Bush Administration seeks latitude to use torture at will

Washington Post:

The government's defense of the waterboarding episodes, laid out in congressional testimony and administration statements over the past two weeks, relies on a complex legal argument that many scholars and human rights advocates say is at odds with settled law barring conduct that amounts to torture, at any time or for any reason. It also leaves open the possibility that, under the right conditions, the CIA could decide to use the tactic again.

...Controversy quickly followed CIA Director Michael V. Hayden's confirmation last week that three al-Qaeda prisoners were subjected to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003. Hayden, Fratto and other Bush administration officials left open the possibility that President Bush could authorize the use of simulated drowning again, but conceded that recent court rulings and legislation might not allow it.

The flurry of statements prompted fierce criticism from Democrats as well as strong condemnations from abroad. Manfred Nowak, the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, said last week that the administration's use of waterboarding is "unjustifiable" and "absolutely unacceptable under international human rights law."

Waterboarding usually involves pouring water over a captive's mouth and nose while he is strapped to an inclined board, with his head lower than his feet and a piece of cloth or cellophane placed over his face. Use of the tactic and its variations has long been condemned by the State Department, and it is explicitly barred by the U.S. Army Field Manual for the handling of military prisoners.

But White House and Justice Department officials have said that the CIA was acting lawfully when it used the tactic. At the time, they noted, administration lawyers, led by then-White House counsel and future attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, had concluded that al-Qaeda prisoners were not covered by protections of the Geneva Conventions.

...Most human rights groups and many lawyers who specialize in interrogation and detention laws maintain that waterboarding is torture, regardless of how carefully it is done -- because some pain is inflicted and victims are essentially coercively threatened with imminent death. "Virtually the entire rest of the world, including . . . every legislator who has spoken to the question, has concluded that waterboarding is categorically unlawful," former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer Martin S. Lederman said in a blog posting Friday.

No closer to "victory" in Iraq

Political analyst Ghassan Attiyah, quoted in the Monitor :

All the Americans did was buy the Iraqi government some time. The fact that fewer people are dying now does not change the reality that this is a dysfunctional state that can easily slip back into civil war.

See the article for more on political instability among the Anbar Sunni tribes on whom the alleged successes of the surge actually depends.

DoD official's epiphany

from the Washington Post, the story of Marc Garlasco who went from being a Pentagon bombing expert to a human rights advocate:

"I found myself standing at that crater, talking to a man about how his family was destroyed, how children were killed, and there was this bunny-rabbit toy covered in dust nearby, and it tore me in two," Garlasco said. "I had been a part of it, so it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It really dawned on me that these aren't just nameless, faceless targets. This is a place where people are going to feel ramifications for a long time."

...As the U.S. military has significantly stepped up its use of airstrikes in Iraq and Afghanistan, Garlasco has tracked every bomb, noting their effectiveness and their potential for killing the innocent. The United States increased its use of aerial bombs in Iraq by more than 500 percent from 2006 to 2007 and dropped more than 20 times as many bombs on Afghanistan last year as it did just a few years ago.

That increase, part of a strategy by U.S. commanders who want to attack enemies in areas they have controlled for years, has made Garlasco's work all the more relevant.

a little context: Uncle Sam and Iran

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for posting this new video from justforeignpolicy.

McCain's Big Stick

Warren Strobel at McClatchy News:

One thing is clear about John McCain's foreign policy views: Much like his political heroes Ronald Reagan and Theodore Roosevelt, he believes that America's power is a force to make the world better.

... Less well known are McCain's promises, if elected, to expand the Army and the Marine Corps to 900,000 soldiers and Marines from a planned strength of about 750,000; to form a U.S.-led League of Democracies to act when the United Nations can't or won't; and to form a new government unit, patterned after the World War II-era Office of Strategic Services, "to fight terrorist subversion" and "take risks that our bureaucracies today rarely consider taking."

...McCain already has indicated that he plans to use national security as a cudgel against the eventual Democratic nominee in the general election campaign.

In Norfolk, Va., on Friday, he talked tough on Iran and said he's best prepared to deal with security threats on his first day in office.

Democratic candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "want to set a date for withdrawal in Iraq. I believe that would have catastrophic consequences. They (terrorists) would try to follow us home," McCain said.

But McCain hasn't spelled out in detail yet how he'd deal with threats to America's security.

...McCain's foreign-policy team is sprinkled with people, including Scheunemann, who were ardent backers of the 2003 Iraq invasion and who dismissed critics who warned of unintended consequences. They include former CIA Director James Woolsey, an adviser mostly on energy security, and William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard.

McCain himself was an early booster of Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi, whose Iraqi National Congress provided bogus prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism.

At a January town hall in New Hampshire, McCain told a questioner that it "would be fine with me" if the United States had a military presence in Iraq for 100 years. He stressed that he meant a peacetime presence like that of U.S. troops in Germany and Japan.

So President McCain is going to rehabilitate the neocons, occupy Iraq forever, and militarily intimidate anybody who doesn't lick Uncle Sam's boots.

Are we scared yet?

AQI admits mistaken political strategy in Anbar

Washington Post interviews AQI leader:

"We do not deny the difficulties we are facing right now," said Riyadh al-Ogaidi, a senior leader, or emir, of al-Qaeda in Iraq in the Garma region of eastern Anbar province. "The Americans have not defeated us, but the turnaround of the Sunnis against us had made us lose a lot and suffer very painfully." Resting on a blanket in the garden of a squat concrete house in Garma, Ogaidi lamented al-Qaeda in Iraq's reversal of fortunes over the past year.

Ogaidi, 39, once traveled with 20 bodyguards in a four-vehicle convoy. But during the recent interview, he was nearly alone, wearing a white cap on his bald head and a gray dishdasha, or floor-length tunic, to disguise himself as a poor villager.

"We made many mistakes over the past year," including the imposition of a strict interpretation of Islamic law, he told a Washington Post special correspondent. Al-Qaeda in Iraq followers broke the fingers of men who smoked, whipped those who imbibed alcohol and banned shops from selling shampoo bottles that displayed images of women -- actions that turned Sunnis against the group.

Neither AQI, nor Uncle Sam, have won the hearts and minds of Iraqis by treating them as fodder for "collateral damage." AQI, however, seems now to have figured that out.

GOP vs. "Party of Surrender"

CNN on Romney's announcement suspending his campaign:

Mitt Romney suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Thursday, saying if he continued it would "forestall the launch of a national campaign and be making it easier for Sen. Clinton or Obama to win. In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror." [PAF's emphasis]

Get ready for the GOP campaign theme of 2008: "Democrats: the Party of Surrender to Terror".

One "stab-in-the-back" coming up! And that proto-fascist bullshit will be all the more virulent if the real Al Qaeda (you remember them -- the guys BushCo allowed to escape from Afghanistan into Pakistan because Iraq was more important and besides Bush was not really that concerned about Osama) succeeds in organizing another attack on US soil.

Jon Stewart responds more directly.

Land of the Brave and Free

Reuters:

The CIA on three occasions shortly after the Sept 11 attacks used a widely condemned interrogation technique known as waterboarding, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on Tuesday.“Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees,” Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee, publicly specifying the number of subjects and naming them for the first time, as Congress considers banning the technique.

