Have you no sense of decency, sir?

Kieth Olbermann on MSNBC:

It is to our deep national shame—and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret—that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies—or even question their effectiveness or execution—to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11—without ever actually saying so—the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”

Make no mistake here—the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word—“media”—the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Mr. Bush and his colleagues have led us before to such waters.

We will not drink again.

And the President’s re-writing and sanitizing of history, so it fits the expediencies of domestic politics, is just as false, and just as scurrilous.

“In the 1920’s a failed Austrian painter published a book in which he explained his intention to build an Aryan super-state in Germany and take revenge on Europe and eradicate the Jews,” President Bush said today, “the world ignored Hitler’s words, and paid a terrible price.”

Whatever the true nature of al Qaeda and other international terrorist threats, to ceaselessly compare them to the Nazi State of Germany serves only to embolden them.

More over, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek—a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

It thus becomes necessary to remind the President that his administration’s recent Nazi “kick” is an awful and cynical thing.

And it becomes necessary to reach back into our history, for yet another quote, from yet another time and to ask it of Mr. Bush:

“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”

Playing the terror card again

from Salon:

By Glenn Greenwald

Bush acknowledged on Wednesday, for the first time, that the CIA has been holding top al-Qaida prisoners, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed, in secret prisons. Bush announced that 14 such prisoners would be transferred to the Pentagon’s custody at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Bush also said that those prisoners would be tried before a military commission and, consistent with a Supreme Court ruling in July, would be afforded the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

This announcement may appear superficially to constitute a reversal, or even a capitulation, by the Bush administration, but there are significant political benefits to be gained from the White House’s maneuver, including election-season pressure on lawmakers to support policies the administration has pursued all along for the “war on terror.”

Last November, reporter Dana Priest revealed in the Washington Post that the Bush administration has “been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al-Qaida captives” in secret CIA-operated prisons, known as “black sites,” located in Eastern Europe and elsewhere around the globe. Shortly thereafter, ABC News reported that one of those prisoners was Mohammed, the al-Qaida member who the Bush administration claims was the “mastermind” of 9/11. ABC also reported that in one of the black sites, Mohammed was subjected to “waterboarding,” a practice the White House describes as an “enhanced interrogation technique” but that many human rights advocates consider to be a form of torture.

Although the Bush administration refused to confirm or deny Priest’s story, it has claimed generally since 9/11 that members of al-Qaida are not prisoners of war, but instead are “enemy combatants,” and therefore are entitled to no protections under the Geneva Conventions. That theory would legally justify secret detentions or any other treatment of al-Qaida detainees. But in July, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected that claim in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, ruling that the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees, including al-Qaida members. That ruling forced the administration’s hand with regard to the CIA’s “black sites,” as it would be illegal under Hamdan to continue to hold detainees in secret prisons beyond the reach of the law.

Republican strategists have made explicitly clear that their strategy for the midterm elections, now just two months away, is to highlight the terrorist threat to the fullest extent possible. Accordingly, top Bush officials, including Bush, have spent the last week giving a series of extraordinary speeches about terrorism, featuring highly charged accusations of “appeasement,” along with escalated rhetoric equating the threat from al-Qaida to that posed by the Nazis during World War II and by Communists under Lenin and Stalin. Republicans clearly want the news dominated by alarming discussions of the terrorist threat, as opposed to the highly unpopular war in Iraq, which has receded from view in recent weeks despite continued grim developments.

Publicly showcasing the most dangerous and prized al-Qaida suspects, as the White House did Wednesday, has already provoked exactly the visceral reminders of the 9/11 attacks that the administration believes will provide it the most political punch. As the so-called 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheik Mohammed is one of the best-known and most ominous terrorists of all. Virtually every news Web site and cable news program is now repeatedly displaying the photograph of a bedraggled, angry Mohammed, taken after he was dragged out of bed in Pakistan in the middle of the night and detained by American soldiers in March 2003. Short of capturing Osama bin Laden, it is difficult to imagine what could bolster the administration’s political objectives more than having such a vivid and alarming image associated with the 9/11 attacks once again filling television and computer screens everywhere.

The transfer of these detainees to Guantánamo is also certain to provide the administration with a powerful new weapon as Congress debates various legislative proposals designed to regulate military commissions and interrogation techniques in the wake of the Hamdan ruling. The Bush administration is insisting that Congress do nothing more than simply endorse, legislatively, the military commissions that the administration already created. The administration is also seeking authorization for the CIA to employ controversial interrogation techniques such as prolonged sleep deprivation and waterboarding—a policy Vice President Cheney in particular has fought for fiercely on Capitol Hill.

But numerous lawmakers, including top Republican senators such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, are insisting that additional due process safeguards be provided to detainees. They include the right for detainees to be present for the proceedings, the right to have access to the evidence against them, and the banning of statements from detainees obtained under coercion (techniques such as waterboarding). And the Senate has previously made clear its opposition to use by the CIA of the more extreme “coercive” tactics for which the administration is seeking authorization.

In the past, the administration has depicted such efforts to protect fundamental principles of due process as “giving rights to terrorists.” By announcing that Mohammed himself is now to be one of the detainees to be tried before a Guantánamo tribunal, the administration is sure to argue that the “mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks does not deserve such privilege. Particularly for those in Congress facing tough reelection battles, the prospect of being depicted as an advocate for Khalid Sheik Mohammed is sure to give them pause when deciding if they will insist on greater safeguards for Guantánamo detainees.

Unsurprisingly, the White House has chosen the ideal time to politically pressure Congress in hopes of regaining some of the ground it lost in the watershed Hamdan decision. That ruling forced an end to its policy of holding detainees at “black sites.” By announcing the transfer of these detainees to Guantánamo for trials before a military commission, the administration advances its political objective of highlighting terrorism, and simultaneously makes it much more difficult for Congress to defy its wishes in the legislative battle over Guantánamo.

The Cheney Presidency

from The Boston Globe via truthout:

By Robert Kuttner

George W. Bush has been faulted in some quarters for taking an extended vacation while the Middle East festers. It doesn’t much matter; the man running the country is Vice President Dick Cheney.

When historians look back on the multiple assaults on our constitutional system of government in this era, Cheney’s unprecedented role will come in for overdue notice. Cheney’s shotgun mishap, when he accidentally sprayed his host with birdshot, has gotten more media attention than has his control of the government.

Historically, the vice president’s job was to ceremonially preside over the Senate, attend second-tier foreign funerals, and be prepared for the president to die. Students are taught that John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s first vice pre?ident, compared the job to a bucket of warm spit (and historians say spit was not the word the pungent Texan actually used).

Recent vice presidents Walter Mondale and Al Gore were given more authority than most, but there was no doubt that the president was in charge.

Cheney is in a class by himself. The administration’s grand strategy and its implementation are the work of Cheney - sometimes Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, sometimes Cheney and political director Karl Rove.

Cheney has planted aides in major Cabinet departments, often over the objection of a Cabinet secretary, to make sure his policies are carried out. He sits in on the Senate Republican caucus, to stamp out any rebellions. Cheney loyalists from the Office of the Vice President dominate interagency planning meetings.

