in such a program, but it became clear those questions loomed larger within the government than we had previously understood.
"Second, in the course of subsequent reporting we satisfied ourselves that we could write about this program -- withholding a number of technical details -- in a way that would not expose any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record. The fact that the government eavesdrops on those suspected of terrorist connections is well-known. The fact that the NSA can legally monitor communications within the United States with a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is also public information. What is new is that the N.S.A. has for the past three years had the authority to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States without a warrant. It is that expansion of authority -- not the need for a robust anti-terror intelligence operation -- that prompted debate within the government, and that is the subject of the article."
We'll post more when we hear more from the Times.
-- Tim Grieve
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Permalink [12:53 EST, Dec. 16, 2005]
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Don't jam the line if you can't do the time
So James Tobin isn't exactly Bill Frist or Tom DeLay, and a conviction on telephone harassment charges isn't exactly the second coming of Fitzmas. But still, if you're looking for some sense of justice today, you could do worse than casting your eyes upon New Hampshire.
That's where a jury has just convicted Tobin on criminal charges related to a scheme to disrupt a Democratic get-out-the-vote effort in 2002. As the Boston Globe explains, the charges on which Tobin was convicted Thursday stem from his role in a Republican plot to "bombard Democratic Party offices in New Hampshire with hang-up calls on Nov. 5, 2002, as the state's governor, Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, faced off against US Representative John Sununu, a Republican, for an open Senate seat."
Tobin, a former official with the Republican National Committee, was the New England chairman for George W. Bush's reelection campaign.
Tobin was acquitted on the most serious charge prosecutors filed -- that of interfering with voters' rights -- but the charges on which he was convicted seem plenty serious themselves: They carry a maximum prison sentence of seven years.
-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
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Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts - New York Times
The Bush Reich on the march.... have they been spying on you, or me, or who?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?hp&ex=1134795600&en=c7596fe0d4798785&ei=5094&partner=homepage
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Tuesday, December 13, 2005
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Monday, December 12, 2005
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Sunday, December 11, 2005
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Friday, December 09, 2005
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Ray McGovern: 'The last throes of Dick Cheney'
After Condi's hostile reception in Europe, Cheney may be on his way out....
The Smirking Chimp
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Thursday, December 08, 2005
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Hong Kong marches for “one person, one vote”
there's also a big prodemocracy movement emerging in Hong Kong
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Mike Whitney: 'How Greenspan skewered America'
important article on how Greenspan policies helped Bush-Cheney Gang rob from the poor and give to the Rich
The Smirking Chimp
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TChris Lehmann: 'Rumsfeld guns for the press while the Lincoln Group spins'
the desperate Rumsfeld attacks the press when stories circulate that Pentagon is constructing stories for Iraqi media-- a big story that US media hasn't pursued....
The Smirking Chimp
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Charlie Cray: 'The plan to steal Iraq's oil'
part of Iraq has always been about stealing Iraq's oil, or getting as much control over it as possible; here's the current plan....
The Smirking Chimp
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Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
there's still hope that Fitzgerald can take down Big Bad Guys like Rove and Cheney and that Abramoff inquiry will take down a lot of corrupt politicians. Here's the latest from Salon:
Patrick Fitzgerald has questions -- for Karl Rove's lawyer
As we noted earlier today, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald took the deposition of Time reporter Viveca Novak today. That part we expected. What we didn't expect was something that appears a few paragraphs into a CNN report on the Novak deposition: Last week, CNN says, Fitzgerald deposed Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin.
How odd is that? Very. It's not often that a judge will let one lawyer depose the lawyer for an opposing (or potentially opposing) party, and it's probably even less often that a lawyer would volunteer to undergo such a deposition without a court order requiring it.
