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Archive: POLITICS

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Not your average conspiracy theory

While conspiracy theories have been rattling around since 9/11, there actually are some reputable people (mostly scientists) who have questioned the official version of how the World Trade Center collapsed. Most recently, Steven Jones, professor of physics at BYU (hardly a hotbed of left-wing crackpots, by the way), aired a very interesting theory, which includes some compelling points.

"It looks like thermite with sulfur added, which really is a very clever idea," Steven Jones, professor of physics at BYU, told a meeting of the Utah Academy of Science, Arts and Letters at Snow College Friday.

[snip]

Last year, Jones presented various arguments for his theory that explosives or incendiary devices were planted in the Trade Towers, and in WTC 7, a smaller building in the Trade Center complex, and that those materials, not planes crashing into the buildings, caused the buildings to collapse.

At that time, he mentioned thermite as the possible explosive or incendiary agent. But Friday, he said he is increasingly convinced that thermite and sulfur were the root causes of the 9/11 disaster. He told college professors and graduate students from throughout Utah gathered for the academy meeting that while almost no fire, even one ignited by jet fuel, can cause structural steel to fail, the combination of thermite and sulfur "slices through steel like a hot knife through butter." He ticked off several pieces of evidence for his thermite fire theory:

First, he said, video showed a yellow, molten substance splashing off the side of the south Trade Tower about 50 minutes after an airplane hit it and a few minutes before it collapsed. Government investigators ruled out the possibility of melting steel being the source of the material because of the unlikelihood of steel melting. The investigators said the molten material must have been aluminum from the plane. But, said Jones, molten aluminum is silvery. It never turns yellow. The substance observed in the videos "just isn't aluminum," he said. But, he said, thermite can cause steel to melt and become yellowish.

Second, he cited video pictures showing white ash rising from the south tower near the dripping, liquefied metal. When thermite burns, Jones said, it releases aluminum-oxide ash. The presence of both yellow-white molten iron and aluminum oxide ash "are signature characteristics of a thermite reaction," he said.

Another item of evidence, Jones said, is the fact that sulfur traces were found in structural steel recovered from the Trade Towers. Jones quoted the New York Times as saying sulfidization in the recovered steel was "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the (official) investigation." But, he said, sulfidization fits the theory that sulfur was combined with thermite to make the thermite burn even hotter than it ordinarily would.

Read the full article at Utah's Desert News (via cosmic iguana)

Final Jeopardy

Elizabeth de la Vega, in typically clear, cogent fashion, dissects the current state of the Plame affair, and comes up with the following 'Final Jeopardy' question:

Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected — as well as false and misleading — portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

Read de la Vega's full article at Mother Jones (Thanks to Eric Alterman)

Wild speculation

That's the Republican talking point du jour, with respect to Sy Hersh's explosive article. Needless to say, that's simply a misdirection, and none of those using the phrase have denied any of the specific allegations in the article. Josh Marshall sums it up well:

This post is, hopefully, nothing more than stating the obvious. But let's just put down for the record that when President Bush calls recent reports of White House plans to attack Iran "wild speculation" that means absolutely nothing.

It's not just that the president has now earned a well-deserved reputation for lying. It is because he and his chief aides lied to the country about a more or less parallel situation -- the build up to war on Iraq -- only four years ago. We now know that the fix was in on the Iraq War as early as September/October 2001. And the president and his crew kept up the charade that no decisions had been made long after those claims became laughable.

Yes, I know, President Bush gets called a liar on center-left and left-wing blogs all the time.

But I think those more genial sorts in the press and policy community in DC need to be honest enough with themselves to recognize that on this issue of all issues President Bush is unquestionably a liar.

It is also not too early to point out that the evidence is there for the confluence of two destructive and disastrous forces -- hawks in the administration's Cheney faction whose instinctive bellicosity is only matched by their actual incompetence (a fatal mixture if there ever was one), and the president's chief political aides who see the build up to an Iran confrontation as the most promising way to contest the mid-term elections. Both those groups are strongly motivated for war. And who is naive enough to imagine a contrary force within the administration strong enough to put on the brakes?

Josh's site TPM

Chicken

Kevin Drum makes an excellent point:

BOMBING IRAN....I think a number of people are missing the point about the latest spate of articles suggesting that George Bush has plans for an air strike against Iran. The United States military has contingency plans for everything, they say, so it's hardly a surprise that the military has contingency plans for Iran. William Arkin even tells us their names: CONPLAN 8022 and CONPLAN 1025.