The Iraq war is the work of Cheney and Rumsfeld. The capture of the career civil service is pure Cheney. The disciplining of Congress is the work of Cheney and Rove. The turning over of energy policy to the oil companies is Cheney. The extreme secrecy is Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

If Cheney were the president, more of this would be smoked out because the press would be paying attention. The New York Times’ acerbic columnist Maureen Dowd regularly makes sport of Cheney’s dominance, and there are plenty of jokes (Bush is a heartbeat away from the presidency). But you can count serious newspaper or magazine articles on Cheney’s operation on the fingers of one hand. One exceptional example is Jane Mayer’s piece in the July 3 New Yorker on Cheney operative David Addington .

Cheney’s power is matched only by his penchant for secrecy. When my colleague at the American Prospect, Robert Dreyfuss, requested the names of people who serve on the vice president’s staff, he was told this was classified information. Former staffers for other departments provided Dreyfuss with names.

So secretive is Cheney (and so incurious the media) that when his chief of staff, Irving Lewis Libby, was implicated in the leaked identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, reporters who rushed to look Libby up on Nexis and Google found that Libby had barely rated previous press attention.

Why does this matter? Because if the man actually running the government is out of the spotlight, the administration and its policies are far less accountable.

When George W. Bush narrowly defeated John Kerry in 2004, many commentators observed that Bush was the fellow with whom you would rather have a beer. It’s an accurate and unflattering comment on the American electorate - but then who wants to have a beer with Cheney? The public may not know the details of his operation, but voters intuitively recoil from him.

Bush’s popularity ratings are now under 40 percent, beer or no, reflecting dwindling confidence in where he is taking the country. But Cheney’s ratings are stuck around 20 percent, far below that of any president.

If Cheney were the actual president, not just the de facto one, he simply could not govern with the same set of policies and approval ratings of 20 percent. The media focuses relentless attention on the president, on the premise that he is actually the chief executive. But for all intents and purposes, Cheney is chief, and Bush is more in the ceremonial role of the queen of England.

Yet the press buys the pretense of Bush being “the decider,” and relentlessly covers Bush - meeting with world leaders, cutting brush, holding press conferences, while Cheney works in secret, largely undisturbed. So let’s take half the members of the overblown White House press corps, which has almost nothing to do anyway, and send them over to Cheney Boot Camp for Reporters. They might learn how to be journalists again, and we might learn who is running the government.

The Bush Doctrine of Ignorance

from The Seattle Times via truthout:

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

The conventional wisdom has it that John F. Kennedy was the first television president.

Meaning not that he was president when the medium began to impact the nation - that distinction goes to Dwight Eisenhower - but that he was the first to understand its potential and exploit its power. The signature illustration is the famous debate with Richard Nixon. People who watched it on television felt the handsome, vigorous Democrat trounced the ailing, haggard Republican. Curiously enough, many of those who only heard the debate on radio gave the edge to Nixon.

Forty-six years later, I submit to you that we are undergoing a similarly seismic moment in presidential communication: George W. Bush is the first Information Age president.

Like Kennedy, he arrived a little late; he was not in office when information access became the currency of daily life. Yet, he was the first president to understand the potential and exploit the power of that development. Unfortunately, he does so to our detriment. While Kennedy used television to expand presidential influence, Bush has controlled information toward a more dubious end: the curtailment of that great threat to imperial power, the informed electorate.

Last week, The Washington Post ran a fascinating story based on a report from the National Security Archive, a research library at George Washington University. According to the report, the Bush administration has been blacking out previously public documents on the nation’s strategic military capabilities. They are doing this, they say, in the name of national security. Got a question on the Minuteman missile? Tough. Curious about the Titan II? Too bad.

Now maybe you wonder what the problem is. This is sensitive information we’re talking about, right? Can’t have that falling into just anybody’s hands, right?

The thing is, it’s already in “anybody’s” hands: it dates back half a century to the Cold War. We’re talking about memos, charts and papers that have over the years been cited in open congressional hearings, reported in newspapers, used in history books. We’re talking about information our government long ago deemed innocuous enough to provide even to its former enemy, the Soviet Union.

And now - “now!” - we’re supposed to believe it’s suddenly so sensitive it has to be classified Top Secret? Please.

This is a classic case of locking the barn after the horse has escaped - and died of old age. More to the point, it is a classic and absurd example of the present regime’s mania for secrecy, its obsessive need to control what, when, how and why you and I learn about its activities.

Anyone who doesn’t see a pattern here has not been paying attention. From its 18-hour blackout of news that the vice president had shot a man, to its paying a newspaper columnist to write favorable pieces, to its habit of putting out video press releases disguised as TV news, to its penchant for stamping top secret on anything that doesn’t move fast enough, this administration has repeatedly shown contempt for the right of the people to know what’s going on. At a time when information is more readily available than ever, this government is working like 1952 to enforce ignorance.

And the people, too many of them, shrug and say okey-dokey. As if we learned nothing from Abscam, Iran-contra, Vietnam and Watergate. As if it’s OK for an arrogant and paternalistic government to decide for us what we get to know.

Well, it’s not. An informed electorate is the lifeblood of democracy, the ultimate check on despotic ambitions.

One wonders if most people get this. One suspects that most people do not. How can you get it and not be outraged? How can you get it and not feel fear? Apparently, some of us don’t understand the stakes here.

It’s not just information they’re trying to control.

A Sick Fixation With Secrecy

from the NYT:

In 1971, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird punctuated his plea to Congress for more cold war appropriations with a graphic display of information that revealed the nation on guard with 54 Titan and 1,000 Minuteman nuclear missiles, plus 30 strategic bomber squadrons. In making his case, Mr. Laird exemplified the idea that a little transparency is no drawback in a democracy.

Thirty-five years later, the Bush administration, which has consistently demonstrated an extraordinary mania for secrecy, is blacking that public information out of history. That’s right: it has reclassified the number of missiles and bombers from the Nixon era as some fresh national security secret, even though historians and officials in the old Soviet Union long have had it available on their research shelves.

What strange compulsion drives such “silly secrecy,” as it is aptly described by officials of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library at George Washington University? The archive published a report on how retroactive the administration has become in its obsession with creating secrets out of interesting information. The blacked-out missile and defense policy information dates to the 1960’s. Soviet numbers are left untouched on the open record, while the old American armada is freshly cloaked. What’s next? Classifying Civil War ironclads and cannons?

The missile blackout is the latest symptom of a deepening government illness. National security has become the excuse for efforts to crack down on whistle-blowers and journalists dealing in such vital disclosures as the illicit eavesdropping on Americans. Last spring the director of the National Archives objected to a reclassifying initiative undertaken by intelligence officials that caused 55,000 decades-old pages to vanish from the public record. The process itself was labeled an official secret.

Public recourse has become more difficult: enforcement of the Freedom of Information Act has become slower and more burdensome. The one thing the administration has made no secret is its antipathy to government transparency. The secrecy fixation is a threat to democracy and an insult to honest history.

