By ROBYN E. BLUMNER, originally printed in the St. Petersburg Times.
who else but Alberto Gonzales? Put this one in the no shit file.
President Bush is not a "heads will roll" kind of leader, probably because you have to be willing to admit mistakes happen in order to hold someone responsible for them.
Okay, maybe criticizing Bush will get you bounced faster than an honest accountant at an Enron convention - just ask Paul O'Neill - but a major-league screw-up does little to alter one's career trajectory.
George Tenet was kept in the central intelligence driver's seat even after the failures of 9/11; Donald Rumsfeld was touted by Bush as a "really good secretary of defense" despite the discovery of military-run torture chambers; and Lt. Gen. William Boykin, who famously announced that his Christian God is better than the Muslims', may be under investigation but has kept his post.
But there is perhaps no figure who has his fingerprints on more short-sighted, backward and counterproductive Bush administration policies than does White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales.
The loyalist attorney from Texas, who was general counsel to Bush as governor and was appointed by him to the Texas Supreme Court, is reportedly a favorite adviser to the president because he can synthesize complicated issues down to a sentence or two, fitting neatly within the president's attention span. Since joining the administration in 2001, Gonzales, 49, has been a guiding force in a swath of administration decisions that have hobbled America's commitment to the rule of law and have cost our nation goodwill and respect around the world. But rather than giving Gonzales a shove toward the door, the president is said to have him on a short list of potential nominees for the first vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Here's the recipe: Generate international animus toward our nation, produce shoddy work, dissemble in the press and who knows, you too could one day sit on the nation's highest court.
There have been many Gonzales missteps but attention has focused recently on a memorandum he wrote to Bush on Jan. 25, 2002, in which he said that the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war should not apply to al-Qaida or Taliban prisoners. Gonzales said the war on terrorism "in my judgment renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners."
While he raises the possible downsides, including provoking "widespread condemnation among our allies," and potentially undermining "U.S. military culture which emphasizes maintaining the highest standards of conduct," Gonzales nonetheless recommends dumping the Conventions in order to preserve "flexibility."
The memo could be titled "do as we say, not as we do." With unexplained logic, it states that anyone who mistreats U.S. personnel could still be charged with war crimes, yet says the Convention - the international law from which the definition of war crimes is derived - should not apply to the actions of the United States. This loophole lawyering, from the man whose former law firm in Houston represented Enron, was an invitation to torture anyone labeled an enemy combatant. He gave legal cover to ungoverned interrogations, resulting in the abuse reports that are now streaming out of Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
Joseph Onek, director of the Liberty and Security Initiative of the Constitution Project, says it was this kind of thinking that turned the world from supporting our invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 to standing against us: "When you think about it, Guantanamo became a symbol around the world for American disrespect for law." He calls Gonzales' judgment "a disaster."
Also contributing to this environment was the presidential order, written by Gonzales, authorizing the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. The order produced howls of protest by setting up a proceeding so lacking in basic due process that it appeared to have the makings of a star chamber.
In defense of the plan, Gonzales wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times calling the tribunals "full and fair." The column was a study in half-truths, including the claim that anyone detained or tried by a military commission "in the United States" would ultimately have the protections of our civilian courts "through a habeas corpus proceeding." In fact, the administration is holding foreign enemy combatants outside the United States, for the sole purpose of defeating their rights of habeas corpus. And whether the administration can get away with this outrage is a question currently before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Gonzales has also been a fierce defender of presidential secrecy, helping to put prior presidential records and Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force records out of reach. "He has been a major advocate of virtually untrammeled presidential prerogatives," said Elliot Mincberg, general counsel for People for the American Way, who worries about a Gonzales nomination if Bush is re-elected.
Mincberg has good reason to worry. Gonzales is a loyal Bush soldier whose work has shattered America's moral authority and standing in the world. That should buy him a spot on a Bush Supreme Court, don't you think?
31 May 2004
Columns: The man behind all the bad decisions
28 May 2004
You're being watched
If you've been wondering whether or not the Patriot Act affects your life.... click here.
