Multi Medium

$4.11 Changed Everything!

Well, it looks like the Republican “Lease Drill Everywhere!” plan is gaining some traction:

Now, polling is beginning to show that a rising share of the public is ready to drill, drill, drill — threatening to destroy precious and unique wildlife areas like the Arctic refuge and create more oil spills along the Gulf coasts. Worse, drilling is a distraction from real changes like massive investments in wind and solar power.

In February, Pew asked the public in a poll whether they favor drilling in the Arctic refuge. At that time 42 percent favored and 50 percent opposed. Now, in July, 50 percent favor drilling and only 43 percent oppose. That’s a 12-point change since the February survey and a 28-point swing since a March 2002 Gallup poll (where 35 percent favored and 56 percent opposed).

The shift is something to be concerned about — progressives are losing ground with the public on drilling. These are alarming gains in sympathy for the plans of Big Oil.

This change isn’t because the idea has gotten better — Arctic drilling might cut gas prices by a mere 4 cents a decade from now. It is because of a sophisticated communications campaign by the oil companies and the Republican Party that is mostly met with silence by the other side — by our side.

I think it’s not just the communications campaign - it’s the fear and desperation of the American public as gas prices cross the $4 threshold and keep climbing with no relief in sight.

This reminds me of nothing so much as the way Republicans have exploited (and fomented) fear and hysteria about terrorism to sell a series of terrible policies (warrantless wiretapping, invasion of Iraq, torture, suspension of habeas corpus, etc.) on the grounds that they would keep us safe from the Scary Terrorists.  Of course, none of these policies did any such thing, and most of them made the underlying problem even worse.  But they sure did make Bush and his cronies a lot more powerful and a lot more rich.

And now, here we are again, with an American people up in arms about gas prices and begging for someone to do something, anything.  And that’s exactly what the Republicans are offering: Bold, decisive action.  So what if it won’t provide any actual relief - it’s better than no action at all, right?  And conservation and alternative energy strategies are sooo boring and lame.  Real red-blooded Americans drill and exploit and take, just like real red-blooded Americans kill and torture and spy and… detain indefinitely without recourse to legal counsel.

I expect the “Drill Everywhere” strategy will work out about as well as the Iraqupation - maybe even worse, since it’s our own country we’ll be destroying.

2 comments July 14th, 2008 at 08:08pm Posted by Eli

Mission Accomplished!

Well, at least the Iraqupation is working out great for somebody:

In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden — the terrorist organizer of 9/11 who still roams free — listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans “have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims” by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded.

Ten years ago today, the price of a barrel of oil was just $11. Heading into this holiday weekend, the price of a barrel of oil rested at $144 — a thirteen-fold increase.

One month after 9/11, the New York Times wrote of possible “nightmare” scenarios that would deliver bin Laden’s goal. Neela Banerjee warned that among the “misguided decisions” that would put oil supplies at risk would be “that the United States attacks Iraq.” The Times included this quote in its story:

“If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he’d turn off the tap,” said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. “He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel” — about six times what it sells for now.

If there were no George W. Bush, bin Laden would have to invent him.  And vice versa.

3 comments July 6th, 2008 at 12:28pm Posted by Eli

Lieberman Looks Back To The Future

Shorter Joe Lieberman:

When the terrorists hit us in 2009, we need to have a president who is willing to seize unprecedented unconstitutional powers for his own and his party’s gain, and John McCain is that man.

That is what “keeping us safe” has become code for, isn’t it?

4 comments June 30th, 2008 at 09:05am Posted by Eli

Reality-Proof Democrats

So I’m reading Chris Dodd’s brilliant statement about why the FISA “compromise” is unacceptable, and how it’s just one of the many symptoms of the Bush administration’s fundamental lawlessness, and I’m having this depressing thought:

Dodd makes a very eloquent, comprehensive, and compelling argument against the FISA bill, and… no-one cares.  I doubt that he convinced even one Democratic senator to join the paltry 15 who voted against cloture, and obviously no Republicans.  The merits of Dodd’s arguments were simply irrelevant in the face of political calculation, party loyalty, and corporate money.  There was literally nothing that he could have said to sway any of them.

And that’s what saddens me: This sense that the merits don’t matter, because hardly anyone in Congress is making decisions based on them.  Dodd is pouring his heart out, and his esteemed colleagues are looking at their watches or playing with their Blackberries, saying, “Yeah, that’s great, Chris - can we get on with servicing our corporate bosses now?”

Most dispiriting of all, that group includes our presidential nominee, who couldn’t be bothered to vote, and who has already said that he will vote for the “compromise” whether immunity has been stripped from it or not (he says he’ll work to strip it, but there’s no way he can succeed).  I don’t know whether Obama’s feeling insecure about his national security credentials as compared to McCain’s, or if he’s beholden to telecom contributions, or if he simply doesn’t want Nominee Obama to mess up President Obama’s chances at extraordinary powers, but it doesn’t really matter.  None of those reasons is an excuse for Obama’s pathetic failure to lead on something this important.

And I’m not going to give one whit of credit to anyone who voted for cloture and then votes against the bill so they can grandstand about how awful it is.  “This bill is a grave threat to our constitutional liberties and the rule of law… but I felt that it deserved an up-or-down vote” is spectacularly bad messaging.

I’m going to be pissed and resentful about this for months, and refuse to give time or money to the Obama campaign.  Way to depress your base in a presidential election year, geniuses.

1 comment June 25th, 2008 at 10:32pm Posted by Eli

The More Things Change…

Over three years ago, I was urging Democrats to lay some groundwork to ensure that Republicans couldn’t turn a terrorist attack or other disaster (this was several months before Katrina) into an undeserved political windfall:

Another thing that the Democrats must keep in mind is the very high probability that Republican policies will lead to a financial or terrorist-inflicted disaster. An electoral scandal and constitutional crisis is also a possibility: I believe there are limits to just how large a margin election “gaming” and fraud can cover up without leaving behind a gun too smoky for the media to ignore. What happens if that threshold is exceeded, at least to the point where the election outcome is severely in doubt? What mechanisms do we have for resolving such a situation?

In theory, Democrats should be able to capitalize on any of these negative outcomes, as they can all be laid clearly at the doorstep of the Republicans. In reality, they would be pilloried by the Republicans and the media for opportunistically “politicizing” a national tragedy.

Therefore, what I’m advocating is that the Democrats get out in front and periodically raise a big stink (and for the love of God, don’t capitulate!) about the various ways that the 100% Republican-controlled government has made us vulnerable…

(…)

[M]y point is that the Democrats need to be vocal about these issues in advance, so that everyone knows where they stand before the unthinkable occurs. It’s very easy to denounce terrorist attacks or stock market crashes after they happen, and both sides of the aisle will be doing exactly that. But the Democrats will be on the record as having warned of disaster, while the Republicans will be on record as steamrolling and shouting them down. This will give the Democrats standing and credibility to point the finger of blame after the fact.