Welcome to Amurika

Diane E. Dees reports in MoJo:

“People here in the U.S. don’t understand these things about constitutional rights.”

That’s what a Jordan-born man says he was told by airport security personnel when they asked him to remove his T-shirt before boarding a flight to California at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York. The man, whose name is Raed, says he was told “People are feeling offended because of your T-shirt.” Raed was wearing a shirt that said in both Arabic and English, We Will Not Be Silent. He was asked to put on another shirt instead, but all of his other shirts were in his checked baggage.

“Isn’t it my constitutional right to express myself in this way?” was Raed’s question, to which one of the security people replied, “"People here in the U.S. don’t understand these things about constitutional rights” Raed’s answer: “I live in the U.S., and I understand it is my right to wear this T-shirt.”

“You can’t wear a T-shirt with Arabic script and come to an airport. It is like wearing a T-shirt that reads ‘I am a robber’ and going to a bank,” was the security man’s rejoinder.

Raed explained that he bought the shirt in Washington, D.C. and that they are available in a number of languages. He was told that without a translator, people did not know what the shirt said. “But as you can see, the statement is in both Arabic and English,” Raed explained, but securiety personnel had yet another reply: “Maybe it is not the same message.”

Raed was asked to wear his T-shirt inside-out, which he refused to do. Security offered to buy him another T-shirt that he could wear over the one he had on. He agreed to do that if they could show him a law that prohibited his wearing his own shirt. He asked to see a supervisor, but was not allowed to; he was told there had been numerous complaints about his shirt. He did not want to miss his flight, so he allowed a woman from his airline to buy him another T-shirt. She innocently asked if he would like to have an I Love New York shirt, and one of the security people said, “No, we shouldn’t ask him to go from one extreme to another.”

Raed did ask the man why, if he had Arabic script on his T-shirt, did that mean he hated New York? This time, he received no reply. He went to board the plane, and discovered his seat, which he had booked four weeks in advance, had been taken from him. He was seated in the very back.

Raed’s final comment: “I grew up under authoritarian governments in the Middle East, and one of the reasons I chose to move to the U.S. was that I don’t want an officer to make me change my T-shirt.”

Well, Raed--welcome to Amurika.

Welcome to Neo-Fascism 101

from Smirking Chimp, who got this from a VirtualCitizens page.
by Andrew Bosworth

Neo-Fascism in America

Neo-conservatives decided that World War III is to be waged against “Islamic-Fascists” or “Islamo-Fascism.”

Who is reading from the new script? William Kristol, Bill O’Reilly, Christopher Hitchens, Michelle Mankin, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter, Nick Cohen, Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Daniel Pipes, Glenn Beck, Oliver North - even George W. Bush, prompting legitimate complaints from Muslim-Americans.

Middle Eastern powers include pan-Arab socialist dictatorships (Syria), monarchies (Saudi Arabia), constitutional theocracies (Iran), and assorted fundamentalist movements. None are “fascist.” For three decades of political scientists, “fascism” is a phenomenon of industrialized societies and exhibits features alien to the Middle East.

Classical fascism was evident in inter-war Italy, Germany and Japan, and full-blown fascism exhibits three dimensions: economic, political and cultural.

1. Economic fascism is based a merger of big business and big government. Sometimes, a formal corporatism emerges; other times, the private sector (monopolies and oligopolies) simply pass over into the public sector (as in the US), capturing the state and using it to wage that most profitable of activities: war. This later scenario is what happened in the United States, and the incestuous relationship between Big Business and Big Government ushered in a new Gilded Age of cronyism and corruption. Benito Mussolini was clear: “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.”

For the Middle East, the preconditions of mature capitalism (and thus fascism) simply do not exist.

2. Political fascism normally includes, as it did for Italy and Germany, a retreat from already-existing democratic practices - an erosion of democracy. The political class begins to express a disdain for human rights and international treaties, lashing out at pillars of civilization like France. Power is increasingly centered on the executive branch, and elections become less transparent, even fraudulent. Civil liberties are restricted, and constitutions are ground under the hobnailed boot.

Political fascism always depicts dissent as treason, and there is an obsession with scapegoats and plots. There are frequent mixed messages about the enemy: the enemy is strong, then weak; the enemy is important; then irrelevant. Today, the Party depicts Hezbollah as having unlimited funds from Iran and, simultaneously, selling pirated DVDs and fake Viagra in your town.

Political fascism is based on militant nationalism, pseudo-populism and an adoration of military power. As Huey Long said, former Governor of Louisiana: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.” For different reasons, these values tend to resonate among economic elites at the top and the lower middle class at the bottom. In the United States, however, it appears that the lower and working classes are now questioning their leadership - or losing themselves in End of Empire entertainment: pan y circo (bread and circus).

In its advanced stages, political fascism depends upon mass surveillance and, more crucially, eternal war. Italy’s mad adventures in Ethiopia and Germany’s insane and unwinnable two-front war were nursed by the ideology of eternal war.

The only ingredient of classical political fascism missing in the United States is a charismatic leader - but not for lack of trying. In Red States, billboards of George W. “Our Leader” arose, and fundamentalists synchronized Morning Prayer to those of the White House.

Middle East powers - particularly the movements neo-cons describe as “Islamofascist” - are emerging in non-democratic systems. They are also pushing for more, not less, political democracy because the popular classes will catapult them to power and keep them there.

Hamas, for example, won in an election. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood would very much like to go to the polls in more transparent elections. Shia Muslims in Iraq are also keen on voting. Iran’s president won an election handily. And when the dust settles in Lebanon, the next sure winner at the ballot box will be Hezbollah, when Lebanese Christians, Sunnis and Druze will surely wait in lines for hours to endorse this radical Shia group. Democracy, it seems, is about to flourish in the Middle East - it’s just not yielding the puppet regimes hoped for in Washington, London (Airstrip One) or Tel Aviv. Tony Snow claims “they hate democracy.” Don’t be snowed.

Islamic fundamentalist groups compete at the national level, but Islamic fundamentalism is a transnational movement inherently opposed to the pseudo-nationalism necessary for fascism.

3. Cultural fascism is based on a reaction against science, modernity, the arts and intellectualism. It distorts science to accomplish political aims. Cultural fascism always includes strong doses of homophobia.

In the US, for every person with legitimate objections to immigration (objections based on public policy), there must be three people objecting to it based on race, and for them “illegal” becomes a euphemism for “Mexican.” Xenophobia is basic to cultural fascism.

Cultural fascism, in the West, tends towards anti-Semitism. For now, American anti-Semitism has an anti-Arab face. In linguistics and ethnology, the term “Semitic” includes “Arabic” and “Arabs.” A Marriam-Webster definition of “Semite” is clear: “A member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs.”

Thus, when neo-con pundits, politicians and even the President employ the term “Islamo-Fascist” they are being anti-Semitic.

Middle Eastern and Islamic movements can be reactionary, but these are reactions to external powers and not to the core dimensions of their own societies, which remain traditional.

