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Archive: POLITICS

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A True – and Courageous – Public Servant

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

In the course of its tenure since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has turned the entire government (and the DOJ in particular) into a veritable Augean stable on issues such as civil rights, civil liberties, international law and basic human rights, as well as criminal prosecution and federal employment and contracting practices. It has systematically undermined the rule of law in the name of fighting terrorism, and it has sought to insulate its actions from legislative or judicial scrutiny and accountability by invoking national security at every turn, engaging in persistent fearmongering, routinely impugning the integrity and/or patriotism of its critics, and protecting its own lawbreakers. This is neither normal government conduct nor "politics as usual," but a national disgrace of a magnitude unseen since the days of Watergate - which, in fact, I believe it eclipses.

In more than a quarter of a century at the DOJ, I have never before seen such consistent and marked disrespect on the part of the highest ranking government policymakers for both law and ethics. It is especially unheard of for U.S. attorneys to be targeted and removed on the basis of pressure and complaints from political figures dissatisfied with their handling of politically sensitive investigations and their unwillingness to "play ball." Enough information has already been disclosed to support the conclusion that this is exactly what happened here, at least in the case of former U.S. Attorney David C. Iglesias of New Mexico (and quite possibly in several others as well). Law enforcement is not supposed to be a political team sport, and prosecutorial independence and integrity are not "performance problems."

[snip]

As usual, the administration has attempted to minimize the significance of its malfeasance and misfeasance, reciting its now-customary "mistakes were made" mantra, accepting purely abstract responsibility without consequences for its actions, and making hollow vows to do better. However, the DOJ Inspector General's Patriot Act report (which would not even have existed if the administration had not been forced to grudgingly accept a very modest legislative reporting requirement, instead of being allowed to operate in its preferred secrecy), the White House-DOJ e-mails, and now the Libby commutation merely highlight yet again the lawlessness, incompetence and dishonesty of the present executive branch leadership.

They also underscore Congress' lack of wisdom in blindly trusting the administration, largely rubber-stamping its legislative proposals, and essentially abandoning the congressional oversight function for most of the last six years. These are, after all, the same leaders who brought us the WMD fiasco, the unnecessary and disastrous Iraq war, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, warrantless domestic NSA surveillance, the Valerie Wilson leak, the arrest of Brandon Mayfield, and the Katrina response failure. The last thing they deserve is trust.

The sweeping, judicially unchecked powers granted under the Patriot Act should neither have been created in the first place nor permanently renewed thereafter, and the Act - which also contributed to the ongoing contretemps regarding the replacement of U.S. attorneys, by changing the appointment process to invite political abuse - should be substantially modified, if not scrapped outright. And real, rather than symbolic, responsibility should be assigned for the manifold abuses. The public trust has been flagrantly violated, and meaningful accountability is long overdue. Officials who have brought into disrepute both the Department of Justice and the administration of justice as a whole should finally have to answer for it - and the misdeeds at issue involve not merely garden-variety misconduct, but multiple "high crimes and misdemeanors," including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

John S. Koppel's full editorial can be read in the Denver Post

Djerejian on the Libby Commutation

The commutation of Lewis Libby’s sentence presents yet another fetid example of the Bush Administration treating the Executive Branch merely as vehicle for governance by quasi-autocratic fiat. There are reasons, after all, that the Framers attempted to inject constitutional checks and balances, not only to escape the legacy of monarchical England, but also because they realized concentrated power too often corrupts terribly. The gross over-reaching of the Executive Branch in the Bush Administration, in areas ranging from detainee treatment, to a politically inspired putsch of federal prosecutors, to the Vice-President’s primitively brazen ‘argument’ his office is not even a part of the Executive Branch, all have conspired to badly shake the public’s trust in our system of government. (And as I argue below, while it is certainly a presidential prerogative to commute sentences, this specific instance failed to meet the spirit with which such powers were imparted).

Indeed what all these excesses showcase, particularly when combined with a dismal dearth of intelligent policy-making, is that errors of judgment tend to cascade one on top of the other, thus imperiling the national interest, with long-standing protections previously afforded our citizens, and others whose care is entrusted us, steadily eroded. What is left is a profoundly damaging legacy that historians will likely view as one of the true nadirs in America’s overall standing in the history of the Republic (sadly, I write this knowing full well matters could turn even worse, perhaps with another reckless military adventure, this time in Iran).