Washington Post:

The White House yesterday directly joined a debate over the use of simulated drownings to force disclosures by CIA detainees, saying the interrogation technique known as waterboarding was legal and that President Bush could authorize the tactic in the future.

Losing the GWOT

Seamus Milne writing in The Guardian (UK):

Nato forces’ own figures show that attacks on western and Afghan troops were up by almost a third last year, to more than 9,000 “significant actions”. And while Nato claims that 70% of incidents took place in the southern Taliban heartlands, the independent Senlis Council thinktank recently estimated that the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan, arguing that “the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when”. Meanwhile, US-led coalition air attacks reached 3,572 last year, 20 times the level two years earlier, as more civilians are killed by Nato forces than by the Taliban and suicide bombings climbed to a record 140. The Kabul press last week predicted a major Taliban offensive in the spring.

The intensity of this armed campaign reflects a significant broadening of the Taliban’s base, as it has increasingly become the umbrella for a revived Pashtun nationalism on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border, as well as for jihadists and others committed to fighting foreign occupation. The original aims of the US-led invasion were of course the capture of Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and Osama bin Laden, along with the destruction of al-Qaida.

None of those aims has been achieved. Instead, the two leaders remain free, while al Qaida has spread from its Afghan base into Pakistan, Iraq and elsewhere, and Afghanistan has become the heroin capital of the world. For the majority of Afghans, occupation has meant the exchange of obscurantist theocrats for brutal and corrupt warlordism, along with rampant torture and insecurity; while even the early limited gains for women and girls in some urban areas, offset by an explosion of rape and other violence against women, are now being reversed. The meaning of “liberation” under foreign occupation can be measured by the death sentence passed last month on a 23-year-old student for blasphemy after he downloaded a report on women’s rights from the internet.

The war in Afghanistan, which claimed more than 6,500 lives last year, cannot be won. It has brought neither peace, development nor freedom, and has no prospect of doing so. Instead of eradicating terror networks, it has spread and multiplied them. The US plans to send 3,000 more troops in April to reinforce its existing 25,000-strong contingent, and influential thinktanks in Washington are pressing for an Iraqi-style surge. But only a vastly greater deployment could even temporarily subdue the country, and that is not remotely in prospect. The only real chance for peace in Afghanistan is the withdrawal of foreign forces as part of a wider political settlement, including the Taliban and neighbouring countries like Iran and Pakistan. But having put their credibility on the line, it seems the western powers are going to have to learn the lessons of the colonial era again and again.

McCain's militarism

Amy Goodman interviews Matt Welch, author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick:

MATT WELCH: Not only were his parents—father and grandfather in the military, but his father used to go around giving these lectures about how, you know, the naval gap between the US and the Soviet Union was threatening democracy, how we—his nickname was Mr. Sea Power. You know, he would recite British colonialist poetry around the dinner table. They were constantly talking about the necessity for just a huge US navy to guarantee the world’s security. That is the background that John McCain was just marinating in from the time he was a child. And for much of that period, whenever his father or grandfather was not out at sea, they were living on Capitol Hill, usually in some Washington, D.C. capacity. So he was sitting around the breakfast table with senators and congressmen from the time he was a kid. There’s this big notion that he’s a man of the people, which is actually the name of a biography of him, when in fact, down the line, he’s been very much an elitist his entire life, for both good and for ill. He has just been surrounded by, you know, top historians, top senators and congressmen and top military brass.


But this tradition that he comes from is incredibly interventionist and expansionist. It’s really interesting that in the primaries so far, if you look at the exit polls, among people who voted in the GOP primaries who consider themselves antiwar, anti-the-Iraq-war, and among voters who consider themselves angry at George Bush—and that’s a quote—and among independents, McCain is beating his opponents by two-to-one. If you actually look at people who describe themselves as just Republicans, McCain has not yet won a single primary. So he is basically winning the GOP primaries on the back of the antiwar vote, when in fact he would be the most explicitly interventionist president since Teddy Roosevelt, and he certainly makes George Bush look gun-shy by comparison.


AMY GOODMAN: And when it comes to the future in Iraq, talk about his comments about being there for a hundred years.


MATT WELCH: Well, this is what’s interesting about it—well, first of all, he was asked—he has been asked several times, you know, how long are we going to be there, how long do you foresee troops. And he just says, “Hey, look, how long have we been in Korea? No one complains about that, so we can be there for fifty, a hundred years. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that there’s no casualties. But, you know, if there’s no casualties, then the US people will support it.” He doesn’t understand the question of why is it that it might be bad that the US troops would be on foreign soil in a semi-hostile area for a hundred years. He just doesn’t understand the question, which I think is even more revealing than the answer itself. There is no downside, from his point of view, of the US basically being the world’s policeman.

Tomorrow

PAF will vote for Obama in the NY primary, not because he's a saint or the second coming of JFK (been there, done that), but because Barak was right about the war and said so, while Hillary was genuflecting to executive power and handing Chimpy the ammunition he needed to attack a country that posed no threat to us. All her bullshit about "experience" notwithstanding, Barak has already passed a crucial test of leadership, and Hillary has already failed that same test.

Hillary and Wal-Mart

From ABC News:

In six years as a member of the Wal-Mart board of directors, between 1986and 1992, Hillary Clinton remained silent as the world’s largest retailer waged a major campaign against labor unions seeking to represent store workers.

That would be this Wal-Mart;

And this one.

Another case where Hillary had the chance to do the right thing for the American people and did not.

Waiting for Tet

Thomas Bass and Marice Isserman offer a cogent statement of the reasons why the worst is yet to come in Iraq:

Claims that victory is at hand in the Iraq war are as fatuous and unsubstantiated as Westmoreland’s belief in 1968 that he was seeing “the light at the end of the tunnel.” In spite of the optimistic talk coming from Baghdad that “civilian deaths have decreased by 62 percent,” the metrics measuring progress in Iraq are no more believable than they were 40 years ago in Vietnam. In fact, America’s military adventure in Iraq is even less sustainable than it was in Vietnam.

In 1968, the United States had a military draft and a surplus of 18-year-olds, and it had yet to commit any of its Reserve or National Guard units to the war. Today, the United States has 160,000 troops in Iraq, many of them reservist and national guard forces (not counting Blackwater and other hired guns). Regardless of the situation on the ground, these troops will soon be coming to the end of their 15-month tours of duty. There is no draft and no possibility of instituting one, and there are not enough fresh units to replace those in the field. The military is finding it hard to keep up enlistments, even with lowered standards, and junior officers are refusing to re-up.

U.S. military commanders are aware that maintaining, never mind increasing, U.S. forces in Iraq is a logistical impossibility. And so are the Iraqis. Iraqi forces opposed to the U.S. occupation have not been eliminated, but are merely lying low. The media focus on al-Qaida is misleading, since it is a minor component in this war compared to the various Sunni and Shiite militias, who for their own reasons have temporarily suspended attacks on U.S. forces and each other’s civilians.