(…)

Am I rooting for catastrophe? Of course not. I think it is highly probable, if not inevitable, but I desperately hope to be proven wrong.

What I am rooting for is that the Democrats will not let the Republicans get away with saying, “Well, these things happen, no-one could have seen it coming, we must all pull together now and do whatever we say,” as they did after 9/11. They must be held accountable for their willful refusal to protect America from harm.

Well, here we are three years later, and (as I predicted in that same post), the Democrats haven’t really gotten that message across, much to RJ Eskow’s dismay (and mine):

I’ve been privately warning Democrats for some time that Obama and the party need emergency preparedness plans. Major events between now and November could change the course of the election - especially a U.S. strike on Iran, or a terror attack against Americans at home or abroad.

We’re not seeing any signs of such plans. Not that we should -except that one outcome would be to explain now why Americans are much less safe as the result of GOP policies.

If it seems crass to weigh political considerations in the face of war or tragedy, remember that the future safety of civilians here and elsewhere will be greatly affected by this election. And they - the Republicans - are certainly thinking politically. When McCain’s chief political advisor, lobbyist Charlie Black, said yesterday that a terror attack “would be a big advantage for him, his biggest mistake was excessive honesty. That’s one of the few imaginable scenarios that could lead to a McCain victory in November.

(…)

So what should Obama and the Democrats be doing about these two possibilities? Some of their planning should be invisible - for the speeches that Obama might gave, the surrogates (military and otherwise) that would appear on Democrats’ behalf. But we should be seeing some groundwork being laid now, and we’re not.  So, what should be happening?

[Main bullet points only - check out Eskow's post for the meat behind them]

Guanatanamo and Abu Ghraib should be described as Bush-created “terrorist factories.”

Democrats should explain that torture is un-American, that it breeds terrorists — and that it doesn’t help catch bad guys.

If we surrender our freedoms, the terrorists win.

…Democrats owe it to themselves - and more importantly, to the nation - to start telling the real story immediately. There should be no equivocation and no calculation.

Their motto should be: Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and do what’s right in the meantime.

I still believe that something terrible is going to happen, that the Republicans’ criminal mismanagement of, well, everything, has made it inevitable.  Indeed, some pretty terrible things have already happened, like Katrina and the subprime meltdown.  But when the next terrible thing happens, if Democrats haven’t already shown (or, better yet, tried to fix) how the Republicans have left us vulnerable, they will be unable to fight off the Republicans’ this-is-why-you-need-a-strong-daddy narrative.

(h/t Elliott)

Add comment June 23rd, 2008 at 09:56pm Posted by Eli

Dubya Doesn’t Care About The Constitution Or Terrorism

In case y’all needed any more proof that Dubya’s assertions of unilateral authority have absolutely nothing to do with fighting terrorism:

Ten months after Congress passed a law establishing a White House coordinator for preventing nuclear terrorism, President Bush has no plans to create the high-level post any time soon, according to the National Security Council.

The provision - suggested by leading members of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - was contained in 2007 legislation designed to improve homeland defenses. Congress passed it by a wide margin, with bipartisan support.

Some congressional leaders said Bush’s failure to fill the job nearly a year later marks an outright evasion of the law, and called on the president to fill the position swiftly, even though his administration has only seven months left in office.

(…)

The White House opposed creating the position from the start. In a January 2007 letter to Congress - six months before the law was adopted - the Bush administration wrote that the appointment of a nuclear antiterrorism chief “is unnecessary given extensive coordination and synchronization mechanisms that now exist within the executive branch,” citing a 2006 strategy document that lays out the responsibilities of numerous government departments.

But in the past, Bush has tried to bypass provisions of laws he disagrees with by issuing “signing statements,” documents singling out those parts of statutes that White House lawyers advised would infringe on his constitutional powers as chief of the government’s executive branch. Bush has used this practice more than any prior president.

This time, however, the White House seems to be ignoring the nuclear terrorism coordinator requirement not for constitutional reasons but simply because the administration thinks it is a bad idea. It is a stance some legal scholars called an even more blatant disregard of the checks and balances on presidential power.

(…)

National security analysts have long advocated for a top presidential adviser focused solely on organizing the government to prevent terrorists from acquiring catastrophic weapons, such as a nuclear device, a radioactive “dirty bomb,” or biological agents. They contend that the current arrangement - in which that responsibility is spread across the Departments of Energy, Defense, State, and Homeland Security - is not fully integrated and has gaps in preparedness.

(…)

Advocates say the post is needed now more than ever, pointing to growing evidence - documented by international intelligence agencies and the International Atomic Energy Agency - that terrorist groups are actively seeking nuclear or radiological weapons and the know-how to make them.

Meanwhile, a government-funded report released this month concluded that some of the current efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation and terrorism are not fully coordinated.

I’m amazed that President Strong Terrorist Fighter can’t even be bothered to appoint someone to guard against the very kind of attack that he spent his entire presidency scaremongering about.  Not only did he not appoint a Nukular Terror Czar of his own volition, he has ignored Congress’s legal directive to do so.

Does anyone still believe that he’s insisting on the need for carte blanche wiretapping to prevent terrorist attacks?  I wonder how many Arabic/Daro/Pashto translators he has working on all those wiretaps of supposed Muslim terrorists…

(h/t dakine)

Add comment June 22nd, 2008 at 02:35pm Posted by Eli

Al Qaeda Is Not A Truck

See, this is the sort of thing that happens when you don’t have Joe Correcterman to whisper in your ear:

[Ted Stevens on] KFQD with conservative talk show host Dan Fagan:

We expect Al Qaeda to come out some time today with a new manifesto where they ought to be using weapons of mass destruction against the United States. That means that they’re realizing they can’t win in Iraq. I think they’re going to change their way of doing business. And I think we have to be on the alert. These people are all over the world. Al Qaeda’s not just in Iraq. They’re in Iran. They’re in the Philippines. Sen Inouye and I went down to [indistinguishable]. They’re over in Indonesia. They’re all over.

This sounds strange at first, until you realize that al Qaeda is actually a series of tubes.

1 comment May 28th, 2008 at 06:44pm Posted by Eli

Quotes Of The Day

Just some things that made me smile today.

Hans von Spakovsky:

Dear President Bush:

It is with great regret that I write to request that you withdraw my nomination to be a Commissioner on the Federal Election Commission.  My nomination has been pending for almost two and one half years in the Senate without any resolution.  This process has been extremely hard on my family, and quite frankly, we do not have the financial resources to continue to wait until this matter is resolved.  I also agree with my former colleague Robert Lenhard, who recently withdrew his nomination, that it was past time that the FEC was reconstituted - the agency that is tasked with policing our campaign finance system needs to be operational during a presidential election year.  Ths opposition to my nomination (however unfair) is preventing that from happening.