In short, we have an Executive Branch still staffed at senior levels, despite some notable comings and goings, with pugnacious ideologues, many of them manifesting a frequent tendency towards lawlessness, a Legislative Branch only now beginning to stir from its prior supine slumber, and a Supreme Court increasingly oriented towards potentially too expansive views of Executive Power. Throw in the constant threat of a new terror attack (real or perceived) precipitating a re-invigorated round of jingoistic sloganeering (witness the hysteria surrounding pitiable plots on the order of Piccadilly, Glasgow, JFK, and Fort Dix, and imagine what would come if another truly professional attack were to transpire on the ‘homeland’), Patriot Act Part Deux (this time, on even greater steroids), and preemptive, or ginned up, expeditions to new fronts in the “Global War on Terror”, one must conclude our nation finds itself in a perilous place.

But this prologue aside, it must be said there is something to the Libby commutation that still manages to jar mightily despite this extensively grim backdrop of too aggressive Executive Branch encroachments on our constitutional order of late. And I say this not as one of those who relished some Lewis Libby auto-de-fe, eager for another neo-con scalp, and poised to jubilate in the streets if the man were incarcerated. Who regales in the plight of others during times of immense professional disaster, after all? Even the angriest of us must try to temper the schadenfreude we feel at the utter debacle that is modern neo-conservatism today, with its leading financial backers (Conrad Black) and intellectual lights (Paul Wolfowitz) badly bruised and bloodied, despite the unconvincing noises all’s just peachy, with the public countenances rich with forced cheer, playing pretend the house of Podhoretz and Kristol has never been stronger. (In reality, it’s tottering mightily, and Americans are getting angrier and angrier, as soi disant policy and regional experts are increasingly being unmasked as agenda-ridden charlatans, for whom incidentally summoning a genuine mea culpa now and again appears to simply not be part of their basic DNA).

But yes, the noxiousness of the Libby commutation nonetheless rankles on so many levels it’s hard to know where to begin.

The full piece can be read at Gregory Djerejian's Belgravia Dispatch

Laws of Convenience

On July 1, 2007, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, intrepid defenders of all things Bush in the “war on terror,” published an op-ed in the Washington Post lambasting the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit for its decision declaring that the President had unlawfully placed Ali al-Marri, a resident of Peoria, Illinois, into military custody as an enemy combatant. The court held that domestic law did not authorize the detention of a civilian resident of the United States accused of supporting al Qaeda. In sky is falling style, they argued that if the Fourth Circuit’s decision stands, the United States would have no authority to use military force against al Qaeda, and al Qaeda could attack us with “impunity.” Here’s my response.

It is ironic that defenders of an administration that has long sought to avoid the laws of war in its conflict with al Qaeda now decry a federal court for declaring that US law, and not the laws of war, govern how US residents alleged to have conspired to engage in terrorism for al Qaeda are to be punished. David Rivkin and Lee Casey have previously argued that the Geneva Conventions – the modern-day embodiment of the laws of war -- ought not apply at all to al Qaeda. But they now maintain that the laws of war do apply, in an attempt to justify subjecting to indefinite military detention a civilian captured in the United States. In reasoning befitting Vice President Dick Cheney’s arguments that he is the executive when that status gives him legal rights but not the executive when it comes to legal obligations, Rivkin and Casey now invoke the very law they earlier sought to evade.

The case that has provoked their ire concerns Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar residing in Peoria, Illinois. Al-Marri was arrested in December 2001 and charged criminally with credit card and identification fraud. One business day after a federal court scheduled a hearing on a motion to suppress illegally seized evidence, and less than a month before al-Marri’s trial was scheduled to commence, however, the President declared him an enemy combatant and swept him into military custody – where he has remained ever since, without charges or a trial. The government claims he came to the United States planning to engage in terrorism on behalf of al-Qaeda, but has never charged him criminally with any such activity.

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that because al-Marri is not a member of any enemy nation’s army, never took up arms with al-Qaeda or the Taliban against the United States, never engaged in direct hostilities with the United States, and was never even present on a battlefield, he cannot be locked up in military detention, but must be tried in a civilian court for his alleged crimes. The court reasoned that under the laws of war that govern conflicts between a state and a non-state actor such as al-Qaeda, persons who conspire to aid enemy forces but are not themselves part of an army are not “combatants.”

More here from David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center

Just In Case You Weren't Aware Of It...

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a disgracefully hypocritical human being. I say that because, having characterized Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence as "reasonable", Romney as governor...