But what's important isn't the existence of the contingency plans. Rather, it's the fairly obvious fact that the Bush administration is publicizing them as part of a very public PR campaign in favor of a strike against Iran. The problem is that even if this is a bluff, it's one that has a profound effect on both Iran and the American public. As James Fallows says:

By giving public warnings, the United States and Israel “create ‘excess demand’ for military action,” as our war-game leader Sam Gardiner recently put it, and constrain their own negotiating choices.

In other words, if the PR campaign is too successful, then Bush will have boxed himself in. Eventually he'll feel obligated to bomb Iran solely because he's now under pressure to make good on his threats and doesn't want to look like he's backing down. World Wars have started over less.

Who knows? A subtle and well orchestrated game of chicken might be appropriate here. But please raise your hands if you trust this crew to play a subtle and well orchestrated game of anything.

Kevin's Blog

"Yes He Would"

That's the title of Krugman's latest column.

“But he wouldn’t do that.” That sentiment is what made it possible for President Bush to stampede America into the Iraq war and to fend off hard questions about the reasons for that war until after the 2004 election. Many people just didn’t want to believe that an American president would deliberately mislead the nation on matters of war and peace.

Now people with contacts in the administration and the military warn that Mr. Bush may be planning another war. The most alarming of the warnings come from Seymour Hersh, the veteran investigative journalist who broke the Abu Ghraib scandal. Writing in The New Yorker, Mr. Hersh suggests that administration officials believe that a bombing campaign could lead to desirable regime change in Iran — and that they refuse to rule out the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

“But he wouldn’t do that,” say people who think they’re being sensible. Given what we now know about the origins of the Iraq war, however, discounting the possibility that Mr. Bush will start another ill-conceived and unnecessary war isn’t sensible. It’s wishful thinking.

Thanks to True Blue Liberal for the complete reprint

Bye-bye, Bugman

Boston Globe cartoonist Dan Wasserman's take on Delay's departure.

Did Bush and Cheney commit multiple felonies?

Greg Palast has an interesting, alternative take on the sort of crimes that the President and Vice-President may well have committed.

OK, let's accept the White House alibi that releasing Plame's identity was no crime. But if that's true, they've committed a bigger crime: Bush and Cheney knowingly withheld vital information from a grand jury investigation, a multimillion dollar inquiry the perps themselves authorized. That's akin to calling in a false fire alarm or calling the cops for a burglary that never happened - but far, far worse. Let's not forget that in the hunt for the perpetrator of this non-crime, reporter Judith Miller went to jail.

Think about that. While Miller sat in a prison cell, Bush and Cheney were laughing their sick heads off, knowing the grand jury testimony, the special prosecutor's subpoenas and the FBI's terrorizing newsrooms were nothing but fake props in Bush's elaborate charade, Cheney's Big Con.

On February 10, 2004, our not-so-dumb-as-he-sounds President stated, "Listen, I know of nobody - I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing. ...And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it."

Notice Bush's cleverly crafted words. He says he can't name anyone who leaked this "classified" info - knowing full well he'd de-classified it. Far from letting Bush off the hook, it worsens the crime. For years, I worked as a government investigator and, let me tell you, Bush and Cheney withholding material information from the grand jury is a felony. Several felonies, actually: abuse of legal process, fraud, racketeering and, that old standby, obstruction of justice.

Read Palast's full post at truthout.org

Outrageous, yet apparently legal greed

From Mark Kleiman:

The expropriation of shareholder wealth by predatory corporate executives is one of the great scandals of the past quarter-century, and in particular the past decade. "Compensation consultants" play a central role in this marginally legal enterprise. (I say "marginally legal" because corporate executives, as fiduciaries for the shareholders, have a legal duty not to overpay themselves.)

[snip]

A little snooping by the Times's Gretchen Morgenson reveals that the "independent" compensation-consulting firm which approved a nearly $20 million paycheck for the CEO of Verizon in a year when Verizon saw its credit rating fall, froze pensions for its managers, and had its net income decline by 5% is also Verizon's benefits manager, and has taken in about half a billion dollars from its Verizon account in the past decade. No doubt Verizon management will keep those dollars flowing as long as the consultant makes suitably generous recommendations about senior executive pay.

Read Mark's full post here

Atypical exchange

From President Bush's discussion at Central Piedmont Community College in
Charlotte, North Carolina:

Q You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question?