He actually makes a very commendable point at the end there (aside from the “however unfair” part), so it appears that he does feel some rudimentary sense of civic responsibility then again, his vision of what the FEC should be doing during a presidential election year is very different from ours.

In case you’ve forgotten why he’s a total bastard who should never have been allowed within 3000 miles of the FEC, check out the roundup at the end of this TPMMuck post.

John Conyers:

We’re closing in on Rove. Someone’s got to kick his ass.

Tom Davis, by way of Peggy Noonan:

The party, Mr. Davis told me, is “an airplane flying right into a mountain.” Analyses of its predicament reflect an “investment in the Bush presidency,” but ‘the public has just moved so far past that.” “Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis.” Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: “He can’t articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it.”

Jay Leno:

Huge political fireworks today after President Bush went to Israel and he talked about American politicians who might want to talk with Hamas or other leaders. Politicians who would sit down and appease terrorists. He said he would not do it. He would not put up with it. He would never talk to terrorists. And then he flew to Saudi Arabia to spend a couple of days with the Saudi royal family.

Jon Stewart (while showing footage of Dubya biking, fishing, and dancing):

You know what?  Pictures matter.  Image is everything.  And when you ask military families to sacrifice so much — through stop-loss, or multiple tours without proper stateside rest, or refusing to fund a proper GI Bill, the least you can do is not force them to see you dicking around like you don’t have a care in the world.

Awesome.

(h/t All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)

Add comment May 16th, 2008 at 08:23pm Posted by Eli

Were You Aware Of It?

Did you know that Islamic terrorists were on the verge of taking over the Middle East - possibly even the entire world?

In a speech before the Knesset, Bush compared calls to talk with unnamed terrorist groups as a “foolish delusion” that was suggested before World War II.

“As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared, ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided,’ ” Bush said. “We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Former President Jimmy Carter recently wrapped up a trip to the Middle East, which included talks with leaders of Hamas — an Islamic militant group that controls the Palestinian territory of Gaza.

Carter hoped to persuade Hamas to negotiate with Israel in an attempt to reach a broader Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Yes, that’s right: Talks and negotiations are exactly the same as appeasement, and the terrorists are exactly the same as the Nazis.

Funny thing, how when the Nazis were invading Europe, it was the Democratic president who wanted to confront them, and the Republicans who wanted us to stay out of it.  And that’s not even mentioning the fact that Dubya’s own grandfather continued doing business with Nazi Germany until the year after they declared war on us…

Add comment May 15th, 2008 at 10:54pm Posted by Eli

Bush Administration Still Soft On Terror

Not that this is a surprise…

Here is the title of a report from the Government Accountability Office on combating terrorism released today:

The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

That is not some line buried in the report. That is the title. Wow.

This GAO report may be the most damning condemnation of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism efforts. The report goes on to say that the Bush administration has failed to develop any plan to address the Al Qaeda threat. Worse, the report finds that Al Qaeda is now able to attack the United States and represents the “most serious” threat to this country.

The report’s opinion of the Bush administration efforts speaks for itself:

The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy the terrorist threat and close the safe haven in Pakistan…

Not only have we not met our goals but we have no plan to meet our goals:

No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (2003), called for by an independent commission (2004), and mandated by congressional legislation (2007). Furthermore, Congress created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in 2004 specifically to develop comprehensive plans to combat terrorism. However, neither the National Security Council (NSC), NCTC, nor other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power—diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support—called for by the various national security strategies and Congress.

Al Qaeda can now attack the United States:

“we found broad agreement, as documented in the unclassified 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), State and embassy documents, as well as among Defense, State, and other officials, including those operating in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan”

The Bush administration has no interest in actually defeating terrorists; they never have.  They are only interested in using the threat of terrorism as a pretense to invade and threaten other countries, and to expand presidential powers far beyond their constitutional limits.  This report is further proof that Bush has used his unprecedented presidential powers to do precisely… nothing.  Sure, he’s authorized torture and wiretapping and blown Iraq all to hell, but other than kicking al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, he’s pretty much let them do what they want.  And now they’re back at full strength and ready to hit us again.

Heckuva job, Bushie.

Add comment April 17th, 2008 at 11:10pm Posted by Eli

Wait… WHAT???

Glenn Greenwald makes a very interesting catch.  Mukasey is either a liar or an accidental whistleblower:

I just received the following statement from the Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Rep. Lee Hamilton, in response to my inquiries last week (and numerous follow-up inquiries from readers here) about Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s claims about the 9/11 attack and, specifically, about Mukasey’s story that there was a pre-9/11 telephone call from an “Afghan safe house” into the U.S. that the Bush administration failed to intercept or investigate:

I am unfamiliar with the telephone call that Attorney General Mukasey cited in his appearance in San Francisco on March 27. The 9/11 Commission did not receive any information pertaining to its occurrence.

That’s the statement in its entirety, and it’s hard to imagine how it could be any clearer. Hamilton’s statement is consistent with the statement of 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow, as well as the letter sent to Mukasey by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and two Subcommittee Chairs, none of whom have any idea what Mukasey was talking about. In light of Hamilton’s amazing comment, could journalists possibly now report on this story? One of two things is true about Mukasey’s extraordinary claim about how and why the 9/11 attacks occurred. Either:

(1) The Bush administration concealed this obviously vital episode from the 9/11 Commission and from everyone else, until Mukasey tearfully trotted it out last week; or,

(2) Mukasey, the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, made this story up in order to scare and manipulate Americans into believing that FISA and other surveillance safeguards caused the 9/11 attacks and therefore the Government should be given more unchecked spying powers.

Either way, isn’t it rather self-evidently a huge story? Kudos to Hamilton, who originally refused to comment and obviously changed his mind as a result of the numerous civil though impassioned entreaties he received from readers here. If the Attorney General says that the 9/11 attacks occurred because of Episode X, and the 9/11 Vice Chair, the 9/11 Executive Director and the House Judiciary Committee Chairman all have never heard of any such episode, isn’t it rather urgent that this be resolved?

See, this is why we need real investigative media who ask Republicans tough questions too.

Add comment April 8th, 2008 at 10:51pm Posted by Eli

Quote Of The Day

The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin:

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Rice was supposedly scheduled to deliver a major speech designating missile defense as the cornerstone of Bush’s new national security strategy.

That sure worked out well, eh?

Add comment April 4th, 2008 at 11:14pm Posted by Eli

If McCain Wins….

Can you prove it didn’t happen?

(picture from Married To The Sea)

1 comment March 27th, 2008 at 11:11am Posted by Eli

The Power Of Narrative

[H]ad Clinton or Obama done something like this, this would have been played on a loop, over and over.
- CNN Political Director Chuck Todd, talking about John McCain’s recent multiple references to Iran supporting al Qaeda

Chuck Todd is exactly right, but it’s not all due to Mad John’s Big Media BBQ, or their longstanding love for his crazy-in-straight-talk’s-clothing. The media are thoroughly invested in a narrative that says that Republicans in general, and John McCain in particular, are Strong On Foreign Policy, while Democrats are Weak.