...twice rejected a pardon for Anthony Circosta, who at age 13 was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun - a shot that didn't break the skin. Circosta worked his way through college, joined the Army National Guard and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq's deadly Sunni triangle.

In 2005, as he was serving in Iraq, he sought a pardon to fulfill his dream of becoming a police officer.

In his presidential bid, Romney often proudly points out that he was the first governor in modern Massachusetts history to deny every request for a pardon or commutation during his four years in office. He says he refused pardons because he didn't want to overturn a jury.

During the four years Romney was in office, 100 requests for commutations and 172 requests for pardons were filed in the state. All were denied.

TPM

The Libby Commutation

That Lewis Libby has been protected by George Bush from the consequences of his crimes only highlights how corrupt and broken our political system is. It reveals nothing new. This is the natural, inevitable outgrowth of our rancid political culture, shaped and slavishly defended by our Beltway ruling class and our serious, sober opinion-making elite.

The disasters and rampant lawlessness and fundamental erosion of our country's political values and institutions are exactly what Fred Hiatt and David Broder and Time Magazine and Tim Russert and Tom Friedman and the New Republic geniuses have spent the last six years protecting, enabling and defending. We have the country we have -- one in which our most powerful political leaders are literally beyond the reach of the law in every sense, where we casually invade and bomb and occupy countries that have not attacked us, where our moral standing in the world has collapsed with good reason, where we our viewed on every continent in the world as a rogue, dangerous and lawless nation -- because we are ruled by a Beltway elite and political press that is sickly and cowardly and slavish at its core.

That Dick Cheney's top aide, one of the most well-connected neoconservatives on the planet, is protected from the consequences of his felonies ought to be anything but surprising. That is the country that we have. It is a result that is completely consistent with the "values" that define official Washington. No other outcome was possible.

The Plame investigation was urged by the Bush CIA and commenced by the Bush DOJ, Libby's conviction pursued by a Bush-appointed federal prosecutor, his jail sentence imposed by a Bush-appointed "tough-on-crime" federal judge, all pursuant to harsh and merciless criminal laws urged on by the "tough-on-crime/no-mercy" GOP. Lewis Libby was sent to prison by the system constructed and desired by the very Republican movement protesting his plight.

But our political discourse and media institutions are so broken and corrupt that Bush followers (and their media enablers) feel free to make the completely-backwards and fact-free claim that the Libby prosecution was driven by "partisan" and "political" motives -- as though it was a mirror image of the Clinton persecution driven by Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and a purely partisan Republican prosecutor -- because they know that there is no such thing as a claim too false to be passed on without real objection by our vapid, drooling press corps.

For the right-wing political movement that has spawned the Bush disasters of the last six years, the exoneration of Lewis Libby was not merely something they supported. It was much more than that. It was a matter of the greatest importance. That is because Libby is a True Believer, a loyal member of their cult. Seeing him in prison would be humiliating, would make them feel weak and defeated at the hands of the Enemy (defined as "anyone who opposes them"), which is the worst outcome there is.

More from Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com

The Very Definition

As for the Supreme Court, we now know that the president's two nominees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, are exactly what many of us thought they were: activist conservatives intent on leading a judicial counterrevolution. Yesterday's 5 to 4 ruling tossing out two school desegregation plans was another milestone on the court's march to the right.

Even after he was confirmed, Roberts was talking about something other than the 5 to 4 conservative court we saw this year on case after case. In a speech at Georgetown University Law School in May 2006, Roberts rightly argued that "the rule of law is strengthened when there is greater coherence and agreement about what the law is." It's a shame this quest for broader majorities had so little bearing on the 2007 Roberts-led court.

Especially troubling was the opinion offered by Roberts and Alito this week eviscerating the rather modest restrictions on sham "issue" ads in the McCain-Feingold law. The provision, which applies for 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election, is aimed at preventing large amounts of corporate and union money from getting around campaign finance restrictions.

Three conservative justices, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy, were willing to admit that in voiding this part of the law they were overturning a precedent set by the court only four years ago. But Roberts and Alito pretended to follow the earlier ruling while ripping its guts out. Scalia called this "faux judicial restraint."

"The court (and, I think, the country) loses when important precedent is overruled without good reason," Justice David H. Souter wrote for the dissenters. Exactly. But upsetting precedent, directly or indirectly, is a major goal of this new conservative majority.

As Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute noted this week in Roll Call, the issue-ad decision demonstrated "not a careful, conservative deference to Congress" but instead "a willingness by Roberts to toss aside Congress' conclusions to fit his own ideological predispositions" -- the very definition of judicial activism.