Woohooooo... you GO Texas!
from the Houston Chronicle Texas again leads U.S. in prisoners Study puts state ahead of California By R.G. RATCLIFFE Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau AUSTIN -- A federal study released Thursday shows that Texas led the nation in the number of inmates incarcerated in state prisons and county jails in June 2003. Texas had 164,222 inmates on the last day of that month, about 800 more than California. The Texas inmate population was up by 4.2 percent, or 6,578 inmates, from June 2002, according to the study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Although Texas had the most inmates incarcerated from 1999-2001, according to the bureau's midyear reports, California edged ahead of the Lone Star State in June 2002. Texas' June 2003 incarceration rate also was the highest in the nation, with 692 inmates per 100,000 population. Mississippi ran a close second with an incarceration rate of 688 per 100,000 residents. Though the number of people incarcerated in California was almost the same as in Texas, California's incarceration rate was far lower: 455 inmates per 100,000 residents. Nationally, the average number of sentenced inmates incarcerated was 480 per 100,000 U.S. residents. Among local jails, Harris County ranked fifth in the nation for the average number of persons held on a daily basis -- 7,300 in 2003. Los Angeles County held an average daily population of 21,184; New York City, 14,533; Cook County, Ill., 10,864; and Maricopa County, Ariz., 8,044, according to the report. The report is compiled twice a year by the bureau, a division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The statistics are based on information provided by the states. Overall, the report said the nation's federal, state and local prisons and jails were holding more than 2 million people on June 30, 2003, the largest number in four years. During a 12-month period, the states' prison inmate population grew by an average of 2.6 percent and the federal inmate population grew by 5.4 percent. Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Mike Viesca initially dismissed the federal report as incorrect. Viesca said the Texas prison system has housed an average of 148,000 in each of the past three years. "Who are you going to trust? Me or the federal government?" Viesca said. Paige Harrison, one of the authors of the study for the U.S. Department of Justice division, said her numbers are accurate because they were provided to the agency by TDCJ. "I think he's got some bodies around there he's not counting," Harrison said. The most likely cause of the initial 16,000 inmate discrepancy, Harrison said, was the fact the federal government counts what Texas calls "paper ready" inmates. Those are ones who have been convicted and sentenced and are waiting in a county jail for transfer to the state prison system. "Our definition may be a little more broad than what they are representing to you," Harrison said. "We stand by the numbers we have." Viesca said counting those inmates may be fair for a comparison among the states, but he said the state prison system only counts 148,000 inmates. "The population we always cite to everyone is 148,000," Viesca said. The California Department of Corrections earlier this month told the Los Angeles Times that it had a prison population of 162,515 inmates. That state currently is undergoing a prison overcrowding crisis.
ok... these frickin things are totally crazy
"Hornets From Hell" Offer Real-Life Fright
A small but highly efficient killing machine—a hornet two inches long and with a wingspan up to three inches—lurks in the mountains of Japan. The voracious predator has a quarter-inch stinger that pumps out a dose of venom with an enzyme so strong it can dissolve human tissue.
25 May 2004
Bomb Case Against Oregon Lawyer Is Rejected
from the NY Times: 2 weeks ago Brandon Mayfield was arrested and detained for questioning in Madrid, in connection with the pre-election bombings in Spain. Yesterday, a Federal judge threw out the case, due to a false-positive reading from a fingerprint analysis performed on a plastic bag found near the scene.