So how did Luskin find himself on the receiving end of Fitzgerald's questions? We don't know the answer to that yet. We do know that Luskin told Fitzgerald about his conversations with Novak as part of an eleventh-hour effort to keep his client from being indicted back in October. As the Washington Post noted the other day, it has never been clear why Luskin thinks that his conversations with Novak might help Rove. But if he does -- and he wouldn't have told Fitzgerald about the conversations otherwise -- then maybe he wouldn't mind testifying about them himself.
On the other hand, why would Fitzgerald need Luskin's deposition testimony about his conversations -- rather than his more informal descriptions of them -- unless he thought there might be some kind of disconnect between what Luskin was telling him and what Novak would be telling him today?
We've got a lot more questions than answers on this one for now, but they all lead back to what one legal expert told the Post yesterday: The work Fitzgerald is doing now is, at the very least, a sign that his investigation is still active.
Turning the screws on Jack Abramoff
Is Jack Abramoff still breathing?
As we noted last week, the noose around the neck of the indicted GOP lobbyist tightened considerably when his lobbying partner pleaded guilty last month and agreed to cooperate with investigators looking into Abramoff's business dealings in Washington. Now the Florida Sun-Sentinel is reporting that Abramoff's partner in the purchase of a fleet of gambling boats is preparing to plead guilty and begin cooperating with investigators, too.
The paper says that Adam Kidan is expected to plead guilty next week to federal conspiracy and wire fraud charges for his role in the purchase of the SunCruz fleet from Gus Bolis, who was murdered in a Mafia-style hit allegedly planned and carried out by men with mob ties to whom Kidan had directed payments.
As part of his plea deal, the Sun-Sentinel says, Kidan will agree to testify against Abramoff. If that comes to pass, Abramoff could find himself at the receiving end of damaging testimony from one-time partners in two major federal criminal cases at once -- the SunCruz case, in which he's already been charged, and the Washington lobbying case, in which he is so far the unindicted co-conspirator known as "Lobbyist A."
That's bad news for Abramoff and worse news still for certain members of Congress, who may soon be learning a lesson about how stuck pigs squeal.
-- Tim Grieve
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Plamegate: It isn't over yet
We still can't say for certain what Patrick Fitzgerald and his deputies were telling a new grand jury Wednesday; with no witnesses testifying, there were no lawyers hanging around to offer self-serving leaks about the day's proceedings.
But here's a safe bet, as spelled out in both the New York Times and the Washington Post: Fitzgerald was simply getting a new batch of grand jurors up to speed on the case so that he can begin working with them on his continuing investigation into Karl Rove. Rove's lawyer says that his client's status hasn't changed since October -- when Rove wasn't indicted but apparently had been warned that he might be -- and one legal expert tells the Post that Fitzgerald's appearance before a second grand jury "is certainly a sign that the investigation is active."
It will remain active today, as Fitzgerald takes the deposition of Viveca Novak, the Time reporter who is said to have alerted Rove's lawyer to the fact that Rove had leaked Valerie Plame's identity to Matthew Cooper at a time when Rove wasn't "remembering" any such conversation and Cooper and Time were fighting to keep it secret. The Post says Fitzgerald has already taken the deposition of Bob Woodward, who belatedly revealed that somebody in the Bush administration leaked Plame's identity to him even before Scooter Libby dished to Judy Miller.
-- Tim Grieve
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
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Wednesday, December 07, 2005
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Salon.com | Condi's trail of lies
Sidney Blumenthal goes after Bigtime Liar Condi Rice:
"Condi's trail of lies
Condoleezza Rice's contradictory, misleading and outright false statements about the U.S. and torture have taken America's moral standing -- and her own -- to new depths.
By Sidney Blumenthal
Dec. 08, 2005 | The metamorphosis of Condoleezza Rice from the chrysalis of the protégé into the butterfly of the State Department has not been a natural evolution but has demanded self-discipline. She has burnished an image of the ultimate loyalist, yet betrayed her mentor, George H.W. Bush's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft. She is the team player, yet carefully inserted knives in the back of her predecessor, Colin Powell, climbing up them like a ladder of success. She is the person most trusted on foreign policy by the president, yet was an enabler for Vice President Cheney and the neoconservatives. Now her public relations team at the State Department depicts her as a restorer of realism, builder of alliances and maker of peace.