So the economic, political and cultural prerequisites of fascism do not exist in the Middle East - but they do exist in the United States. Our post-WWII, Information Age neo-fascism is much like the inter-war classical fascism but softer, lighter, friendlier. Today, instead of marching, we ritually demonstrate our political will on touch-screen pads, a ceremony organized by Party-backed corporations with secret software on private servers.

It’s a race: Will the future look like Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, where a “dictatorship without tears” is founded upon psychotropic drugs, false religion and biological-sexual engineering? Or will it be a world of brute force like George Orwell’s 1984? “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.” It will be both: A Brave New World for those who conform and 1984 for those who don’t. American fascism will both smile and grimace.

Neo-con pundits follow a clever strategy of deflection. They employ the term “Islamo-Fascism” when “theocracy” or “dictatorship” or “fundamentalist movement” would be more historically accurate. Why do they do this? Their political epithets are inspired by a subtle conditioning campaign.

Perhaps it’s subconscious projection. “Projection,” of course, is a defense mechanism that kicks when someone is threatened by, or afraid of, their own impulse. So they attribute these impulses to someone else. Do not be neo-conned. How can you help?

First, always replace the term “neo-conservatism” with “neo-fascism.”

Second, always charge those who use the term “Islamo-fascism” with anti-Semitism (because Arabs - most of whom are Muslims - are technically “Semitic,” too).

Third, remind people who use the term “Islamo-Fascism” that the term is historically inaccurate and that the main ingredients of classical fascism - 1) monopoly capitalism; 2) erosion of democracy; and 3) militant nationalism - are coming together in the United States like a Perfect Storm.

It’s not fair to perform a vivisection of the Bush regime without pointing to what a healthier body politic might look like - a “post-crisis” body politic.

1) The restoration of the checks and balances, and limited government, of a democratic republic. This includes voter protections and a pencil-paper-box voting system.

2) The restoration of foreign relations to open diplomacy (as envisioned by the Founders) - to the power of persuasion - unless attacked, upon which military force will be restricted to the forces demonstrably responsible. This means no foreign aid, no weapons sales, no forward bases, and no committing political adultery by dividing loyalties between the people of the United States and any foreign power. The American people can express their solidarity with people around the world with short-term disaster relief.

3) Challenging both Israel and Arab powers to follow the letter of international law. Compliance means full participation in an international economy and community (the carrot); and resistance invites the atrophy of embargoes, travel restrictions, and blockages (the stick). Under UN Resolution 181, Israel secures its right to exist according to the 1948 borders, with protection from the United Nations. Simultaneously, Israel withdraws all of its settler colonies from the West Bank, illegal under Article 49 of the Geneva Conventions: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” And Jerusalem becomes the international city as intended in 1948.

4) Challenging the world’s people and states with a transformative proposal: universal nuclear disarmament. If states do not disarm, take the proposal to their peoples. Inspired, motivated and determined, masses of people will quickly sideline both foot-dragging politicians and terrorists. The best weapon against terror is not the US Army; it is civilized men and women everywhere. The world is ready to make nuclear weapons - and then war - extinct.

Thomas Paine: “We have it in our power to make the world new again.”

Ruling for the Law

from the NYT via truthout:

Ever since President Bush was forced to admit that he was spying on Americans’ telephone calls and email without warrants, his lawyers have fought to keep challenges to the program out of the courts. Yesterday, that plan failed. A federal judge in Detroit declared the eavesdropping program to be illegal and unconstitutional. She also offered a scathing condemnation of what lies behind the wiretapping - Mr. Bush’s attempt to expand his powers to the point that he can place himself beyond the reach of Congress, judges or the Constitution.

“There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution,” wrote Judge Anna Diggs Taylor of the United States District Court in Detroit. Her decision was based on a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

She said Mr. Bush violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act when he ordered the National Security Agency to spy without a warrant on international phone calls and e-mail by Americans and foreign residents of the United States. She noted that the surveillance law was passed to prohibit just this sort of presidential abuse of power and provided ample flexibility for gathering vital intelligence. She also said that the program violated the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, as well as the rights of free speech and association granted by the First Amendment.

The ruling eviscerated the absurd notion on which the administration’s arguments have been based: that Congress authorized Mr. Bush to do whatever he thinks is necessary when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan.

It’s good news that this ruling exists at all. Mr. Bush’s lawyers tried to have the entire suit thrown out on national security grounds, a tactic they have used in an alarming number of cases. In one particularly appalling example, they persuaded federal judges to refuse to hear a lawsuit filed by an innocent German citizen of Lebanese birth who was snatched out of his private life, illegally imprisoned for five months and tortured by American jailers.

In this case, the administration told Judge Taylor that merely arguing its case would expose top secret information. Judge Taylor said she had reviewed the secret material and concluded it was not relevant. The secrecy claim, she said, was “disingenuous and without merit.”

No sooner had this ruling been issued than Mr. Bush’s loyalists in Congress, who have been searching for ways to give legal cover to an illegal spying program, began calling for new laws to overcome Judge Taylor’s objections. Republicans quickly pointed out that Judge Taylor was appointed by President Jimmy Carter and that some of the many precedents she cited were written by liberal judges. These efforts to undermine Judge Taylor’s arguments will undoubtedly continue while the White House appeals the decision, and the outcome in the conservative Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals is uncertain.

But for now, with a careful, thoroughly grounded opinion, one judge in Michigan has done what 535 members of Congress have so abysmally failed to do. She has reasserted the rule of law over a lawless administration and shown why issues of this kind belong within the constitutional process created more than two centuries ago to handle them.

Voter Suppression in Missouri

from the NYT:

Missouri is the latest front in the Republican Party’s campaign to use photo ID requirements to suppress voting. The Republican legislators who pushed through Missouri’s ID law earlier this year said they wanted to deter fraud, but that claim falls apart on close inspection. Missouri’s new ID rules — and similar ones adopted last year in Indiana and Georgia — are intended to deter voting by blacks, poor people and other groups that are less likely to have driver’s licenses. Georgia’s law has been blocked by the courts, and the others should be too.

Even before Missouri passed its new law, it had tougher ID requirements than many states. Voters were required, with limited exceptions, to bring ID with them to the polls, but university ID cards, bank statements mailed to a voter’s address, and similar documents were acceptable. The new law requires a government-issued photo ID, which as many as 200,000 Missourians do not have.

Missourians who have driver’s licenses will have little trouble voting, but many who do not will have to go to considerable trouble to get special ID’s. The supporting documents needed to get these, like birth certificates, often have fees attached, so some Missourians will have to pay to keep voting. It is likely that many people will not jump all of the bureaucratic hurdles to get the special ID, and will become ineligible to vote.

Not coincidentally, groups that are more likely to vote against the Republicans who passed the ID law will be most disadvantaged. Advocates for blacks, the elderly and the disabled say that those groups are less likely than the average Missourian to have driver’s licenses, and most likely to lose their right to vote. In close elections, like the bitterly contested U.S. Senate race now under way in the state, this disenfranchisement could easily make the difference in who wins.

