Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 113

Plurality of Americans love Gadaffi

Hillary Clinton, yesterday, when asked about those questioning the Libya War:

But the bottom line is, whose side are you on? Are you on Qadhafi's side or are you on the side of the aspirations of the Libyan people and the international coalition that has been created to support them? For the Obama Administration, the answer to that question is very easy.

Gallup, yesterday (click image to enlarge): 

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It's not only a plurality of Americans who are "on Gaddafi's side," but also the head of the Arab League, a short time ago held out as the Beacon of all that's Right (when they favored a no-fly zone).  And also Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey.  And our NATO ally Italy.  Who knew Gadaffi had so many friends, allies and fans?  There's almost as many of those as there were Saddam lovers (also known as "Iraq war critics").

I noted yesterday that the administration's rhetoric in attacking Libya war critics was becoming more and more identical to the Bush administration's on Iraq; apparently, the more unpopular a war gets, the more desperate and bullying the White House's attacks on critics become.  But Clinton's full quote is so thoroughly Rovian and noxious -- positing that there are two choices and only two: either enthusiastically support their war or be condemned as pro-Gadaffi -- that nobody, regardless of one's views on the war, should tolerate it.  Recall what ThinkProgress accurately said in 2010 about attacks from Bush followers on Iraq war critics:

We saw similar arguments leveled against critics of the Iraq war -- first that, by questioning the case for war, they were "objectively pro-Saddam," and later that, by continuing to criticize the war as it went worse and worse, they were emboldening insurgents.

An anonymous Obama official yesterday accused war critics of emboldening Gadaffi, and now it turns out Secretary Clinton accuses them of being on Gadaffi's side.  How much longer until we hear "who cares?" in response to polls showing widespread opposition to their war?

There's one other quote I'd like to recall:

"I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family" -- Hillary Clinton, March, 2009.

There's also this:

Bill Clinton's presidential library raised more than 10 percent of the cost of its $165 million facility from foreign sources, with the most generous overseas donation coming from Saudi Arabia . . . The royal family of Saudi Arabia gave the Clinton facility in Little Rock about $10 million, roughly the same amount it gave toward the presidential library of George H.W. Bush

There are some people in the world with the moral authority to accuse others of being too close to and supportive of brutal tyrants.  Hillary Clinton is most definitely not on that list; in fact, she is very near the top of those who have no authority whatsoever to spout that accusation.  Those questioning the war aren't declaring Gaddafi to be " friends of their family" or taking millions of dollars from his regime; they're simply questioning the legality, wisdom and morality of the war.  Doing that does not put one on Gaddafi's side any more than doing it in 2003 put one on Saddam's.

Climate of Fear: Jim Risen v. the Obama administration

[Barring unforeseen events, I'm going to leave this post at the top of the page for today and tomorrow, as I think the events it examines, rather in detail and at length, are vitally important and merit much more attention than they've received]

_________________

The Obama DOJ's effort to force New York Times investigative journalist Jim Risen to testify in a whistleblower prosecution and reveal his source is really remarkable and revealing in several ways; it should be receiving much more attention than it is.  On its own, the whistleblower prosecution and accompanying targeting of Risen are pernicious, but more importantly, it underscores the menacing attempt by the Obama administration -- as Risen yesterday pointed out -- to threaten and intimidate whistleblowers, journalists and activists who meaningfully challenge what the government does in secret.

The subpoena to Risen was originally issued but then abandoned by the Bush administration, and then revitalized by Obama lawyers.  It is part of the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent whom the DOJ accuses of leaking to Risen the story of a severely botched agency plot -- from 11 years ago -- to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program, a story Risen wrote about six years after the fact in his 2006 best-selling book, State of War.  The DOJ wants to force Risen to testify under oath about whether Sterling was his source.

Like any good reporter would, Risen is categorically refusing to testify and, if it comes to that (meaning if the court orders him to testify), he appears prepared to go to prison in defense of press freedoms and to protect his source (just as some young WikiLeaks supporters are courageously prepared to do rather than cooperate with the Obama DOJ's repellent persecution of the whistleblowing site).  Yesterday, Risen filed a Motion asking the Court to quash the government's subpoena on the ground that it violates the First Amendment's free press guarantee, and as part of the Motion, filed a lengthy Affidavit that is amazing in several respects.

