As seen from Just Above Sunset

Thursday, 18 May 2006

Notes on the New America
Topic: Chasing the Zeitgeist

Notes on the New America

Some days are slow news days, and some filled with events that seem to reveal a great deal and who we are, or what we're becoming. Thursday, May 18, 2006, was on of the latter. Here's an array of that day's events for you consideration, with commentary.

Chickens Coming Home to Roost, Again

This was supposed to go away. From these pages, March 29, 2006, The game is winding down, the one started on the nursery school playground... -

And if Abu Ghraib and some events at Guantánamo weren't enough now we have Haditha.

Well, it doesn't really count as March madness, as the event happened on 19 November last year. Marines this time. The Pentagon and Naval Criminal Investigative Service have opened an investigation (the Marines are traditionally part of the Navy). Time magazine covers it here - a raid where we captured a bad guy, but fifteen civilians, including six women and children, died. Was it civilians unfortunately in the way? The building just collapsed and that was that?

We say so. The local police say no. It may be that our guys lost one of there own and got angry and things spun out of control. A cameraman working for Reuters in Haditha at the time said bodies were left lying in the street for hours after the attack. One source here has the women and children handcuffed and shot in the head, execution-style. ABC News covers it here with video of the aftermath shot by an Iraqi journalism student - but who did what? That there is now a formal investigation is not a good sign. We've been forced to look into this. Abandoning the usual "sorry, fog of war" line is not a good sign. Ah, maybe it's nothing - things happened just as the guys said.

In the same issue this was also mentioned here to make a different point, and again in the April 16th issue here in another context - "When a culture is as historically clueless and morally desensitized as this one appears to be..."

But then it was time to let it go, and not mention the three Marine officers from that same unit who had been dismissed from command, for the cryptic reason that their superiors had "lost confidence" in their battlefield decisions. It was a local story, from Camp Pendleton, the big Marine base down the coast at Oceanside. And it was Donald Rumsfeld who famously said of the looting of Baghdad and the murders in the streets there, "stuff happens." Democracy is messy and all that. Maybe this was a "stuff happens" thing. Or maybe it's just not true.

But the story resurfaced here on May 17th from NBC -

A Pentagon probe into the death of Iraqi civilians last November in the Iraqi city of Haditha will show that U.S. Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood," a U.S. lawmaker said Wednesday.

From the beginning, Iraqis in the town of Haditha said U.S. Marines deliberately killed 15 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including seven women and three children.

One young Iraqi girl said the Marines killed six members of her family, including her parents. "The Americans came into the room where my father was praying," she said, "and shot him."

On Wednesday, Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., said the accounts are true.

Military officials told NBC News that the Marine Corps' own evidence appears to show Murtha is right.

A videotape taken by an Iraqi showed the aftermath of the alleged attack: a blood-smeared bedroom floor and bits of what appear to be human flesh and bullet holes on the walls.

The video, obtained by Time magazine, was broadcast a day after town residents told The Associated Press that American troops entered homes on Nov. 19 and shot dead 15 members of two families, including a 3-year-old girl, after a roadside bomb killed a U.S. Marine.

On Nov. 20, U.S. Marines spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool issued a statement saying that on the previous day a roadside bomb had killed 15 civilians and a Marine. In a later gunbattle, U.S. and Iraqi troops killed eight insurgents, he said.

U.S. military officials later confirmed that the version of events was wrong.

Murtha holds a news conference and says when this is over it will be clear that "there was no firefight, there was no IED (improvised explosive device) that killed these innocent people. Our troops overreacted because of the pressure on them, and they killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

NBC gets one military official to admit, off the record, "This one is ugly." The Marine Corps issues a statement saying that they won't say anything - an ongoing investigation and can't mess it up by saying anything now.

Now John Murtha called this news conference not to deal with whatever happened at Haditha, but to point out it had been six months to the day since he had upset everyone and called for "redeployment" of American forces from Iraq. As you recall, when he did that the strange little woman from Cincinnati called Murtha a coward on the floor of the House. The Bush side introduced a sham proposal that we withdraw all forces from Iraq immediately, every single person there, and dared the Democrats to vote for that. Murtha and others protested that's not what Murtha had proposed. The Bush side said it was the same thing, really. It was a mess. Six months later Murtha is still saying the same thing, redeploy big blocks of our forces to other sites in the area and stop making things worse - and this Haditha business is one reason why. Our guys are so stressed out and overextended they can really lose it. And when they do it's awful for everyone, so let's help keep these guys from going all crazy and rethink what where doing, with whom and where.

And then he went on NBC's Hardball and said the same thing (video here).

What's going on?

The right exploded with anger calling him a traitor and saying he should be shot and all that. But he's an odd duck, a Marine himself for almost thirty years, extremely pro-military and on the inside with the top command of all the services. Was he relaying a message to the administration from them, one they themselves couldn't force up the chain of command given the personality of the civilian commander of the armed forces, the current Secretary of Defense, the testy and impatient Donald Rumsfeld with his set ideas on how things should be no matter who says what and no matter what happens? Murtha has played this messenger role before. Was this a massage from the field - our troops need some relief here as this is going nowhere? Perhaps.

But that message was lost as it seems the Haditha event, seeming to be just what Murtha said, itself took center stage - some saying it didn't happen, or if it did it should have never been revealed as it hurts America, and others saying it surely did happen and shows something awful about the guys in charge, or the administration, or the whole idea of the war itself, or our whole culture, or whatever.

See Bill Montgomery here -

When the Abu Ghraib horror show first aired on 60 Minutes, I remember wondering whether it would prove to be the Iraq War's version of the My Lai Massacre - with the photo of the hooded man on his box, arms spread in a crucifix, as the enduring image of a military machine run amok, just as a photo of murdered Vietnamese women and children, sprawled in the middle of a muddy road, became the Americal Division's permanent badge of shame.

To a degree, that's what happened - with the hapless sadists of the 184th Infantry Regiment serving as the collective stand-ins for Lt. William Calley, and Colin Powell reprising his earlier role as the bullshit artist telling everybody what they want to hear.

But now it appears that instead of a symbolic My Lai, we have the genuine article...

And as for that office who said "this one is ugly" -

Ugly? That doesn't even begin to cover it. Dick Cheney is ugly. The Pentagon is ugly. An Abrams tank is ugly. Executing helpless women and children while they're huddled on the floor, praying to their God, is a war crime committed by terrorists. It's Lidice and Rwanda and Srebrenica and, of course, My Lai.

... I don't know if it's better or worse that this atrocity seems to have been committed by a military unit completely out of control, instead of one that was following orders, as was clearly the case at Abu Ghraib. On one hand, you can argue that it's simply a reminder that Americans are as capable of being beasts as anyone else: Germans, Japanese, Russians, Serbs, Arabs, Afghans, Israelis, Somalians, Afrikaaners, Salvadorans - the list goes on and on. There's nothing exceptional about us, even in our war crimes.

On the other hand, the fact that U.S. Marines - the few, the proud, etc. - were capable of such bestiality says something ominous about the psychological state of the American military after three years of being stretched to the limit. These weren't draftees or Guardsmen or pathetic losers like Calley. These were professionals, supposedly the best of the best, and yet they threw away their training, their code and their honor, and drenched themselves and their flag in the blood of innocents. They simply snapped, in other words, and it makes me wonder how many more like them are out there - one IED or ambush away from going berserk.

There is a whiff of genocide in the air, and not just in Iraq. While the keyboard warriors still talk in slightly coded terms about waging war with the "ferocity" required to win, some of the real warriors aren't bothering to conceal what those terms really mean.

As for the congressman from Pennsylvania -

I don't know why Murtha went public (just as the right wingers don't know) but I can make my own guess: He did it to try to prevent Rumsfeld's toadies from classifying and then deep-sixing the investigative report, as they tried to bury the Taguba report on Abu Ghraib. And if the past really is prologue, Murtha is probably speaking on behalf of some fairly senior Marine officers who either can't abide a cover up, or who want to pin the blame on the people who created this mess, and left the jarheads in Haditha to deal with it, instead of on their beloved Corps.

As for the reaction on the right see the roundup from Glenn Greenwald here, including - "Frankly, this is the action of a traitor or a sellout. He deserves to be ridiculed, excoriated and frog-marched off Capitol Hill, then remanded to jail. No bail. Doesn't this idiot know the type of damage this inflicts on the Marines?"

Murtha was thinking of the damage already done, and continuing.

And there's this from Greenwald -

Ultimately, do any of these war supporters really care if these allegations are true? Weren't they just recently celebrating Shelby Steele's recommendation that we fight this war with much less precision and sensitivity to civilian deaths, and with much greater and unrestrained "ferocity"? Are they angry at Murtha for violating their oh-so-deeply held beliefs in the need for due process before publicly proclaiming someone's guilt, or are they angry at him for confirming that the U.S. engaged in conduct in Iraq which, yet again, is incalculably harmful to our image and credibility in that region, supposedly the principal purpose of our occupation?

This administration hates nothing more than people who publicize politically harmful information that they want to conceal. Those who have been most viciously attacked, and at whom the most intense calls for imprisonment have been aimed, have been those who have disclosed information that has reflected poorly on the Commander-in-Chief and his administration. That is what explains these sustained attacks on investigative journalism. Investigative journalists, by definition, reveal information which the Bush administration wants to keep secret, and they are therefore one of the prime Enemies.

And he moves on to those attacks on investigative journalism. It's all the same.

Who we are? A large bloc of us thinks about the Marine shooting the three-year-old and her mother in the head as they pray, and feel that this is fine. We need to show these people not to mess with us. And if you blab about it you're a traitor. Interesting.

Tap-Dancing into the CIA

While all that was being discussed, the no-nonsense, blue-collar general from Pittsburgh (profile with photo here) faced the Senate Intelligence Committee, the first step in his confirmation as the new head of the CIA - they say he's okay and the nomination goes to the full senate for the formality of vote that counts for the record. He'll be fine. He's a shoe-in. John Bolton never got the larger vote to be confirmed as our UN Ambassador, but Bolton had a long history of saying the UN should be eliminated as they were all fools and crooks. The president had to use a recess appointment to get him up to the big blue building on the East River, where he could say such things to their faces there. But that's not the case here. Michael V. Hayden, who for six years ran the NSA with all those spy-on-every-American programs of dubious legality and questionable effectiveness, loves the CIA and wants to make it hum. Or that was his line.

The NSA stuff had to come up, even if his confirmation is assured.

Associated Press has the bare bones here -

CIA director nominee Michael Hayden acknowledged concerns about civil liberties even as he vigorously defended the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program as a legal spy tool needed to ensnare terrorists.

Peppered with tough questions at a daylong confirmation hearing Thursday, the four-star Air Force general portrayed himself as an independent thinker, capable of taking over the CIA as it struggles with issues ranging from nuclear threats to its place among 15 other spy agencies.

Hayden spoke of his own concerns about the no-warrant surveillance program and other eavesdropping operations he oversaw as National Security Agency chief from 1999 until last year.

"Clearly, the privacy of American citizens is a concern - constantly," he told the Senate Intelligence Committee. "And it's a concern in this program. It's a concern in everything we've done."

Hayden said he decided to go ahead with the terrorist surveillance program in October 2001 after internal discussions about what more the NSA could do to detect potential attacks. He believed the work to be legal and necessary, an assertion Democrats and civil liberties groups have aggressively questioned.

"The math was pretty straightforward," Hayden said. "I could not not do this."