The new law’s supporters say its purpose is to deter fraud. But there is little evidence of “imposter voting,” the sort of fraud that ID laws are aimed at, in Missouri or anywhere else. Groups in Missouri that want to suppress voting have a long history of crying fraud, but investigations by the Justice Department and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, among others, have refuted such claims in the past. If the Legislature really wanted to deter fraud, it would have focused its efforts on absentee ballots, which are a notorious source of election fraud — and are not covered by Missouri’s new ID requirements.

Because of the important constitutional issues these laws raise, courts will have the final say. Federal and state judges have already blocked Georgia’s ID law from taking effect, and although Indiana’s law was upheld earlier this year, that ruling is on appeal. Missouri voting-rights advocates recently filed suit against their state’s law.

Unduly onerous voter ID laws violate equal protection, and when voters have to pay to get the ID’s, they are an illegal poll tax. They are also an insult to democracy, because their goal is to have elections in which eligible voters are turned away.

The Constitution in Crisis

Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee issue a sweeping indictment of Bush administration law-breaking.

Missile Defense Deployments “Secret for Political Purposes”

The names of foreign countries that are being considered for deployment of U.S. missile defense systems are unclassified but nevertheless should be kept secret, the Missile Defense Agency ordered (pdf) last year.

"There are many operational and political sensitivities that require varying levels of protection as we consider possible deployments," wrote MDA Deputy Director Gen. Marvin K. McNamara.

"Therefore, I am requiring that potential host nations being studied or considered by MDA for operational deployments not be identified by country or city name in any form on Unclassified computer systems....."

The November 22, 2005 MDA memorandum on "Protection of Information Regarding Operational Deployments" was obtained by Nick Schwellenbach of the Project on Government Oversight and is available here.

In an email message also obtained by POGO, an MDA security manager paraphrased the policy this way: "Information regarding operational deployments should be treated as 'Secret' for political purposes and, for that reason, the information is to be sent encrypted or by SIPRNET."

What is at issue here, explained Victoria Samson of the Center for Defense Information, is the location of the third site for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system, which is still under conideration.

But not everyone got the word.

In a March 20, 2006 briefing (pdf) by MDA Director Gen. Trey Obering, obtained by Ms. Samson, three countries are identified as possible candidates for the third ground-based site: the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, and Poland. See "Missile Defense Program Update" (at slide 35).

Official controls on unclassified information have mushroomed in recent years. An interagency task force that conducted an inventory of so-called Sensitive But Unclassified control markings recently identified 164 distinct marking systems for controlling unclassified information, according to Grace Mastalli, who co-chaired the task force.

Task force decries Bush’s law “interpretations”

from the AP:

by Gina Holland

Bush’s penchant for writing exceptions to laws he has just signed violates the Constitution, an American Bar Association task force says in a report highly critical of the practice.

The ABA group, which includes a one-time FBI director and former federal appeals court judge, said Bush has overstepped his authority in attaching challenges to hundreds of new laws.

The attachments, known as bill-signing statements, say Bush reserves a right to revise, interpret or disregard measures on national security and constitutional grounds.

“This report raises serious concerns crucial to the survival of our democracy,” said the ABA’s president, Michael Greco. “If left unchecked, the president’s practice does grave harm to the separation of powers doctrine, and the system of checks and balances that have sustained our democracy for more than two centuries.”

Some congressional leaders had questioned the practice. The task force’s recommendations, being released Monday in Washington, will be presented to the 410,000-member group next month at its annual meeting in Hawaii.

ABA policymakers will decide whether to denounce the statements and encourage a legal fight over them.

The task force said the statements suggest Bush will decline to enforce some laws. Bush has had more than 800 signing statement challenges, compared with about 600 signing statements combined for all other presidents, the group said.

Noel J. Francisco, a former Bush administration attorney who practices law in Washington, said Bush is doing nothing unusual or inappropriate.

“Presidents have always issued signing statements,” he said. “This administration believes that it should make clear ... when the Congress is getting close to the lines that our Constitution draws.”

Francisco said the administration’s input is part of the give and take between the branches of government. “I think it’s good that the debate is taking place at a public level,” he added.

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said last month that “it’s important for the president at least to express reservations about the constitutionality of certain provisions.”

The ABA report said President Reagan was the first to use the statements as a strategic weapon, and that it was encouraged by then-administration lawyer Samuel Alito - now the newest Supreme Court justice.

The task force included former prosecutor Neal Sonnett of Miami; former FBI Director William Sessions; Patricia Wald, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit; former Republican Rep. Mickey Edwards; and former Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein; and law school professors and other lawyers.

Democracy in Crisis

from truthout:

Democracy in Crisis - Interview with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

BRAD BLOG: In your book, “Crimes Against Nature,” you said that Bush won the 2004 election because of an information deficit caused by a breakdown in our national media. You go on to say that “Bush was re-elected because of the negligence of-and deliberate deception by-the American press.” Your recent article in “Rolling Stone” seems to suggest that your opinion has changed, focusing more on the fraud and deception in Ohio with the computerized voting machines. What was the most important thing that made you suspect fraud and decide to investigate the 2004 election?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR.: Well, my opinion hasn’t changed, that the press has been negligent, and that the large amount of support for the President, and for the people that did vote for the President, that large numbers of them would not have done so, had they known the truth about his policies, and his record. You say my opinion changed, but it hasn’t changed.

You know I’ve known this for many years, because of my anecdotal experience. I give about 40 speeches a year, in red states to Republican audiences, and I get the same enthusiastic responses from those audiences as I get from Liberal college audiences. The only difference is, is that the Republicans often say to me, “How come we’ve never heard this before?” I made the conclusion many years ago that there’s not a huge values difference between Red State Republicans and Blue State Democrats. The distinction is really informational. 80% of Republicans are just Democrats who don’t know what’s going on. And my anecdotal conclusion was confirmed by a survey done immediately after the 2004 election called the PIPA [7] report, which tested Bush supporters and Kerry supporters based upon their knowledge of current events. It found that among Bush supporters, they were widespread in its interpretations, or there were factual errors in the way that they viewed Bush’s major public policy initiatives.

For example, 75% of the Republican respondents believed that Saddam Hussein bombed the World Trade Center, and 72% believed that WMD had been found in Iraq. And most of them believed that the war in Iraq had strong support among Iraq’s Muslim neighbors and our traditional allies in Europe, which of course is wrong. The Democrats as a whole had a much more accurate view of those events. And then PIPA [8] went back twice to these same people. The first time it went back to the people that had these misinterpretations, and asked them where they were getting their news, and invariably they said talk radio and FOX news. And PIPA went back a third time, and made inquiries about their fundamental values, and it did start with a string of hypotheticals:

“What if there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? What if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with bombing the World Trade Center? What if the U.S. Invasion of Iraq had little support among Iraq’s Muslim neighbors and was largely opposed by Iraq’s Muslim neighbors, and by our troops and allies in Europe? Should we have still gone in?” And roughly 80% of Dem and 80% of Rep said the same thing, “We should not.” And so the values were the same. It was the facts, the information, it was the access to information that was different.