The end result is that any time McCain or another Republican screws up on foreign policy, it’s dismissed as an aberration, a one-time fluke occurrence. But if a Democrat makes a similar error, the media seize upon it as proof that the domestic-minded mommy Democrats just don’t understand foreign policy, and that’s why only the pragmatic, worldly Republicans can keep us safe from the bad scary people.

Of course, foreign policy is not the only example, not by a long shot. Consider the persistence of such laughable narratives as “Republicans are the party of moral values”; “Republicans are the party of personal responsibility”; “George W. Bush is a resolute man of conviction and Al Gore/John Kerry is a flip-flopping phony,” none of which have a basis in any reality other than the Republicans’ self-declared one. The media have perpetuated them in the exact same way, by downplaying stories that conflict with the narrative, and emphasizing the ones that reinforce it.

As Peter Daou said, way back in his pre-Hillary days:

These narratives are woven so deeply into the fabric of news coverage that they have become second nature and have permeated the public psyche and are regurgitated in polls. (The polls are then used to strengthen the narratives.) They are delivered as affirmative statements, interrogatives, hypotheticals; they are discussed as fact and accepted as conventional wisdom; they are twisted, turned, shaped, reshaped, and fed to the American public in millions of little soundbites, captions, articles, editorials, news stories, and opinion pieces. They are inserted into the national dialogue as contagious memes that imprint the idea of Bush=strong/Dems=weak. And they are false.

What’s so dumbfounding to progressive netroots activists, who clearly see the role of the traditional media in perpetuating these storylines - and are taking concrete action (here, here, and here) to remedy the problem - is that Democratic politicians, strategists, and surrogates have internalized these narratives and play into them, publicly wringing their hands over how to fix their “muddled” message, how to deal with Bush’s “strength” on national security, how to talk about “values.” It’s become a self-fulfilling cycle, with Democrats reinforcing anti-Dem myths because they can’t imagine any other explanation for the apparent lack of resonance of their message. Out of desperation, they resort to hackneyed, focus-grouped slogans in a vain attempt to break through the filter.

It’s simple: if your core values and beliefs and positions, no matter how reasonable, how mainstream, how correct, how ethical, are filtered to the public through the lens of a media that has inoculated the public against your message, and if the media is the public’s primary source of information, then NOTHING you say is going to break through and change that dynamic. Which explains, in large measure, the Dems’ sorry electoral failures.

Until Democrats and progressives can either develop their own media, or de-Foxify the existing media, they will always be held to a much higher standard than Republicans, and every election will be an uphill battle against the Republicans and the media.

Add comment March 19th, 2008 at 09:27pm Posted by Eli

The Magic Is Over

No kidding:

Bernard Kouchner, the foreign minister of France and a longtime humanitarian, diplomatic and political activist, said this week that whoever succeeds President Bush might restore something of the United States’ battered image and standing overseas but that “the magic is over.”

(…)

Asked whether the United States could repair the damage it had suffered to its reputation during the Bush presidency and especially since the 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq, Mr. Kouchner replied, “It will never be as it was before.”

I believe that the 2004 election was the turning point. In 2000, most Americans had no idea what kind of malignant, dangerous psychopaths Bush and Cheney were (are), but by 2004 they had revealed their true colors for all to see… and we still re-elected them. I think that was the moment in which we became willing accessories to all of their crimes, and there’s really no way to take that back.

(h/t All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin)

Add comment March 17th, 2008 at 10:31pm Posted by Eli

Bush Calls Torture “One Of The Most Valuable Tools In The War On Terror”

As Machiavelli said, it is better to be feared than loved…

President George W. Bush said Saturday he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.

“The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror,” Mr. Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. “So today I vetoed it.”

The bill he rejected provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and has the interrogation requirement as one provision. It cleared the House of Representatives in December and the Senate last month.

“This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe,” the president said.

(…)

The bill would have limited CIA interrogators to the 19 techniques allowed for use by military questioners. The Army field manual in 2006 banned using methods such as waterboarding or sensory deprivation on uncooperative prisoners.

Mr. Bush said the CIA must retain use of “specialized interrogation procedures” that the military doesn’t need. The military methods are designed for questioning “lawful combatants captured on the battlefield,” while intelligence professionals are dealing with “hardened terrorists” who have been trained to resist the techniques in the Army manual, the president said.

“We created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaeda operatives, particularly those who might have knowledge of attacks planned on our homeland,” Mr. Bush said. “If we were to shut down this program and restrict the CIA to methods in the field manual, we could lose vital information from senior al Qaeda terrorists, and that could cost American lives.”

(…)

Among the techniques the field manual prohibits are hooding prisoners or putting duct tape across their eyes, stripping them naked, forcing them to perform or mimic sexual acts, or beating, electrocuting, burning or otherwise physically hurting them. They may not be subjected to hypothermia or mock executions. It does not allow food, water and medical treatment to be withheld. Dogs may not be used in any aspect of interrogation.

But waterboarding is the most high-profile and controversial of the interrogation methods in question.

(…)

“President Bush’s veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency,” Senator Edward Kennedy said in a statement Friday. “Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world.”

He noted that the Army field manual contends that harsh interrogation is a “poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts and can induce the source to say what he thinks the (interrogator) wants to hear.”

The U.S. military specifically prohibited waterboarding in 2006. The CIA also prohibited the practice in 2006, and says it has not been used since three prisoners encountered it in 2003.

Dubya looooves him some torture.

Add comment March 8th, 2008 at 11:45am Posted by Eli

The Vindictive States Of America

I wish I could say I was shocked…

The case of the “Liberty City Seven” stymied jurors. After a three-month trial late last year, they deadlocked on nearly all of the charges regarding the purported plot by several men to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago.

The one thing jurors could agree upon, however, was that one of the men, Lyglenson Lemorin, 33, was not guilty.

(…)

Yet more than two months after his acquittal on charges of supporting terrorism, Lemorin remains incarcerated, and U.S. immigration officials are moving to deport him to Haiti, which he left more than 20 years ago. Officials are asking an administrative judge to order his deportation based on the same charges that the jury dismissed.

The government’s effort to punish Lemorin despite the acquittal is drawing fire from his attorneys and some legal observers as an attempt to seek retribution in a high-profile case that prosecutors lost after a fair trial.

Even the jury foreman — who said he had been willing to convict some of Lemorin’s co-defendants — said the move to deport Lemorin seems unfair.