E. J. Dionne Jr.'s full editorial can be read in the Washington Post

A related editorial from the L.A. Times

The Supreme Court (predictably) veers right

"Where the First Amendment is implicated," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote this week in an important free-speech opinion, "the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor."

It's a comforting thought, and a nice example of the kind of judicial rhetoric Americans are used to. It appeared high up in most news accounts of the Supreme Court's decisions in three First Amendment cases on Monday, and it is sure to appear in conservative commentary hailing the arrival of the Roberts court.

Unfortunately, the implication that this court defends First Amendment rights is pretty much hogwash. If one carefully reads all three of these First Amendment cases, the court is really saying that the tie goes to speakers who have money and power. That is, if the speaker is rich and influential, then free speech wins. If not, free speech loses. Taken together, the cases give a picture of a new court majority that takes a very narrow view of free speech and a deferential approach to bureaucrats who seek to shape American culture from the top down.

Read Garrett Epps' full piece at Salon.com

F*ck the environment, too

Dick Cheney, the most powerful, misguided Vice-President in U.S. history, has left a clear and disturbing record of culpability for a number of disasters, ranging from the Iraq debacle, to the gutting of American citizens' rights, to leading the charge for unprecedented and outrageous Executive privilege and power. But wait, there's more. You can add blatant (and of course secretive) efforts to kick aside well documented environmental concerns in order to fatten the accounts of big businesses. From the Washington Post:

Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the 19th-ranking Interior Department official, arrived at her desk in Room 6140 a few months after Inauguration Day 2001. A phone message awaited her.

"This is Dick Cheney," said the man on her voice mail, Wooldridge recalled in an interview. "I understand you are the person handling this Klamath situation. Please call me at -- hmm, I guess I don't know my own number. I'm over at the White House."

Wooldridge wrote off the message as a prank. It was not. Cheney had reached far down the chain of command, on so unexpected a point of vice presidential concern, because he had spotted a political threat arriving on Wooldridge's desk.

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.

Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.

First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.

Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks.

The Klamath case is one of many in which the vice president took on a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business.

By combining unwavering ideological positions -- such as the priority of economic interests over protected fish -- with a deep practical knowledge of the federal bureaucracy, Cheney has made an indelible mark on the administration's approach to everything from air and water quality to the preservation of national parks and forests.

It was Cheney's insistence on easing air pollution controls, not the personal reasons she cited at the time, that led Christine Todd Whitman to resign as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, she said in an interview that provides the most detailed account so far of her departure.

The vice president also pushed to make Nevada's Yucca Mountain the nation's repository for nuclear and radioactive waste, aides said, a victory for the nuclear power industry over those with long-standing safety concerns. And his office was a powerful force behind the White House's decision to rewrite a Clinton-era land-protection measure that put nearly a third of the national forests off limits to logging, mining and most development, former Cheney staff members said.

Cheney's pro-business drive to ease regulations, however, has often set the administration on a collision course with the judicial branch.

The full article by Jo Becker and Barton Gellman can be read here

Fisk on Palestine

How troublesome the Muslims of the Middle East are. First, we demand that the Palestinians embrace democracy and then they elect the wrong party—Hamas—and then Hamas wins a mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza Strip. And we Westerners still want to negotiate with the discredited President, Mahmoud Abbas. Today “Palestine”—and let’s keep those quotation marks in place—has two prime ministers. Welcome to the Middle East.

Who can we negotiate with? To whom do we talk? Well of course, we should have talked to Hamas months ago. But we didn’t like the democratically elected government of the Palestinian people. They were supposed to have voted for Fatah and its corrupt leadership. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement.

No one asked—on our side—which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds—and goes on building—vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of “Palestine” still left to negotiate over ?

And so today, we are supposed to talk to our faithful policeman, Mr Abbas, the “moderate” (as the BBC, CNN and Fox News refer to him) Palestinian leader, a man who wrote a 600-page book about Oslo without once mentioning the word “occupation”, who always referred to Israeli “redeployment” rather than “withdrawal”, a “leader” we can trust because he wears a tie and goes to the White House and says all the right things. The Palestinians didn’t vote for Hamas because they wanted an Islamic republic - which is how Hamas’s bloody victory will be represented - but because they were tired of the corruption of Mr Abbas’s Fatah and the rotten nature of the “Palestinian Authority”.