Borrowing a page from the playbook of Lawrence of Arabia, the United States has put the Shiite militias and Sunni tribes on the U.S. payroll. Infusions of cold cash, in a conflict already costing more than $2 billion a week, have created a welfare warfare state, with many of Iraq’s insurgent forces being fed, trained and equipped by the United States. But incorporating one-time insurgents into U.S.-backed paramilitary groups guarantees neither their future loyalty nor the future stability of Iraq. Leaders of the Shiite and Sunni militias know full well that the number of U.S. boots on the ground will be going down later this year, which is when the real battle for control of neighborhoods, cities, regions, and oil will begin in earnest.

Smells like... Victory?

Buck Turgidson McCain

More straight talk from Turgidson, er, McCain:

"The Protocols of the Elders of Haight-Ashbury"

As in, you know, the totally secret (but widely known among conservatives) hippy-left conspiracy to take over the world and force everyone to do bong hits and eat brownies and make love not war and call up call up Tommy Chong and ask for Dave and shit, which is the whole reason why we're so fucked up now, or so The Editors at the Poor Man Institute tell me Jonah Goldberg says.

But let's dig that one more time:

"The Protocols of the Elders of Haight-Ashbury"

All I can say to writing like that is Far Fucking Out. Bong hits aside, I am in awe of The Editors.

And these people in the picture, they can crash at PAF's place any day.

Wolfowitz rides again

BBC:

Former World Bank chief Paul Wolfowitz has been appointed head of an influential panel advising the US government on arms control.
Mr Wolfowitz was ousted from the Bank last year over a scandal involving payments to his girlfriend, who was also a bank employee at the time.

He has long been a controversial figure in US and international politics.

As the Pentagon's number two after Donald Rumsfeld, he was one of the leading architects of the war in Iraq.

Juan Cole:

Hiring Paul Wolfowitz to advise the State Department on arms control is like hiring Lindsay Lohan as a driving instructor.

Hillary and Bill spin Obama and Iraq

Stephen Zunes on the flap between Hillary and Obama over their Iraq war positions:

Obama believed that Iraq may have been able to develop chemical and biological weapons and he certainly carried no pretense about the nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, referring to the late Iraqi dictator as “brutal” and “ruthless” and acknowledging that “The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.” At the same time, he recognized that “Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors.” Furthermore, Obama noted how he recognized “that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained.”

That same month in Washington, however, Senator Clinton was insisting incorrectly that Iraq was “trying to develop nuclear weapons” and that Iraq’s possession of biological and chemical weapons was “not in doubt” and was “undisputed.”

Senator Clinton then went on record insisting that the risk that Saddam Hussein would “employ those weapons to launch a surprise attack against the United States” was enough to “justify action by the United States to defend itself,” specifically by authorizing President Bush to launch an invasion of Iraq at the time and circumstances of his choosing.

...Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Obama was observing how “even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.” He also recognized that “an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al Qaeda.”

In summary, on the most critical political question of the decade, a freshman state senator from Illinois was able to figure out what an experienced member of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee could not - that Saddam Hussein was no longer a threat and that an invasion of Iraq would harm America’s national security interests. Over the next few weeks, Democratic voters will have the opportunity to decide whether which of these two leading candidates has the best judgment to lead this country during this next critical period.

I'll vote for Hillary only if she is the last Democrat standing.

You and what army?

William Arkin:

The Army once again missed its benchmarks for recruiting in 2007. And, as it struggles to fill the ranks in wartime, it's lowering the "quality" of recruits it will accept.

That sets our Armed Forces up for long-term problems on the battlefield. But it also speaks to a far greater question about our country's willingness to truly support our troops.

A new study from the National Priorities Project, a Massachusetts-based research organization, found that the percentage of recruits entering the Army with a high school diploma dropped to a new low in 2007 and was nearly 20 percentage points shy of the Army's goal. The study additionally found that average scores on the army qualification test are dropping.

...The National Priorities study underscored that lower and middle-income families are supplying the lion's share of recruits. Our military is increasingly less representative of our society. And I think one of the drivers behind that trend is that Americans are fundamentally uncomfortable with the tenor of the war against terrorism.

The flag waiving and the slogans and the eye-watering reverence for the troops is still on display. But the patriotism is mostly hollow. The country is clearly not behind the kinds of wars being waged to defeat terrorism. And increasing the size of the Army or throwing more money at the Pentagon is not going to address this fundamental problem.

Bush wants to lock us into long-term military occupation of Iraq

npr:

President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a joint letter in November. On the surface, the "Declaration of Principles" appears as a mutual "expression of friendship," as it has been characterized by administration officials.

But a closer look reveals a blueprint for how the two administrations plan to set the foundation for the future of America's involvement in Iraq.

..."The declaration of principles would appear to commit the United States to keeping the elected Iraqi government in power against internal threats," says Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst at the Congressional Research Service. "I leave it to the lawyers to determine whether that's the definition of a treaty or not but it certainly seems to be — is going to be — a hefty U.S. commitment to Iraq for a long time."

Such a hefty commitment would be unprecedented in the history of American foreign policy.

935 lies and a war that won't end

Center for Public Integrity:

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration’s case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose “Duelfer Report” established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq’s nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003.

These lies continue to kill and maim people every day.

"Don't even think about it"

James Ridgeway and Jean Casella writing at Mother Jones:

Largely ignored by the mainstream candidates—as well as the mainstream media—are the latest efforts to bring the fear home by targeting "homegrown terrorism"—another new catchphrase. Only liberal Democrat Dennis Kucinich and libertarian Republican Ron Paul have warned that in the name of stopping domestic terrorist plots before they happen, Congress is in the midst of passing legislation aimed not at actual hate crimes or even terrorist conspiracies, but at talking, Web surfing, or even thinking about jihadism or other "extremist belief systems." Last October, a piece of legislation called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 sailed through the House with near-universal bipartisan support; it is likely to reach the floor of the Senate early this year and appears certain to be signed into law.

...The bill raises the potential for government encroachments on civil rights in part through the way it defines some basic terms. The text of the bill says that "the term 'violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change." It gives no clue as to what would qualify, under this law, as an "extremist belief system," leaving this open to broad interpretation according to the prevailing political winds.

In addition, simply by designating the "process of adopting or promoting" belief systems as a target for government concern or control, the bill moves into dangerous territory. The director of the ACLU's Washington legislative office, Caroline Fredrickson, said in a statement on the bill, "Law enforcement should focus on action, not thought. We need to worry about the people who are committing crimes rather than those who harbor beliefs that the government may consider to be extreme."

...Robert Peck of the Center for Constitutional Litigation points out that some of the most significant First Amendment battles have been fought over precisely when "speech transgresses the line from mere advocacy, which is protected by the First Amendment, to incitement, which is not." Through the early twentieth century, when "incitement" was defined broadly as speech that had a "tendency" to cause illegal acts, it was used to prosecute nonviolent abolitionists, anarchists, socialists, and draft resisters. Gradually, the Supreme Court narrowed the definition, so that speech is protected unless it will "intentionally produce a high likelihood of real imminent harm."

What the Homegrown Terrorism bill does is bring back into the equation not just violent actions, and not just violent plots, but the words and ideas that may (or may not) inspire or encourage them somewhere down the road. It moves toward designating people as terrorists based not on what they do, but on what they say and what they think.