As a practical man, legal or not, he had to run those programs. And what does it matter now, in this new job as head of the CIA, or more formally the Director of Central Intelligence?

As for the NSA business, Senator Levin - "Is that the whole program?" Hayden - "I'm not at liberty to talk about that in open session."

So thee was a closed-door session in the evening. No one will know what was said there. Whatever.

Hayden - "I also believe it's time to move past what seems to me to be an endless picking apart of the archaeology of every past intelligence success or failure."

Let it go, guys.

One critic, Christy Hardin Smith, won't, as we see here -

... just got off a phone conference call that the ACLU arranged with Bruce Fein regarding the Hayden nomination for DCI and the implications that the hearings might have for the illegal domestic wiretapping without a warrant in which the NSA has been engaged.

One of the things that Bruce Fein said struck me, and I wanted to bring it to everyone's attention here: the Bush Administration is doing everything it can to prevent any of the illegally collected data and information from being used in any courtroom context, because they do not want to have to face the consequences of a constitutional challenge to their failure to obtain a lawful warrant. Think about that for a moment - Bruce Fein is no liberal, he is a very conservative Reagan Republican, having worked in the DoJ as Deputy Attorney General in the Reagan Administration.

And he is saying, out loud, that the Bush White House is avoiding constitutional scrutiny because they know - they KNOW - they will be shown to be what they are. Lawbreakers.
And Congress has been letting them get away with this, because they have put their perceived duty to their party and to partisanship and division ahead of their duty to the nation, to our principles and our Constitution.

This must stop. And that's where all of our readers come in - if you can, today, please take the time to e-mail, FAX or call the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, first, and ask them to place partisanship aside and put the good of the country and our constitutional system of government first in how they evaluate General Hayden and the NSA wiretapping programs in which he was involved.

But Hayden is saying what's done is done. Let's move on.

Smith say no -

I missed another great Bruce Fein point from my notes: that the Hayden hearings have done nothing to dispel - and have, in fact made it more of a concern - that there is no line that Hayden wouldn't cross if the President asked him to do so. Which makes the need for real, meaningful oversight all the more necessary.

Yeah, yeah, he did toe the administration line - no matter what you learned about the constitution in eight-grade civics class, the president is the big guy there to protect us all and can violate any law and ignore any court ruling about any law as that's his job, to deicide how to keep us safe. Article II says so, sort of - he's the daddy here, although the general from Pittsburgh didn't put it quite that way.

A large bloc of Americans is fine with that, saying we're all the silly kids and he's the stern and nasty daddy. Interesting.

English Only Down Mexico Way

What was daddy up to? He was in Yuma talking up his immigration ideas (see this) - he likes fences. They're neat. The problem is no one agrees what sort of neat wall we should have. The House proposes one across the whole border down that way, almost six hundred miles of wall. The president thinks one half that size would be fine, and the rest could be a virtual wall - he sees unmanned spy drones in the sky, and tethered radar blimps, and motion sensors and cool cameras, and wants almost two billion for the big defense contractors who will set it all up. Neat. The Mexicans are offended the we're thinking of building any kind of wall at all.

Yes, it's not very friendly, but the current chat on the right is all about the Mexican "invasion" - and when you put it like that, they are the enemy. The president has proposed sending in the National Guard, six thousand of them to the border. And even if they're just doing logistic and administrative work, it is nicely military in its feel. A character in a satire on Air America said, as the president was in Yuma, that the real answer was landmines - a few poor guys who need work and their women and children get their legs blown off and there'll be no problem. And someone may make that argument for real soon.

In any event, the real action, unlike in cowboy movies, wasn't in Yuma. The action was back in Washington, where the House is angry with the Senate as the Senate gets all mixed-message on the issue, as is the president. Yep, they vote for a guest worker program, and for offering a path to citizenship for a good number of the twelve million or so illegal immigrants already in the country and being normal and rather boring, as in paying taxes and being good - and at the very same time, so the House and the red-meat but-these-folks-aren't-exactly-white angry folks don't get mad, they vote for a wall (the shorter one with the electronic gizmos) and throw in a kicker. The Senate votes to make English the official language of America.

What? That's a new one.

The Los Angeles Times, from the city where every ATM is English-Spanish, covers that here -

The GOP-backed amendment, which passed 63 to 34, would allow the government to continue to offer publications and services - such as bilingual ballots - in languages other than English. It would require all illegal immigrants seeking to legalize their status in the United States to pass English proficiency tests and would offer guidelines to the Department of Homeland Security for a revised citizenship test.

Heated discussions about the measure dominated the Senate's proceedings, as proponents argued that it was needed to unite the country, while opponents insisted that it would leave the nation more divided.

Designating an official language is important to conservatives, who argue that the government should require English proficiency to ensure that the country does not descend into two societies, and that the 11 million to 12 million undocumented workers now in the United States only become citizens if they can speak the language.

Republicans, led by the principal sponsor, Sen. James Inhoffe (R-Okla.), argued that the amendment is needed because a common language is an important step in allowing people to talk to each other.

"It will help unify us as a nation," said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

But the amendment also creates questions of fairness, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), citing the possibility of someone who is legally in the United States but has difficulty with English. Currently, interpreters are provided in many official forums, such as courts. And many states, including California, provide official ballots in different languages.

"Are we going too far?" Durbin asked about the amendment. "What of people who are poor with limited language skills? Are we being fair?"

Republicans insisted that the amendment's language wouldn't prevent needed translations services.

"We are having a great debate on what it means to be an American," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

Yep, they're arguing about changing the citizenship test.

See this -

"The reason I'm voting for this is that I think it tries to unite us," Graham said, adding that nothing in the amendment prevents the use of interpreters in courtrooms for those whose English is not strong enough. "It doesn't disturb the legal situation in this country. If I thought it did, I wouldn't vote for it."

He sees no slippery slope. No one will later use the law to stop printing ballots in other languages, to keep down the vote of those who just don't vote Republican. No one will later use the law to get rid of court interpreters, putting some of those folks in jail. You have to trust him on that.

"What of people who are poor with limited language skills? Are we being fair?"

We elected one of them (but not poor) to be our president. No problem. Anyone can grow up to be president, even without language skills - or curiosity, knowledge of the world or any significant or relevant experience or talent. We proved it.

As for the president's mixed-message problem - build an impressive wall to keep people out and, at the same time, welcome people and ask them to stay if they're good - John Dickerson here points out the president has done and odd thing, he's trapped himself in a "nuance box" -

President Bush has built his political career on clarity and simplicity. He's presented himself as the teller of truths sharply stated. He and his administration saw things clearly, made crisp decisions, and were home for dinner. In the post-9/11 uproar, Bush's clarity defined him and won him admirers. His plain-spokenness about "evil" was bracing and just what the country seemed to want. But the president's greatest talent has suddenly become a curse. Lack of clarity bedevils Bush on immigration reform, high gas prices, and Iraq. He's now trying to make nuanced arguments but his presidency rests on an anti-nuance platform. Now he has to actually make a subtle case, but he has neither the tools to do so nor a receptive audience.

Democrats have come to see any Bush attempt at nuance as a bait and switch. "Compassionate conservatism" sounded OK to them in 2000, but then Bush turned out to be just conservative. And conservatives see nuance as a sign of weakness, in part because Bush has taught them to view it as such. During the 2004 campaign, Bush advisers and campaign officials turned "nuance" into a pejorative. They walloped Kerry with it like a mallet. It was a point of pride for the president, who once reportedly told Sen. Joe Lieberman, "I don't do nuance."

Now Bush is nuancing all over the place, trying to explain to his supporters the complicated competing interests that require everyone to compromise by gathering at some "rational middle ground." But polling suggests Bush has lost moderates and independents. The only people left who still even listen to him are the ones least likely to buy the pitch.

Maybe so, but one man's nuance and rational middle ground is another's muddleheaded confusion and mixed-messages. One can be sure Vincente Fox is confused, as confused at the House deport-them-all fanatics.

The conflict defines where we are. We're of two minds, or more. But we'll all be confused in English only.

If You Can't Do Anything Useful Do Something Deeply Symbolic and Pointless

With the war not going that well, and the latest dismal polling, showing that on each and every major issue facing America the public prefers what the Democrats might do to what the Republicans seem to be doing, the Republicans need others issues, so they've dug out the old standby issues - we need two constitutional amendments, one to ban a specific behavior in political protests, burning the flag, and an amendment to clarify what the law means by the word marriage.

But even that didn't go well, as you see here -

A Senate committee approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage Thursday, after a shouting match that ended when one Democrat strode out and the Republican chairman bid him "good riddance."

"I don't need to be lectured by you. You are no more a protector of the Constitution than am I," Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., shouted after Sen. Russ Feingold declared his opposition to the amendment, his affinity for the Constitution and his intention to leave the meeting.

"If you want to leave, good riddance," Specter finished.

"I've enjoyed your lecture, too, Mr. Chairman," replied Feingold, D-Wis., who is considering a run for president in 2008. "See ya."

Amid increasing partisan tension over President Bush's judicial nominees and domestic wiretapping, the panel voted along party lines to send the constitutional amendment - which would prohibit states from recognizing same-sex marriages - to the full Senate, where it stands little chance of passing.

Democrats complained that bringing up the amendment is a purely political move designed to appeal to the GOP's conservative base in this year of midterm elections. Under the domed ceiling of the ornate and historic President's Room off the Senate floor, senators voted 10-8 to send the measure forward.

It was a bullshit thing, a secret vote in an obscure office, not the regular meeting room. And it was kind of a joke. Feingold just said so. Specter got pissed - courtesy demands that when you do this sort of pandering that will go nowhere at all, the opposition isn't suppose to laugh at you and point it out.

That afternoon, on CNN's Situation Room, Jack Cafferty explains to host Wolf Blitzer the question to which viewers should send email answers (video here) -

Jack Cafferty: Wolf, today's lesson in hypocrisy comes to us courtesy of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They met in a different private room behind closed doors today and approved a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage. at one point the thing got pretty ugly. A shouting match, between the Republican Chairman Senator Arlen Specter and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, who said he was against the Amendment as well as Specter's decision to hold the vote in a private room out of the public's view.

These guys are shameless. Feingold eventually stormed out telling Specter "I've enjoyed your lecture Mr Chairman. See ya."

Senator Specter in a real show of courage, says that he is "totally opposed to the Amendment", but he voted for it anyway saying that it deserves a debate in the Senate. Majority Leader Bill Frist says the full Senate will now debate a Constitutional Amendment which has absolutely no chance of passing. Frist hopes to have a vote by June 5th.

This is all being done by the Republican majority in an effort to appeal to right-wing nuts in the Republican Party ahead of the upcoming mid-term elections. Ignore all of the pressing issues facing the country, and instead go grovel at the feet of the lunatic fringe. Senator Frist should be very proud of himself. That's leadership. Here's the question: Is now the time for the Senate to consider a constitutional amendment on gay marriage?"

Where we are now? Not only is everyone now developing a pretty good bullshit detector, they're laughing at what is clearly nonsense. Times are changing.

Sorry About That

In these pages, December 11, 2005, in a discussion of extraordinary rendition, where we secretly kidnap selected people and make them disappear without a trace to use some rather harsh methods to get them to talk, this - the long and short of it is we grabbed a German citizen in Macedonia, we imprisoned him and beat him up and all that, held him for five months of that sort of thing, and realized he was a nobody. We decided to release him - what was the point of keeping him? But we told the German government no matter what the guy said, they should keep quiet and not reveal we goofed on this one. We didn't need any legal crap, so they needed to lie and maintain our cover. We don't do such things - no kidnapping, no secret prisons, no harsh treatment. Not us. We asked them to back us on this. Deny everything.