“It’s kind of outrageous that the guy was cleared after we spent three months at trial, and now they’re continuing to go after him,” said Jeff Agron, 46, an educator. “They’re getting a second bite at the apple. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

Caught in the middle is Lemorin, a father of two, a Haitian immigrant who came here as a child and is a permanent legal resident of the United States.

“It’s not just double jeopardy — it’s sour grapes,” said Lemorin’s criminal defense attorney, Joel DeFabio. “It’s a mind set at the Department of Justice: ‘We don’t lose — and if we can get you another way, we will.’ ”

Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Lemorin “will get due process.”

Legally, there is nothing to bar the government from pursuing immigration sanctions against Lemorin, experts said, though such action is rare after an acquittal. The immigration charges are a civil matter, and a judge will apply a less strict standard of evidence to the charges that were brought at the criminal trial.

Apparently, it is possible to be guilty even after proven innocent under the Bush legal regime. And vice versa.

(h/t dakine)

Add comment March 2nd, 2008 at 02:13pm Posted by Eli

And Now, The Good News…

Hey, some things actually went right today!

The House passed the measure to hold Josh Bolton and Harriet Miers in contempt, and they refused to modify their version of FISA to match the Bush-friendly Senate one. They also did a nice job of countering the Republicans’ fearmongering about how terrorists will blow us up the instant the Protect America Act expires by pointing out that the Republicans all voted against the 21-day extension of the Act that was supposedly keeping us all alive.

I guess it comes down to the House-Senate conference committee now to decide whether the final FISA bill will give the telecoms immunity. Which will probably depend on who gets selected for the committee. For what it’s worth, out of the 21 Bush Dog representatives who felt so strongly that they wrote a letter to Pelosi in support of the Senate version, only two of them (Boswell and Cramer) are on either the Judiciary or Intelligence committees, which I assume would be the pool of potential conference committee members. So that’s something, anyway.

(And, of course, the contempt vote would have been a lot more impressive if they hadn’t waited seven months to call it…)

Add comment February 14th, 2008 at 09:52pm Posted by Eli

The Only War We’re Winning

…Is the War On The Constitution:

If things proceed on the course now set by the Bush Administration and its shortsighted collaborators, and the national surveillance state is achieved in short order, then future generations looking back and tracing the destruction of the grand design of our Constitution may settle on yesterday, February 12, 2008, as the date of the decisive breach. It hardly got a mention in the media, obsessed as it was with reports on the primary elections, the use of drugs in sporting events, and that unfailing topic, the weather. Yesterday the Senate voted down the resolution offered by Senator Dodd to block retroactive immunity for the telecoms and it voted for a measure which guts the Constitution’s ban on warrantless searches by extending blanket authority to the Executive to snoop on the nation’s citizens in a wide variety of circumstances, subject to no independent checks. On the key vote, the Republicans in the Senate continued to function in lock-step, as they have on almost all significant issues for the last seven years, while the Democrats fragmented. Their vote summed up everything that’s wrong with Washington politics today. Fear and hard campaign cash rule the roost, and the Constitution is regarded as a meaningless scrap of parchment, indeed, a nuisance.

The issue in focus was a retroactive grant of immunity to telecommunications giants which violated the rights of millions of Americans by facilitating warrantless surveillance by the Bush Administration. With the exception of Qwest, they were knowingly complicit in criminal acts. And in a touch worthy of a totalitarian state, Qwest quickly found its CEO under criminal investigation and prosecuted. In fact the White House’s own arguments smack of the mentality of totalitarianism. Here’s the leading argument that the White House offers up in favor of the legislation:

“Companies should not be held responsible for verifying the government’s determination that requested assistance was necessary and lawful - and such an impossible requirement would hurt our ability to keep the Nation safe.”

But as Dan Froomkin notes at the Washington Post, “Isn’t that the very definition of a police state: that companies should do whatever the government asks, even if they know it’s illegal?” Indeed it is.

I don’t think Tuesday will go down in history as the turning point, but that’s only because telecom immunity isn’t a done deal yet. It still has to get through the House-Senate conference committee and then pass both houses of Congress. If that happens, that would go down in history as the moment when we turned our back on the Constitution. Either that or the day we re-elected Dubya as president.

(h/t Froomkin)

Add comment February 14th, 2008 at 07:52am Posted by Eli

Here’s A Question…

A revealing exchange from yesterday’s online chat with The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin:

Los Angeles: If — as Bush claims — the telecoms will shell out “billions of dollars,” won’t it be only because the courts have found that they are liable for illegal actions?

Dan Froomkin: That’s a very good point. It’s one thing to say they’ll be out some considerable legal costs — but presumably, they’d only be out billions if they lost. Thanks.

Kinda sounds like maybe Dubya knows the telecoms broke the law, doesn’t it?

2 comments February 14th, 2008 at 07:22am Posted by Eli

Great Moments In Propaganda

From the NRCC:

A suspected foreign terrorist calls the United States from overseas to plan an attack on U.S. soil. Our intelligence agencies monitor the situation and secure critical information about the call.

Because of our ability to monitor terrorist cells overseas and gather this important information, we are able to thwart off this particular threat.

“Thwart off”?

Oh, and then there’s the usual bullshit about how if Congress doesn’t close the “terrorist loophole” right away, we will be Perilously Exposed To Terrorist Attack. Complete with animated countdown clock, ticking away the days, hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds until the FISA extension expires. Clearly this is one of those ticking timebomb situations where torture is justified.

1 comment February 13th, 2008 at 11:37pm Posted by Eli

EPIC FAIL

Well, those useless bloody wankers have gone and done it again. Yet another Profiles In Courage moment from our allegedly Democratic Congress:

The bill to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, including a provision granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that facilitated government spying, passed the Senate on a 68-29 vote Tuesday evening.

(…)

On Tuesday, the Senate struck down several proposals to strip retroactive immunity from an update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance act and seemed ready to pass a final bill. However, the FISA update still needs to be squared with the House, which passed an immunity-free version several months ago and remains opposed to the proposal.

The Senate actions would shield from lawsuits telecommunications companies that helped the government eavesdrop on their customers without court permission after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After nearly two months of stops and starts, the Senate rejected by a vote of 31 to 67 an amendment sponsored by Sens. Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) that would have stripped a grant of retroactive immunity to the companies.

Also voted down were amendments that would have shielded the companies from most aspects of the lawsuits while still maintaining some judicial oversight of Bush’s program, which critics say violated privacy and telecommunications law. On a 30-68 vote, the Senate rejected a proposal from Sens. Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) that would have made the government stand in as defendant in those suits. The Senate then rejected an amendment to allow the FISA court to determine whether the companies did, in fact, respond in “good faith” to government requests; that proposal from Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) failed on a 41-57 vote.

Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and John McCain (R-AZ) took some time from campaigning for Tuesday’s slate of “Potomac Primaries” in Maryland, Virginia and Washington to swing by the Capitol and vote on the amendments. Obama voted for the amendments to strip immunity from the bill, while McCain opposed the amendments and voted in favor of keeping immunity.