BB: Are you then adding a layer of suspicion about the direct manipulation and fraudulent counting through computerized voting?

RFK JR.: That also happened, that was another factor. Our democracy is broken. Our democracy is broken because of our campaign finance system, which is just a system of legalized bribery, which has allowed corporations and the very wealthy to control the electoral results. Let me go back and say our electoral system is broken for three reasons, in three large respects: The first is our campaign finance system, which is a system of legalized bribery, and which has allowed corporations and the very rich to control the results of our electoral process. Number two is the failure of the American press and that is also a function and result of corporate control, as I showed in my book. Number three is the election system itself, which is broken. We’ve privatized it and allowed four large corporations to count our votes on machines that don’t work.

But also the Republican party has inculcated a culture of corruption. The Republican party has adopted a strategy of denying votes to blacks and other minorities, and to other people more traditionally Democratic, suppressing Democratic vote and fraudulently expanding Republican vote. And this is happening all over the country. I would urge you to read Greg Palast’s latest book, Armed Madhouse [9]. He does for the national elections what I did for the Ohio election, which is to synthesize the information that’s out there into a readable document, in which he shows exactly how this election was stolen-not just in Ohio but in many other states as well.

BB: Have any of your expert witnesses or anyone referred to some of the stringent requirements in the gaming industry which uses computerized slot machines, poker machines and so forth involving the levels of certification and disclosure of the security requirements of its vendors?

RFK JR.: Well, you see this was just another corporate boondoggle that gave the most venal mendacious corporations charge of our most sacred public trust, which is the right to vote. These corporations were making hundreds of millions of dollars. The machines, as it turns out, were manufactured by wireless companies and were just a cheap piece of junk that cost less than $100 to manufacture, and they were selling them for $2400 apiece. And they were using Jack Abramoff and other corrupt lobbyists to persuade federal officials to pass the federal act to appropriate the money and then to persuade state and local officials to purchase the defective machines.

BB: Jack Abramoff was involved in this?

RFK JR.: Oh yes. Jack Abramoff, and Bob Ney [10](R-Oh), the principle figure in the Abramoff scandal and he’s the author of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). And Diebold contributed millions of dollars to these guys, including hundreds of thousands of dollars to Abramoff to lobby on behalf of HAVA, and to lobby states like New York and the other states, to adopt the Diebold machines.

BB: So HAVA was “created specifically to disenfranchise voters and verfication”?

RFK JR.: HAVA was written specifically to require the states to buy Diebold machines. I mean one company basically had control of the whole legislative process. That’s why HAVA has a provision in it that discourages vote verification by paper ballots. Both Republicans and Democrats tried to reform the HAVA, saying of course we should have paper verification of the vote. Paper verification would allow you to go in, make your vote on the electronic machine, and you get a receipt that is a copy of who you voted for and you are allowed to examine that receipt. You deposit it in a locked box in the voting area. That way, if there’s ever any question, if you need to count, you can count the papers, and see if it compares to what the machine says.

But Bob Ney fought tooth and nail against that provision because Diebold made a machine that does not provide a paper ballot. And he went so far, because Diebold contributed a million dollars to an organization that purportedly protects the rights of blind people. And in exchange for that, that organization got one of its officers to testify on Capitol Hill at the HAVA hearings, that blind people in America did not want paper ballots - voter verified ballots - because it would deprive someone of the right to vote secretly. Now the other organizations that support handicapped rights and rights of the blind, do not take that position. This was a position that that organization adopted after accepting a million dollars from Diebold. The whole operation was corrupt and now Bob Ney is going to jail for it.

BB: Also, speaking of those guys, election officials in several states, most notably Ken Blackwell in Ohio and Bruce McPherson here in the state of California, appear to be be deliberately flaunting established law and procedures as well as direct court orders, and they seem to be just “getting away with it”. How can that be?

RFK JR.: Well, again, it’s because of the failure of the American press. This is the most important issue in American Democracy and the press isn’t covering it. So the politicians who want to fix the elections, and who want these fraudulent machines, can get away with it, don’t take a position because it gets no traction in the press.

BB: But then why didn’t people like Kerry want to contest the results?

RFK JR.: You’d have to ask Kerry.

BB: Why hasn’t the DNC done anything about this?

RFK JR.: You’d have to ask the DNC.

BB: We watched Howard Dean on television having a hack demonstrated to him by Bev Harris [11], and he doesn’t seem to say anything… I guess we’ll have to ask them! But there seems to have been a pattern here in the leadership of the Democratic Party....What I was getting to in those questions was not for you to interpret the actions of the those in the DNC and so forth, but there seems to be a pattern in the leadership of the Dem Party that shies away from direct conflict in this....

RFK JR.: The Democratic leadership on this issue has been abysmal. And particularly since this is a civil rights issue and it’s a racial issue. The machines themselves are kind of a distraction because the machines are recent innovations. The Republican Party, the Republican National Committee, has been using, old-fashioned, Jim Crow, apartheid-type maneuvers to steal the last two national elections.

BB: Like in Georgia, who were trying to establish the Poll Tax again…

RFK JR.: And this has been happening all over the country. If you look at who’s being denied the right to vote, on absentee ballots, on provisional ballots, it’s Hispanics, it’s Blacks and it’s Native Americans, and the Democratic Party ought to be touting this as the biggest civil rights issue of our time. But they are ignoring it, and that really is shocking. It’s shocking that the Republicans are not up in arms about this too, because this should not be a partisan issue. This is a fundamental basis of our American value system, which is representative Democracy. For a party that claims to speak for “American Values” to ignore the fact that other members of the party, that the leadership of the party is involved in an active national campaign to stop black people from voting, and to steal elections, shows the moral bankruptcy of everybody in that party!

Why aren’t Republicans standing up and speaking on this issue? Why isn’t Republican leadership standing up and speaking on this issue?

BB: California just recently went to Diebold machines, all over the state. If California “goes” Republican, do you think we will be able to say, ok, there’s no doubt anymore?

RFK JR.: Listen: all I can say is that the Diebold machines are among the worst. They break down, they are easily hacked, Diebold uses fraudulent misrepresentations to sell the machines, and they should not be part of our voting system.

BB: Are there any plans on a national or state level to contest suspicious results this time around?

RFK JR.: They make it very difficult to contest crooked elections. Nebraska is one of several states that have now passed laws, and I believe Florida is one of those states, that prohibit counting paper ballots in votes that were originally counted by machines. The only way that you can count votes is the original way in which they were counted. And so, of course, that makes it easy to fix any election and make sure that nobody has the right to challenge it.

Many other states, including Ohio, have made it impossible for anybody to challenge an election, even if it was obviously fixed. And these kinds of initiatives are happening all over the country. Why would any state legislature vote for such a rule unless they were Republicans who felt that elections would be fixed in their favor? Why would any American vote for such a rule? It is completely anti-American and un-American. We should be encouraging Americans to vote and encouraging EVERY American to cast a vote and to make sure that every vote is counted. And both parties should be working toward that.