During the Bush years, Risen was one of the few investigative journalists exposing the excesses and lawbreaking that was the War on Terror -- causing him to be literally hated by officials of the National Security State.  Along with Eric Lichtblau, Risen most famously revealed, in 2005, that the NSA was secretly spying on Americans without warrants which -- as he put it in his Affidavit -- "in all likelihood, violated the law and the United States Constitution."  In 2006, he revealed that the Bush administration had been obtaining huge amounts of financial and banking information about American citizens from the SWIFT system, all without oversight or Congressional authorization.  And here's how he summarized the multiple revelations in State of War, the book for which the Obama DOJ is now seeking to force him to reveal his source upon pain of imprisonment:

State of War included explosive revelations about a series of illegal or potentially illegal actions taken by President Bush, including the domestic wiretapping program. It also disclosed how President Bush secretly pressured the CIA to use torture on detainees in secret prisons around the world; how the White House and CIA leadership ignored information before the 2003 invasion of Iraq that showed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction; documented how, in the aftermath of the invasion, the Bush Administration punished CIA professionals who warned that the war in Iraq was going badly; showed how the Bush Administration turned a blind eye to Saudi involvement in terrorism; and revealed that the CIA's intelligence operations on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Iran and other countries were completely dysfunctional, and even reckless.

(To understand the function of the American media and American political culture: please re-read that paragraph -- describing revelations of pervasive lawbreaking and corruption at the highest levels of government from one reporter in one book -- and compare the media's indifferent and/or supportive treatment of that revealed conduct to the orgy of intense, obsessive condemnation directed at Anthony Weiner; or compare how the perpetrators of that conduct revealed by Risen are treated with great respect to the universal scorn heaped on Weiner).

Particularly because of the NSA revelation, Risen was despised by Bush officials and was the target of a right-wing hate campaign (including suggestions -- from administration officials and prominent others -- that he be prosecuted for espionage).  Risen compiles ample evidence in his Affidavit to argue that the Subpoena issued to him in the Sterling case was a by-product of the administration's efforts to harm him; he writes: "the administration was embarrassed by the disclosures I made in the course of my reporting for State of War as well as in The New York Times, and eventually singled me out as a target for political harassment."  Indeed, Risen argues -- persuasively -- that the investigation to unmask his source, and the prosecution of Sterling itself, is little more than a means of punishing him for his reporting and for intimidating similar disclosures in the future:

I believe that the investigation that led to this prosecution started because of my reporting on the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. The Bush White House was furious over that story. I believe that this investigation started as part of an effort by the Bush Administration to punish me and silence me, following the publication of the NSA wiretapping story. I was told by a reliable source that Vice President Dick Cheney pressured the Justice Department to personally target me because he was unhappy with my reporting and wanted to see me in jail.

As it has in so many other instances, the Obama administration appears on the verge of fulfilling Dick Cheney's nefarious wish beyond what even Cheney could achieve.

* * * * * *

There are two aspects to Risen's Affidavit which merit particular attention.  First, Risen cites a 2006 ABC News report from Brian Ross and others that claimed the Bush administration was, without warrants, spying on the communications of reporters (including Ross) in order to discover the identity of their sources.  I personally never attached much credence to that story because of how unreliable I find Brian Ross to be, but in his Affidavit, Risen states (under oath) that he "has reason to believe that the story . . . is true" because he "learned from an individual who testified before a grand jury in this District that was examining my reporting about the domestic wiretapping program that the Government had shown this individual copies of telephone records relating to calls made to and from me."

The fact that Bush officials were spying on reporters is extraordinary.  Instead of pursuing Cheneyite vendettas by persecuting whistleblowers who exposed newsworthy ineptitude from long-irrelevant CIA plots, the Obama DOJ ought to be investigating that allegation; that it isn't and wouldn't speaks volumes.

Second, Risen links the Obama administration's pursuit of the Sterling case and of Risen to the current President's broader (and unprecedented) war on whistleblowers and investigative journalism.  He writes:

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[I believe that the efforts to target me have continued under the Obama Administration, which has been aggressively investigating whistleblowers and reporters in a way that will have a chilling effect on the freedom of the press in the United States.]

What's particularly striking about this prosecution is that it involves digging deep into the ancient past (the Iran operation in question was begun under the Clinton administration): this from a President who insisted that Bush officials not be investigated for their crimes on the ground that we must "Look Forward, Not Backward."  But it's not hard to see why Obama officials are so intent on doing so: few things are more effective in creating a Climate of Fear -- one that deters investigation and disclosure and stifles the exercise of basic rights -- than prosecuting prominent people for having challenged and undermined the government's agenda.  As Risen documents, that -- plainly -- is what this prosecution and the Obama administration's broader anti-whistleblower war is about: chilling the exercise of basic rights and the ability to challenge government actions.

* * * * * 

While there is no good faith claim that Risen's revelation six years after the fact harmed U.S. national security, Risen's story was unquestionably newsworthy because it revealed how inept and ignorant American intelligence agencies are when it comes to Iran.  Indeed, Risen claims vindication for his story "given subsequent reports about the unreliability of our intelligence about Iran's nuclear capabilities and about our government's tendency to overstate the threat in a way that is not entirely consistent with the intelligence actually gathered."