...It's the "road" the bill lays out that worries civil libertarians. "This measure looks benign enough, but we should be concerned about where it will lead," Kamau Franklin of New York's Center for Constitutional Rights said when the bill passed the House. The National Commission it creates will have broad power to conduct investigations; one commentator dubbed it the "Son of HUAC"—the House Un-American Activities Committee—because it is supposed to travel around the country, holding hearings and questioning people under oath about their ideological beliefs. Wherever it may ultimately lead, the bill seems clearly part of a growing push toward expanding domestic intelligence operations—spying that is aimed not at any Al Qaeda members who may have slipped across the border, but at U.S. citizens and legal residents. The great civil libertarian Frank J. Donner, in his book The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System, argued that the true goal of domestic intelligence was not to prevent or punish criminal activity, but to protect existing power structures and suppress dissent. Unlike law enforcement, which deals with illegal actions that have already been committed, domestic intelligence is by nature "future-oriented": It is not looking for criminals, but potential criminals, and it does so by relying on "ideology, not behavior, theory not practice." Anyone who thinks the wrong way could at some point act the wrong way—so they have to be watched.

Donner was writing in the late 1970s, following congressional investigations that exposed the abuses of the FBI's COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program), which for more than a decade had conducted surveillance and planted informants to spy on and disrupt what J. Edgar Hoover had decided were "enemies of the American way of life"—including civil rights, anti-war, student, and women's liberation groups, as well as the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan. During this period, the bureau tapped phones, opened mail, planted bugs, and burglarized homes and offices. At least 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency." In the end, the Bureau conducted more than half a million investigations of so-called subversives and maintained files on well over a million Americans—all of this without a single conviction for a criminal act.

Plenty of people will argue that the "subversive" groups targeted during the McCarthy era or the COINTELPRO period were nothing like today's Islamic radicals—and there are, of course, differences, not least in terms of new tactics like suicide attacks and dirty bombs. But the Weather Underground set off at least a dozen bombs, which is a dozen more than the homegrown jihadists have managed so far. And just as the FBI spied on Weathermen and anti-war activists alike, it will be unlikely to distinguish between active jihadists and Muslims who are simply ardent or angry. What's more, anything that can be applied to one "extremist" group—laws, policies, law enforcement strategies, domestic intelligence operations—can be applied to others. A case in point is offered by Brian Michael Jenkins, a Rand Corporation terrorism expert who served as a consultant on the NYPD's report. In his book on terrorism, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves, Jenkins wrote, "In their international campaign, the jihadists will seek common grounds with leftist, anti-American, and anti-globalization forces, who will in turn see, in radical Islam, comrades against a mutual foe." Once a terrorist is defined by thought and word rather than deed, there will be room for all of us in the big tent.

Bacevich: Surge to Nowhere

In only one respect has the surge achieved undeniable success: It has ensured that U.S. troops won't be coming home anytime soon. This was one of the main points of the exercise in the first place. As AEI military analyst Thomas Donnelly has acknowledged with admirable candor, "part of the purpose of the surge was to redefine the Washington narrative," thereby deflecting calls for a complete withdrawal of U.S. combat forces. Hawks who had pooh-poohed the risks of invasion now portrayed the risks of withdrawal as too awful to contemplate. But a prerequisite to perpetuating the war -- and leaving it to the next president -- was to get Iraq off the front pages and out of the nightly news. At least in this context, the surge qualifies as a masterstroke. From his new perch as a New York Times columnist, William Kristol has worried that feckless politicians just might "snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory." Not to worry: The "victory" gained in recent months all but guarantees that the United States will remain caught in the jaws of Iraq for the foreseeable future.


...Bush had once counted on the U.S. invasion of Iraq to pay massive dividends. Iraq was central to his administration's game plan for eliminating jihadist terrorism. It would demonstrate how U.S. power and beneficence could transform the Muslim world. Just months after the fall of Baghdad, the president declared, "The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution." Democracy's triumph in Baghdad, he announced, "will send forth the news, from Damascus to Tehran -- that freedom can be the future of every nation." In short, the administration saw Baghdad not as a final destination but as a way station en route to even greater successes.

In reality, the war's effects are precisely the inverse of those that Bush and his lieutenants expected. Baghdad has become a strategic cul-de-sac. Only the truly blinkered will imagine at this late date that Iraq has shown the United States to be the "stronger horse." In fact, the war has revealed the very real limits of U.S. power. And for good measure, it has boosted anti-Americanism to record levels, recruited untold numbers of new jihadists, enhanced the standing of adversaries such as Iran and diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, a theater of war far more directly relevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Instead of draining the jihadist swamp, the Iraq war is continuously replenishing it.

Look beyond the spin, the wishful thinking, the intellectual bullying and the myth-making. The real legacy of the surge is that it will enable Bush to bequeath the Iraq war to his successor -- no doubt cause for celebration at AEI, although perhaps less so for the families of U.S. troops. Yet the stubborn insistence that the war must continue also ensures that Bush's successor will, upon taking office, discover that the post-9/11 United States is strategically adrift. Washington no longer has a coherent approach to dealing with Islamic radicalism. Certainly, the next president will not find in Iraq a useful template to be applied in Iran or Syria or Pakistan.

According to the war's most fervent proponents, Bush's critics have become so "invested in defeat" that they cannot see the progress being made on the ground. Yet something similar might be said of those who remain so passionately invested in a futile war's perpetuation. They are unable to see that, surge or no surge, the Iraq war remains an egregious strategic blunder that persistence will only compound.

Record number of US troops in Afghanistan

The Pentagon’s announcement here Tuesday that it is dispatching some 3,200 marines to Afghanistan underlines both Washington’s mounting concern about the strength of the Taliban insurgency and the growing sense here that the central front in its nearly six-and-a-half-year-old “war on terror” has moved back to its South Asian roots.

The deployment, which will take place over the next three months, will bring the total number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to a record level of some 30,000 — still significantly less than the 160,000 in Iraq but nonetheless an implicit admission that U.S. and NATO forces have not been able to subdue the largely Pashtun rebels.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Pakistan's Taliban are mounting their own surge.

Why the world loves America

“If you don’t violate someone’s human rights some of the time,” revealed an American counter-terrorism official in 2004, “you probably aren’t doing your job.”

Professor Anita Inder Singh writing in the Guardian/UK

Some historical perspective from a former president

Not.

Classic British understatement

from the Guardian/UK:

Open attacks on the business elite are seldom heard from mainstream White House candidates in America, despite skyrocketing CEO pay, rising income inequality, and a torrent of scandals in corporate boardrooms and on Wall Street.

And why is that, boys and girls? Because there is no such thing as class in America.



Nu-uh.

And so that's not why US business elites are not scared of John Edwards.

Nope.

Zombies in Jesusland: I am Legend

PAF goes to the Movies

Just back from seeing Will Smith in I am Legend. In some ways this film was well executed, thrilling and clever; in other ways it was anticlimactic, preachy and downright offensive.

The premise of the film is as follows: an attempt (by a female scientist) to genetically engineer a virus to kill cancer appears successful at first, but then kills 90 percent of those exposed to it as it spreads rapidly through New York where just about everyone is exposed, and then on to the rest of the world. One percent of people are resistant to the virus and do not get infected, including (miraculously) our hero, the Will Smith character, who happens to be both a combat-equipped army officer and a world-class scientist.