But instead you have a Republican party that is trying to suppress votes and trying to defraud the public. And you have a Democratic party that is like the deer in headlights. And the Democrats are never going to win another election if they don’t fix this issue because they are starting out every election with a 3 million vote deficit, and those are mainly the black voters in this country and who no longer have their votes counted.

And you know, this may sound shrill, but look at the facts. And I challenge anyone who says that this is shrill and inaccurate to read Greg Palast’s book, to read my article, to look at the facts, because the facts are infallible.

BB: Do you think we are going to need a reaction like they are having currently in Mexico?

RFK JR.: Well, I wish the Democratic Party had the cojones that the Mexican opposition party has! They’re saying “We’re not gonna stand for our elections being stolen anymore!” It’s great for these (our) political leaders to stand up and say “I will gracefully concede” but what does that mean for the rest of us? We are getting stuck with these governments that are absolutely running our country into the ground.

BB: You said in your recent interview with Charlie Rose, that this is the worst Presidency we’ve ever had, and they’ve ruined our reputation in the world. So if you had your ideal President, what kind of things would he or she need to do to restore our credibility?

RFK JR.: Well the first thing we need to do is to restore American Democracy.

Number One: Fix the campaign finance system to get corporate money out of the electoral process. Corporations are a great thing for our country. They drive our economy but they should NOT be running our government because they don’t want the same thing for America that Americans want. Corporations don’t want democracy, they want free markets, they want profits, and oftentimes the easiest path to profits is to use the campaign finance system to get their hooks into a public official and to use that public official to dismantle the marketplace to give them monopoly control and a competitive edge and to privatize the commons-to steal our air, our water, or our public treasury, and liquidate it for private profits.

Number Two: We have to fix the press: restore journalistic ethics in this country, and that is by bringing back the fairness doctrine and strengthening the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was abolished by Ronald Reagan in 1988, and it recognized that the airwaves belong to the public; that the broadcasters can be licensed to use them to make a profit, but they use them with the proviso that their primary obligation is to advance democracy and promote the public interest. They have to inform the public because a democracy cannot survive an uninformed public. As Thomas Jefferson said, “An uninformed public will trade a hundred years of hard-fought civil rights for a half an hour of welfare.” And they will follow the first demagogue or religious fanatic that comes along and offers them a $300 tax break.

Number Three: We have to fix our electoral system so that every vote is counted. Those are the first three things that any President should do, Republican or Democrat, to restore American Democracy.

BB: Now all these state laws that are being put in place could be trumped by Congress…

RFK JR.: Of course, we should have a federal law that creates federal standards for elections. All federal elections have to be verified by paper ballots. Election officials, whose job is to ensure the integrity of federal elections, cannot simultaneously serve as campaign managers or candidates who are participating in that contest. Many states already have that rule, but Florida and Ohio do not. It’s a formula for corruption!

BB: In summary, how optimistic or pessimistic are you about our ability to get our country back?

RFK JR.: Well, you know, my attitude is that I don’t try to predict the future, I can only say that those of us who care about this country have to keep fighting, and whether you think you’re gonna win or lose, you gotta just keep slugging and you gotta be ready to die with your boots on, because that’s what our forefathers did, they started a revolution, and they put their fortunes and their lives at stake. And we need to summon the same kind of courage from our generation, and demand that kind of courage from our leadership.

BB: And we have to get that message out to the Democratic leadership as well.

RFK JR.: And that’s what you guys are doing....

--------

Article printed from The BRAD BLOG: http://www.bradblog.com

URL to article: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3079

URLs in this post:
[1] The BRAD BLOG: http://www.BradBlog.com
[2] Joy: http://fancypantselitist.blogspot.com
[3] bio: http://www.waterkeeper.org/mainpresident.aspx
[4] Was the 2004 Election Stolen: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen
[5] Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush & His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking our Democracy:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060746874/airamericarad-20/104-4412599-7091110
[6] lawsuit: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3065
[7] PIPA: http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf
[8] PIPA: http://astro.berkeley.edu/~aleroy/Report10_21_04.pdf
[9] Armed Madhouse: http://www.gregpalast.com/
[11] Jack Abramoff, and Bob Ney : http://www.bradblog.com/?p=2262
[11] Howard Dean on television having a hack demonstrated to him by Bev Harris: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=911

Bush Thwarted Probe Into NSA Wiretapping

from WaPo:

By Dan Eggen

Bush effectively blocked a Justice Department investigation of the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program, refusing to give security clearances to attorneys who were attempting to conduct the probe, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday.

Bush’s decision represents an unusually direct and unprecedented White House intervention into an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal affairs office at Justice, administration officials and legal experts said. It forced OPR to abandon its investigation of the role Justice officials played in authorizing and monitoring the controversial NSA eavesdropping effort, according to officials and government documents.

“Since its creation some 31 years ago, OPR has conducted many highly sensitive investigations involving Executive Branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels,” the office’s chief lawyer, H. Marshall Jarrett, wrote in a memorandum released yesterday. “In all those years, OPR has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation.”

In testimony yesterday to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales said that in matters involving access to classified programs, “the president of the United States makes the decision.”

“The president decided that protecting the secrecy and security of the program requires that a strict limit be placed on the number of persons granted access to information about the program for non-operational reasons,” Gonzales wrote in a related letter sent to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). “Every additional security clearance that is granted for the [program] increases the risk that national security might be compromised.”

The eavesdropping program, begun after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and revealed in news reports last December, allows the NSA to intercept telephone calls and e-mails between the United States and locations overseas without court approval if one of the parties is suspected of links to terrorist groups. It is the focus of several lawsuits and months of wrangling between the administration and Congress over its legality.

Last week, Specter and the administration agreed on proposed legislation that would allow Bush to submit the program to the government’s secret terrorism and intelligence court for review of its legality. But other lawmakers have criticized that deal, saying it would provide insufficient oversight.

In addition to the abandoned OPR investigation, administration officials have said that the NSA inspector general has been monitoring the program since its inception. Officials also revealed yesterday that Glenn A. Fine, the Justice Department’s inspector general, has opened a preliminary inquiry into how the FBI used information gleaned from the NSA surveillance program.

Jarrett told lawmakers in May that his office was unable to proceed with its inquiry because it was repeatedly denied the necessary security clearances. But until yesterday, Gonzales and other Justice officials had declined to provide details on who made that decision.

Some legal experts and members of Congress who have questioned the legality of the NSA program said Bush’s move to quash the Justice probe represents a politically motivated interference in Justice Department affairs. Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.), one of the lawmakers who spearheaded calls for the Justice review, said the move is an example of “an administration that thinks it doesn’t have to follow the law.”

A few critics unfavorably compared Gonzales to Elliot Richardson, the Watergate-era attorney general who resigned in 1973 rather than obey President Richard M. Nixon’s order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox.

“If he was like Elliot Richardson, he’d say, ‘Mr. President, I quit,’ “ said Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer and Reagan-era Justice Department official who has been sharply critical of the administration’s legal rationale for the surveillance program.

A Justice Department official called such comparisons ludicrous and said that the original request for an OPR investigation was political in nature, initiated by more than three dozen Democrats and one House independent.