Q Okay, I don't have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I -- in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and --

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait a sec -- let him speak.

Q And I would hope -- I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself. And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak what I'm saying to you right now. That is part of what this country is about.

THE PRESIDENT: It is, yes. (Applause.)

Q And I know that this doesn't come welcome to most of the people in this room, but I do appreciate that.

Full transcript

Final arbiters

The most recent, damning revelations, directly implicating President Bush in the outrageous, unethical, and possibly illegal outing of a CIA operative for political purposes, have already been widely covered (for details, try these links: Juan Cole, NY Sun, firedoglake, Josh Marshall.)

Rather than focus on the specific issue, I believe that a step back, providing a view of the broader implications, is in order. As it happens, I was composing my thoughts this morning, when I came across a really excellent post by Publius at Legal Fiction, in which he gets to the heart of the matter.

One of these common “roots” is the assumption that the executive branch gets to be the final arbiter of the limits of its own power. This single assumption ties together a number of the administration’s most troubling policies. For instance, according to the administration, it alone decides how detainees will be treated in wartime. It alone decides what constitutes torture. It alone decides who is deemed an “enemy combatant.” It alone decides who will be wiretapped. It alone decides whether it will follow the requirements of the Patriot Act. It alone decides whether America can legally go to war. It alone decides when documents are declassified. It alone decides when the Geneva Convention should be followed.

The tie that binds each and every one of these positions is that, in each one, the executive alone gets the final say on the scope of its power.

Although the “final arbiter” assumption explains a lot, it doesn’t explain everything. In fact, I think the “final arbiter” assumption is itself a symptom of an even more fundamental and flawed assumption held by the administration. And that assumption is the unyielding certitude of its own correctness and goodness. That arrogance, to me, is original sin of the administration – and the source of its most disturbing and often disastrous policies.

Think about it – most everything that you don’t like about the Bush administration can be traced back to their belief that they’re always right – and very right – about everything. Most obviously, the belief in their own goodness and correctness explains why they think they get to be the final arbiters of their own power. But it explains a lot of other things too.

[snip]

To me, this arrogance was the ultimate cause of the selective leaking. Administration officials had no qualms about it because they knew – they just knew – that they were right about the threat posed by Saddam. And so, personal destruction of Wilson was a necessary cost of justifying to the public what was clearly right in their own minds. And because they were right, they could discuss Plame’s employment. They could also disclose classified information without formally declassifying it. They could do whatever they wanted to do because they were right.

Of course, history has shown all too clearly that executives are often wrong. In fact, when you really get down to it, the evolution of Western law has been an ongoing response to executive wrongness. The Magna Carta was about constraining the executive and subjecting its actions to the public will. The United States was created in part because of perceived abuses of the executive. Finally, even though our Constitution created a stronger executive (compared to the Articles), it still takes an obsessive number of steps to limit the power of the executive – even in wartime.

By all means, read the full post here

Plan B: no excuse for opposition

Not surprisingly, many religious conservatives, and (need I qualify?) opportunist Republican politicians oppose the so-called Plan B form of contraception. What many don't realize, though, is that they don't have a leg to stand on. What I mean is that many of Plan B's opponents object on the same grounds on which they object to abortion: the sanctity of "life". The problem with that argument is that is doesn't apply to Plan B, period.

I'll let the far better qualified PZ Myers, biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota (Morris), explain:

It is a form of birth control that tells the woman's ovaries to hold off on releasing any eggs for a short while. It's called emergency contraception, because it is used by a woman who has, for whatever reason (rape, a broken condom, misplaced enthusiasm, second thoughts, anything) had unwanted sperm in her reproductive tract, and she wants to make sure that this isn't the moment her ovaries happen to pop a follicle.

Plan B is not an abortion.

Plan B doesn't help if one is already pregnant, and it doesn't affect any implanted zygotes. Pregnant women produce progesterone naturally.

Plan B gives women the ability to control, to a limited extent, when they will expel a gamete. In purely reproductive terms, it's a bit like a male's ability to control when he will ejaculate, or expel his gametes. That's it. No fertilized zygotes are involved, so that level of the birth control debate isn't even relevant. It's simple, responsible, and safe. You'd have to be insane to object to Plan B.

Short version: Plan B doesn't kill a fertilized egg; it prevents conception.