Hillary Clinton did not vote on the immunity issue at all, although she was in Washington at least part of the day Tuesday, competing in the same primaries as Obama and McCain.

(…)

Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and blogger for Salon who has sharply criticized the warrantless wiretapping program, offers a brief history lesson Tuesday on the catalyst for FISA reform and its disappointing endgame:

It’s worth taking a step back and recalling that all of this is the result of the December, 2005 story by the New York Times which first reported that the Bush administration was illegally spying on Americans for many years without warrants of any kind. All sorts of “controversy” erupted from that story. Democrats everywhere expressed dramatic, unbridled outrage, vowing that this would not stand. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau were awarded Pulitzer Prizes for exposing this serious lawbreaking. All sorts of Committees were formed, papers written, speeches given, conferences convened, and editorials published to denounce this extreme abuse of presidential power. This was illegality and corruption at the highest level of government, on the grandest scale, and of the most transparent strain. What was the outcome of all of that sturm und drang? What were the consequences for the President for having broken the law so deliberately and transparently? Absolutely nothing. To the contrary, the Senate is about to enact a bill which has two simple purposes: (1) to render retroactively legal the President’s illegal spying program by legalizing its crux: warrantless eavesdropping on Americans, and (2) to stifle forever the sole remaining avenue for finding out what the Government did and obtaining a judicial ruling as to its legality: namely, the lawsuits brought against the co-conspiring telecoms. In other words, the only steps taken by our political class upon exposure by the NYT of this profound lawbreaking is to endorse it all and then suppress any and all efforts to investigate it and subject it to the rule of law.

Yes, the most effective way to stop lawbreaking is to make the illegal behavior legal. Problem solved.

There is still a faint ray of light, however:

There seemed some hope for blocking immunity in the House, as its Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, who has seen secret White House justifications for its warrantless wiretapping, said the documents do not support giving immunity to the telecommunications companies.

“Indeed, review and consideration of the documents and briefings provided so far leads me to conclude that there is no basis for the broad telecommunications company amnesty provisions advocated by the Administration and contained in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) bill being considered today in the Senate,” Conyers wrote in a letter to White House counsel Fred Fielding (.pdf). and that these materials raise more questions than they answer on the issue of amnesty for telecommunications providers.”

…[T]he FISA update still needs to be squared with the House, which passed an immunity-free version several months ago and remains opposed to the proposal.

The two burning questions that I have are:

1) Who gets to select the House-Senate conference committee members? Will they stack it with pro-immunity creeps?

2) If by some miracle the conference committee reports out a bill without immunity, will all the Senate Democrats vote for it, or will they refuse to vote in favor of a bill that leaves their telecom buddies out in the cold? If all the Senate Dems vote for it, but they don’t have enough votes (Lieberman, 60-vote requirement) to pass it, do they have the balls to let the Republicans take the hit for obstruction? Likewise if they have enough votes to pass it but not enough votes to override the inevitable veto.

I wish I could say I felt optimistic, but the Senate Democrats seem absolutely determined to flush the rule of law down the toilet. Rubbing the stink of Dubya’s rotting political corpse all over themselves appears to be their idea of a brilliant strategy for November success. Yay, team.

Add comment February 12th, 2008 at 07:52pm Posted by Eli

The Database Revisited

As much as I despise the Bush administration and believe that the 935 Lies Of BushCo. Database is a worthy and valuable endeavor, I think my friend Anders makes a valid comment:

The philosopher in me really wants to insist that the database lists statements that turned out to be false, not “lies”. A statement that turns out to be false is not necessarily a lie when it is made. For one thing, it has to be known to be false to be a lie. I have no doubt that, for example, Bush may really have believed we found weapons of mass destruction at the time he said so.

The point is that moral culpability of the act really depends on the epistemic situation of the speaker at the time, not on the objective facts as later determined. It is perfectly possible for false statements to be fully justified by evidence available at the time of their making, in which case, the maker is blameless for going where the evidence points.

I am not saying these statements were even justified by that standard. But by and large don’t see any serious attempt by the compilers of the database to clearly identify *lies* among these statements.

I don’t really want to defend the Bushie’s conduct with these statements. But this conflation of lying with speaking falsely seems to me a every sleazy rhetorical maneuver. To me, Bush-bashers are no better than Coulter or Rush Limbaugh if they exploit such a conflation. One should have higher standards of argumentation.

Now, I believe that Anders is probably giving BushCo. far more benefit of the doubt than they deserve. I think that in most cases, Bush and his inner circle were well aware that what they were saying was false or, at best, completely unsubstantiated (remember “The intelligence is being fixed around the policy”?).

But Anders is correct that the database does not take the additional step of closing the loop by contrasting BushCo’s false statements with what they knew at the time. It’s easy to say that the Bushies said 935 things that were untrue, but if you want to prove that they’re liars and not just fools, then you have to show that their statements were as clearly false then as they are now. They do some of this on the main page, but not within the individual database items.

However, I feel obliged to point out that even if you give the Bushies the maximum benefit of the doubt and say that they were simply mistaken 935 times about something as weighty as the reasons for going to war, that is pretty damning in its own right.

4 comments January 26th, 2008 at 01:26pm Posted by Eli

I Can Haz Leadership? (Updated)

As I understand it, the presidential primaries are supposed to be all about demonstrating to the voters of your party that you have the leadership qualities necessary to be President of the I-think-still-just-barely most powerful nation on Earth. We’ve heard all kinds of back and forth between the top three candidates about who can best effect Change.

Well, there’s this FISA vote coming up, wherein Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will attempt to ram through a bill granting telecom corporations retroactive immunity for turning their customer’s calls over to the Bush Administration without warrants. Reid intends to do this over Chris Dodd’s dead body, and will dispense with the courtesies that he granted to Republican opponents, such as honoring holds and not requiring actual reading-from-the-phone-book-until-you-keel-over filibusters. As if this were not bad enough, it appears that this is actually the outcome that the Senate Democrats want, and the only Democrats willing to stand with Dodd in support of a filibuster are Teddy Kennedy and Russ Feingold (of course).

The first time FISA almost came to a head, Hillary and Obama refused to tear themselves away from their campaigning, which was a non-response worthy of our current Ignorer-In-Chief. If Hillary and Obama really want to show voters, especially Democratic voters, that they have the mettle to lead our country, then they need to get their asses down to the Senate floor and help Dodd out. Vote against cloture, ask Dodd long rambling questions so he can take breaks, and perhaps most importantly of all, use the megaphone of your presidential campaigns to let the American people know that the Bush administration (with the active collusion of the Democratic leadership) is once again trying to chip away at the rule of law to let themselves and their corporate henchmen escape accountability.

