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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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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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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 presiden | |