Mr. Mayfield shook as he spoke at his news conference earlier in the day, thanking his family and supporters. "This is a serious infringement on our civil liberties," Mr. Mayfield said. He added, "In a climate of fear, this war on terrorism has gone to the extreme and innocent people are victims as a result." At a news conference in Portland and in court documents, the F.B.I. explained how the fingerprint error had happened. But those explanations did little to dilute what was clearly an embarrassment for the government. The Mayfield episode is likely to lead to calls for a broad examination of both the laboratory work by the F.B.I. and the increasingly aggressive the Justice Department's use of the federal material witness statute to detain people who it says may have information about a crime. The Justice Department is known to have used the statute at least 50 times since the Sept. 11 attacks, and civil liberties advocates said Monday that the Mayfield case demonstrated the potential for abuse. "This is indicative of how the Justice Department has overreached and cut constitutional corners since 9/11," said David Fidanque, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon. "The Justice Department is using the material witness statute in a way that it was never meant to be used, and this is just the most dramatic example of that trend." Mr. Mayfield said that in the weeks before his arrest he had sensed that he was being watched and that things were not quite right in the house, in the Portland suburb of Aloha, where he lives with his wife, Mona, an Egyptian immigrant, and their three children. He said a bolt on the front door had been locked, when no one in the family used it. Blinds were raised higher than usual, and there was a large footprint in the living room carpet, much larger than the shoe sizes of any of the Mayfields, he said. "I feel that I was being surveyed or watched," he said. "Any of us sitting in this room could be subject to it. They will fiddle around with your possessions; they may take things or bring them back. People should wake up, is what I'm saying. We need to start protecting our civil liberties. You can't trade your freedom for security, because if you do, you're going to lose both."
22 May 2004
20 May 2004
Ha! Doesn't get any better than this
Pictures sure are worth 1000 words. well done Atrios....
Flashback III - Wouldn't Have These Problems Edition Remember A vote for Truman electors is a direct order to our Congressmen and Senators from Mississippi to vote for passage of Truman's so called civil rights program in the next Congress. This means the vicious FEPC -- anti-poll tax -- anti-lynching and anti-segregation proposals will become the law of the land and our way of life in the South will be gone forever. If you FAIL to VOTE you are in fact casting a vote for Truman and his vicious anti-Southern program.
Reuters vs the Pentagon
from Behind the Homefront
REUTERS NOT PLEASED BY ARMY RESPONSE TO ABUSE OF JOURNALISTS. Reuters has said that the Pentagon has not taken complaints of physical and sexual abuse of three of its journalists seriously, and has not conducted a complete investigation into the incidents. The three Iraqi employees of the agency, along with an Iraqi employee of NBC, had been detained in January, even though they had identified themselves as journalists, and most of the abuse and mistreatment had occurred after Reuters had informed Army officials that the men were on the agency's staff. Reuters later released a timeline showing that it had repeatedly pressed the military for answers since the incident occurred, but Army officials announced that the case was considered closed. More here, background here, timeline here.
Sudanese government allowing aid workers access to Darfur
from BBC NEWS
Sudan has said it will scrap the need for aid workers to have special permits to enter the troubled Darfur region in the west of the country. It said embassies would issue standard visas to aid workers within 48 hours. Announcing the change, Foreign Minister Mostafa Othman Ismail called on African countries to send peacekeepers to Darfur as soon as possible. Thousands of people have died in fighting between the government and rebels in the region. An international commission set up by the African Union is due to hold its first meeting in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, this weekend to discuss implementing a ceasefire signed in April. 'Ethnic cleansing' Some one million people have fled Darfur, where pro-government militias are accused of "ethnic cleansing". Aid workers have complained that they were being denied passes to enter the troubled region Earlier this week, the US accused Sudan of deliberately preventing American relief workers from visiting Darfur.more here.
Through the eyes of Dick Cheney
thanks to Geraldine Sealey over at Salon Through the eyes of Dick Cheney The Center for American Progress uses Dick Cheney's own words to try to get inside the head of our vice president. Funny, but of course, not. "In a series of public statements over the last few months, Vice President Cheney has given the American public a glimpse of how the world looks from his perspective. In Cheney World, Fox News is a bastion of journalistic integrity, Wal-Mart's poverty-level wages represent all that is good about the American economy, Don Rumsfeld's mishandling of/lying about Iraq makes him the best Defense Secretary ever, and Halliburton is a shining beacon of integrity even as it shafts American taxpayers and U.S. troops."