On her first trip to Europe early this year she left the sensation of being fresh by listening rather than lecturing. The flirtation of power appeared to have a more seductive effect than arrogance. So the old face became a new face. But on this week's trip the iron butterfly emerged.
Rice arrived as the enforcer of the Bush administration's torture policy. She reminded the queasy Europeans that their intelligence services, one way or another, are involved in the rendition of hundreds of suspected terrorists transported through their airports for harsh interrogation in countries like Jordan and Egypt or secret CIA prisons known as "black sites." With her warnings, Rice recast the Western alliance as a partnership in complicity. In her attempt to impose silence, she spread guilt. Everybody is unclean in the dirty war and nobody has any right to complain. "What I would hope that our allies would acknowledge," she said, "is that we are all in this together."
For the European leaders, facing publics hostile to U.S. policy in Iraq and torture, Rice's visit was disquieting. In Italy, prosecutors have issued indictments of 22 current and former CIA operatives for their "extraordinary rendition" of an Egyptian suspect; among those indicted is the former Rome CIA station chief, whom an Italian judge has ruled has no immunity from prosecution. Italian Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini, asked about renditions, said, "We know absolutely nothing. We have not one single piece of knowledge." If the Italian government knew the facts, it would investigate, he added.
In Britain, the Foreign Office released a diplomatic disclaimer that it has "no evidence to corroborate media allegations about the use of UK territory in rendition operations." But upset members of the House of Commons have launched a parliamentary inquiry into whether the U.K. has violated the European Convention on Human Rights and the United Nations Convention Against Torture. Foreign Minister Jack Straw sent Rice a letter requesting any "clarification the U.S. can give about these reports in the hope that this will allay parliamentary and public concerns."
When the Washington Post reported on the eve of Rice's trip that CIA prisons holding U.S. detainees exist in Romania, Poland and other Eastern European nations, it triggered an explosion. Even though Romania and Poland denied the report, the European Commission and the Council of Europe began investigations. The E.C. declared that for any member state to harbor a CIA prison would be "extremely serious" and bring down sanctions upon it.
In Germany, Rice was greeted by the new chancellor, Angela Merkel, eager to repair relations with the Bush administration made awkward by former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's opposition to the Iraq war. Rice's visit was supposed to smooth over the conflicts of the past, but instead it surfaced new ones that indicated that the divisions between Germany -- and Europe -- and the U.S. are rooted in the Bush administration's fundamental policies.
Rice arrived in Berlin on the heels of a Washington Post report about the rendition, to a secret CIA jail in Afghanistan called the Salt Pit, of a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who was tortured and imprisoned for five months in a case of mistaken identity. After meeting with Rice, Merkel announced that Rice had acknowledged that the U.S. had made a "mistake" in the case. But Rice countered with a statement denying she had said that at all. The reconciliation with Germany was botched; Merkel was embarrassed; and Rice's credibility, at least in the German press, was left in tatters.
Rice had hoped to quell the controversy before she landed. On Monday, as she boarded her plane at Andrew Air Force base in Washington, she delivered a lengthy statement on torture. Her speech was remarkable for its defensive, dense and evasive tone. It was replete with half-truths, outright falsehoods, distortions and subterfuges.
Her remarks can never sway or convince any European leader, foreign ministry or intelligence service, which have the means to make their own judgments. In her effort to persuade world opinion and reassure the American public, she raised the debate over torture to greater prominence and virtually invited inspection of her claims.
Rice has made memorable statements in the past. There was her appearance before the 9/11 Commission, in which she had trouble recalling the CIA's Presidential Daily Briefing of Aug. 6, 2001, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US," and dismissed its significance. There were her many assertions about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." There was her attack on Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief on the National Security Council, for his disclosure that both she and the president did not regard al-Qaida as an urgent threat before Sept. 11, 2001, as a "scurrilous allegation." But her remarks on torture may turn out to be her most unforgettable full-length speech, tainting her tenure as secretary of state as indelibly as Colin Powell's speech making the case for the Iraq war before the United Nations blotted him.