That Iran is developing nuclear weapons is one of the Obama administration's most cherished orthodoxies.  Anything that challenges that is attacked.  Recall how cowardly Obama officials ran to Politico to anonymously malign Seymour Hersh's recent New Yorker piece arguing that there is little credible evidence of Iran's nuclear activities.  As Risen says:  "Whether one agrees with Mr. Hersh's article or not, it is clear that, five years after I wrote State of War, there is still a serious national debate about Iran's nuclear ambitions and about whether the current administration has incentives to exaggerate intelligence related to this topic."

What the Obama administration is doing, above all else, is bolstering the Climate of Fear that prevents any challenges to its pronouncements of this sort.   I wrote about that joint White-House/Politico attack on Hersh to mock the gross hypocrisy of criticizing Hersh for his use of anonymous sources in the very same article where Politico granted anonymity to Obama officials to attack him; but the more substantive point is that of course Hersh has to use anonymous sources.  In the Climate of Fear being deliberately fortified by the Obama administration, what person in their right mind would openly challenge their national security decrees on classified matters or call their veracity into question?  As the Sterling/Risen case and numerous others have intentionally conveyed:  imprisonment is the likely outcome for those who do that.

* * * * * 

This Climate of Fear is being strengthened by more than just whistleblowing prosecutions and the targeting of journalists.  So many Obama policies are devoted to its fortification.

Today in The New York Times, former NYT reporter David Shipler chronicles the multiple ways the current President, in conjunction with Congress and the Supreme Court, have intensified the decades-long assault on the Fourth Amendment's guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures:  "The Obama administration petitioned the Supreme Court to allow GPS tracking of vehicles without judicial permission. The Supreme Court ruled that the police could break into a house without a search warrant if, after knocking and announcing themselves, they heard what sounded like evidence being destroyed. Then it refused to see a Fourth Amendment violation where a citizen was jailed for 16 days on the false pretext that he was being held as a material witness to a crime. Congress renewed Patriot Act provisions on enhanced surveillance powers until 2015, and the F.B.I. expanded agents' authority to comb databases, follow people and rummage through their trash even if they are not suspected of a crime."  In his last paragraph, Shipler describes why this matters so much:

The Fourth Amendment is weaker than it was 50 years ago, and this should worry everyone. "Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government," Justice Robert H. Jackson, the former chief United States prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, wrote in 1949. "Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart." 

Beyond the numerous actions described by Shipler, the Obama adminstration has pursued multiple actions perfectly described by that passage, certain to achieve that very outcome.  It has continuously harassed numerous WikiLeaks supporters, repeatedly detaining them at airports and seizing and copying their laptops, all without warrants, and subpoeaned their social networking records.   It is seeking (and is likely to obtain) dramatically expanded domestic surveillance powers, physically and over the Internet.  It has seized the power to target American citizens for assassination without a whiff of due process.  It succeeded in convincing the Supreme Court to declare that one can "materially support Terrorism" -- a felony -- merely by talking to, or advocating on behalf of, designated Terrorist groups.  In one of the most important stories I haven't written about (but should have), it has invasively investigated and threatened with prosecution a slew of domestic peace activists and those sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.  And now the precedent has been bolstered that the prime circumstance that fuels and justifies all of these powers -- war -- can be unilaterally commenced by the President for any reason, for any length of time, without a pretense of democratic consent.

For someone who has no real interest in challenging government claims or undermining official actions, these policies will have no direct, perceptible effect.  It's always true that those who are supportive of institutions of authority or who otherwise have no interest in challenging them are never targeted by measures of this sort; why would they be?  That's why supporters of all Presidents -- Republicans during the Bush years and now Democratic loyalists under Obama -- are rarely disturbed by such developments. 

Along with the apathetic, who by definition pose no threat to anyone, prominent cheerleaders for the President and his party, who labor every day to keep them in power, are the last ones who will be subjected to such programs.  Obviously, nobody in the Obama administration is monitoring the phone calls at the Center for American Progress or ones placed to the large stable of columnists, bloggers and TV stars who daily spout White House talking points or devote each day to attacking the President's political opponents.  That's why purported civil liberties concerns manifest only when the other party is in power, but vanish when their own is.  Partisan loyalists are indifferent to their leader's ability to deter dissent; if anything, they're happy that their party's leader wields such power and can use it against political adversaries.