House Democrats issue warning to Church
Salon.com News | House Democrats issue warning to Church May 20, 2004 | Washington -- Forty-eight Catholic members of Congress have signed a letter warning that the church risks bringing "great harm" on itself if bishops decide to deny Communion to legislators who support abortion rights or take other public positions that are odds with church doctrine. In a May 10 letter to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of the Washington archdiocese, the legislators, all House Democrats, wrote that they were concerned about recent statements by some members of the Catholic hierarchy "indicating that the sacrament of communion should be withheld from certain Catholic legislators because of their votes on public issues." "We do not believe it is our role to legislate the teachings of the Catholic Church," wrote the legislators, some of whom oppose abortion rights. "For any of us to be singled out by any bishop by the refusal of communion or other public criticism because we vote in what we believe are the requirements of the United States Constitution and laws of our country, which we are sworn to uphold, is deeply hurtful." The legislators said denying the sacrament to legislators based on their voting records "would be counter-productive and would bring great harm to the Church." McCarrick is chairing a seven-member task force of bishops that is considering whether to recommend sanctions in guidelines on how prelates should respond to Catholic lawmakers who do not uphold church values in their work. The legislators requested a meeting with McCarrick and possibly with other members of the task force to discuss the matter. Susan Gibbs, a spokeswoman for McCarrick, said Thursday the cardinal was open to talking with the legislators, noting that the task force has heard from a number of people and groups. She said the task force has no deadline for completing its work. McCarrick told The Associated Press last month that Roman Catholic politicians who advocate policies contrary to church teaching on abortion and other issues may risk sanctions that fall short of denial of Holy Communion. "I have not gotten to the stage where I'm comfortable in denying the Eucharist," he said. For example, McCarrick said, Catholic universities could deny honorary degrees, dioceses may withhold honors, and Catholic institutions may not invite them to speak. The issue has come to the forefront with the emergence of Sen. John Kerry, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, as Democratic presidential candidate. In their letter, the legislators wrote that while the "paranoid anti-Catholicism" that once denied public office to church members seems to be in the past, "attempts by Church leaders today to influence votes by the threat of withholding a sacrament will revive latent anti-Catholic prejudice, which so many of us have worked so hard to overcome." The letter, which was circulated by Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Nicholas Lampson of Texas, was first reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post.
From One Commission to Another: Shut Up
From One Commission to Another: Shut Up by Julietter Kayyem and Wayne Downing April 16, 2004 Reprinted from the New York Times -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a growing chorus of criticism against members of the 9/11 commission that they are behaving like partisan players in what was supposed to be an objective review of the terrorist attacks. After all, you can't turn on the television or flip through a newspaper (including to this page) without encountering panel members pontificating on the hearings. While we are confident that the commission will ultimately be able to produce a constructive and unbiased report, as members of another panel on terrorism we also know the value of silence. In August 1999, we were appointed to the independent National Commission on Terrorism, which Congress established after the embassy bombings in Africa to assess the growing threat against America. One of us is a conservative Army general who led special operations during Desert Storm. The other is a Democratic lawyer who worked at the Justice Department under Attorney General Janet Reno. From that moment until the commission released its report in June 2000, we did not speak to the news media. Following a voluntary gag order, we and the eight other commissioners revealed not a single inkling of our assessments of witnesses, documents or the Clinton administration's policies. It seemed to us that we were only relevant, and would only be effective, if we spoke in a unified voice once our work was complete. The time has come for the 9/11 commission to impose the same voluntary gag order on itself. The heightened profile and interest in the hearings has inevitably made this panel a focal point for those engaged in election debates. There is little the commissioners can or should do to stop those interpretations. Their job is to ask hard questions — they were chosen for their unique and substantive backgrounds and because they are no longer aligned with any government agency. While open testimony is important for the American public, open pontificating by the commissioners is not. That only encourages outsiders to perceive the commissioners as stand-ins for factions in current political battles. It also tempts commissioners into making assessments and conclusions prematurely. A panel like this acts as a kind of jury, taking information and determining what ultimately should result. There is a sound reason why jury deliberations are not public and why individual jurors are prohibited from discussing their deliberations while they are occurring. The weight of the commission's recommendations is made more credible and dignified if the commissioners do not have known opinions outside the ultimate verdict. We learned first-hand that initial opinions can change over time after hearing additional testimony and undergoing internal deliberations. One of us, for example, went "left" in ultimately deciding that more rigorous standards were needed for detaining individuals based on undisclosed information. The other went "right" in supporting more aggressive recruitment by the C.I.A. of human-rights violators to act as informants. This is a healthy process. It is hard to see how it is facilitated by taking a premature position on national television. That only makes it more difficult for a commissioner to back away from that position later on, and unnecessarily so. This is not to say that the 9/11 commissioners do not have an interest in making their opinions known. But that interest should be limited to issues involving process and the effective workings of the panel. Such procedural concerns included the commission's request for Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to testify, and its unanimous recommendation that the Aug. 6 Presidential Daily Brief be released to the public. In the end, public analysis, as a matter of sound political strategy (political in the effectiveness sense, not the partisan sense), is better left to others in the White House, the Kerry campaign, Congress, the 9/11 families and the news media. Once the report is released, there will be plenty of time for the commissioners to chat. There should, of course, be no sanction for violating a gag-order agreement. But the reality is that an individual commissioner's interpretation of the hearings, evidence and report itself is irrelevant. If, as we hope, the 9/11 report is going to say something constructive and beneficial about America's security, then a voluntary gag order will help ensure that it will have the greatest possible historical importance and influence. Juliette Kayyem teaches national security at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. Wayne Downing was the national security adviser for counterterrorism in the administration of George H. W. Bush.