Officials declined to say whether Gonzales agreed with Bush’s decision and whether he had a role in the debate over clearances.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the eavesdropping program has been subject to legal review every 45 days by senior officials, including Gonzales. “The Office of Professional Responsibility was not the proper venue for conducting” a legal review, Snow said.

A series of memos released yesterday indicates that Jarrett was increasingly frustrated by the refusal to grant his staff the security clearances necessary to investigate the NSA program.

Jarrett noted that clearances were granted to lawyers and agents from Justice and the FBI who were assigned to investigate the original leak of the NSA program’s existence to the media. He also noted that numerous other investigators and officials—including members of Congress and the members of a federal civil liberties board—had been granted access to or had been briefed on the program.

“In contrast, our repeated requests for access to classified information about the NSA program have not been granted,” Jarrett wrote on March 21 to Gonzales’s deputy. By late April, he wrote internally that the office intended to close its investigation.

The Real Agenda

from NYT via truthout:

It is only now, nearly five years after Sept. 11, that the full picture of the Bush administration’s response to the terror attacks is becoming clear. Much of it, we can see now, had far less to do with fighting Osama bin Laden than with expanding presidential power.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, Bush and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

One result has been a frayed democratic fabric in a country founded on a constitutional system of checks and balances. Another has been a less effective war on terror.

The Guantánamo Bay Prison

This whole sorry story has been on vivid display since the Supreme Court ruled that the Geneva Conventions and United States law both applied to the Guantánamo Bay detention camp. For one brief, shining moment, it appeared that the administration realized it had met a check that it could not simply ignore. The White House sent out signals that the president was ready to work with Congress in creating a proper procedure for trying the hundreds of men who have spent years now locked up as suspected terrorists without any hope of due process.

But by week’s end it was clear that Bush’s idea of cooperation was purely cosmetic. At hearings last week, the administration made it clear that it merely wanted Congress to legalize President Bush’s illegal actions - to amend the law to negate the court’s ruling instead of creating a system of justice within the law. As for the Geneva Conventions, administration witnesses and some of their more ideologically blinkered supporters in Congress want to scrap the international consensus that no prisoner may be robbed of basic human dignity.

The hearings were a bizarre spectacle in which the top military lawyers - who had been elbowed aside when the procedures at Guantánamo were established - endorsed the idea that the prisoners were covered by the Geneva Convention protections. Meanwhile, administration officials and obedient Republican lawmakers offered a lot of silly talk about not coddling the masterminds of terror.

The divide made it clear how little this all has to do with fighting terrorism. Undoing the Geneva Conventions would further endanger the life of every member of the American military who might ever be taken captive in the future. And if the prisoners scooped up in Afghanistan and sent to Guantánamo had been properly processed first - as military lawyers wanted to do - many would never have been kept in custody, a continuing reproach to the country that is holding them. Others would actually have been able to be tried under a fair system that would give the world a less perverse vision of American justice. The recent disbanding of the C.I.A. unit charged with finding Osama bin Laden is a reminder that the American people may never see anyone brought to trial for the terrible crimes of 9/11.

The hearings were supposed to produce a hopeful vision of a newly humbled and cooperative administration working with Congress to undo the mess it had created in stashing away hundreds of people, many with limited connections to terrorism at the most, without any plan for what to do with them over the long run. Instead, we saw an administration whose political core was still intent on hunkering down. The most embarrassing moment came when Bush loyalists argued that the United States could not follow the Geneva Conventions because Common Article Three, which has governed the treatment of wartime prisoners for more than half a century, was too vague. Which part of “civilized peoples,” “judicial guarantees” or “humiliating and degrading treatment” do they find confusing?

Eavesdropping on Americans

The administration’s intent to use the war on terror to buttress presidential power was never clearer than in the case of its wiretapping program. The president had legal means of listening in on the phone calls of suspected terrorists and checking their e-mail messages. A special court was established through a 1978 law to give the executive branch warrants for just this purpose, efficiently and in secrecy. And Republicans in Congress were all but begging for a chance to change the process in any way the president requested. Instead, of course, the administration did what it wanted without asking anyone. When the program became public, the administration ignored calls for it to comply with the rules. As usual, Bush’s most loyal supporters simply urged that Congress pass a law allowing him to go on doing whatever he wanted to do.

Senator Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced on Thursday that he had obtained a concession from Bush on how to handle this problem. Once again, the early perception that Bush was going to bend to the rules turned out to be premature.

The bill Bush has agreed to accept would allow him to go on ignoring the eavesdropping law. It does not require the president to obtain warrants for the one domestic spying program we know about - or for any other program - from the special intelligence surveillance court. It makes that an option and sets the precedent of giving blanket approval to programs, rather than insisting on the individual warrants required by the Constitution. Once again, Bush has refused to acknowledge that there are rules he is required to follow.

And while the bill would establish new rules that Bush could voluntarily follow, it strips the federal courts of the right to hear legal challenges to the president’s wiretapping authority. The Supreme Court made it clear in the Guantánamo Bay case that this sort of meddling is unconstitutional.

If Congress accepts this deal, Mr. Specter said, the president will promise to ask the surveillance court to assess the constitutionality of the domestic spying program he has acknowledged. Even if Bush had a record of keeping such bargains, that is not the right court to make the determination. In addition, Bush could appeal if the court ruled against him, but the measure provides no avenue of appeal if the surveillance court decides the spying program is constitutional.

The Cost of Executive Arrogance

Bush’s constant efforts to assert his power to act without consent or consultation has warped the war on terror. The unity and sense of national purpose that followed 9/11 is gone, replaced by suspicion and divisiveness that never needed to emerge. Bush had no need to go it alone - everyone wanted to go with him. Both parties in Congress were eager to show they were tough on terrorism. But the obsession with presidential prerogatives created fights where no fights needed to occur and made huge messes out of programs that could have functioned more efficiently within the rules.

Jane Mayer provided a close look at this effort to undermine the constitutional separation of powers in a chilling article in the July 3 issue of The New Yorker. She showed how it grew out of Vice President Dick Cheney’s long and deeply held conviction that the real lesson of Watergate and the later Iran-contra debacle was that the president needed more power and that Congress and the courts should get out of the way.

To a disturbing degree, the horror of 9/11 became an excuse to take up this cause behind the shield of Americans’ deep insecurity. The results have been devastating. Americans’ civil liberties have been trampled. The nation’s image as a champion of human rights has been gravely harmed. Prisoners have been abused, tortured and even killed at the prisons we know about, while other prisons operate in secret. American agents “disappear” people, some entirely innocent, and send them off to torture chambers in distant lands. Hundreds of innocent men have been jailed at Guantánamo Bay without charges or rudimentary rights. And Congress has shirked its duty to correct this out of fear of being painted as pro-terrorist at election time.

We still hope Congress will respond to the Supreme Court’s powerful and unequivocal ruling on Guantánamo Bay and also hold Bush to account for ignoring the law on wiretapping. Certainly, Bush has made it clear that he is not giving an inch of ground.