That did work out so well. He sued.

But luckily that didn't work so well for him, as noted here -

A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by a German man who said he was illegally detained and tortured in overseas prisons run by the CIA, ruling that a lawsuit would improperly expose state secrets.

Thursday's ruling by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III makes no determination on the validity of the claims by Khaled al-Masri, who said he was kidnapped on New Year's Eve 2003 and detained for nearly five months before finally being dumped on an abandoned road in Albania.

The ruling hands a victory to the Bush administration, which intervened in the civil lawsuit to prevent exposure of its tactics in the war on terrorism.

During his detention, al-Masri said he was beaten and sodomized with a foreign object by his captors. He also alleges that a CIA team forced him to wear a diaper and drugged him before a flight to an Afghan prison and refused to contact German authorities about his arrest.

Ellis said he was satisfied after receiving a secret written briefing from the director of central intelligence that allowing al-Masri's lawsuit to proceed would harm national security.

"In the present circumstances, al-Masri's private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets," Ellis wrote.

That's where we are. Be careful out there.

The guy's lawyer says it's absurd to think al-Masri's lawsuit would expose state secrets because many of the details of al-Masri's detention have been made public and confirmed by government sources in newspaper reports - "There isn't really any dispute about what happened."

The judge says "putting aside all the legal issues, if al-Masri's allegations are true or substantially true, then all fair-minded people ... must also agree that al-Masri has suffered injuries as the result of our country's mistake and deserves a remedy." But he says that's not his job. Congress might do something, or the president's executive branch. You want a remedy to an injustice? These days don't go to court. The courts can be neutered.

And that's where we are on that.

He's Back

There's a whole lot of discussion about the new Al Gore movie, which is this -

From director Davis Guggenheim comes the Sundance Film Festival hit, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which offers a passionate and inspirational look at one man's fervent crusade to halt global warming's deadly progress in its tracks by exposing the myths and misconceptions that surround it. That man is former Vice President Al Gore, who, in the wake of defeat in the 2000 election, re-set the course of his life to focus on a last-ditch, all-out effort to help save the planet from irrevocable change. In this eye-opening and poignant portrait of Gore and his "traveling global warming show," Gore also proves himself to be one of the most misunderstood characters in modern American public life. Here he is seen as never before in the media - funny, engaging, open and downright on fire about getting the surprisingly stirring truth about what he calls our "planetary emergency" out to ordinary citizens before it's too late.

It's big. The buzz is growing, as in this from Franklin Foer at the National Review -

I found myself walking out in a strange mood. I had just seen a movie featuring a politician ... and there wasn't a trace of snark or cynicism coursing through my body. The film has genuine rhetorical power. It builds an incredibly frightening case without hints of fear-mongering or over-wrought moments. Because Gore is truly self-deprecating, the movie doesn't ever feel like an ego-trip - although it does occasionally look like a giant product placement for Apple. At any rate, I walked out of the movie and decided to sell my car and begin otherwise preparing for our planet's impending doom. I know this praise isn't so unexpected coming from TNR. But I think the movie has the potential to become a seminal political document - a cinematic Silent Spring

Can't have that. Check out the new massive ad campaign by the oil companies, through their PR arm, the Competitive Enterprise Institute here - there is no global warming and carbon dioxide is your friend - "We breathe it out, plants breathe it in." Take THAT, Al. Don't pick on our friend.

Some things never change, but Al's working on it.

Posted by Alan at 23:07 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Friday, 19 May 2006 08:49 PDT home

Wednesday, 10 May 2006

Storm Warnings
Topic: Chasing the Zeitgeist

Storm Warnings

Some news days are slow news days, where there are no one or two big events, just follow-up on the events of previous days as reporters try to work out context and background (and we get long "thumb suckers" - those background stories that run on and on). Those who do commentary in print, and on the net and on air, try to explain the "what it all means" of whatever it is that has recently happened, but that's ephemeral stuff - things will change again and again, and what it all means is will be decided down the road, with more startling news events figured in, if what it all means will ever be decided.

Tuesday, May 9, was one of those slow news days. No big gun suddenly left office, no one else was shot in the face by the vice president, there were no additional odd nominations to key government posts, and, save for the serious brush fires in Florida and the spring tornados from Tulsa to Memphis, no natural disasters.

But there were storm warnings. With the word getting out that the upcoming hurricane season would be as bad as last year, with its new record of twenty-eight named hurricanes, Reuters was reporting this - "A hurricane with only moderate intensity could wreak havoc in New York City because it has been years since the nation's financial center faced severe weather, government forecasters warned on Tuesday." Even a puny Category Two would be a disaster, and they explain why (it has to do with very tall buildings and fluid dynamics). As for the spring tornados, they've been running at three times the normal number. The administration has long claimed that all this has nothing to do with global warming, and punished any government scientist who said such things, but the data are biased against them, once again.

But this is just weather. You can't blame anyone for the weather. Well, maybe you can.

There actually was a milestone sort of storm warning in the financial world - Gold Prices Hit Highest Level Since 1980. That would be just over seven hundred dollars an ounce. Worrisome? Some sort of ominous indicator? Perhaps. Traditionally in times of trouble, when no one knows what government will do what, and which currency will suddenly turn to toilet paper, and no one knows which market will crash or what anything will eventually cost, you move your capital to something safe, and that's gold. Sell the stocks and bonds, and forget holding cash in any one currency. Gold is safe.

Is there a collective agreement forming here that bad times are coming, or worse times if you'd like? It's either a slow panic gathering momentum, or lemming-like copycat trading (we don't know anything ourselves someone seems to know something). Maybe those are the same thing. Still, it is curious. The "market" is said to have its own accurate forecasting insight, even if no individual investor is making any "the world is ending" proclamations - the "collective wisdom" is far more accurate at predicting the future than any individual.

It's a worry. Warren Buffet and George Soros made their fortunes listening to "the market" and not to individuals, riding the trend, not the immediate data. And too the dollar dropped at the same time - a Euro cost 1.28 as the day ended. When watching Al Gore concede the presidency to George Bush on CNN International on a small television in a Paris hotel room, one of those new Euros cost eighty-five cents and walking across the street to the Flore for overpriced coffee was no big deal. The last six years have been odd. And the trend just got really obvious.

But no one follows such things, or few do. High finance, gold prices and foreign exchange rates are for the top business folks, not a concern for Joe Six-Pack. They're not immediate concerns, until it's too late and they are.

And is it too late for the administration? The storm warnings there were clear.

As mentioned previously, the week before the administration got some good news - the Fox News poll showed a reversal in the low approval ratings. The president moved up from thirty-three percent to thirty-eight percent approval. The man who thinks Bush hung the moon, Fred Barnes, here said things were actually turning around. Just look at the numbers. Then on Monday USA Today / Gallup released their new numbers - a drop in the president's approval rating of three points in one week, down to a record low of thirty-one percent. Which is showing the real trend?

Tuesday, May 9, the CBS / New York Times poll was the tie-breaker with this -

Mr. Bush's overall job approval rating hit another new low, 31 percent, tying the low point of his father, George H. W. Bush, in July 1992, four months before the elder Mr. Bush lost his bid for a second term to Bill Clinton. That is the third lowest approval rating of any president in 50 years; only Richard M. Nixon and Jimmy Carter were viewed less favorably.

Only the core of the ever-sinking core remains. Can this be turned around? Bomb Iran? Build that giant wall across the Mexican border and round up the eleven or twelve million illegal immigrant workers, load them in boxcars and send them back? Dump Cheney for Rice? (That last one does sound like a serving suggestion, of course.)

Bill Montgomery says it really doesn't matter -

The point is, when you get down to 31% approval in a Gallup Poll, and your disapproval rating is trying to poll vault over the record high set by Richard Nixon just before he resigned in disgrace, it means the American people essentially think you're the political equivalent of crab lice. At that point, they're probably going to hate anything and everything you do - even if they actually agree with it - just because you're the one doing it.

There is no recovery. Even doing something really cool won't work. The House and Senate probably will shift and be in the control of the opposition party for the last two years, and there'll be more than a bit of explaining to do. Saying "I'm the decider" and walking away won't cut it. It'll be a return to the old days, where elected leaders explain why they made whatever decisions they made, to the people they serve. The experiment in the new "I don't have to explain a damned thing" leadership theory will be over. Back to how democracy had been understood how to work. You thought you owed nothing to the public by way of keeping them in the loop? Well, it was interesting while it lasted. It'll be like old times.

Of course the business with stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons could be a chance to be the cowboy hero, and change everything around, but the same day the second poll showed that thirty-one percent approval rating the bad guys weren't doing the showdown thing at all. They wanted to "communicate" - as if this all wasn't some street in Dodge City but, instead, a "let's talk" session over latte at a downtown Starbucks. Bummer.

The day was filled with the details of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent personal letter to George Bush, in Persian with a convenient English translation (here in PDF format). It was pretty wacky, and the New York Times discusses it here, but basically it says the world's a mess, Saddam Hussein was a really bad man of course, and Jesus is cool, a fine prophet, but bombing Iran would be counterproductive, and Western-style democracy just isn't for us, and, say, we could get together and work out our differences and maybe make things better everywhere. There are eighteen pages of that.

The tone is rather insulting and it's not well-structured, but it is "the first direct communication between the two countries' leaders since Iranian militants overthrew the shah and took Americans hostage at the U.S. Embassy in 1979." That's got to count for something. To some it seemed a perfect example of "the medium is the message" the actual contents were clap-trap and boilerplate rants. But the news was that the letter was sent at all. The president has been advised to set this up this Iran business as the usual say-nothing and glower cowboy showdown, which is what he sells us all as how things should be done in this world, and Ahmadinejad sends a damned letter saying "you know, we should talk." Not fair. He wants to appear reasonable and open (with the emphasis on "appear") and it seemed an attempt to make the cowboy thing look just bullheaded and rather stupid. It really doesn't matter what was in the letter. Sending it, and making sure the world knew he sent it, is just damned awkward.

The president ignored it, and Secretary of State Rice said it was a ploy. Our UN ambassador, John "The UN Sucks" Bolton, said "We don't have anything to say to Iran until they give up their pursuit of nuclear weapons." One think tank guy summed it up, saying the prevailing attitude was clear - "Why should we reward Iran's bad behavior by talking to it when we haven't in the past? It would be conferring legitimacy on the regime. And why reward them for things they should be doing anyway?"

So we won't talk to Iran, and even though they've been asking us to, we won't even join in the talks we've asked the Europeans to continue. That's for the "little nations." We don't do that. They say we should just try to talk. What's the problem? What harm could it do now? Even some members of congress are saying that.

The irony is the president is saying, just as he said in the run up to the Iraq war, that he wants a diplomatic solution - war is the last resort and all that. The kicker is the diplomacy will be done by others, while we watch from sidelines, and if it fails, we get to bomb. We don't actually do diplomacy ourselves. We set up the appropriate scapegoats for when we do bomb the snot out of Iran, saying, see, diplomacy doesn't work.

Would it work if we joined in? Who knows? It's not going to happen.