yoooohoooooooooooo
Also, see this by Josh Marshall on the plans to hand over the keys to Iraq...
who are we giving them to?
19 May 2004
British city to become wireless hotspot
from BBC NEWS Cardiff is to become the first city in the UK to offer wire-free internet coverage in central areas of the city. The technology, known as wi-fi, means people with suitably-equipped laptops will be able to surf the web or pick up emails in "hotspots" without cables. A network of 50 hotspots will operate across the city centre and in Cardiff Bay from the summer.
Guantanamo Bay detainee reviews to begin within weeks
JURIST's Paper Chase - Legal news worth thinking about Chris Buell on 5/18/2004 09:16:52 PM The Pentagon announced Tuesday that it would begin annual reviews to determine whether to release terror suspects being held in Guatanamo Bay. The reviews will be closed to the public, and detainees will have no right to counsel. Procedures for the reviews can be found here. A defense department official said the secrecy was needed because classified information will be presented in the hearings. The process will be conducted entirely within the Defense Department and will not be subject to review by courts. Reuters has more.
18 May 2004
Same-sex marriage debate increases support for such recognition
Good... then keep debating it. MSNBC - Civil unions for gays favored, polls show
U.S. Intelligence Misled by Sources of Prewar Iraq Information, Powell Says
from NTI: Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — The CIA was “misled” by some of its sources on prewar intelligence on alleged Iraqi WMD efforts, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said yesterday. Meanwhile, the former head of the U.S. Central Command criticized the Bush administration’s use of intelligence provided by former Iraqi opposition groups, which have been heavily criticized for providing inaccurate information (see GSN, April 13). During an appearance yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Powell briefly discussed the controversy surrounding an Iraqi defector known as “Curveball,” who reportedly was the source for a now-discredited claim Powell made in February 2003 to the U.N. Security Council that Iraq possessed mobile biological weapons facilities (see GSN, March 29). While saying that his presentation was based on the “best information” made available by the CIA, Powell also reiterated that the sources for such information had been wrong, and went even further by saying they had misled U.S. intelligence. “It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong, and in some cases deliberately misleading. And for that I am disappointed, and I regret it,” Powell said. According to reports, Curveball was first made available to Western intelligence agencies by the Iraqi National Congress, a former opposition group headed by Ahmad Chalabi that has been accused of providing bad intelligence on prewar Iraq. In a speech last week, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command, said that one of the “biggest” mistakes of the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq was its reliance on exile groups. In a May 12 speech before the Board of Directors of the Washington think-tank Center for Defense Information, Zinni outlined a 10-point critique of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq crisis. Among the administration’s mistakes, Zinni said, was trusting Iraqi exile groups such as the Iraqi National Congress, which he called “Gucci guerrillas from London.” “We bought into their intelligence reports,” Zinni said. “And we ended up with a group that fed us bad information,” he said. U.S. Senator Joseph Biden (Del.), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, yesterday criticized the Bush administration’s apparent continued use of the National Congress for gathering information. According to reports, the U.S. Defense Department is paying the group more than $300,000 per month for intelligence-gathering efforts (see GSN, March 11). “I think he [Chalabi] seems to be the darling of the vice president and of some of the civilians in the Defense Department. I think he’s a problem. He’s not part of the solution. But yet there seems to be an unwillingness to break from him,” Biden said during an appearance on Meet the Press.