What about the other nine percent, you might wonder. Silly you. They're turned into light-fearing flesh-eating mutant zombies with superhuman strength who prowl the night sniffing out the blood of survivors to devour -- natch. While the uninfected one percent of the inhabitants of Manhattan might still have left some neighbors for Will, the zombies seem to have eaten everyone except Will and his dog. Partly horrified, I am also secretly cheered by the implication that Donald Trump has met his match.

So far I'm totally along for the ride. Perfectly happy to suspend disbelief this far. Partly because I grew up with movies like Omega Man which scared the shit out of me and thrilled me as a kid, partly because the scenes of a depopulated, dilapidated New York are so vivid and persuasive, and partly because Will Smith does a really fine job with the role of tormented, lonesome survivor (putting Omega Man's Charleton Heston to shame).

But then Jesus comes in through the back door. Will Smith's character has just lost his dog and only companion to the zombies, is losing the will to live and is about to be consumed by zombies when (miraculously) he is saved by a beautiful latin woman accompanied by a child. She appears to him in a scene in which the first thing Will sees after regaining consciousness is the cricifix hanging from her rearview mirror (hint, hint). Later, she tells Will that God has sent her to him for a reason, to save humanity from the viral zombie pestilence. Will tells her she's full of shit, that no loving God would tolerate anything so catastrophically cruel, but she persists. Ultimately, Will finds a cure for the zombie virus, but then sacrifices himself (hint, hint) to the zombie hordes so that the woman and child can escape to carry the cure to a colony of survivors in the mountains of Vermont and sustain decent, non-flesh-eating human life. But not before he tells her that she was right about God and must help humanity carry on without him.

So a halfway decent flesh-eating zombie flick turns into a Christian morality tale about the self-destructive hubris of human reason and science opening the gates of hell and bringing catastrophe upon it, only to be redeemed by divine intervention, a reassertion of faith and self-sacrifice to cleanse the sins of science. Add into the mix that the site of this modern Gomorrah was NYC, and that the symbol of secular hubris run amok was a prominent female scientist, and you have another adventure in Jesusland, cleverly packaged as a hyper-violent post-apocalyptic zombie tale.

Movie trivia: Spiritual advisor and necrophilia consultant was Mike Huckabee.

Why not 'President McCain'?

How's this for starters:



And this:



And this:



This guy is dangerous.

The very idea that US troops could indefinitely occupy Iraq and 'contribute to stability', that these occupying troops would somehow magically be 'out of harm's way,' is delusional. So is the notion that it was not the invasion itself but the poor execution which is the root of our problems in Iraq, and in the Muslim world more generally. And none of this would be helped by bombing Iran.

I think I'd prefer Huckabee.

Surging to victory? Bullshit.

The Center for American Progress debunks the right-wing triumphalism about the surge:

In an address to the nation one year ago today, President Bush outlined a "new strategy" for Iraq that would entail an increase in U.S. security operations with the goal of giving the Iraqi government "the breathing space it needs" to "make reconciliation possible." Though violence in Iraq diminished in the tail end of 2007, the year since Bush's announcement of his escalation strategy has been the deadliest of the war for the U.S. military. Unfortunately, the hard fought gains of American troops have not been sufficiently accompanied by "progress on any of the key political benchmarks so critical to bringing Iraq together and producing lasting stability." In October, the Government Accountability Office assessed that of the eight political benchmarks set forth by Bush and Congress, the Iraqi government had only "met one legislative benchmark and partially met another." In his speech, Bush warned that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks." But now that the goals have been largely unmet, the administration is downplaying their importance. In December, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "I no longer think of them so much as benchmarks as the pieces that they are now presenting as what they need to do over the next year." Earlier this week, however, Bush claimed that "the Iraqis are beginning to see political progress that is matching the dramatic security gains for the past year." But if anything, "the political situation has gotten worse."

KEY MEASURES NOT MET: Last year, Bush promised that "Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis." This has not happened. Instead, "the oil bill has not even had a first reading in parliament, a year after it was drafted." Bush also declared that "the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution." Neither of these goals have been met either. Though the de-Baathification law "came up for discussion," it "was met with angry protests from Shiite lawmakers." Last month, the head of the parliament's constitutional review committee requested a three-month delay for revising the document -- "the fourth time the target date for revision of the document, approved in a referendum in 2005, has been deferred." The delay of the constitutional revision has hindered progress on other issues. Bush also said that Iraqis would "hold provincial elections" last year, but they have not come to pass. "New provincial elections have been postponed pending agreement on a law setting out the relationship between national and regional governments." Currently, there are "no provincial elections in sight."

'BITTERLY DIVIDED' SECTARIAN LINES: In the effort to decrease violence in Iraq, a key U.S. tactic has been to "to empower and arm Sunni Arab tribes and factions, provided they pledge to resist outside militants like al-Qaeda." Though this strategy -- which was precipitated by the decision of Sunni tribes to turn against al Qaeda -- has been effective in the short-term, "this approach threatens to further split Iraq and exacerbate sectarian tensions" in the long run. The new Sunni leaders whom the United States is empowering "are decidedly against Iraq's U.S.-backed, Shiite-led government, which is wary of the Awakening movement's growing influence, viewing it as a potential threat when U.S. troops withdraw." "When the U.S. military suggested that the Shiite-led Iraqi government incorporate the Sunni fighters -- many of them veterans of anti-U.S. combat -- into their own security forces, the Iraqis balked." Even U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker admits that tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have hardened on the national level, saying recently that "nothing good is coming down the line." The Center for American Progress's Brian Katulis and Peter Juul write today that "Iraq at the start of 2008 is even more bitterly divided along ethnic and sectarian lines than it was at the start of 2007, increasing the possibility that the recent declines in violence may be a temporary lull."

More from the Washington Post on how the default strategy is becoming the strategy of default.

If this is victory, I wonder what failure looks like.

Bill O'Reilly is a thug?

Who knew???

O'Reilly's a classic bully. But in his mind he's defending the constitution. Cough/choke/snort. Can you say 'delusiuons of grandeur'?

And he seemed like such a nice young man.

More on the BillO phenomenon from the New Yorker's Nicholas Lemann.

another message from Necrophiliacs for Huckabee

Bush continues to build tensions with Iran, despite loss of nuclear pretext

Juan Cole:

President Bush’s speech on Wednesday night only stoked such speculation. Bush paid lip service to the Iraq Study Group report, but cast aside its advice that he negotiate with Iran and Syria. Instead, he rattled sabers at Iran with some ferocity, accusing it of arming insurgents in Iraq and threatening it with international isolation. He attempted to rally his Sunni Arab allies, such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, in this effort. He said, “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.” He announced that he would position another aircraft-carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf and would deploy Patriot antimissile batteries.

Then Thursday came a U.S. raid on an Iranian consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil. By the end of the day, rumors of war with Iran had spread to normally cautious corners of the Internet. The Washington Note wondered aloud if Bush had issued an executive order to commence military action against Iran and Syria. Was the raid a deliberate provocation and the preface to war?

And then there is this, too close for comfort and all too reminiscent of the Tonkin Gulf fiasco which LBJ used as a pretext to commit US forces to the Vietnam War.