Note this -

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's abrupt dismissal of a letter from Iran's president might only strengthen hardline attitudes and mistrust of America, some Iranians warned Tuesday.

As President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began a high-profile visit to a key Muslim country, Indonesia, a former top Iranian official said Rice's response will give new justification to those who oppose ties with the U.S.

Iran's former ambassador to France, Sadeq Kharrazi, said the letter the first from an Iranian head of state to an American president in 27 years "could have been a turning point in relations." But he said Rice squandered the opportunity with what he called a "hasty reaction."

"This gives a pretext to those in Iran who oppose re-establishment of ties with America," he said.

The brush-off was not a good tactical response. Ahmadinejad is getting great press.

Should have called his bluff and made him look stupid. Kennedy corresponded with Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis Eisenhower corresponded with former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh way back when. When things get hot that is what you used to do.

This is a change. Bush is an unusual president, unique in fact. No administration in our history has ever tried this "we won't talk" kind of approach to the world before - no public communication, no backchannel contacts - no nothing. Let others try that if it makes them happy. Knock yourselves out. We take the moral high ground. People will admire us and respect us for that. It's an interesting theory. And quite mad. Had Bush been in the White House in 1962 we'd all be dead, but be right - the Soviet missiles in Cuba had to go.

Ah well. Here we go again. After Iran, Syria, and so on.

And there were other storm warnings the same day, as in this -

America may be the world's superpower, but its survival rate for newborn babies ranks near the bottom among developed nations.

Among 33 industrialized nations examined in a new report, the United States tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with a death rate of nearly 5 per 1,000 babies. Only Latvia had higher mortality figures, with 6 per 1,000, according to the report by the U.S.-based Save the Children.

... Researchers noted that the United States is more racially diverse and has a greater degree of economic disparity than many other developed countries, making it more challenging to provide culturally appropriate health care.

... The lack of national health insurance and short maternity leaves in the U.S. can lead to poor health care before and during pregnancy, increasing risks for premature births and low birth weight, which are the leading causes of newborn death in industrialized countries.

We beat Latvia! We tied Malta! And this got a lot of press. The storm warning, of course, is that voters rank healthcare and health insurance as a major issue, and once again the facts are biased, as they say, making the administration's line - keep the government out of healthcare as the market knows best and economic competition always fixes everything - look just stupid. Dead babies have that effect. Ask Jonathan Swift. Trouble ahead.

But at least our military is strong, except for the recruiting problems. But the same day there was another warning sign from Portland this time, where Army recruiters just signed up an autistic eighteen-year-old. The shy and silent lad didn't know there was a war in Iraq until his parents told him about it last fall. The implications are obvious. This is not a good sign.

In that Gallup poll, seventy-three percent of Americans believe that their country is generally headed "off on the wrong track." Could be.

But there are some signs that aren't storm warnings, as in the latest news about our detention facility down Guantánamo way.

The president gave an interview to a German television station. Why not? German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in town. And putting aside his saying his happiest moment in his six years as president was catching a very big bass down at the Texas ranch, from the pond he had built and had stocked (he may not really like his job and that mean Uncle Dick), he said this -

I very much would like to end Guantánamo; I very much would like to get people to a court. And we're waiting for our Supreme Court to give us a decision as to whether the people need to have a fair trial in a civilian court or in a military court.

What?

Dahlia Lithwick, in a long and detailed item in Slate notes this -

His statement was surprising for several reasons, not least because it represents a major reversal from prior policy statements about the camp. While the president has suggested that he was open to rethinking the camp, as recently as January Bush insisted - in response to German Chancellor Angela Merkel's demands that he shut the camp down - that "Guantanamo is a necessary part of protecting the American people and so long as the war on terror goes on ... we will inevitably need to hold people that would do ourselves harm." And only last February Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Council on Foreign Relations, "Every once in a while someone pops up and gets some press for saying 'Oh let's close Guantanamo Bay.' Well, if someone has a better idea, I'd like to hear it." Apparently Bush has a better idea.

Well, the evidence is contradictory, as Kellogg-Brown-Root, the Halliburton subsidiary, is almost finished with the thirty-million-dollar state-of-the-art prison there. It opens in August. On the other hand by then there may only be three hundred or so prisoners left, of the over seven hundred, as we're letting them go in dribs and drabs, as they may not have been "the worst of the worst." Oops. Lithwick has all the details.

But this is big news, as she explains -

The most important aspect of the president's comment isn't just that he acknowledged, at least tacitly, that Gitmo is a disaster and must be closed; or even that he acknowledged that detainees have a basic right to some adjudicatory process. These two concessions are momentous, but they pale next to his admission that he is in any way bound by the decision of the high court - that the court will have the last word on anything to do with the war on terror.

It's been this administration's contention from the start that what happens on Guantanamo is absolutely immunized from court review. That's been the blanket argument from the outset: It's the president's war and the courts and Congress have no role to play - short of lying down very quietly until Armistice Day. The president's newfound acceptance of the authority of the judicial branch may be nothing more than convenient political cover: He can close the camp and say the dumb court forced him to do it, just as the dumb court forced him to release Hamdi and to remove Jose Padilla to civilian court.

Still, with each new concession to the court's ability to constrain his decisions, the president admits that his views alone are not the law of the land.

Now that is news. It's the opposite of a storm warning. Things may get back to normal.

Posted by Alan at 00:31 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Wednesday, 10 May 2006 08:23 PDT home

Thursday, 4 May 2006

Chickens, Coming Home, Roosting
Topic: Chasing the Zeitgeist

Chickens, Coming Home, Roosting

It seems the chickens are coming home to roost for the administration. At least they were on Thursday, May 4th, and that's as good an "old saying" as any. Here's a sampling of that day's returning chickens.

Chicken Number One: What You Said That You Really Didn't Say

It seems that our first lady, Laura Bush, in an interview on CNN with John King midweek, defended her husband, the current president, by telling King that everyone misunderstood - when the president gave that nationally televised speech under that "Mission Accomplished" banner on the Abraham Lincoln three years ago, he only meant that the mission of that particular aircraft carrier had been accomplished. She didn't see why people didn't get it, and thought he was saying we'd fixed the Iraq problem. Yes, we all misunderstood. There's a satiric and mildly clever rewrite of the actual speech with the hidden subtext we all missed here, but this is a minor thing. She holds no office and makes no decisions. Her husband is "the decider." He said so. He said that in the defense of defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, with all the recent calls for his ouster. No one else can decide he goes but "the decider" - and the designated decider decided he stays.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld does hold office, one to which he was appointed and confirmed by the Senate, and actually does make decisions - lots of them. And he says things on record. And what he has said about his decisions, and those of the vice president and his administration, was, on this particular Thursday, thrown back at him. Those particular chickens, his actual words, came home to roost.

The evening news shows, or two of them, led with the story, and it was all over cable news. Something extraordinary happened. A former CIA analyst, in a public forum, stood up, faced Rumsfeld, and said it sure looked he had been lying, and could he explain his words?

Laura Bush wasn't there to help out. He was alone on stage. The crowd hadn't been screened thoroughly enough. This wasn't supposed to happen. And forget chickens. Think deer - in the headlights. He was speechless for more than a moment.

For the record, the Associated Press account is here -

Protesters repeatedly interrupted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday and one man, a former CIA analyst, accused him of lying about Iraq prewar intelligence in an unusually vociferous display of anti-war sentiment.

"Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?" asked Ray McGovern, the former analyst, during a question-and-answer session.

"I did not lie," shot back Rumsfeld, who waved off security guards ready to remove McGovern from the hall at the Southern Center for International Studies.

But they don't get into the substance, although they mention three other protesters were "escorted away by security as each interrupted Rumsfeld's speech by jumping up and shouting anti-war messages." And one woman, whose Army son had been killed in Iraq, asked some pointed questions about how she was supposed to raise her grandson now, but that was easy to handle - he said that was a tragic thing and referred her to the usual websites listing aid organizations.

The substantial stuff - you said it was certain that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and said you knew just where they were - was carried on the news shows, and in detail on "Countdown" on MSNBC.

There's a video clip of the exchange at Crooks and Liars here and a full transcript here, but it pretty much comes down to this -

Rumsfeld: ...it appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.

McGovern: You said you knew where they were.

Rumsfeld: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were and...

McGovern: You said you knew where they were. Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, south, west of there. Those are your words.

Rumsfeld: My words - my words were that - no, no, wait a minute - wait a minute. Let him stay one second. Just a second....

So the Secret Service didn't drag the CIA guy out of the room, and Rumsfeld said he never really said what he actually said. MSNBC covered it and put the actual quotes on the screen, as did other news shows.

And this exchange was interesting -

McGovern: Well we're talking about lies and your allegation there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

Rumsfeld:: Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.

McGovern: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That's also...

Rumsfeld: He was also in Baghdad.

McGovern: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital. Come on, these people aren't idiots. They know the story.

He really needed Laura Bush right then. She's good at saying these people who remember what was actually said really are idiots, in a very nice and non-threatening way.

But something is up. Jane Hamsher comments here -

I don't want to draw conclusions that are too broad based on too little information, but there does seem to be a day of reckoning on the horizon. Between Harry Taylor's questions put to George Bush, Stephen Colbert's appearance before the White House Press Corps and now Ray McGovern's public accusations against Donald Rumsfeld, the simmering public feelings of frustration do seem to be bubbling up and directly confronting those responsible for the current sad state of affairs even within their tightly controlled, canned public appearances.

And she quotes Marc Lord saying this, something about a revolution in progress -

Step three in progression to outright revolution is granting or withholding support of a regime. The foremost expression of that development is that the grantors and withholders start duking it out publicly. The withholders start to shame their fellows who are complicit in supporting the regime and make it clear that they will be publicly humiliated, followed by progressively worse fates.

Noam Chomsky addressed West Point on April 21st. Steven Colbert openly mocked the preznit the next weekend. ... This is the humiliation phase.

Noam Chomsky spoke at West Point? What? But then, if "duking it out" is a sign of revolution, and in this case it's the CIA in a fistfight with the administration, then something really is up

And Hampsher points to this, discussion of the fellow, unnamed for security reasons, who was a former colleague of Valerie Plame at the CIA and, like her, assigned to counter-proliferation in the Middle East. He's now suing the head of the CIA, Porter Goss, and a few others there. He said thy fired him because he refused to falsify information on Iraq before the war.

Hampsher sums up the suit. The fellow is claiming that "he followed all the appropriate channels to get his information out, but that his information was suppressed and he was both harassed and terminated for his efforts."

This may be more complicated and there may be lots of other issues involved, but Hampsher notes this was referenced by the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter James Risen last August here -

In a lawsuit filed in federal court here in December, the former C.I.A. officer, whose name remains secret, said that the informant told him that Iraq's uranium enrichment program had ended years earlier and that centrifuge components from the scuttled program were available for examination and even purchase.

... His information on the Iraqi nuclear program, described as coming from a significant source, would have arrived at a time when the C.I.A. was starting to reconsider whether Iraq had revived its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The agency's conclusion that this was happening, eventually made public by the Bush administration in 2002 as part of its rationale for war, has since been found to be incorrect.

There are lots of news details at the links. But what's interesting about this particular "John Doe" is this -

The first time Doe was required to bury intelligence was in 2000, before Bush was inaugurated and probably before he was (s)elected. Which reminds me that the Niger embassy in Rome was burgled (and therefore the plot to forge the Niger documents was presumably in place) in early January 2001, before Bush was inaugurated. In other words, they've been setting up their Neocon moves since before Bush was put into office.