17 May 2004
Iraqi council replaces slain leader - May 17, 2004
from CNN.com BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A civil engineer from the northern city of Mosul was sworn in Monday to replace the assassinated leader of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. The council selected Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar as president after a suicide bomber killed Izzedine Salim on Monday morning in Baghdad, rattling the U.S.-backed coalition as it prepares to hand over sovereignty of the country to Iraqis on June 30. "We should all unify our efforts in our words and in our actions in chasing those criminals and paralyzing their hand and to unify our energy in working for a democratic and free Iraq," the new president said.
16 May 2004
THE GRAY ZONE: by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
in the May 24th edition of The New Yorker
How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib.
The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.
According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.
Rumsfeld, during appearances last week before Congress to testify about Abu Ghraib, was precluded by law from explicitly mentioning highly secret matters in an unclassified session. But he conveyed the message that he was telling the public all that he knew about the story. He said, “Any suggestion that there is not a full, deep awareness of what has happened, and the damage it has done, I think, would be a misunderstanding.” The senior C.I.A. official, asked about Rumsfeld’s testimony and that of Stephen Cambone, his Under-Secretary for Intelligence, said, “Some people think you can bullshit anyone.”
15 May 2004
14 May 2004
How do I reconcile
this?
"Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to strike America, to attack us, I would have used every resource, every asset, every power of this government to protect the American people."
with this?
ya think?
Bush is a fear president The US president is determined to use national anxiety to his advantage
Administration officials might not want to read this
from USATODAY.com
"Administration officials might not want to read this" WASHINGTON -- George W. Bush sometimes suggests that he abandoned reading newspapers when he moved into the Oval Office. 'I glance at the headlines just to (get) kind of a flavor for what's moving,' the president told Fox News last September. Bush said during the TV interview that he prefers to get his information from briefings by chief of staff Andy Card and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Now Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also seems to have broken his addiction to print. During his surprise whirlwind visit to Iraq on Thursday, Rumsfeld joked while speaking to U.S troops, 'I've stopped reading newspapers. You've got to keep your sanity somehow. I'm a survivor.' For those of us who write words that appear in black type, it is hard to note these developments without a sense of disappointment. When John Kennedy famously canceled the White House subscription to the Republican-leaning New York Herald Tribune, JFK was merely displaying pique at a single newspaper and not dissing the entire journalistic profession. But Rumsfeld's remark, assuming he was at least partly serious, has the makings of a trend. Pretty soon the Bush administration may need to arrange 12-step programs in newspaper avoidance to help top officials maintain psychological equilibrium in troubling times. Editorial pages and, yes, columnists would undoubtedly be the first to go as addiction counselors point the way to print-free recovery. Then the front pages and all news from Iraq. After a week or two of this tough-love regimen, officials battling newspaper withdrawal would be limited to the sports sections and weather maps. Just a year ago, amid the triumphant mood following the fall of Saddam Hussein, newspapers were brimming with praise about Rumsfeld's masterful command in military briefings. Unlike Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld appeared to revel in matching wits with his press critics. For all his grumbling about individual press stories, the Pentagon chief came across as far too confident to ever need to kick the newspaper habit. But the prisoner-abuse scandal and the brutal casualty figures from Iraq have damaged Rumsfeld's reputation. Sure, both Bush and Cheney have gone out of their way to roll out the laudatory adjectives about Rumsfeld's tenure at the Pentagon. But something strange is happening when Rumsfeld feels compelled to declare, even in jest, "I'm a survivor." True survivors endure without challenge rather than proclaiming their determination not to go quietly into retirement. Bush, like any president running for re-election, is also a survivor. And there may come a moment, especially if prominent Republicans on Capitol Hill publicly join the anti-Rumsfeld chorus, when Bush's political self-interest trumps his obvious feelings of personal loyalty. True, Rumsfeld can take comfort in the poll numbers that suggest only hard-core Democrats want him ousted from office. Accountability is an imperfect mechanism in a democracy. Cabinet members