I recall years ago being summoned to the home of a PA official whose walls had just been punctured by an Israeli tank shell. All true. But what struck me were the gold-plated taps in his bathroom. Those taps—or variations of them—were what cost Fatah its election. Palestinians wanted an end to corruption—the cancer of the Arab world - and so they voted for Hamas and thus we, the all-wise, all-good West, decided to sanction them and starve them and bully them for exercising their free vote. Maybe we should offer “Palestine” EU membership if it would be gracious enough to vote for the right people?

Robert Fisk's full piece at truthdig

Words Matter

Josh Marshall publishes an e-mail from a reader who identifies what is one of the most astonishing instances of mindless, pro-government "reporting" yet:

It's a curious thing that, over the past 10 - 12 days, the news from Iraq refers to the combatants there as "al-Qaida" fighters. When did that happen?

Until a few days ago, the combatants in Iraq were "insurgents" or they were referred to as "Sunni" or "Shia'a" fighters in the Iraq Civil War. Suddenly, without evidence, without proof, without any semblance of fact, the US military command is referring to these combatants as "al-Qaida".

Welcome to the latest in Iraq propaganda.

That the Bush administration, and specifically its military commanders, decided to begin using the term "Al Qaeda" to designate "anyone and everyeone we fight against or kill in Iraq" is obvious. All of a sudden, every time one of the top military commanders describes our latest operations or quantifies how many we killed, the enemy is referred to, almost exclusively now, as "Al Qaeda."

But what is even more notable is that the establishment press has followed right along, just as enthusiastically. I don't think the New York Times has published a story about Iraq in the last two weeks without stating that we are killing "Al Qaeda fighters," capturing "Al Qaeda leaders," and every new operation is against "Al Qaeda."

The Times -- typically in the form of the gullible and always-government-trusting "reporting" of Michael Gordon, though not only -- makes this claim over and over, as prominently as possible, often without the slightest questioning, qualification, or doubt. If your only news about Iraq came from The New York Times, you would think that the war in Iraq is now indistinguishable from the initial stage of the war in Afghanistan -- that we are there fighting against the people who hijacked those planes and flew them into our buildings: "Al Qaeda."

What is so amazing about this new rhetorical development -- not only from our military, but also from our "journalists" -- is that, for years, it was too shameless and false even for the Bush administration to use. Even at the height of their propaganda offensives about the war, the furthest Bush officials were willing to go was to use the generic term "terrorists" for everyone we are fighting in Iraq, as in: "we cannot surrender to the terrorists by withdrawing" and "we must stay on the offensive against terrorists."

More from Glenn Greenwald

The Mahdi Army

In 2005, Abu Rusil was a penniless Shiite Muslim taxi driver who could barely afford to rent a room. Then Sunni gunmen stopped his older brother at a checkpoint, checked his ID and discovered he was a Shiite. They dragged him from his car and shot him dead on the spot.

Now Abu Rusil lives for revenge.

Leila Fadel of the McClatchy Newspapers has a frightening interview with Rusil

The Constitution

No one has captured George W. Bush’s understanding of constitutional law more precisely or presciently than Richard M. Nixon, who famously (and incorrectly) told David Frost in 1977, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Many hoped this theory had seen its definitive demise with Nixon’s own fall, but Bush and his compatriots clearly have a different view—Dick Cheney in particular has long argued that his old boss’s forced resignation set the stage for an unwarranted evisceration of executive power. We should not be surprised, then, that Cheney and his new boss, with the help of a color-coded state of fear induced by the terrorist attacks of 9/11, have done much to restore the Nixonian tradition.

As a result, the Constitution at the end of Bush’s two terms is much the worse for wear. For a short parlor game, challenge your friends to name a constitutional right that Bush has not sought to undermine. After the right to bear arms and the guarantee against the quartering of soldiers, the game will be over. Those who prefer a longer game can reverse the exercise, but be prepared for an extended and dispiriting evening.

David Cole's full piece in Harper's

All The News That's Fit To...Transcribe?

Today's New York Times includes a story on the supoenas issued for Harriet Meiers and Sara Taylor, two former White House officials. Written by Sheryl Gay Stolberg--whom I hope eventually sees this--it is a disgrace both to the author and her editors, as well as a more general indication, yet again, of how far we have sunk in the 35 years since issues of executive privilege first became national news.