This may be tin-foil-hat territory but Hampsher notes the two of the officers in the CIA's Counter Proliferation Division, Plame and this man, both "most closely involved with ascertaining just who in the Middle East has what kind of WMD had their careers ruined, and in the process, their ability to provide accurate information that might prevent war."

Oh well, maybe the suit is bogus, and, even if it isn't, this is just a coincidence. But part of figuring out what's going on in the world, and then dealing with it in a sensible way, is seeing patterns. That's now called "connecting the dots" and is supposed to be good thing if you can do it. This is mighty odd.

And what was said about how we had to go to war immediately, all those words, are in the air. The chickens came home. They're roosting.

Chicken Number Two: The Law Is What I Say It Is

The week began with this, a Boston Globe analysis covering how President Bush has "quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office."

That is discussed in these pages as one of the Tuesday Tidbits, and on Tuesday it seemed that this was not something really new, but something the press had finally decided to notice as the president's poll numbers were astonishingly low and it was a target of opportunity, and thus it was time for these seven hundred and fifty particular chickens to come home and roost, and no one would do anything about it. Senator Feingold has introduced a "letter of censure" he thought the Senate ought to send down the street to the president, but that had been thoroughly buried by the senate Republicans, with the cooperation of all but three leading Democrats. They other Democrats got scared - focus groups or consultants warned them off.

But the press has some power, or they follow the ever-changing zeitgeist for profit and fame, and two days later the same Boston Globe reporter reported this -

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accusing the White House of ''very blatant encroachment" on congressional authority, said yesterday he will hold an oversight hearing into President Bush's assertion that he has the power to bypass more than 750 laws enacted over the past five years.

''There is some need for some oversight by Congress to assert its authority here," Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said in an interview. ''What's the point of having a statute if ... the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn't like?"

Specter said he plans to hold the hearing in June. He said he intends to call administration officials to explain and defend the president's claims of authority, as well to invite constitutional scholars to testify on whether Bush has overstepped the boundaries of his power.

What changed? He suddenly noticed the chickens had come home and were roosting - so why not? He can follow the ever-changing zeitgeist for profit and fame too.

And note this from the Globe -

Dana Perino, a White House spokeswoman, said via e-mail that if Specter calls a hearing, ''by all means we will ensure he has the information he needs." She pointed out that other presidents dating to the 19th century have ''on occasion" issued statements that raise constitutional concerns about provisions in new laws.

But while previous presidents did occasionally challenge provisions in laws while signing them, legal scholars say, the frequency and breadth of Bush's use of that power are unprecedented.

Bush is also the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, an act that gives public notice that he is rejecting a law and can be overridden by Congress. Instead, Bush has used signing statements to declare that he can bypass numerous provisions in new laws.

Now that's odd. The Globe reporter dutifully transcribed for us the administrations official take on the real issue and gave it to us, then told us it, looking at the facts, that it was pretty much bullshit. The last time reporters did such a thing - matching statements against the actual facts - was well before September 11, 2001, the day that "changed everything," and most obviously changed what was supposed to be the roll of the press, from reporting to patriotic cheerleading. Things have changed again?

And it's not just the press. Maybe the Senate has changed, and even a Republican like Arlen Specter can move beyond fawning worship of those who parade their manliness (or craven cowardice when dealing with them) and get back to doing what's in the job description. On the other side of the aisle you would, of course, expect the ever-smiling and ambitious Senator Happy Joe "Flashing Teeth" Biden, of Delaware, to propose an amendment to the emergency spending bill of the month - the next hundred billion or more off-budget (a supplemental appropriation), to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for repairing hurricane damage - that would prevent the administration from using funds from the Iraq part of the bill for construction of permanent bases in Iraq. The "decider" is supposed to decide such things. But odd things are happening, the Republican-controlled Senate actually approved the amendment.

Everyone sees the chickens have returned.

Chicken Number Three: It's Not 1918 in Montana Anymore

Remember the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 that went away and came back in a new form as the First World War was something we joined in, to get the bad guys of the time?

It seems that in the middle of this particular odd week they "went away" again, in a way, unless the current administration revives them to closed down the New York Times and Washington Post for revealing stuff we do that's illegal by our laws and the under the international treaties we've signed.

In Montana, Governor Brian Schweitzer signed a pardon for the seventy-eight people who had been convicted under that state's version of the laws -

Montana's sedition laws served as a model for the federal sedition laws also passed in 1918. Other states had such laws, but none was more vigorous in pressing them than Montana.

Remarks that were labeled seditious - in one case, the observation, "This is a rich man's war" in a saloon - carried fines approaching $20,000 and sentences of up to 20 years in jail.

Martin Wehinger told a group of Teamsters, "We had no business sticking our nose in there, and we should get licked for doing so." He served 18 months in Deer Lodge State Penitentiary.

A hundred fifty people were charged under the laws in 1918 and 1919. Forty men and one woman served time in state prison. One man was pardoned in the 1920s after it was discovered that witnesses had lied at his trial.

Schweitzer is going the opposite way of President Bush, and seems to be saying Bush just isn't anything like a real cowboy, even if he is from Texas - "Neighbor informing on neighbor - this isn't the American way, it isn't the Montana way, it isn't the cowboy way."

So much for the Patriot Act, and as for the House Republicans on immigration - build the giant wall to keep the beaners out and make anyone here without permission automatically guilty of an aggravated felony - and as for the president, angry that there's that version of the national anthem in Spanish going around - he's not lining up with any of that either -

Schweitzer said he felt a personal connection to those caught up in the hysteria of the time. His grandparents came to Montana in 1909.

"They worked hard and kept their heads down. My grandmother never did learn to speak English," Schweitzer said. "It was a time when Germans were forced out of their houses and onto the streets, made to kiss the American flag and sing the national anthem in English."

He doesn't think people should do that? He sees the chickens coming home to roost. Things have changed.

When the comedian Bill Maher said the wrong thing on air in late 2001 - that the guys crashing the airplanes into our building were certainly vile, evil people, but calling them cowards seemed self-serving - he lost his job at ABC and the president's press secretary at the time said people now should "watch what they say." Those days have past. It's chicken power.

On the other hand, there's this -

A Senate panel approved a measure on Thursday that would change the Constitution to let Congress ban burning of the American flag, setting up an election-year debate over a perennial hot-button issue.

The measure passed the Senate Judiciary constitution subcommittee by a vote of 6 to 3. It must pass the Senate by a two-thirds majority and win the support of at least 38 states within seven years before it takes effect.

Well, it always comes up, and with all the other issues people care about - the war, their jobs, health insurance, the price of gasoline, if whether, when the next hurricane or earthquake hits, their tax dollars, all that money sent in over all the long years, gets them any help at all - the Republicans had to do something about the chickens.

Chicken Number Four: But We're Helping You People, Even If You're Not Evangelical Christians Yet

You have to love this - the chairman of the Republican Party was actually booed at an American Jewish Committee event over comments on Iraq. What did he say? He said we've done really well in Iraq, because, after all, Iraq "posed less of a challenge now than under Saddam Hussein."

It was that "less of a challenge" thing. As the CIA guy said to Rumsfeld - "Come on, these people aren't idiots."

Damned chickens. Should have thought about what'd happen once we "won" the thing. Now what?

And then there's this (emphasis added) -

Mehlman was otherwise politely received when he spoke Tuesday at the AJ Committee's 100th anniversary celebrations in Washington, and he got warm applause when he said the Bush administration would not tolerate an Iranian nuclear bomb and always would stand by Israel.

The room burst into applause, however, when AJ Committee board member Edith Everett asked Mehlman to "take a message" to President Bush to stop linking Israel and Iran.

"It does not help Israel and it does not help American Jews to appear to be stimulators of any action against Iran," Everett said.

Yep, these people aren't idiots. Damned chickens coming home.

Chicken Number Five: The Real Bad Guys? What Bad Guys

Okay, it's over. That Moussaoui fellow, the minor whack-job wannabe who wouldn't incriminate himself to the FBI and was charged with being the one person who could have prevented the attacks of September 11, 2001, had he only done so, and if the feds had miraculously done what they had never been able to do, is going to jail for the rest of his life, and he he won't be executed for what he didn't say.

Fine. It doesn't matter. His punishment is a matter of degree, and there's some disagreement on what degree was appropriate. But it's case closed. Move on.

That's easy. What does it matter, really?

But some people, now that's that is over, got to thinking.

One is the Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff, on Chris Matthews' show (video here), connecting some dots, or looking at what's really going on.

From Mark Kleiman, our UCLA public policy professor, a summary of the dots here -

1. When Moussaoui was captured, there was some thought that he was centrally involved in the 9-11 plot.

2. Later it was discovered that he wasn't.

3. It was decided to put him on trial anyway, because we needed someone to try.

4. The central plotters (other than bin Laden) are all in U.S. custody, but they haven't been tried and won't be tried.

5. Top people on the President's staff (Gonzales) and the Vice President's staff (Addington) decided to authorize waterboarding and related methods of "aggressive interrogation" as applied to the top plotters.

6. Having tortured them, the Administration can't now put them on trial without having their defense lawyers put the facts about their maltreatment on the official record.

Now there are some big chickens coming home to roost. It seems we weren't supposed to remember the other guys.

And Kleiman adds another chicken coming home - "... if the plotters were tried in civilian courts rather than by military tribunals, it would be almost impossible to convict them, since not only would evidence obtained under duress be excluded, but so would anything learned as a result. So the government would have to prove, with respect to each piece of evidence, that it hadn't been obtained, directly or indirectly, as a result of torture."

So "the major plotters aren't being tried in order to cover up decisions made at the very top of the Bush Administration. Instead, the government tried to send a bit player to the death chamber, and the jury refused to go along."

Yeah, it's that old law of unintended consequences, the one about the chickens coming home to roost.

New Yorker Siva Vaidhyanathan puts it another way here -

What gets me - what I don't understand - is why millions of my fellow American citizens, led by the families of those who lost loved ones in the attacks, are not banging down the doors of the Justice Department to bring to justice those who really did mastermind the killings of 3,000 of my neighbors. Their memory still hangs heavy in the air of my city. And we wonder why our government seems all too willing to put on a show trial of a sad peripheral character instead of pursuing real justice and - I admit it - satisfying vengeance.

Somewhere in a secret prison sits Khalid Sheik Mohammad, the mastermind of the attacks. Our government could bring him to trial either here in the United States or in the Hague. It could use the trial to demonstrate not only the terrible hatred that drives Al Qaeda to murder so many innocents around the world. It could use a trial to reveal the depth and breadth of the ideological threat that we face in coming years. It could show how we can avoid such vulnerability in the future. A Khalid Sheik Mohammad conviction would be deeply meaningful and satisfying.

Best of all, it could demonstrate to the world that despite so much recent evidence to the contrary, the United States is a nation of laws and its governmental agents are not above either our laws or international laws. They whole world thinks we have given up on the concept of justice. We could use a decent trial to show otherwise.

The reason we have not done this may be very disturbing: in our haste to be brutal and stupid, we almost certainly tortured Mohammad, rendering him unconvictable in any decent court in any decent country. We have also held him and hundreds more for more than three years without counsel, without facing charges, without a chance to respond to accusations, and without even allowing their families to know that they are in custody.

So basically, we are unable to try the real killer, even though we know who he is and we have him in custody.