"Torture is a term that is defined by law," said Rice. "We rely on our law to govern our operations." She neglected to explain that "torture" as she used it has been defined by presidential findings to include universally defined methods of torture, such as waterboarding, for which U.S. soldiers were court-martialed in 1902 and 1968 specifically on the basis of having engaged in torture.
But the Bush administration has rejected adherence to the Geneva Conventions as "quaint," in the term of then White House legal counsel and now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; rejects torture as it is defined in the United Nations Convention Against Torture (although the U.S. is a signatory); and rejects torture as it is interpreted by other international expert bodies, including the European Human Rights Court, whose judgments are binding on the nations of the Council of Europe.
"The United States does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances," Rice insisted in her statement. "Moreover, in accordance with the policy of this administration: The United States has respected -- and will continue to respect -- the sovereignty of other countries." But was the kidnapping of the Egyptian suspect in Italy that has resulted in the 22 indictments of CIA operatives a fiction? Have the Italian prosecutors been made aware that the event was a figment of their imaginations? Was holding el-Masri, the innocent German, not a violation of the sovereignty of another country?
Rice continued: "The United States does not transport, and has not transported, detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured." But the German government was reported to have a list of 400 flights over European airspace for the purpose of renditions. And Amnesty International reports that there have been 800 such flights. Once again, Rice relies upon her own definition of "torture" to deny it.
She went on: "The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured. Where appropriate, the United States seeks assurances that transferred persons will not be tortured." In fact, the U.S. receives assurances from those countries that it would be unlikely that the suspects will be tortured, a technical loophole that provides for a washing of hands. Everybody on all sides understands that there will be torture, as there has been.
Rice's legal interpretations were authoritative, bland and bogus. It is hard to say whether they should be called Orwellian for their intentional falsity or Kafkaesque for their unintentional absurdity.
"International law allows a state to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities," she said. But the administration has vitiated international law with its presidential findings. The "global war on terror" is a conflict without end; its time limit extends into perpetuity. So long as terror is used as a tactic, or the threat of terror exists, which it always does, a state of war, such as it is, justifies indefinite detention.
Then, Rice presented as the administration's position precisely the position it opposes: "Detainees may only be held for an extended period if the intelligence or other evidence against them has been carefully evaluated and supports a determination that detention is lawful. The U.S. does not seek to hold anyone for a period beyond what is necessary to evaluate the intelligence or other evidence against them, prevent further acts of terrorism, or hold them for legal proceedings." But the Bush administration has refused to place detainees within the criminal justice system. Instead, they have been kept in a legal limbo, denied the protections of both the U.S. justice system and the Geneva Conventions. The administration has hid "ghost detainees" from the International Red Cross. If the suspects are criminals, they have not been tried as criminals.
Rice cited two cases to make her point: Carlos the Jackal, the international terrorist captured in Sudan in 1994, and Ramzi Youssef, the 1993 World Trade Center bomber. But, unlike current detainees, both were put on public trial, Carlos in France, Youssef in the United States. And the European Commission on Human Rights issued a report that Carlos' rights were not violated. Both cases refuted in their particulars the larger argument Rice was making.
One case Rice did not cite was that of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a captured al-Qaida operative, whose claims about Saddam Hussein's possession of WMD were used by the administration to build the case for the Iraq war. "We've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," President Bush said on Oct. 7, 2002, drawing on al-Libi's information. Al-Libi also provided the basis for a dramatic high point of Secretary of State Powell's U.N. speech: "the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate to you now, as he himself, described it." But al-Libi had been tortured and repeated to his interrogators what they had suggested to him. The Defense Intelligence Agency reported in February 2002 that al-Libi's information was dubious, and the CIA also questioned its credibility in a report in January 2003 -- both reports made before the war. Rice's various statements created a pandemonium across Europe that she tried to quiet with a clarification Wednesday in Ukraine. The policy she had just declared we did not follow she announced we would no longer pursue. "As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT [U.N. Convention Against Torture], which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment -- those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States," Rice said at a press conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko.