US War Crimes and the Return of the Winter Soldier

Frida Berrigan:

The Laws of Armed Conflict and the Geneva Conventions were designed as the basis for military conduct in times of war. Three central principles govern armed conflict: military necessity, distinction (soldiers must engage only valid military targets) and proportionality (the loss of civilian lives and property damage must not outweigh the military advantage sought). Among other things, the Geneva Conventions identify grave breaches of international law as the “willful killing; torture or inhuman treatment; willful causing of great suffering; and extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully or wantonly.” An examination of the military’s actions in the aftermath of Haditha reveals a clear unwillingness to apply these principles.

...Military prosecutors have won convictions against soldiers and Marines in more than 200 cases of violent crimes, including murder, rape and assault against Iraqi civilians, according to a July 27, 2007 New York Times analysis. In some cases, these convictions may come with severe sentences. Federal prosecutors are said to be seeking the death penalty for former Pvt. Stephen Green, who is accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, as well as slaying her parents and younger sister. He will be tried as a civilian because he was discharged before the crimes came to light. This horrific crime is the subject of Brian de Palma’s new movie Redacted.

But seeking the death penalty for Green, sentencing Hutchins to 15 years or court-martialing Wuterich for multiple unpremeditated murders is not the same as seeking justice for war crimes. These three should be held responsible, but the scales of justice are tipped toward scapegoating the convenient foils. They have committed awful and criminal acts, but their guilt cannot be easily separated from those who are the architects of the war.

In November 2006, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a nonprofit legal and educational organization, filed a criminal complaint, asking a German federal prosecutor to open “a criminal prosecution that will look into the responsibility of high-ranking U.S. officials for authorizing war crimes in the context of the so-called war on terror,” according to a CCR statement. On behalf of 12 Iraqi citizens whom the U.S. military detained and tortured at Abu Ghraib, the complaint names former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other high-ranking U.S. officials. The German court dismissed the case in April 2007, ruling that a U.S. court should hear the charges. But CCR-along with other groups-have filed similar charges in Sweden, Argentina and France.

...While these projects inch forward, soldiers are taking matters into their own hands. In March 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will convene new Winter Soldier hearings, modeled on the February 1971 meetings in a Detroit Howard Johnson’s. In the shadow of the My Lai massacre revelations, the hearings provided a platform to more than 125 Vietnam veterans to describe the atrocities they participated in and witnessed. This effort could once again give the United States a chance to listen to soldiers and Marines as they break the silence, hold themselves and each other accountable and demand the same from the architects of the war.

Breakfast in America

Authorities Find Grisly Scene in Texas

Please don't tell Mike Huckabee.

To destroy al Qaeda in Iraq, end the Occupation

Only the presence of U.S. forces allows the group called "al Qaeda in Iraq" (AQI) to survive and function, and setting a timetable for the occupation to end is the best way to beat them.

...Several sources we reached in the Sunni community agreed that AQI, a predominantly Sunni insurgent group that did not exist prior to the U.S. invasion -- it started in 2005 -- will not exist for long after coalition forces depart. AQI is universally detested by large majorities of Iraqis of all ethnic and sectarian backgrounds because of its fundamentalist interpretation of religious law and efforts to set up a separate Sunni state, and its only support -- and it obviously does enjoy some support -- is based solely on its opposition to the deeply unpopular U.S.-led occupation of Iraq.

Raed Jarrar and Joshua Holland

Edwards: no more occupation

"Only John Edwards among the top three Dems would effectively end the occupation of Iraq within a year of taking office," writes Joshua Holland at Alternet.

Both Clinton and Obama have bought into the dangerous idea that the U.S. must maintain forces in Iraq to protect U.S. bases -- yes, they're actually saying that we need to leave soldiers to guard the bases that the U.S. built to house the troops occupying Iraq -- to fight "al Qaeda in Iraq," and to help train Iraqi forces. Obama has said that he envisions a less expansive mission than Clinton does, and would contemplate basing some of his "residual forces" outside the country. Both of the candidates are reluctant to say exactly how many troops would be needed to accomplish the job, but independent estimates range from at least 20,000 to as many as 75,000 soldiers. John Edwards stated the obvious when he told the New York Times: "To me, that is a continuation of the occupation of Iraq."

Only two candidates have proposed a complete pullout of U.S. troops: Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson. But John Edwards has come very close to their position, saying that he'd only train Iraqi troops outside of Iraq and leave no troops to "guard U.S. bases." And, while he'd keep a rapid-response force in the region, it too would remain outside the country's borders. Unlike Obama and Clinton, he's put a hard number on what he thinks is necessary to keep in-country -- only a single "brigade of 3,500 to 5,000 troops to protect the embassy and possibly a few hundred troops to guard humanitarian workers." He'd pull the rest out within ten months.

Meanwhile, back in Jesusland

Huckabee will save America from the Necrophiliac Agenda

Johann Hari writing for the Independent:

In Huckabee’s hokey breast, the old-style evangelical populism of William Jennings Bryan -the perennial Democratic candidate for President at the turn of the last century - has been reborn. And, like Bryan, he is a barking theocrat. He insists the world was created 6,000 years ago, and he ain’t descended from no monkey. He drawls, “Science changes with every generation with new discoveries, and God doesn’t. So I’ll stick with God.” In the 1990s he suggested quarantining HIV victims, and he openly compares homosexuality to necrophilia and bestiality.

Yikes. More on your post-Iowa Republican front-runner here.

Further reflection on the politics of necrophilia: Maybe that is what Nixon had in mind when he said to Hunter Thompson, "Fuck the doomed". Wouldn't put it past him.

PAF loves cats

But I'm really glad I'm 15 times bigger than they are.

At any lesser ratio, these guys are formidable creatures indeed.

More on the Israel Lobby

from the thoughtful and well-informed Stephen Zunes:

There is no question that the Israel Lobby is one important factor influencing U.S. policy in the Middle East, particularly regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not, however, the only factor or the most important factor.

There is also no question that the Israel Lobby has made informed debate on U.S. support for Israeli policy far more difficult than it would be otherwise and, as a result, has made it much harder for peace and human rights activists to make as much headway in challenging U.S. policy as we would otherwise be able to do. However, while this is certainly not insignificant, this is very different than the assertion of Mearsheimer and Walt that U.S. policy would be considerably more enlightened without the Lobby’s influence.

The US is, after all, an imperial power. The neocons and the Israel Lobby are, in that sense, as much a symptom as a cause.

He's baaack

When Rambo returns, you know Uncle Sam is losing a war somewhere and our hyper-masculine militarized culture needs a dose of viagra. And beautifully timed so that we have the season of "peace on earth" out of our systems and we're ready to start the new year with some glorious gore. I feel more manly already.

The Wicked Queen's sinister plan

We're not talking poisoned apples here, kids:

A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.

Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.

Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the country against treason, espionage and sabotage.” The F.B.I would “apprehend all individuals potentially dangerous” to national security, Hoover’s proposal said. The arrests would be carried out under “a master warrant attached to a list of names” provided by the bureau.

The names were part of an index that Hoover had been compiling for years. “The index now contains approximately twelve thousand individuals, of which approximately ninety-seven per cent are citizens of the United States,” he wrote.

“In order to make effective these apprehensions, the proclamation suspends the Writ of Habeas Corpus,” it said. ...Hoover’s plan called for “the permanent detention” of the roughly 12,000 suspects at military bases as well as in federal prisons.