What is truly shocking about the story is that it is written completely from the perspective of the Administration. The story never explicitly states who issued the supoenas--the Senate Judiciary Committee. Instead it simply says that they were issued by "Democrats," which is both partisan and misleading, since the supoenas have the support of some Republicans on the committee. The White House, in short, is once again the victim of that disgruntled mass of blue-staters--not of the legal process initiated by a (more recently) elected, equal branch of the government of the United States, which is doing its job by trying to find out how the Executive Branch may have abused its power for political purposes. You have to read more than half of the story to get to a reference to Charles Schumer, " a New York Democrat who is one of those leading the investigation in the Senate, but who isn't even the Judiciary Committee chairman.. The words "Judiciary Committee" NEVER APPEAR in the story; Arlen Specter is described simply as another "leading lawmaker." Nor is this all. Three men were asked to comment on the situation--all three of them, Ari Fleischer, Charles Black, and David Rifkin, Republicans who have served in or are close to the Bush White House. And they confine their comments completely to the political dynamics of the situation. No one comments on the underlying legal issues involved.

David Kaiser's full take

Binary Moralism

Glenn Greenwald is not only one of the very best and most prolific political bloggers, but is also an incredibly important activist author. Greenwald is, in a sense, a muckraking historian, which is to say that he has a rare ability to (accurately) view current events in a much broader historical context, and at the same time use his insights in an effort to awaken those who might not otherwise see the profound dangers that lurk just around the corner.

Greenwald has just written his second book in the past two years. His first, How Would a Patriot Act?, can be purchased here, and his most recent, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good Vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency, can be pre-ordered here.

Today, at his regular space at Salon.com, Greenwald provides a preview into his important new book, a book which which may be as much much an indictment of the American public as it is of George W. Bush. Here's an extended excerpt:

The central purpose of the book is to examine what has happened to the United States for the last six years under the Bush presidency. That is the "Bush legacy" -- our national character and national identity have been fundamentally degraded, our moral standing and credibility in the world eroded to previously unthinkable depths, our government engaged in the very behavior which, for decades, we have collectively deplored, our trust in America's governmental and journalistic institutions reduced virtually to zero, and our country placed on a plainly unsustainable course as a result of the militarized, imperial role we are choosing to play in the world.

At the heart of this process lies a binary moralistic view of the world, one which seeks to define every conflict and political challenge, both foreign and domestic, as a battle of Good versus Evil. The crux of this mindset is the continuous identification of an Enemy, one which embodies Evil and which must be stopped, typically destroyed, at all costs. No competing considerations, no rational arguments, no counter-balancing objectives, not even constraints of reality or resources, can compete with the moral imperative of this mission. The mission of destroying Evil trumps all.

And the converse then also falls comfortably into place: those who seek to destroy Evil -- whether it be America, or President Bush, or the right-wing political faction that has supported the Bush presidency -- are, by definition, the embodiment of Good. Thus, whatever steps they take, whatever instruments they employ in service of their mission, are intrinsically justifiable because, by definition, they are employed in service of the Good.

This Manichean mentality not only drives George W. Bush personally, but it also subsumes our political discourse almost entirely. It is this mindset, more than any other single cause, that has driven us to embrace extraordinary policies and truly radical beliefs that are as ill-considered and incoherent as they are destructive. This is the "moral reasoning" which led us to invade and indefinitely occupy Iraq, to vest previously unimaginable power in the President, to allow our country to become symbolized by orange-jumpsuit-clad, shackled and leashed detainees locked away and brutally maltreated in lawless prisons around the world, and which has brought us to the brink of still new wars in the Middle East, most alarmingly with Iran. It is this reasoning which has rendered our country virtually unrecognizable, and has placed us on a course which simply cannot be sustained.

Attempting to simplify a complex and daunting world into clean moral dichotomies is not new; the word "Manichean" derives from a third century popular religion founded by the Persian prophet Manes, who insisted that a battle between the forces of pure Good and pure Evil drives every event in the world. That religion's defining mandate was that the individual's sole duty was to choose sides and act in defense of Good against Evil.

For quite some time in America, but particularly since the 9/11 attacks, it is this Good versus Evil template which has driven our national conduct. This is the mindset that has been applied by George Bush, and in turn by our media and our country, to virtually every political challenge we have. But by its very terms, it distorts reality beyond recognition, renders rational debate impossible, and justifies even the most morally grotesque actions in the name of defending Good and annihilating Evil.