Rice's erratic journey also raises the question of her own part in the policy. The Washington Post story on el-Masri reports that Rice intervened on the side of informing the German government, a disclosure that resulted in el-Masri's release. This fact suggests that Rice has a degree of authority and knowledge in the realm of detainees and "black sites."
Since 2003, Rice has repeatedly told representatives of Human Rights Watch and other similar organizations that the U.S. does not torture. There is no trail of memos tracing her involvement in the titanic struggle over U.S. torture policy between Powell and the senior military on one side and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft's Justice Department on the other. Was the national security advisor completely out of the loop? On Nov. 19., ABC News reported, "Current and former CIA officers tell ABC News there is a presidential finding, signed in 2002, by President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, approving the [harsh interrogation] techniques, including waterboarding."
That technique has its origin in the Spanish Inquisition. Indeed, in 1490, a baptized Christian who was a secret Jew, a converso named Benito Garcia, was subjected to water torture. The process drew out of him a confession of the ritual murder of a Christian child by crucifixion to get his blood for a magic ceremony to halt the Inquisition and bring about Jewish control. The incident greatly helped whip up the fear that led to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, as described by James Reston Jr. in his new book, "Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors."
Since the Inquisition, the method of waterboarding has been little refined. But Rice, like Bush, says we did not and will not torture anymore.
-- By Sidney Blumenthal "
Salon.com | Condi's trail of lies
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Tuesday, December 06, 2005
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Mark Shields: 'Selling out his country'
Duke the Traitor, bigtime republican hypocrat, sold out his country
The Smirking Chimp
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Stephen Pizzo: 'Donald Rumsfeld is mad as a hatter'
Rummy, aka Dr Strangelove, is nutty as a fruitcake, mad as a hatter, dangerous as could be and he's still running the "defense" department
The Smirking Chimp
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Monday, December 05, 2005
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Mike Whitney: 'Barbara Bush and the wretched Mr. Cheney'
if Big Barb is after Bad Dick, he might be in trouble....
The Smirking Chimp
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Sunday, December 04, 2005
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Stephen Pizzo: 'America's Beer Hall Putsch (Adolf — and John Gotti — would have approved)'
more evidence of utterly corrupt and antidemocratic Bush-Cheney-Rove-DeLay Gang practices
The Smirking Chimp
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Saturday, December 03, 2005
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Ray McGovern: 'A clear strategy — for disaster'
Bush's Iraq "strategy" is surely a strategy for disaster....
The Smirking Chimp
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Richard Reeves: 'Is George Bush the worst president — ever?'
another contribution to the flourishing genre of Bush as the worst president ever....
The Smirking Chimp
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Bush's Speech on Iraq War Echoes Voice of an Analyst - New York Times
Bush is utterly deluded that "victory" is possible in Iraq and it will be interesting to see whether public buys the line that he "has a "plan for victory." Anyone who believes this still believes that Saddam Hussein has "weapons of mass destruction:Bush's Speech on Iraq War Echoes Voice of an Analyst - New York Times
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Friday, December 02, 2005
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Thursday, December 01, 2005
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Robert Parry: 'Bush in Iraq, slouching toward Genocide'
war crimes in Iraq just keep compounding
The Smirking Chimp
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Arianna Huffington: 'Bob Woodward, the dumb blonde of American journalism'
Woodie just gets more and more embarassing, what a disgrace to US journalism....
The Smirking Chimp
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Stephen Pizzo: 'The GOP's culture of corruption'
good overview by top investigative reporter of Repug corruption
The Smirking Chimp
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