If you want to show leadership, then lead, don’t hide. If you want to demonstrate your ability to effect change, then change something. If you want to show that you’re not beholden to corporations and lobbyists, then tell the telecoms who have been pelting you with money that you appreciate their support, but you have to follow your conscience and do the right thing.

Of course, even if you do all that, you’ll still be following Chris Dodd, who despite polling in the low single digits in his bid for the nomination, still managed to display more leadership in a week than either of you has shown in the entirety of your brief, cautious Senate careers. But at this point I have to take what I can get, and I’d rather have a fast follower for President than someone who hides under the desk every time Republicans shout “9/11.”

But what about Edwards, you ask? After all, he is the Officially Endorsed Candidate Of Multi Medium, is he not? He most certainly is - but what he is not is a sitting Senator. I would love to see him go down to DC in a show of support and solidarity, but Edwards can only affect the outcome indirectly, either by focusing the meager spotlight the media deign to give him onto the immunity issue, or by shaming Actual Sitting Senators Hillary and Obama into showing up so he can’t lord this over them for the rest of the campaign.

And as long as I’m on the subject of leadership, where the hell is ours in Congress? Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is actively facilitating an enormous gift to the Bush administration, and Nancy “Impeachment Is Off The Table” Pelosi still refuses to call a vote to hold Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten in contempt, over six months after they blew off Congressional subpoenas to testify on the US Attorney firings. If covering for a lawless, out-of-control Republican President is the kind of “leadership” our Democratic Representatives and Senators actually want, then God help us all, and we need better Democrats. Much, much better Democrats.

UPDATE: I forgot to ask: Why can’t Reid just say, “Sorry, fellas - as much as I’d like to help you with the whole shielding-corporations-and-Bushies-from-accountability thing, my hands are tied as long as that mean ol’ Mr. Dodd persists with his hold. And since it doesn’t look like he’s going to change his mind anytime soon, you might as well just pass the version without telecom immunity. And, I might add, the absence of retroactive immunity for telecoms does not in any way impede our ability to catch terrorists, regardless of what the Bush administration may say.”?

Am I asking too much?

3 comments January 24th, 2008 at 07:46am Posted by Eli

Ask Ayman

Apparently conservatives and progressives aren’t the only ones who feel like their leadership isn’t doing enough…

It’s only a matter of time before the grassroots start backing primary challengers…

(h/t Caro Kay at MakeThemAccountable)

Add comment January 22nd, 2008 at 09:12pm Posted by Eli

All According To Plan…

Kung Fu Monkey may be on to something here:

PRESENT: AGENT [REDACTED], ASSET CODENAME/TOXIC
Preliminary Interview
Interview already in progress, see Transcript #194BSZ

Toxic: So what am I looking at here?
Agent: Osama Bin Laden’s cave headquarters near Tora Bora. Footage was shot by a Marine Recon Team….

Agent: …Well, as you can see as we enter Osama’s personal chambers …

Toxic: Oh my.
Agent: Yes.
Toxic: I mean, a lot of people have “… Baby One More Time”, but –
Agent: On that shelf next to the poster for the Onyx Hotel Tour, those are bootleg tapes. Of your Mickey Mouse Club appearances.
Toxic: Oh.
Agent: Mmm-hmm.
Toxic: That’s just gross, y’all.
Agent: Our official judgment as well.
Toxic: Wow, he’s even got “And Then We Kiss”.
Agent: Based on this evidence, our profilers believe you have the best chance of getting close to Osama Bin Laden. He is utterly obsessed with you.

(PAUSE / 8 SECONDS)

Agent: Miss [redacted]?
Toxic: Anything for my country
Agent: We’re not going to lie to you. You’re America’s pop princess. There’s no way he’s going to believe you just decided to “hook” up with him. No way he’s got a chance with you at the height of your fame and power. We need –
Toxic: – to ruin me.
Agent: A downward spiral. Very public, very messy. This is deep cover, Miss [redacted]. Not everybody comes back.
Toxic: What’s the timetable?
Agent: To make it convincing? Years. At least. Sham marriage. Alcohol and drug abuse, multiple psychological problems. We need to go completely over the top, too, to make it convincing. And then …
Toxic: Then what?
Agent: You contact any one of these paparazzi we’ve had under surveillance. They’re all of Middle Eastern or Muslim descent. Begin a relationship. Our profilers feel that at that point, Bin Laden will figure he has a chance, and will make the call.
Toxic: What do I do when that happens?
Agent: You’ll receive weapons training.
Toxic: I understand.

Well, she is very patriotic…

This would also explain why she doesn’t want custody of her children, or even visitation rights - if her cover is broken, anyone close to her will not be safe. Fortunately, this blog is an excellent place to hide classified information where no-one will ever see it.

2 comments January 16th, 2008 at 11:44am Posted by Eli

George W. Bush, Eyebrow Repairman

The All-Seeing Eye Of Froomkin has found a great quote to sum up Dubya’s blow-everything-up-until-its-democracy foreign policy:

“A popular proverb in Iran says that ‘they wanted to fix a person’s eyebrow but instead they made him blind.’ In our view, this summarizes Bush’s policies in the Middle East,” said Ali Reza Jalaeepour, a reformist political analyst in Tehran.

Worst. Beautician. Ever.

Add comment January 11th, 2008 at 10:08pm Posted by Eli

You Know, They Have The Automated Bill-Paying Now…

Yet another revealing look at the depth of our government’s commitment to fighting terrorism:

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation “was halted due to untimely payment,” the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government’s most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

“We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,” according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows.

(…)

The American Civil Liberties Union called on the FBI to release the entire, unedited audit. The group, which has been critical of some of the government’s wiretapping programs, also took a swipe at telecommunication companies that allowed the eavesdropping � as long as they are getting paid.

“It seems the telecoms, who are claiming they were just being ‘good patriots’ when they allowed the government to spy on us without warrants, are more than willing to pull the plug on national security investigations when the government falls behind on its bills,” said former FBI agent Michael German, the ACLU’s national security policy counsel. “To put it bluntly, it sounds as though the telecoms believe it when the FBI says the warrant is in the mail but not when they say the check is in the mail.”

It really is amazing that telecom companies were so willing to accommodate the Bush administration’s mass surveillance demands without requiring actual warrants, but would be such sticklers about unpaid bills. Hell, maybe that’s why there were unpaid bills - the Feds figured the telecoms would let them get away with anything.

You know, the automated bill-paying is really easy to set up. If I can figure it out, surely the FBI can.

Add comment January 10th, 2008 at 08:41pm Posted by Eli

If You Liked Dubya’s 9/11 Prevention, You’ll Love Mitt

Yes, Mitt Romney actually brags that his counterterrorism adviser is one of the masterminds behind Operation Ignore:

J. COFER BLACK is GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s chief weapon against Islamo-fascism. The former CIA official chairs Romney’s Counterterrorism Policy Advisory Group. Also, the 9/11 Commission, the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 and the CIA’s inspector general all condemn him for dropping the ball before Sept. 11, 2001. Black’s spot in Romney’s brain trust raises grave doubts about the former Massachusetts governor’s national-security judgment.