Meyers explains the process in clear, detailed fashion on his blog

Good riddance

Tom DeLay is, as most of you know, the largest of multiple, malignant tumors to have grown and thrived within our diseased political system in recent years. And like a fetid piece of tissue being removed from the body, DeLay emits a most foul odor as he prepares to retire from politics.

An additional impetus for putting off the resignation until now was suggested by John Feehery, a former aide to DeLay and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "He needed to raise money for the defense fund. That was the bottom line," Feehery said. "He wanted to make sure he could take care of himself in the court of law." Under federal campaign rules, any reelection money a lawmaker raises can be used to pay legal fees stemming from official duties.

Just to be clear, DeLay postponed his withdrawal in order to pocket campaign funds which will, instead, be used for his legal defense.

Immediate withdrawal

Peter N. Kirstein, professor of history at St. Xavier University, argues forcefully that the Iraq War is an unmitigated disaster, and that the U.S. should withdraw immediately. Note that he blames Democrats for the debacle as well.

The Iraq War, as Vietnam was, is morally wrong, strategically a disaster and fueled by the notion of American exceptionalism: that America has the might and the ethnocentric right to shape the international community in its own image. The occupation of Iraq must end with the rapid withdrawal of American military forces. The justification for war was deliberately falsified and demonstrated an incompetence of such magnitude as to warrant criminal prosecution of the national-security elites including the president, vice president, secretary of defense and both the current and previous secretaries of state. I do not exclude the Democratic Party from guilt for this war. Most Democratic Senators voted for authorization to use force and, other than Congressperson John Murtha and Senator Russ Feingold, few Democrats have demanded disengagement from Iraq. They have not attempted to cut off funding and nominated Senator John Kerry, a vacillating, calculating, prowar presidential candidate, in 2004. My condemnation of this war is bi-partisan and extends beyond the Bush administration.

Read Kirstein's article here

"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are his accomplices." –Edward R. Murrow

Media bias: a microcosm

Peter Daou (of the excellent Daou Report at Salon.com) uses CNN as a typical example of insidious bias in the mainstream media:

Media Matters adds, "Over the past year, CNN hosts, anchors, and reporters have repeatedly commented on the Democratic Party's purported lack of a clear plan or concrete set of alternatives on issues ranging from Social Security to the war in Iraq. When a large coalition of Democrats stood together on March 29 to unveil a unified national security platform, CNN largely ignored the news.

Media Matters details CNN's (lack of) coverage: "In the early afternoon on March 29, the Democrats held a 40-minute press conference announcing the release of their new national security agenda, "Real Security: Protecting America and Restoring Our Leadership in the World." (pdf) The proposals in this set of policy papers include screening 100 percent of containers and cargo entering the United States, boosting the size of the U.S. Special Forces and National Guard, ensuring that troops have better body armor, providing more resources to first-responders, and allotting greater funding for veterans benefits."

"A Media Matters for America survey of CNN's programming on March 29 between 6 a.m. ET and 4 p.m. ET found only one mention of the Democratic plan. It came at 2:23 p.m. when CNN's Live From ... aired a brief clip of Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid [NV] speaking at the Democrats' press conference. The two-minute clip came directly after CNN had provided uninterrupted coverage of Bush's speech at the Hyatt Regency in Washington, D.C., an event that spanned an hour and a half and largely mirrored the multiple foreign policy addresses Bush has given in recent weeks."

Sadly, this is not an anomaly. The mainstream media, which the Republicans have so successfully (though inaccurately) painted as "liberal", has a pronounced bias in the opposite direction.

Read the full post here

More from Daou on the topic here

Permanent bases in Iraq? Yes, no, maybe so...

One of the many worrying issues which has taken a back seat to more immediate concerns is the question of whether the U.S. intends to create and man permanent (or "long-term", if you like) military bases in Iraq. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest an affirmative answer, though, predictably, the Administration has clouded the issue through denials and obfuscation. Consider the following comments, excerpted from this AP article:

The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and other U.S. officials disavow any desire for permanent bases. But long-term access, as at other U.S. bases abroad, is different from "permanent," and the official U.S. position is carefully worded.

Lt. Cmdr. Joe Carpenter, a Pentagon spokesman on international security, told The Associated Press it would be "inappropriate" to discuss future basing until a new Iraqi government is in place, expected in the coming weeks.

Less formally, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, asked about "permanent duty stations" by a Marine during an Iraq visit in December, allowed that it was "an interesting question." He said it would have to be raised by the incoming Baghdad government, if "they have an interest in our assisting them for some period over time."