Why stop there? Why are Americans not demanding that this administration pursue and capture Osama bin Laden? Or Ayman al-Zawahiri? Why are we letting these guys continue to murder innocent people and inspire hatred against the entire world?

In recent years the Justice Department has created a small series of meaningless show trials. Those young men from Lackawanna, New York? They were dupes who let their religious fervor and a manipulative adult take them to Pakistan to fight against India. They never did fight against India or anyone else. Yet now they are serving prison terms in the United States because they saw no way out but to plea. And John Walker Lindh? Please. He's the biggest threat to my life and liberty? These folks a bad people who broke (unconstitutional) laws. But their trials seem to be counted among this administration's greatest victories.

The law of unintended consequences, the chickens coming home to roost. Maybe the one big show trial was a bad idea. As with overthrowing Saddam in Baghdad, no one seems to have thought about what would happen next. You get people consumed with thinking about one trial and, odds are they'll think of another. Oops.

Random Chickens: Immigration and Globalization

In the same Siva Vaidhyanathan column there are a number of "letters to the editor" on these other topics that cover other unintended consequences, and they are worth note -

Name: Ruth Alice Anderson
Hometown: Portland, OR

First, I doubt Kariyn Kinsey knows the provenance of all of her ancestors for 200 years. Secondly, the virtues and hard work of her ancestors don't imbue her with virtue; they imbue her with privilege that she mistakes for virtue. On the other hand, I agree with her that Congress has poorly served the working class -- failing to increase the minimum wage, giving our hard-earned tax dollars away to corporations and to themselves. She is perfectly correct, but to focus that anger on immigrants is a classic example of kicking down. The agents of harm (Congress) are more powerful than her, so she kicks down at the least powerful people in the nation. It would be more effective is she would stand in solidarity with immigrant workers to demand they receive the same worker rights that the rest of us enjoy. If that were true, corporations could not so readily exploit them and the wage gap that makes them so appealing to capital would begin to narrow.
Worker solidarity, not factionalism, is the only way to build the power of working people. Unity, not factionalism, is strength. It's instructive to see how perfectly the right uses wedges like immigration to drive people like Karolyn who should never stand with the right on anything straight into their arms. They understand that sadly enough, hate and anger are more powerful than hope and understanding in moving voters.

Name: Jack
Hometown: Washington, D.C.

To Ms. Kinsey from Utah -

I don't even want to get into a debate about the immigration problem as it is today, since most people have made up their minds as is. However, I would like to point something out to you in something you said, and something I have heard repeated over and over. "My family immigrated here legally, and they can too." Prior to 1875, immigration was the problem of individual states.
Most of the new immigrants did not have passports, and all of the inspections were done here in the US. So, a person got on a ship hoping that they wouldn't be turned around at the port when they arrived. In 1875, the Supreme Court decided that immigration should be under the federal government. That is when Ellis Island came into being. However, the same still held true, that the potential immigrant got on board and was questioned once they got to New York. It was only between 1917 - 1924 that the US Government started issuing visas to enter the US at Embassies overseas. And the current laws for immigration didn't really go into effect until 1952. What I am trying to say is this: Your relatives did the exact same thing these illegals did. Your relatives came to this country with no paper saying they could come. They just showed up and hoped they could get in. Try to remember that when worrying about the illegals "trying to take over this country."

Name: Thomas Heiden
Hometown: Stratford, CT

I am beyond sick of the ... the "benefits" of globalization. To best understand this, we need to return to the basics. Global capitalism is a race to the bottom, because costs are what kill in business. We see all of this now as corporations move their labor, and any pollution-producing manufacturing, to those places with the lowest costs (read: least regulation). This is not because they are evil, but because they are in COMPETITION. There is no international mechanism - hell, we don't at this point even have a NATIONAL mechanism - to control corporate behavior, so these entities are free to go and to do whatever costs them the least and makes them the most. There is no way the average human being will benefit from unrestricted global corporate capitalism (... in other words, it will NOT be "done right", because corporations, with profit as motive, control the process, not governments that putatively have the public good as the goal). The entire world will look and be like the stockyards of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."

Further, one dire consequence of this vaunted "globalization" is that this nation hemorrhages wealth (to the current tune of about three-quarters of a TRILLION dollars every year) to nations which used to send us their money. This is why the middle class is vanishing before our eyes, and why two people must work to try to maintain that middle-class lifestyle that a single wage-earner could provide back when we had a positive trade balance. Liberal immigration policy will not only not help any of this, it is grossly unfair. If we use Mexico as an example, my view is that I want those coming here illegally for "better opportunity" to stay in their own country and FIX IT! Make it a nation that can and does take care of its citizens by providing opportunities for them to live decently. We don't want them coming here to piggy-back on all the sacrifices that have been made for us by our ancestors - they need to find their own Jefferson and Madison, their own Susan Anthony and, yes, Caesar Chavez. If they do not have the gumption to stand against their own government, we do not need them here for that reason either - we have our own government that is sorely in need of its citizens standing up to it!

Geez, raise some issues to get votes and then people think about the issues. That wasn't supposed to happen. It seems the chickens are coming home to roost for the administration, "big time."

__

Note:

For a view of the basic miscalculation that underlies all this, you might note Michael Shaw here discussing delayed moral development -

... To understand "delayed" moral development, you need only look at the way this country has been governed over the past five years. For example, you find a lot of black-and-white thinking, such as "good" versus "bad" and "us" versus "them"; a preoccupation with authority and obedience; and dramatic, self-centered acts mostly rationalized after the fact.

Delayed moral advancement tends to go hand-in-hand with the lower rungs of emotional maturity. In kids trapped in adult bodies, you tend to see silliness substituting for wit; awkwardness in the place of poise; passion masquerading as love; aggression covering for strength; and rituals standing in for originality.

That'll do. The adults are having none of it.

Posted by Alan at 23:42 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Friday, 5 May 2006 07:27 PDT home

Tuesday, 25 April 2006

What Adults Do
Topic: Chasing the Zeitgeist

What Adults Do

Glenn Greenwald is that constitutional law attorney in New York, the one who writes the political blog, "Unclaimed Territory," often cited in these pages. Oddly enough, he's also written for the magazine American Conservative, and you see him on television now and then, or hear him on the radio. He's been on C-Span's "Washington Journal" and Air America's "Majority Report" - and on Public Radio International's "To the Point." You find him doing his blend of reporting and analysis in print and online here and there. He was on fire when the NSA warrantless story broke, or he covered that like white on rice - choose your own cliché. Greenwald didn't much care for the president saying that, yes, he knew there was a law requiring that if any president was going to have his NSA folks secretly spy on American citizens - listening to their phone calls and reading their email and such - that president had to run that past a special court for approval in the form of a warrant, but the White House legal staff had assured him that the correct way of looking at the constitution showed he could ignore that law, and the congress and the courts did not have any authority to make him follow that law, or any other that he decided, without review by anyone, just didn't apply to him.

Of course, the implications of this new and special way of seeing the constitution were enormous. And the president's "spying on anyone he chooses" business was matched by the signing statements, the most widely discussed one being when the president attached a signing statement to the McCain legislation the definitively outlawed any agency of our government doing anything like torture. The president attached a statement that said as he read the legislation it was fine, but he reserved the right, under his plenary powers as commander-in-chief, to ignore the law when he decided it would be better to ignore it, and that wasn't open to review, as he saw it, and the White House attorneys assured him.

The idea was you just had to trust the president that any secret spying on American citizens, that no one would ever know about, would only be for the purest of motives, to get terrorists, and never to find out things about political opponents and their plan, or anything like that. The president seemed more than a little surprised and a bit miffed that anyone would even think otherwise. And as for torture, the president time and time again said, in spite of all the obvious evidence, we never do that. But then, he reserved the right to order just that if he alone decided it might be useful, and no one had the authority to stop him from ordering torture when he so decided.

You see where all that leads. Yes, when confronted with the many calls from recently retired top generals for the Secretary of Defense to be replaced, the president simply said "I'm the decider." Case closed. He stays. No real substance, no reasons he's the right man. Not open to discussion. This is a distinct new view of presidential powers. There are no limits on them, except for an election every four years. Congress has no authority at all, with their "laws." And the courts have no jurisdiction.

All this is the sort of thing that drives constitutional law attorneys up the wall, although, considering the results of the last presidential election, it was just fine with slightly more than half of all Americans. When you're convinced the world is a scary place full of very odd people, many of whom want to kill us all, and no one anywhere likes us much anyway, you elect a strong daddy who will fix things without tedious explanations. You may suspect some very nasty things are going on, but you don't ask, and daddy doesn't tell. It's a mutual bargain.

The problem is that the more you inadvertently discover about what is actually going on, and what it can lead to, the more you may want out of the bargain. You can be told, again and again, this is just what you agreed to, and there's no backing out, and, if you have a problem with any little or large bit of it, go do something about it in the voting booth in 2008, but just shut up now.

That worked fine for the administration after the events of September 11, 2001, when almost ninety percent of the angry, frightened and confused public bought into the bargain. Now that's down to thirty-two percent. That would be the thirty-two percent who would still like to be treated as children, and who just trust daddy, because not to trust daddy is just too scary.

And that brings us back to Glenn Greenwald, who has just written a book for the growing majority of people who think that bargains you made when you were a child, to keep the monsters under the bed from attacking you in the night, can be discarded, along with GI Joe and Barbie.

The odd thing about the book is that, as of six in the evening, Pacific Time, Tuesday, April 25, 2006, it was sixth on the Amazon bestseller list, and hadn't been published yet. The ranking was based solely on pre-orders. Times have changed quite a bit.

If you don't want to be left out - if you're tired of sitting at the children's table while the adults are across the room with the good food and interesting talk - here's the book.

How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok
Glenn Greenwald
Paperback: 146 pages
Publisher: Working Assets Publishing (May 15, 2006)
ISBN: 097794400X

What Greenwald says about it over at his blog is this -

What I hope will be the book's principal impact is to cast a very bright light on the fact that all of these Bush administration scandals which are always discussed in isolation - lawless detentions, secret prisons, the use of torture, illegal eavesdropping, etc. - are merely symptoms of a profound political crisis which our country faces, brought about by the fact that this administration has adopted radical theories of power whereby the President literally and expressly claims the right to act without restraint, including those imposed by law. The powers seized by this president are exactly those powers about which the founders most urgently and explicitly warned, and which they sought, first and foremost, to prevent.

A substantial portion of the book is devoted to highlighting the ways in which the administration has used rank fear-mongering and an endless exploitation of the terrorist threat to attempt to obscure and justify these abuses. Those manipulative tactics have not only enabled them to embrace these most un-American powers right out in the open, but they are also threatening to alter, perhaps irreversibly, our national character.

Perhaps most importantly, the book documents the fact that even when all other intended checks on government excesses fail - when the media, the Congress and the courts are co-opted or are otherwise neutralized - Americans always have the ability, inherent in our system of government, to put a stop to abuses and excesses, provided they choose to exercise that power. But to do so, it is necessary that it first be understood just how radical and dangerous our government has become under this administration, and making the case that we have arrived at exactly that point is the primary purpose of the book.

So it's time to walk away from the bargain we made four years ago, and this is the precise time to do it. Part of it is walking away from childish things - the need for a strong daddy and a fear of thinking about what to do and then the responsibility that goes along with actually making decisions about what to do. Part of it has to do with all the things that used to be associated with being an American doing the right thing - not cheating or lying or hiding information to get what you want, a system of laws everyone follows and some kind of "justice for all," a governmental structure that keeps any one person or party from having all the power. It's all that stuff from civics classes, about how things run here, and the constitution that provides the basic user manual.