At CNN/YouTube’s Nov. 28 debate, Romney said that when pondering terrorist interrogation, “I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some 35 years.” Actually, this is false. Black served the CIA for 28 years and directed its Counterterrorist Center (CTC) for less than three — from June 1999 to May 2002.

In January 2000, Black’s CTC briefed top CIA, FBI and White House officials on a 9/11 planning summit in Kuala Lumpur. Hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar attended. Alas, these two left Malaysia, then vanished in Bangkok.

But in early March 2000, the CIA learned that Hazmi had flown to Los Angeles that Jan. 15, as did Mihdhar.

“No one outside of the Counterterrorist Center was told any of this,” the 9/11 Commission Report states (page 181). “The CIA did not try to register Mihdhar or Hazmi with the State Department’s TIPOFF watchlist…”

In January 2001, the CIA tied Mihdhar to “Khallad,” an al-Qaida agent who bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. “Yet we found no effort by the CIA to renew the long-abandoned search for Mihdhar or his travel companions,” the 9/11 Commission concluded (page 266). It added that then-CIA Director George “Tenet and Cofer Black testified before Congress’s Joint Inquiry into 9/11 that the FBI had access to this identification from the beginning. But drawing on an extensive record … we conclude this was not the case.”

Were Mihdhar “watchlisted,” he could have been arrested when he returned from Mecca on July 4, 2001. Instead, he resumed his mass-murder plans.

These botched opportunities also prevented the FBI from activating a California source who knew Hazmi and Mihdhar. “The informant’s contacts with the hijackers, had they been capitalized upon, would have given the San Diego FBI field office perhaps the Intelligence Community’s best chance to unravel the Sept. 11 plot,” the Congressional Joint Inquiry’s declassified December 2002 report heartbreakingly observes. “Given the CIA’s failure to disseminate, in a timely manner, intelligence information on the significance and location of al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, that chance, unfortunately, never materialized.”

(…)

On Aug. 25, 2005, the Associated Press’ Katherine Shrader revealed that CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s then-classified report “recommended disciplinary reviews” for Black, Tenet and former clandestine-service head Jim Pavett. “The former officials are likely candidates for proceedings before an accountability board,” Shrader wrote. Tenet’s successor, Porter Goss, took no disciplinary action.

(…)

Romney elevated Black to run his counterterrorism advisory board. Despite deep, declassified dismay with Black’s pre-Sept. 11 tenure, it’s been onward and upward for Black on Team Romney.

Few heads rolled after 9/11, despite the incompetence that allowed al-Qaida to massacre 2,978 human beings. Cofer Black kept his head, and now uses it to advise someone who promoted him in September, and praised him on CNN in late November.

This news should keep Republican primary voters wide awake at night.

Sure looks like Mitt is pulling out all the stops to live up to Dubya’s legacy of incompetence and failure.

(h/t dakine)

Add comment January 6th, 2008 at 04:24pm Posted by Eli

Liquids And Clippers And Gels, Oh My!

NYT’s Patrick Smith is fed up with airport security:

Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless.

The first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes. Explosives scanning for checked luggage, for instance, was long overdue and is perhaps the most welcome addition. Unfortunately, at concourse checkpoints all across America, the madness of passenger screening continues in plain view. It began with pat-downs and the senseless confiscation of pointy objects. Then came the mandatory shoe removal, followed in the summer of 2006 by the prohibition of liquids and gels. We can only imagine what is next.

(…)

In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.

For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back. Say what you want of terrorists, they cannot afford to waste time and resources on schemes with a high probability of failure. And thus the September 11th template is all but useless to potential hijackers.

(…)

The folly is much the same with respect to the liquids and gels restrictions, introduced two summers ago following the breakup of a London-based cabal that was planning to blow up jetliners using liquid explosives. Allegations surrounding the conspiracy were revealed to substantially embellished. In an August, 2006 article in the New York Times, British officials admitted that public statements made following the arrests were overcooked, inaccurate and “unfortunate.” The plot’s leaders were still in the process of recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers. They lacked passports, airline tickets and, most critical of all, they had been unsuccessful in actually producing liquid explosives. Investigators later described the widely parroted report that up to ten U.S airliners had been targeted as “speculative” and “exaggerated.”

Among first to express serious skepticism about the bombers’ readiness was Thomas C. Greene, whose essay in The Register explored the extreme difficulty of mixing and deploying the types of binary explosives purportedly to be used….“The notion that deadly explosives can be cooked up in an airplane lavatory is pure fiction,” Greene told me during an interview. “A handy gimmick for action movies and shows like ‘24.’ The reality proves disappointing: it’s rather awkward to do chemistry in an airplane toilet. Nevertheless, our official protectors and deciders respond to such notions instinctively, because they’re familiar to us: we’ve all seen scenarios on television and in the cinema. This, incredibly, is why you can no longer carry a bottle of water onto a plane.”

(…)

“I would not hesitate to allow that liquid explosives can pose a danger,” Greene added, recalling Ramzi Yousef’s 1994 detonation of a small nitroglycerine bomb aboard Philippine Airlines Flight 434…. “But the idea that confiscating someone’s toothpaste is going to keep us safe is too ridiculous to entertain.”

…At every concourse checkpoint you’ll see a bin or barrel brimming with contraband containers taken from passengers for having exceeded the volume limit. Now, the assumption has to be that the materials in those containers are potentially hazardous. If not, why were they seized in the first place? But if so, why are they dumped unceremoniously into the trash? They are not quarantined or handed over to the bomb squad; they are simply thrown away. The agency seems to be saying that it knows these things are harmless. But it’s going to steal them anyway, and either you accept it or you don’t fly.

(…)

In the end, I’m not sure which is more troubling, the inanity of the existing regulations, or the average American’s acceptance of them and willingness to be humiliated. These wasteful and tedious protocols have solidified into what appears to be indefinite policy, with little or no opposition. There ought to be a tide of protest rising up against this mania. Where is it? At its loudest, the voice of the traveling public is one of grumbled resignation. The op-ed pages are silent, the pundits have nothing meaningful to say.

(…)

How we got to this point is an interesting study in reactionary politics, fear-mongering and a disconcerting willingness of the American public to accept almost anything in the name of “security.” Conned and frightened, our nation demands not actual security, but security spectacle. And although a reasonable percentage of passengers, along with most security experts, would concur such theater serves no useful purpose, there has been surprisingly little outrage. In that regard, maybe we’ve gotten exactly the system we deserve.

As I have said before, all bin Laden needs to do to complete the demoralization and humiliation of the American people is unleash a very inept Underwear Bomber.

4 comments December 29th, 2007 at 05:52pm Posted by Eli