It strikes me as a black and white issue: we simply should not do it. Retired General Anthony Zinni hits the nail on the head:

"It’s a stupid idea and clearly politically unacceptable," Zinni, a former Central Command chief, said in a Washington interview. "It would damage our image in the region, where people would decide that this" — seizing bases — "was our original intent."

Orrin Hatch: intellectually dishonest, for starters

Even in the context of the current, degraded state of politics in the U.S., Orinn Hatch is a disgrace. Too harsh? Well, consider that he is in a position of great power, is ostensibly an employee of the citizens of the state which he represents, and should, like anyone in such a position, be held to exceptionally high standards. His failure to achieve anything close to the highest standards can be documented in numerous cases spanning his 30 year career in Congress, but his most recent act of dishonesty is as blatant as it is reprehensible.

Glenn Greenwald provides an excellent summary:

This seems to be an accurate summary of the evolution of Sen. Hatch's views of constitutional law:

(1) The Congress has the right to restrict the President's eavesdropping activities, and to make certain eavesdropping activities a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in prison.

(2) Therefore, Hatch votes several times for FISA.

(3) Every President since then complies with the law -- including President Reagan and Bush 41 during the height of the Cold War - and no Administration or member of Congress challenge its constitutionality.

(4) George Bush gets caught violating FISA by engaging in the precise eavesdropping which FISA criminalizes.

(5) Hatch says that the Leader did nothing wrong because the law which the Leader violated -- the same one Hatch voted to enact and to amend repeatedly -- is unconstitutional.

Hatch has been in the Congress for more than 30 years. He was in Congress when FISA was enacted 28 years ago. He never once claimed that it was unconstitutional in any way -- until it was revealed that George Bush has been deliberately violating the law. Then he suddenly said that Congress had no right to pass that law, so after 28 years, the whole thing is all just totally invalid.

That's correct. Hatch was fully supportive of FISA for 28 years, and yet, when it serves his political purposes (to protect the President), he argues – with a straight face – that the statute is unconstitutional.

If we, the people of this country, continue to re-elect politicians who are obviously dishonest, then we richly deserve whatever disastrous results may follow.

Read Glenn's full post here

The "Good Faith" defense

Some prominent Republicans (e.g. Spector and Graham) have taken a serious look at the FISA case, and are clearly concerned about the legality of Bush's wiretaps. But as they don't feel comfortable defending the President on legal grounds, they are attempting to do so on the basis that he was operating on good faith.

Anonymous Liberal succinctly exposes that argument for what it is:

I also want to take a moment to address the emerging "good faith" defense of the President, which is being advanced by Republicans like Senators Graham and Specter who are clearly skeptical of the NSA program's legality. The argument seems to be that while Bush may have acted illegally, he did so based on a good faith belief that his actions were legal, and therefore he does not deserve harsh criticism or Congressional sanction.

I can see why Republicans like Graham and Specter have gravitated toward this argument. It allows them to express their genuine skepticism about the legality of the program without having to criticize the President for authorizing it.

But there's a major problem. Everything the administration has done for the past four and a half years indicates that it does NOT have a good faith believe in its own legal arguments. If Bush administration officials had any confidence whatsoever in their legal theories, they could at any point seek judicial blessing of the NSA program. All they would have to do is try to introduce evidence obtained via warrantless surveillance in court, either in a criminal prosecution or in an application for a FISA warrant. Either move would force the court to address the legality of the NSA program. In the latter context, the administration would have the benefit of being able to present its case ex parte and in secret.

But they are unwilling to do this, and for one simple reason: they are pretty certain they will lose.

Read the full post here

Froomkin and Waas

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post, and Murray Waas of the National Journal, are two of the very few mainstream journlists to have consistently reported (and reported well) on the failings of the Bush Administration. Today, Froomkin outlined the importance of Waas' recent reporting.

Slowly but surely, investigative reporter Murray Waas has been putting together a compelling narrative about how President Bush and his top aides contrived their bogus case for war in Iraq; how they succeeded in keeping charges of deception from becoming a major issue in the 2004 election; and how they continue to keep most of the press off the trail to this day.

What emerges in Waas's stories is a consistent White House modus operandi: That time and time again, Bush and his aides have selectively leaked or declassified secret intelligence findings that served their political agenda -- while aggressively asserting the need to keep secret the information that would tend to discredit them.

Do read Frookin's full column (Waas' article can be read here)

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