Note this from Digby at Hullabaloo, from his comments on the new Greenwald book -

The founders knew that relying on the good will of men in power is stupid and we are seeing their predictions come true before our very eyes. The modern Republican leadership may currently have a monopoly on authoritarian impulses, but they are by no means the only people in this country who could be seduced by this Republican notion of executive authority. The constitution is what protects all Americans from the dark side of human nature when it has power over others, regardless of party or political philosophy. Those of us who worry about this usurpation of the constitution and degradation of the Bill of Rights know that this is not a passing fashion that will easily be tucked back into its former shape. Once you allow powerful men to seize power it's awfully hard to persuade their successors to give it back.

... Unless we insist upon accountability for what these people have done, I fear that the country will not be able to recover. People need to see that our system of government can not only survive such assaults on its integrity, but that justice and the rule of law will reassert themselves under responsible leadership. It must be publicly demonstrated that this doctrine of unlimited presidential authority is unacceptable and un-American.

A distorted, authoritarian undemocratic view of American government has persisted now for more than a generation among certain conservatives. This philosophy has taken us from Watergate to Iran-Contra to Impeachment to the Supreme Court deciding a presidential election and the last five years of unprecedented assaults on the constitution in the name of a war that has no end. We need to drive a stake through the heart of this philosophy once and for all before it kills us.

Well, we may not be fighting the undead, even if the image fits in an odd sort of way (Nixon rising from the grave and all that). But it may be time for a bit of a new American Revolution, to get us back to where we were after the first one, unless you think what happened four years ago "changed everything" as the president and his supporters so often say. Time to choose.

Who will you have for company if you leave the children's table? There is Bruce Springsteen of all people -

"I guess my take on some of the last experiences we've had," Springsteen says, "is that a small group of men with a very particular ideology found their way into power and pressed themselves on an immature president. They were able to literally get what they wanted: They got their tax cuts, they got their war, they got their money going to the places they wanted it to go to. I don't think that's being cynical."

No, that's just realistic. Time to do something.

After all, things like these below can't go on forever. Someone has to deal with them, preferably an adult, who knows how to work with others and together figure out what to do.

This is just a sample from Tuesday, April 25th.

A few days after the audio tape from Osama bin Laden - he doesn't much like our "Zionist-crusader war on Islam" and is urging militants to fight in Sudan, and calls for attacks on civilians in the west, as they elected those waging war on Islam - we get this - "Terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi revealed his face for the first time Tuesday in a dramatic video in which he dismissed Iraq's new government as an American 'stooge' and called it a 'poisoned dagger' in the heart of the Muslim world."

And this wasn't a tape delivered to al Jazeera by a series of couriers with lots of clever cut-outs. This was a video web broadcast, and he showed his face - no hood or anything. So we know just what he looks like at the moment. He doesn't care.

This war is not going well, and it could use a "rethink." Admit it's a mess, get a lot of adults together, the thoughtful and maybe the irritating contrarians, and let's figure out a new way to deal with this. Why not? Maybe daddy doesn't know best and all the adults could come up with something. That seems unlikely. But it's an idea.

And the same day there was this - "Iran ratcheted up its defiance ahead of a U.N. Security Council deadline to suspend uranium enrichment, threatening Tuesday to hide its program if the West takes 'harsh measures' and to transfer nuclear technology to chaos-ridden Sudan."

Okay, same thing, get a lot of adults together, the thoughtful and maybe the irritating contrarians, and let's figure out a new way to deal with this. Making threats seems to be making matters worse, so why bother? And the United States refuses face-to-face talks with Iran, preferring "proxy diplomacy" - the UN or NATO or somebody better fix this or we really will bomb the crap out of Iran. Of course, adults do the adult and responsible thing - when you have a problem with someone you sit down with them and figure out what's going on. They talk, you listen, and you talk and hope they listen. It's unpleasant, but that's what adults do. Children hide behind others and make threats.

But what do we get? Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Europe with this - she's asking NATO to do something harsh to show Iran they're being very, very bad. She says the NATO nations really need to support us on this. The item doesn't mention any NATO ambassador asking her why, if this is such an urgent problem, doesn't Bush send her to Tehran to sit down and talk with them and explain the concerns and see if something can be worked out, or just go himself if he's so hot and bothered.

That no one asked the question indicates what people know of us now - we don't do that sort of thing. We ask the grownups to do that talking stuff, while we pout and hide. Why even bother to pose the question? This was in Athens, and there were anti-American riots in the streets - tear gas and everything - with the crowds telling her to go home. Who needs a brat, or more precisely a princess, whining that no one will do what she won't do?

As for the big story of the day, it was the president delivering a major speech saying the government really was going to do something about the record high gasoline prices.

CNN - "Calling the oil issue a matter of national security, President Bush outlined a plan Tuesday to cut gasoline costs and temporarily stopped deposits to the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve."

The New York Times - "President Bush today announced a series of short-term steps that he said might slightly ease energy prices, including a suspension of government purchases to refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and investigations into possible price gouging and price fixing. The moves reflect growing concern among Republicans that the price hikes would become another election-year liability for them."

Buried in each story was also dropping all the environmental regulations for now, so you will be able to get anything at all at the pump, and anyone who wants to build a refinery can build anything they'd like, no matter what it does to the air or ground water.

And they admit it really won't fix anything. The price of gasoline will only go higher. But they care.

Bill Montgomery here and what else they could try -

They could even try telling the truth: That sky-high gas prices are the product of many forces, including the economic rise of China, our national allergic reaction to conservation, the security nightmare of trying to protect a far-flung global energy infrastructure, and, most of all, the inevitable fact that the supply of light sweet crude is finite, and production is probably nearing its peak.

They could explain to the American people that there is no quick fix, no miracle fuels on the horizon, no package of tax incentives or industry subsidies that is going to make the problem go away.

They could warn them that even if there was such a solution, current fossil fuel consumption trends still wouldn't be sustainable, not unless we're willing to turn most of coastal cities into salt water swimming pools.

And they could try to make our pampered upper and middle classes understand that the sooner they adjust their bloated lifestyles to reflect these unpleasant facts, the better off we will all be in the long run.

But it looks like they want to keep their jobs.

On the other hand, given Greenwald's not-yet-published bestseller, it would seem that the idea that you keep your job by concealing the unpleasant truth may be an idea that's just outmoded. What Montgomery proposes is treating people like adults, rational participants in events that effect them, and able to handle the facts.

Some of us would like to be treated that way. In fact, there are more and more of us everyday. Someone should tell the White House, but maybe that comes in November.

Posted by Alan at 22:27 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Wednesday, 26 April 2006 07:36 PDT home

Tuesday, 18 April 2006

Fixed Positions: No One Now Gives an Inch
Topic: Chasing the Zeitgeist

Fixed Positions: No One Now Gives an Inch

If you read these pages you should know who you have for company. Note these two logons early in the day, Tuesday, April 18, 2006, the first from Washington DC and the second from Fort Monmouth in New Jersey -

IP Address 198.81.129.# (Central Intelligence Agency)
IP Address 192.172.8.# (USAISC-CECOM) ... the US Army Information Systems Command-Communications and Electronics Command

Perhaps they were just clicking through to the photographs of famous places in Hollywood, planning a summer vacation.

That noted, the big national issue at hand on that same day was who's in charge and what you can say about them. The feds can make of it what they will.

But first there was, on the one hundredth anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake, some news of things going right in the world.

There was this from Reuters -

More than half a century after U.S. civil rights icon Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man, the Alabama legislature on Tuesday voted to pardon her and others convicted for breaking segregation-era race laws.

The "Rosa Parks Act," approved unanimously by the state House of Representatives but opposed by three senators in the Senate, also clears the way for hundreds of other activists to wipe out their arrest records for acts of civil disobedience in the struggle for black civil rights...

Now that she's dead she's no longer a threat? No, it's just fixing thing, even if a bit late.

And there was this from the AFP wire - "A US contractor pleaded guilty to bribing American officials in charge of Iraq reconstruction to ensure contracts worth 8.6 million dollars were granted to his building companies, US authorities said."

What? Someone caught and admitting guilt and not getting another big contract? It wasn't Halliburton or Flour or Parsons, but it's something.

Something is in the air, a change.

In fact, out here, opening at the Geffen Playhouse the next day - All My Sons ("a father's revelation of what he did during World War II shatters two families in Arthur Miller's Tony-winning classic"). That's the play about the father whose company made defective aircraft parts in WWII and how his sons in the military deal with it, given their dead friends. It's a bit plodding and obvious, but it has its moments - the kind of thing you teach in high school English classes. The kids "get" it. Of course this is the time to revive the thing, and the guilty plea above is a bit of neat but amusing coincidence for the producers.

But the big news in Hollywood, on the one hundredth anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake up north, was this: Katie Holmes Gives Birth To Tom Cruise's Baby. It's a girl, named Suri - seven pounds, seven ounces. Fine. That will swamp the news cycles for days.

And everyone will no doubt wonder about this in the Daily Mirror (UK), two days before the blessed event -

Tom Cruise yesterday revealed his latest bizarre mission... to eat his new baby's placenta.

Cruise vowed he would tuck in straight after girlfriend Katie Holmes gives birth, saying he thought it would be "very nutritious".

Oh. It must be a Scientology thing, like silent birth (the woman is not permitted to make any sounds). Of course, the founder of, Scientology, L Ron Hubbard, bases the whole business on aliens, the Thetans, who came to earth seventy-five million years ago. Their spirits are in all our brains. It's obvious. And the woman should be silent in labor, and maybe they have something to do with the proposed meal.

Ah well, it's not just the benign and thoughtful and wise aliens spirits in the brains of the Scientologists, as the Mirror helpfully adds this -

Rod Stewart and girlfriend Penny Lancaster took home their baby's placenta, sprinkled it with tee tree oil and buried it in the garden.

In 1998, Channel 4 chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall fried a placenta with shallots and garlic and served it up to 20 guests, including the baby's mum and dad.

TV watchdogs later criticised the show, branding it "disagreeable".

But placenta-eating is considered normal in some cultures. Various recipes include one for placenta lasagna. Some say eating it helps avoid post-natal depression.

Whatever. The Scientologists should merge with the "Pastafarians" - the folks who worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Bring a nice Chianti. That'd work.

But this particular day wasn't all good news. Late in the afternoon the Reuters wire carried this - "The United States on Tuesday failed to secure international support for targeted sanctions against Iran and President George W. Bush refused to rule out nuclear strikes if diplomacy failed to curb the Islamic Republic's atomic ambitions."

It was already the next morning in Paris and the International Herald Tribune there opened with this -

As diplomats meeting in Moscow failed to reach agreement Tuesday on how best to increase the pressure on Iran over its nuclear program, the American and Iranian presidents, both using tough language, staked out unyielding positions.

President George W. Bush, in response to a reporter's question, declined to rule out a nuclear attack to stop Iran from building atomic weapons if diplomacy fails, saying that "all options are on the table." But he added, "We want to solve this issue diplomatically, and we're working hard to do so."

During an Army Day parade in Tehran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the military that it had to be "constantly ready," and he warned that Iran would "cut off the hand of any aggressor," The Associated Press reported.