Hoover was such a patriot, he was willing to sacrifice our most basic rights to keep this country free. If only we had more like him.

Oh wait, we do!

P.S. And the "queen" part, that's just fine by us. Hoover was a consenting adult who should not have been closeted and locked into a self-loathing and self-destructive homophobic ideology. Homophobia, anti-communism and compulsory patriotism are not strangers after all.

Just for Mike Huckabeee

As an "ideological secularist" and "fanatically twisted fringe" element, PAF is happy to support publicly endorsed and institutionally supported Necrophilia. Yeah baby, that's right at the top of my agenda. Makes a dandy bumber sticker, too.

On the other hand, I can think of worse things to do with our tax dollars (like for example waging unnecessary wars and creating hundreds of thousands more cadavers for Mike Huckabeeee to fantasize about).

More Huckabeee here.

Adventures in Jesusland

NYT on Creationism Institute for training (drumroll please) science teachers:

HOUSTON — A Texas higher education panel has recommended allowing a Bible-based group called the Institute for Creation Research to offer online master’s degrees in science education.

The action comes weeks after the Texas Education Agency’s director of science, Christine Castillo Comer, lost her job after superiors accused her of displaying bias against creationism and failing to be “neutral” over the teaching of evolution.

The state’s commissioner of higher education, Raymund A. Paredes, said late Monday that he was aware of the institute’s opposition to evolution but was withholding judgment until the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board meets Jan. 24 to rule on the recommendation, made last Friday, by the board’s certification advisory council.

Henry Morris III, the chief executive of the Institute for Creation Research, said Tuesday that the proposed curriculum, taught in California, used faculty and textbooks “from all the top schools” along with, he said, the “value added” of challenges to standard teachings of evolution.

“Where the difference is, we provide both sides of the story,” Mr. Morris said. On its Web site, the institute declares, “All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six literal days of the creation week” and says it “equips believers with evidences of the Bible’s accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs, and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.”

It also says “the harmful consequences of evolutionary thinking on families and society (abortion, promiscuity, drug abuse, homosexuality and many others) are evident all around us.”

Asked how the institute could educate students to teach science, Dr. Paredes, who holds a doctorate in American civilization from the University of Texas and served 10 years as vice chancellor for academic development at the University of California, said, “I don’t know. I’m not a scientist.”

What a state. What a country!

Representatives Wexler, Gutierrez, and Baldwin call for Cheney Impeachment Hearings

John Nichols writes in The Nation:

Three senior members of the House Judiciary Committee have called for the immediate opening of impeachment hearings for Vice President Richard Cheney.

Democrats Robert Wexler of Florida, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on Friday distributed a statement, “A Case for Hearings,” that declares, “The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens.”

In particular, the Judiciary Committee members cite the recent revelation by former White House press secretary Scott McClellan that the Vice President and his staff purposefully gave him false information about the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent as part of a White House campaign to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson. On the basis of McClellan’s statements, Wexler, Gutierrez and Baldwin say, “it is even more important for Congress to investigate what may have been an intentional obstruction of justice.” The three House members argue that, “Congress should call Mr. McClellan to testify about what he described as being asked to ‘unknowingly [pass] along false information.’”

Adding to the sense of urgency, the members note that “recent revelations have shown that the Administration including Vice President Cheney may have again manipulated and exaggerated evidence about weapons of mass destruction — this time about Iran’s nuclear capabilities.”

Corporate Power and Energy Policy

NYT:

Pared-down energy legislation cleared the Senate on Thursday by a wide margin after the oil industry and utilities succeeded in stripping out provisions that would have cost them billions of dollars.

The legislation still contains a landmark increase in fuel-economy standards for vehicles and a huge boost for alternative fuels. But a $13 billion tax increase on oil companies and a requirement that utilities nationwide produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources were left on the floor to secure Republican votes for the package.

The tax measure and the renewable electricity mandate were included in an energy bill that easily passed the House last week. But industry lobbyists focused their attention on Republican members of the Senate and on the White House, which repeatedly threatened to veto the bill if the offending sections were not removed.

...Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth Action, accused Senate Democrats of “capitulating” to Senate Republicans and the White House.

“When the Republican leadership and the polluter lobby have blocked important legislation, Senate Democrats have been all too willing to move in their direction,” Mr. Blackwelder said in a statement. “The result is that the two most positive provisions of the energy bill — a clean energy mandate and a tax package reining in handouts for fossil fuels and promoting clean energy — are being removed, while detrimental provisions, such as a radical five-fold increase in unsustainable biofuel use, remain.”

Jews ≠ neocons

Glenn Greenwald:

A new survey of American Jewish opinion, released by the American Jewish Committee, demonstrates several important propositions: (1) right-wing neocons (the Bill Kristol/Commentary/ AIPAC/Marty Peretz faction) who relentlessly claim to speak for Israel and for Jews generally hold views that are shared only by a small minority of American Jews; (2) viewpoints that are routinely demonized as reflective of animus towards Israel or even anti-Semitism are ones that are held by large majorities of American Jews; and (3) most American Jews oppose U.S. military action in the Middle East — including both in Iraq and against Iran.

Tex refusal protest

Chris Hedges has decided that he can no longer in good conscience pay taxes that fund America's wars. This is a deeply admirable decision, defended with both clarity and passion. Why aren't we all tax refusers, or in jail for some form of civil disobedience?

PAF has been arrested for CD before, part of a protest against an earlier war. It made me feel a little better, kind of. Business as usual over our dead bodies, goddamit. For about 15 minutes, our protest action impeded the ability of federal civil servants to get to their offices through the front door of the building. Then we were politely arrested and taken in a police bus to be booked in the police department auditorium. Whether we liked it or not we got our names in the paper. A few people thought we were heros, we were villified by many more, but most ignored us. All of us took personal risks to do this. I truly believed my career was at risk. And what did we accomplish? We risked arrest for political reasons. We fucking courted arrest. We were arrested. The war went merrily on, and almost no one noticed or cared about what we had done.

Over the years I have come to think about this as a moral statement that I believed I needed to make at the time. We felt better about ourselves for having made the statement and for having taken some risks to do so. But it was certainly not politically effective in any way whatever. In short, it was as much about me and my fellow protesters as it was about the war.

I admire Chris Hedges for doing what he is doing. He is taking much more serious risks than I did, or than I would be willing to do, especially now that I am a parent. I wish him well. But I think these sorts of individually defiant gestures are unlikely to stop the war or change the direction of the country. Having said that, I must also confess that I have no better answer. Perhaps that makes me one of the Good Germans.

Establishment Dems complicit in torture?

Your opposition party at work:

According to the Washington Post, since 2002 leading Democrats lawmakers received "about 30 private CIA briefings, some of which included descriptions of waterboarding, overseas rendition sites, "and other harsh interrogation methods." Officials present at some of the meetings, told the Post that the reaction from legislators "was not just approval, but encouragement."

More here.

American as Apple fucking Pie

Death Squads, Disappearances, and Torture

Proto-fascist tendencies

Scapegoating and eliminationist rhetoric have become increasingly pervasive in "mainstream" conservatism.

Ron Paul

may not be as stupidly militant (or militantly stupid) as Rudy Fucking Guiliani.