That this moral absolutism is what drives George Bush personally -- steeped, for him, in the evangelical theology he embraced as a means of overcoming his alcoholism -- also accounts for one of the most critical aspects of the Bush presidency. Bush's presidency has been shaped by the ability of various factions -- the garden-variety Cheney/Rumsfeld hawks who believe in the endless application of U.S. military force to enforce America's will in the world; the right-wing Christian evangelicals who believe in the exercise of government power to fulfill theological ends; the Israel-centric neoconservatives who seek to use American resources to rule the Middle East -- to induce Bush's unyielding commitments to their agenda by depicting their desired policies in the moralistic terms which drive the President.

The agendas of these disparate political factions converge in agreement on one overarching, shared vision: ever-increasing American militarism, particularly in the Middle East, accompanied by a steady increase in governmental power domestically that is justified in the name of that militarism. That vision has been dressed up in the language of moral imperative, and justified by the core Goodness of America, of the Bush administration, and of the political movement he leads.

This agenda of militarism and domestic liberty-infringement has been fueled by the fear-invoking specter of an endless supply of new Enemies who embody pure Evil, against whom we need protection. This view of the world is protected by the claim that anyone who opposes this Battle is himself indifferent to, if not sympathetic with, the forces of Evil. And it is this moralistic certitude that has come to be the predominant theme driving our national behavior -- both within the U.S. and in the world -- and it fundamentally shapes the role we seek to play in the world.

Our country's collective acceptance of the same Manichean moralism which drives George Bush, its unexamined acceptance of American exceptionalism, explains much of what has happened over the last six years. Various chapters in the book document how Bush's moralistic vision accounts for specific policies and actions we have taken. The largest chapter in the book is devoted to an examination of how the Bush presidency has placed the U.S. on a completely unnecessary -- though seemingly desired -- collision course with Iran, threatening a military confrontation with that country that would be indescribably destructive.

Greenwald's full piece

Yes Men

Washington was briefly abuzz last week with the news that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will not recommend the reappointment of General Peter Pace for a second two-year term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gates is instead nominating Admiral Michael Mullen for the post. The political classes reacted first with surprise and then with approval. The New York Times editorial page declared Mullen a "good choice." Senate confirmation seems assured.
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A better idea might be to abolish the position of JCS chairman altogether -- and the entire JCS system along with it.

History will render this judgment of Pace, who succeeded General Richard B Myers as chairman in September 2005: As U. S. forces became mired ever more deeply in an unwinnable war, Pace remained a passive bystander, a witness to a catastrophe that he was slow to comprehend and did little to forestall. If the position of JCS chair had simply remained vacant for the past two years, it is difficult to see how the American military would be in worse shape today.

Softening history's verdict will be this fact: Long before Pace arrived on the scene the JCS had established a well-deserved reputation as one of the most ineffective institutions in Washington. Dissatisfaction with the Joint Chiefs dates virtually from the moment in 1947 when Congress passed the legislation creating it. Trying to fix the JCS soon became a cottage industry. The widespread unhappiness with Pace's performance, culminating in his de facto firing, affirms that these various reforms have failed.

Expectations that a permanent mechanism for providing military advice could improve the quality of civilian decision-making inspired the creation of the Joint Chiefs in the first place. After all, this had seemingly been the case during World War II, when Franklin Roosevelt had created a precursor of the modern JCS whose members had collaborated effectively with FDR in successfully directing a massive global war.

The creation of a permanent JCS two years after the war was intended to replicate that success: drawing on the accumulated wisdom of their profession, the new Joint Chiefs would help the president and Congress maintain adequate but economical defenses, avoid unnecessary wars, and wage effectively those wars that proved unavoidable.

Measured by these criteria, over the course of six decades the Joint Chiefs of Staff have performed miserably. Attempts to fix the institution only introduced new varieties of dysfunction, culminating in the rise of General Colin Powell, the most talented -- and most problematic -- officer ever to preside over the JCS. After Powell, things would only get worse.

Read Andrew J. Bacevich's full commentary in The Boston Globe

Turmoil in Gaza

Coming, as he does, from Fox News, Tony Snow is obviously a deeply cynical fellow, but this takes some beating: Asked to comment Wednesday on the bloodbath in Gaza, he answered: “Ultimately, the Palestinians are going to have to sort out their politics and figure out which pathway they want to pursue — the pathway toward two states living peaceably side-by-side, or whether this sort of chaos is going to become a problem.”