This is not much like the lead-up to Iraq war, where Saddam Hussein said he was cooperating with inspections, and sort of was, and said he had no weapons of mass destruction, and it turned out he actually didn't. There only one side was unyieldingly bullheaded and refused to back down.

Here? Both sides are making big time threats. And we're saying, just like last time, we'd prefer a diplomatic resolution to this whole mess, but we may have to do what we have to do, this time with nukes, and this time even without the Brits, a few Aussies, and the troops from Fiji. And when the fallout drifts over our allies in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, they may gripe as their people glow and die, but we'll have done the right thing.

We stand firm. Iran may be surrounded by hostile powers, many with nukes, but they will not have them. This time the other side is just as firm. That's the new element.

This standing firm on our part was also on full display on Tuesday, April 18th on another matter. (Standing firm of course is a loaded linguistic construction. As the sociolinguistics guy - and later whacky senator from California - S. I. Hayakawa once pointed out, just as you can conjugate verbs, you can conjugate adjectives in each person - "I am firm and resolute, you are stubborn, and he is a bullheaded fool." So choose your adjective as you wish.)

The matter was the revolt of the generals against Donald Rumsfeld. That came to a head the same day.

It should be noted that a Republican senator, Chuck Hagel, Vietnam veteran and a bit of a maverick, came out and said Rumsfeld "does not command the respect and confidence of our men an women in uniform." It's time for him to go. (That's here if you want details.)

The senate minority leader, Harry Reid said so too (of course), but pointed out the problem wasn't so much Rumsfeld as Bush, as it was "more a question of leadership from the president." (That's here if you want details.) And Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois suggested on Tuesday that Rumsfeld should face what would be a symbolic "vote of confidence" in the Senate. (That's here if you want details.)

David Broder, sometimes called the dean of Washington journalists (probably because he has a gift for the obvious and has no firm opinion until everyone else has agreed on one), in the Washington Post said Rumsfeld needed to resign - "Even in Vietnam we saw no such open defiance." (That's here if you want details.)

Of course, the day before, Rumsfeld gave an exclusive interview to explain himself, on the Rush Limbaugh radio show. He said the media in the United States was just being manipulated by al Qaeda, specifically by that Osama fellow, and by the other guy, Zarqawi, so he didn't take it all very seriously. (That's here if you want details.) The Post carried his comments that "this too shall pass" and how there were over six thousand retired generals and if six of them don't like him it doesn't mean much, statistically. And he told the world, "I won't quit."

All this came to a head in a Tuesday press conference where the president got angry. CNN has the transcript posted here, and the relevant part is this, where CNN's Ed Henry has the closing question -

HENRY: Mr. President, you make it a practice of not commenting on potential personnel move.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Of course, I did.

HENRY: Calling it speculation.

BUSH: And you can understand why. Because we've got people's reputations at stake. And on Friday I stood up and said I don't appreciate the speculation about Don Rumsfeld. He's doing a fine job. I strongly support him.

HENRY: But what do you say to critics who believe that you're ignoring the advice of retired generals, military commanders, who say that there needs to be a change?

BUSH: I say I listen to all voices, but mine's the final decision and Don Rumsfeld is doing a fine job. He's not only transforming the military, he's fighting a war on terror. He's helping us fight a war on terror. I have strong confidence in Don Rumsfeld. I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation, but I'm the decider and I decide what is best and what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense. I want to thank you all very much.

And he turned on his heel and walked off. There's a video of the exchange here. He was ticked. He's in charge.

There was an explosion of comment on this, and perhaps the most pointed comes from Digby at Hullabaloo here.

Digby points back to an item in the current American Prospect (here) on how things work in the White House, with Vice President Cheney pretty much in charge -

Says one insider deeply involved in U.S. policy toward North Korea: "The president is given only the most basic notions about the Korea issue. They tell him, 'Above South Korea is a country called North Korea. It is an evil regime.' ... So that translates into a presidential decision: Why enter into any agreement with an evil regime?"

Digby -

I'm the decider! I yam, I yam! Evil, evil, evil.

Once again, I am stunned that the Republicans had the gall to foist this manchild on the United States of America - and that so many Americans accepted it for so long. There's a lot of talk in the wingnutsphere about "Bush Derangement Syndrome" which says that we are all suffering form irrational hatred of Dear Leader. But it's not accurate. Bush is just a spoiled, deluded little boy, pushed into a job that was obvious to any sentient being would be too much for him. My righteous anger is for the big money Pooh-Bahs like Dick Cheney who would gamble with this country's future by choosing a brand name in an empty suit for president. They proved that they can sell anything, I'll give them that. But as with their other colossal marketing success and business failure, Enron, the sales job couldn't cover the corruption and poor planning forever. Therefore, I blame the Republican Party more than little Junior. He's just a pathetic loser who believed his own hype -responsible for his actions, of course, but not the mastermind.

From his little tirade today, it appears that he's feeling like his authority is being questioned. That's just funny. It took his this long to figure out that he's not really in charge?

A bit harsh, but you could see what happened that way - a temper tantrum by a pathetic guy who thinks he's in charge when he's just out of the loop.

And what of this "wingnutsphere" (the pro-Bush universe of online magazines, news sites and web logs)? They say Bush's critics are just unhinged by hatred of the man, and envy of his manliness and whatnot.

But then they say things like this, one of the most often quoted defenses of the president - "It must be very strange to be President Bush. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can't get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile."

Take your choice, one or the other. It can't be both.

But everyone is hardening their positions.

Note this, from Editor and Publisher the same day -

On his national radio program today, William Bennett, the former Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration official and now a CNN commentator, said that three reporters who won Pulitzer Prizes yesterday were not "worthy of an award" but rather "worthy of jail."

He identified them as Dana Priest of The Washington Post, who wrote about the CIA's "secret prisons" in Europe, and James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of The New York Times, who exposed the National Security Agency's domestic (a.k.a. terrorist) spy program.

Scott Johnson of the popular Powerline blog also weighed in today, under the heading "The Pulitzer Prize for Treason," declaring "Today's Pulitzer Prize award to the Times brings a new shame to the Pulitzer Prize committee."

The outrage Bennett sees is this (emphasis added) -

[These reporters] took classified information, secret information, published it in their newspapers, against the wishes of the president, against the request of the president and others, that they not release it. They not only released it, they publicized it - they put it on the front page, and it damaged us, it hurt us.

How do we know it damaged us? Well, it revealed the existence of the surveillance program, so people are going to stop making calls. Since they are now aware of this, they're going to adjust their behavior. ...on the secret sites, the CIA sites, we embarrassed our allies. So it hurt us there.

As a result, are they punished, are they in shame, are they embarrassed, are they arrested? No, they win Pulitzer prizes - they win Pulitzer prizes. I don't think what they did was worthy of an award - I think what they did is worthy of jail, and I think this investigation needs to go forward.

It seems the wishes of the president matter. The press should respect them.

It that what the press is supposed to do, what the president wishes? Listen to the audio clip here and see if you agree.

The first amendment attorney, Glenn Greenwald, is not surprised by all this, and here he points back to this, and op-ed piece in the Post that Bennett wrote Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who has long argued we should legalize torture (see CNN from 2003 here). In the Post opinion piece they argue the press has "capitulated to Islamists." A free press would have published those Mohammed cartoons, and we don't have a free press, just a bunch of cowards.

The irony is obvious. The idea of a free press is one that publishes everything that's true and important, but not what the president asks them not to publish.

Greenwald - "Remember - these are the people who think that they are elevated and pure enough to invade other countries in order to teach the repressed masses about democracy and freedom. They endlessly tout their own patriotism and crusades for freedom while agitating for the imprisonment of journalists who publish stories which reflect poorly on their leader. On countless fronts, they are on the precipice of dismantling every defining value and principle of liberty we have."

And he throws Bennett's words back at him, as Bennett in the Post has said this - "[O]ur general agreement and understanding of the First Amendment and a free press is informed by the fact - not opinion but fact - that without broad freedom, without responsibility for the right to know carried out by courageous writers, editors, political cartoonists and publishers, our democracy would be weaker, if not nonexistent."

Yeah, right.

Greenwald -

It is difficult, and I think foolish, to ignore these ugly impulses which are always pulsating immediately beneath the veneer of so many Bush followers. These are not random, fringe commentators whose extremist views are being held up to make a point. Rather, these are among the most representative and, in Bennett's case, influential Bush followers who have been incessantly and indignantly calling for the imprisonment of journalists. And as the drumbeat for war against Iran grows more intense, so, too, will the perceived justification for these types of distinctly un-American measures. The more "times of war" we have, the less room we have for marginal liberties, such as the luxury of a free press.

But positions are hardening. The imprisonment of journalists may be necessary. How else will we bring freedom to the world?

The matching minor story is here with a follow-up here. The short version, military recruiters show up at the university up in Santa Cruz. There's a big student protest. The recruiters decide to bag it and leave (the campus at Santa Cruz is very hippie-left and it was a dumb idea, really). The right-side "wingnutsphere" is outraged and says this is outrageous, and unpatriotic, an abridgment of free speech, and un-American and all the rest. One of the most widely-read commentators on the right, Michelle Malkin, gets a document with the home phone numbers of the leaders of the student protest. She publishes their home phone numbers on her site. The kids get a lot of obscene calls, angry calls, and of course they get many, many death threats. They complain. Seems they're scared or something. Malkin refuses to take down the phone numbers - people should be responsible for their actions. They brought it on themselves. They should grow up. The lefties all over the media are pissed, and talk about the responsibility of the press. You don't publish people's private phone numbers and such. On the right there's more of the personal responsibility thing - but Malkin asks her readers to tone it down a bit, but she is not responsible if anything happens. These student leaders brought this on themselves, and, if some properly angry patriot does what he or she shouldn't and bumps one of them off, it wouldn't be her fault.

Yes, this is reminiscent of the pro-life anti-abortion folks publishing the home address of doctors who perform abortions. A few of them were gunned down. And now and then someone examines the addresses on the lists of registered sex offenders and bumps one of them off. The defense is always the same - the person bumped off was doing something evil, or would do something evil, and there was a greater good to be served.

Positions are hardening.

The only counter indication seem to be the much discussed Carl Bernstein item in the new Vanity Fair, where the somewhat less self-enamored of the two ace reporters who broke the Watergate story and brought down Richard Nixon (although not single-handedly), says positions are really shifting, and it's now time for Watergate-level Senate hearings. On what? On the conduct of the Bush administration in leading the country into war with Iraq and misleading the American public.

The item is long, detailed, tightly-argued and here. You might have seen Bernstein explaining his idea on Tuesday, April 18, on MSNBC's Countdown, in the opening segment, but the nub of it is this -

After Nixon's resignation, it was often said that the system had worked. Confronted by an aberrant president, the checks and balances on the executive by the legislative and judicial branches of government, and by a free press, had functioned as the founders had envisioned.

The system has thus far failed during the presidency of George W. Bush - at incalculable cost in human lives, to the American political system, to undertaking an intelligent and effective war against terror, and to the standing of the United States in parts of the world where it previously had been held in the highest regard.

"There was understandable reluctance in the Congress to begin a serious investigation of the Nixon presidency. Then there came a time when it was unavoidable. That time in the Bush presidency has arrived.

Has Carl Bernstein stopped following the news?

Everything has hardened. No one now gives an inch.

Posted by Alan at 22:09 PDT | Post Comment | Permalink
Updated: Wednesday, 19 April 2006 06:11 PDT home

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