But he does flirt with some pretty nasty shit in the form of "New World Order" conspiracy theories.

Name that tune

"Jesus blows up balloons all day"


Answer

PAF wonders

if these guys weren't onto something.

Cause it's hard to be free if you're not attacking someone

Remember those fun folks at Freedom's Watch?

They're doing focus groups to figure out how to sell an attack against Iran to the American public.

What fun!

gobsmacked

Tom Tomorrow ponders the fact that we are actually debating how much torture is ok.

Of course, one person's torture is another person's daily hydration requirement.

It's "assisted hydration," don'tchaknow; kinda like "enhanced interrogation."

The United States Does Not Torture People. We just enhance their experience with a hydrational assist.

Re-runs

Cheney is trying to diddle the intelligence on Iran.

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

Haven't we seen this show before?

As I recall, it wasn't very good the first time around.

Can we change the channel?

David Horowitz is bonkers?

Who knew???

Bush's "Osama card"

and why the Dems suck.

courtesy of AmericaBlog.

As if we needed another reason

to oppose Giuliani

More from Crooks and Liars.

Implausible deniability

The United States does not Torture.

No sir.

Not us.

Who knows what can happen when Uncle Sam hands people over to authoritarian allies and, with a wink and a nod, says "We'd sure like to know what this guy knows about such and such." We can hardly be resposible if they beat the guy half to death and lock him in a tiny box for hours on end.

I guess, you know, stuff happens. Not our fault. Nope.

Talk of Iranian nuclear threat "hyperbolic"

In the run up to the Iraq war, Knight-Ridder/McClatchy News Service was one of the few major news outlets to explicitly call into question administration falsehoods about Iraq. This was an enormous public service. Now they are reporting on the "hyperbolic" nature of administration fear-mongering of Iran.

Despite President Bush's claims that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons that could trigger "World War III," experts in and out of government say there's no conclusive evidence that Tehran has an active nuclear-weapons program.

And even if Iran did acquire a nuclear weapons capability at some point in the future, they would be effectively deterred from using it by the threat of total annihilation - the very same logic of deterrence which we relied upon to prevent nuclear war with the Soviet Union (remember them? PAF enjoys a moment of nostalgia).

Ahmadinejad's alleged threats against Israel have been similarly exaggerated and distorted, and in any case his office is not equivalent to the American Presidency and he is not in control of Iranian Foreign Policy.

There is no reason to believe that Iran poses a grave threat to the existence of Israel or to the security of the US. But a nuclear-armed Iran would be harder for Uncle Sam to push around insofar as they too would possess some deterrent capability. So PAF thinks the reason for the push to attack Iran now is to forestall a situation in which Iran might have some ability to deter or limit US military expansionism in their neighborhood. US imperial domination of the region may be at stake, but US or Israeli survival and security is not.

Imperial Petro-politics: the new 'Washington Consensus'

Michael Klare:

The New 'Washington Consensus'

The need for a vigorous US military role in protecting energy assets abroad has been a major theme in American foreign policy since 1945, when President Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and promised to protect the kingdom in return for privileged access to Saudi oil.

In the most famous expression of this linkage, President Carter affirmed in January 1980 that the unimpeded flow of Persian Gulf oil is among this country's vital interests and that to protect this interest, the United States will employ "any means necessary, including military force." This principle was later cited by President Reagan as the rationale for "reflagging" Kuwaiti oil tankers with the American ensign during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 and protecting them with US warships--a stance that led to sporadic clashes with Iran. The same principle was subsequently invoked by George H.W. Bush as a justification for the Gulf War of 1991.

In considering these past events, it is important to recognize that the use of military force to protect the flow of imported petroleum has generally enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Washington. Initially, this bipartisan outlook was largely focused on the Persian Gulf area, but since 1990, it has been extended to other areas as well. President Clinton eagerly pursued close military ties with the Caspian Sea oil states of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan after the breakup of the USSR in 1991, while George W. Bush has avidly sought an increased US military presence in Africa's oil-producing regions, going so far as to favor the establishment of a US Africa Command (Africom) in February.

One might imagine that the current debacle in Iraq would shake this consensus, but there is no evidence that this is so. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case: possibly fearful that the chaos in Iraq will spread to other countries in the Gulf region, senior figures in both parties are calling for a reinvigorated US military role in the protection of foreign energy deliveries.

Perhaps the most explicit expression of this elite consensus is an independent task force report, National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency, backed by many prominent Democrats and Republicans. It was released by the bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), co-chaired by John Deutch, deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton Administration, and James Schlesinger, defense secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations, in October 2006. The report warns of mounting perils to the safe flow of foreign oil. Concluding that the United States alone has the capacity to protect the global oil trade against the threat of violent obstruction, it argues the need for a strong US military presence in key producing areas and in the sea lanes that carry foreign oil to American shores.

An awareness of this new "Washington consensus" on the need to protect overseas oil supplies with American troops helps explain many recent developments in Washington. Most significant, it illuminates the strategic stance adopted by President Bush in justifying his determination to retain a potent US force in Iraq--and why the Democrats have found it so difficult to contest that stance.

Consider Bush's September 13 prime-time speech on Iraq. "If we were to be driven out of Iraq," he prophesied, "extremists of all strains would be emboldened.... Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region. Extremists could control a key part of the global energy supply." And then came the kicker: "Whatever political party you belong to, whatever your position on Iraq, we should be able to agree that America has a vital interest in preventing chaos and providing hope in the Middle East." In other words, Iraq is no longer about democracy or WMDs or terrorism but about maintaining regional stability to ensure the safe flow of petroleum and keep the American economy on an even keel; it was almost as if he was speaking to the bipartisan crowd that backed the CFR report cited above.

It is very clear that the Democrats, or at least mainstream Democrats, are finding it exceedingly difficult to contest this argument head-on. In March, for example, Senator Hillary Clinton told the New York Times that Iraq is "right in the heart of the oil region" and so "it is directly in opposition to our interests" for it to become a failed state or a pawn of Iran. This means, she continued, that it will be necessary to keep some US troops in Iraq indefinitely, to provide logistical and training support to the Iraqi military. Senator Barack Obama has also spoken of the need to maintain a robust US military presence in Iraq and the surrounding area. Thus, while calling for the withdrawal of most US combat brigades from Iraq proper, he has championed an "over-the-horizon force that could prevent chaos in the wider region."

Given this perspective, it is very hard for mainstream Democrats to challenge Bush when he says that an "enduring" US military presence is needed in Iraq or to change the Administration's current policy, barring a major military setback or some other unforeseen event. By the same token, it will be hard for the Democrats to avert a US attack on Iran if this can be portrayed as a necessary move to prevent Tehran from threatening the long-term safety of Persian Gulf oil supplies.

Nor can we anticipate a dramatic change in US policy in the Gulf region from the next administration, whether Democratic or Republican. If anything, we should expect an increase in the use of military force to protect the overseas flow of oil, as the threat level rises along with the need for new investment to avert even further reductions in global supplies.

Calling Bullshit on the War-bots

Daily Kos has a very thorough and persusaive debunking of the hard-liners' drive for war with Iran.

This is definitely worth taking the time to read. Especially since a majority of Americans apparently now accept that a military strike on Iran would be warranted to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons program (of which there is no evidence).