serve at the pleasure of the president and can otherwise only be removed from office by impeachment. As a result, Rumsfeld can remain impervious to the public clamor and ignore the newspapers as long as he retains the support of the man in the White House. Congressional shock at the pictures from Abu Ghraib prison brings to mind an earlier firestorm that raced through Capitol Hill. In late 1974, The New York Times reported that the CIA had flagrantly violated the law by spying on domestic dissidents within the USA. Coming in the aftermath of Watergate and the Vietnam War, these revelations prompted the Senate to set up a special investigatory panel known as the Church Committee after its chairman, Idaho Democrat Frank Church. The dramatic Church Committee hearings uncovered CIA misdeeds that went far beyond domestic snooping. Americans were horrified to learn that the CIA had attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro, rigged elections in democratic countries such as Chile and cynically conducted drug experiments on unwitting Americans. What makes the Church Committee experience relevant today is the way that the investigation mushroomed from a single news story into a wide-ranging exposé of the dark underside of the CIA and other spy agencies. In similar fashion, tales of sadistic abuse at Abu Ghraib have prompted renewed questioning about the tactics that the CIA has used in interrogating al-Qaeda captives. The Times reported Thursday that the CIA has been employing something called "water boarding" in which prisoners are strapped to a board, held underwater and threatened with drowning. Under our system of government, the most potent investigative body is Congress. As Loch Johnson, a professor of international affairs at the University of Georgia and a special assistant to Church during the hearings in the 1970s, put it, "Congress has always done well to do its own probes. Government agencies are self-protective organisms, whether they're the Army, the CIA or the White House itself." After a week of congressional hearings, it is far too early to gauge the full ramifications of the prisoner-abuse scandal. But if the past is any precedent, it may be many months before Rumsfeld and other administration officials resume happily reading the papers. Walter Shapiro's column appears Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at wshapiro@usatoday.com
Kevin Drum on the revolving door
from The Washington Monthly
COUNTERTERRORISM....When I was reading Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, one of the things that struck me was that everyone who takes the chief counterterrorism job in George Bush's White House gets disgusted pretty quickly and leaves. Over at TNR's Campaign Journal, Ryan Lizza notes that the latest counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, has recently resigned and summarizes the revolving door like this:
First there was Richard Clarke. We all know what happened to him. He left his post in disgust and wrote a book arguing that Bush paid no attention to terrorism before 9/11 and that the war in Iraq was a monumental diversion from the fight against al Qaeda and a gift to jihadist recruiters across the Muslim world. Clarke was replaced by General Wayne Downing, a pro-Iraq war hawk. Nonetheless, he had a similar experience, lasting a total of 10 months before abruptly resigning in frustration at how the White House bureaucracy was responding to the terrorist threat. Downing was replaced by two men, General [John] Gordon, who lasted ten months before moving on to his homeland security job, and Rand Beers, who resigned in disgust over the Iraq war after seven months in his post. His experience was searing enough that he immediately joined the Kerry campaign. Beers was replaced by Townsend, who has now been tapped to replace Gordon, who is apparently resigning under circumstances similar to Clarke and Beers. (Got all that?)
In a followup post Ryan notes that there's actually a sixth person to add to this list.
There doesn't seem to be a single person who knows anything about counterterrorism who can stand to be in Bush's White House for more than a few months. What does this tell you about both their competence and their dedication to building a counterterrorism program that actually works?
"Broken Engagement "
The strategy that won the Cold War could help bring democracy to the Middle East-- if only the Bush hawks understood it. by Gen. Wesley Clark We can't know precisely how the desire for freedom among the peoples of the Middle East will grow and evolve into movements that result in stable democratic governments. Different countries may take different paths. Progress may come from a beneficent king, from enlightened mullahs, from a secular military, from a women's movement, from workers returning from years spent as immigrants in Western Europe, from privileged sons of oil barons raised on MTV, or from an increasingly educated urban intelligentsia, such as the nascent one in Iran. But if the events of the last year tell us anything, it is that democracy in the Middle East is unlikely to come at the point of our gun. And Ronald Reagan would have known better than to try.