Everyone following the conflict in Gaza knows full well that the reason for the violence is not that Palestinians have not “sorted out their politics” — they’ve made their political preferences abundantly clear in democratic elections, and later in a power-sharing agreement brokered by the Saudis. The problem is that the U.S. and the corrupt and self-serving warlords of Fatah did not accept either the election result or the unity government, and have conspired actively ever since to reverse both by all available means, including starving the Palestinian economy of funds, refusing to hand over power over the Palestinian Authority to the elected government, and arming and training Fatah loyalists to militarily restore their party’s power. Unfortunately, after three days of some of the most savage fighting ever seen in Gaza, that strategy now lies in tatters. Fatah is, quite simply, no longer a credible fighting force in Gaza, where it has long been in decline as a credible political force.

You can read more about the Palestinian problems which have been exacerbated by the U.S. at Tony Karon's site

knocking from underneath

You think you've reached bottom, then you hear knocking from underneath. As I follow the news from Iraq, and the American debate about it, I fear that the worst is still to come. Here's the latest twist. In desperation, and since the surge is not having the desired effect, the US military is now arming and funding Sunni gangs to help them fight other Sunni gangs linked to al-Qaida. The enemy of my enemy is my friend - even if, until only yesterday, he was the enemy I had claimed to be defeating. But how will the US military know they are not supporting killers who have the blood of American soldiers on their hands? Ah, because they will use biometric tests - retina scans and fingerprinting - on those they are arming. How reassuring.

In the short term, this modern version of a 19th century British colonial technique may actually serve to beat back the al-Qaida-related bands, as it reportedly has in Anbar province. But in the medium term, it can only fuel the civil war that most observers expect to erupt with full fury as American and British forces pull back. And that's in addition to arming the largely Shia forces of the Iraqi army. One way or another, Americans are giving Iraqis more weapons with which they can kill each other. After yesterday's attack on the al-Askari mosque in Samara, another round of Sunni-Shia violence must be expected.

More from Timothy Garton Ash in The Guardian (UK)

Rudy GIuliani

This is the first, and quite probably the last bit of space that I will use to discuss the frighteningly awful Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. And because he has summarized the topic so well, I'll let Andrew Sullivan do the work:

Former New York mayor Giuliani is always entertaining, and he hasn’t disappointed. The most remarkable aspect of his candidacy is its complete immunity from anything that has actually happened in the last five years. For Rudy, it’s still 9/12 and always will be. And why not? He hasn’t felt so significant since – although his speaking fees have. He has no qualms about Iraq. It’s simple, after all. We just have to win.

His entire analysis of the war on terror can be reduced to the notion that we stay "on offense". Offense means anything aggressive, it appears. He wouldn’t rule out a nuclear strike on Iran, for example. He endorses “any methods necessary” to extract information from anyone who might seem like a terrorist.

He spoke of two recent terror plots – one involving a handful of loons who wanted to invade a military base, another a crew of Caribbeans who dreamt of blowing up JFK airport (they had no weapons and no firm plans) – as if they were an imminent threat to America’s very existence.

As his eyes flash through his wire-rim glasses, and he bobs up and down on his shiny corporate shoes, you can just see him drooling over the chance to fire a few missiles, round up a few immigrants, strip a few more Americans of habeas corpus rights and nuke Tehran. This is the man, remember, who banned ferret-ownership and jaywalking in New York City. Next stop: Falluja. Piece of cake.

Sullivan's full rundown of the Republican candidates can be found at The Times (UK)

The Scooter Libby Trial: One Final Note

Whether or not you happened to closely follow the trial, conviction, and recent sentencing of Scooter Libby, you may have missed this gem. The judge presiding over the case, Reggie B. Walton (ironically a Bush appointee), was none too pleased about the Amicus Brief which was submitted by Libby's defense team in an effort to influence the sentencing. Here's what Walton had to say about it:

It is an impressive show of public service when twelve prominent and distinguished current and former law professors of well-respected schools are able to amass their collective wisdom in the course of only several days to provide their legal expertise to the Court on behalf of a criminal defendant. The Court trusts that this is a reflection of these eminent academics' willingness in the future to step to the plate and provide like assistance in cases involving any of the numerous litigants, both in this Court and throughout the courts of our nation, who lack the financial means to fully and properly articulate the merits of their legal positions even in instances where failure to do so could result in monetary penalties, incarceration, or worse. The Court will certainly not hesitate to call for such assistance from these luminaries, as necessary in the interests of justice and equity, whenever similar questions arise in the cases that come before it.

If only there had been more public servants like Walton in the Bush Administration, we might have avoided a few of the resulting catastrophes.

via emptywheel

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