13 May 2004
"I've stopped reading newspapers"
add Donald Rumsfeld to the list of administration officials who don't like it when newspapers say mean things about them, so they quit reading. Wah.
A deepening rift at the Pentagon Rumsfeld's surprise visit to Iraq should help buoy troops, but DOD is still riven by the scandal. By Ann Scott Tyson Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – The Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal is exposing a Pentagon increasingly at war with itself, leading to a crisis of leadership even as tens of thousands of US troops risk their lives battling insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. For months, discord has been growing in Pentagon corridors over the Iraq war, as senior US military officers criticize what they see as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's risky war plan and the lack of a clear political end game.
11 May 2004
So Very True
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it." Dwight D. Eisenhower
I HATE WAR
originally posted March 25, 2004
[update: Below are pictures of the FDR Memorial, which you still won't find here.]
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I'm outraged.
Today was "Girls' day" for my wife, sister and mother... (they do this occasionally, I think it's a girl thing). Was a beautiful day... 70°... sunny... the beginning 
Pretty scary stuff, huh?
I'm curious though. How does the passage below (excerpted from the DOJ FOIA memo which led to the removal of the FDR inscription page) differ from the inscription that was removed from the National Parks Service website?
The Department of Justice and this Administration are equally committed to protecting other fundamental values that are held by our society. Among them are safeguarding our national security, enhancing the effectiveness of our law enforcement agencies, protecting sensitive business information and, not least, preserving personal privacy
10 May 2004
Collapsing from within
from the Navy Times... emphasis added is mine.
Editorial: A failure of leadership at the highest levels Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war. Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable. But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons. There is no excuse for the behavior displayed by soldiers in the now-infamous pictures and an even more damning report by Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba. Every soldier involved should be ashamed. But while responsibility begins with the six soldiers facing criminal charges, it extends all the way up the chain of command to the highest reaches of the military hierarchy and its civilian leadership. The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes. In addition to the scores of prisoners who were humiliated and demeaned, at least 14 have died in custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has ruled at least two of those homicides. This is not the way a free people keeps its captives or wins the hearts and minds of a suspicious world. How tragically ironic that the American military, which was welcomed to Baghdad by the euphoric Iraqi people a year ago as a liberating force that ended 30 years of tyranny, would today stand guilty of dehumanizing torture in the same Abu Ghraib prison used by Saddam Hussein’s henchmen. One can only wonder why the prison wasn’t razed in the wake of the invasion as a symbolic stake through the heart of the Baathist regime. Army commanders in Iraq bear responsibility for running a prison where there was no legal adviser to the commander, and no ultimate responsibility taken for the care and treatment of the prisoners. Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, also shares in the shame. Myers asked “60 Minutes II” to hold off reporting news of the scandal because it could put U.S. troops at risk. But when the report was aired, a week later, Myers still hadn’t read Taguba’s report, which had been completed in March. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also failed to read the report until after the scandal broke in the media. By then, of course, it was too late. Myers, Rumsfeld and their staffs failed to recognize the impact the scandal would have not only in the United States, but around the world. If their staffs failed to alert Myers and Rumsfeld, shame on them. But shame, too, on the chairman and secretary, who failed to inform even President Bush. He was left to learn of the explosive scandal from media reports instead of from his own military leaders. On the battlefield, Myers’ and Rumsfeld’s errors would be called a lack of situational awareness — a failure that amounts to professional negligence. To date, the Army has moved to court-martial the six soldiers suspected of abusing Iraqi detainees and has reprimanded six others. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who commanded the MP brigade that ran Abu Ghraib, has received a letter of admonishment and also faces possible disciplinary action. That’s good, but not good enough. This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential — even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war. — Military Times editorial, May 17 issue
09 May 2004
U.S. Army report on Iraqi prisoner abuse
The report was prepared by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba on alleged abuse of prisoners by members of the 800th Military Police Brigade at the Abu Ghraib Prison in Baghdad MSNBC - U.S. Army report on Iraqi prisoner abuse