But for anyone who is engaged in meaningful dissent from and challenge to government officials -- the Jim Risens and other real investigative reporters, the Thomas Drakes and other whistleblowers, the WikiLeaks supporters, the Midwest peace activists -- these prosecutions and these ever-expanding surveillance, detention and even assassination powers are inevitably intimidating.  Regardless of how those powers are used or even whether they are, they will, as Risen put it, have "a chilling effect" on the exercise of core freedoms.  As Risen explained in his Affidavit, even if Brian Ross' story turned out to be false, the mere claim by anonymous officials that the phone records of journalists are being monitored -- combined with threats of prison for their sources and even for reporters who are subpoenaed -- means "the Government further contributed to creating an atmosphere of fear for journalists who publish stories about national security and intelligence issues."

The most odious aspect of this Climate of Fear is that it fundamentally changes how the citizenry thinks of itself and its relationship to the Government.  A state can offer all the theoretical guarantees of freedom in the world, but those become meaningless if citizens are afraid to exercise them.  In that climate, the Government need not even act to abridge rights; a fearful populace will voluntarily refrain on its own from exercising those rights. 

Nobody wants to believe that they have been put in a state of fear, that they are intimidated, so rationalizations are often contrived: I don't perceive any violations of my rights because there's nothing I want to do that I'm not able to do.   Inducing a fearful population to refrain from exercising rights -- as it convinces itself no such thing is happening -- is a far more effective, and far more pernicious, means of suppressing freedoms.  That's what a Climate of Fear uniquely enables.  The vast National Security and Surveillance State has for decades been compiling powers -- and eroding safeguards and checks -- devoted to the strengthening of this climate, and the past two-and-a-half years have seen as rapid and concerted intensification as any other period one can recall.  Read Jim Risen's Affidavit if you doubt that.

The universality of war rhetoric

(updated below - Update II)

In 2004, a cowardly anonymous Bush official notoriously attacked House Democrats who were Iraq War critics and were attempting to impose limits on the war, accusing them of helping Saddam:

And I think, astoundingly, there is a move in the House of Representatives to take an effort as it relates to the ongoing effort to stop a tyrant in Iraq and to turn it into a political football in such a way here as to give, at a critical time -- potentially send a very negative signal to the leadership of that country, which, as we all know, has over the course of time carried out hateful and heinous attacks against U.S. citizens, including terrorist attacks.

Oh, I'm sorry.  My mistake: replace "Iraq" with "Libya," and that's actually a quote from a cowardly "senior" Obama official -- quoted in an article from The Hill this morning entitled "Obama's aggravation with Congress over Libya on display" -- anonymously accusing defiant members of Congress of aiding Gadaffi by sending him "a very negative signal."  If you question the war in Libya or even seek a democratic debate over it, then, of course, it means that you are indifferent to the suffering of Iraqis under Saddam Libyans under Gadaffi (except, presumably, for these -- and these).

 

UPDATE:  In his column for the American Enterprise Institute today, John Yoo accuses President Obama of transgressing the proper limits of executive power by asserting the right to wage war in Libya without Congress.

 

UPDATE II:  Hillary Clinton today chimes in with her own version of You're-either-with-us-or-with-the-Terrorists:

MONTEGO BAY, Jamaica -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is questioning the priorities of lawmakers criticizing the U.S. intervention in Libya.

She's asking bluntly, '"Whose side are you on?"

You're either pro-war or pro-Saddam -- pro-war or pro-Gaddafi.  Whose side are you on?

The true definition of "Terrorist"

In late May, two Iraqi nationals, who were in the U.S. legally, were arrested in Kentucky and indicted on a variety of Terrorism crimes.  In The Washington Post today, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- writing under the headline:  "Guantanamo is the place to try terrorists" -- castigates Attorney General Eric Holder for planning to try the two defendants in a civilian court on U.S. soil rather than shipping them to Guantanamo. 

To make his case, the war-loving-but-never-fighting McConnell waves the flag of cowardly manufactured fear that is both his hallmark and the hallmark of uniquely American political rhetoric on Terrorism ("my constituents do not think that civilian judges and jurors in their community should be subjected to the risk of reprisal for participating in a terrorist trial"); relies on the ignoble example of Chuck Schumer and other New York Democrats who demanded that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not be tried in Manhattan; and, as usual, issues vacant cries of war-uber-alles to justify abandonment of basic legal safeguards ("our top priority in battling terrorism should be to find, capture and detain or kill those who would do us harm").  Along the way, McConnell -- as most right-wing politicians are now forced to do given the continuity with Bush 43 -- praises Obama's overall national security approach:

The administration has shown admirable flexibility in making decisions concerning national security and has shown that it is willing, on occasion, to put safety over ideology. President Obama launched a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, ignored calls to hastily withdraw from Iraq and recently agreed to extend the Patriot Act without weakening its provisions or making them harder to use.

Indeed, the Kentucky Republican ends his Op-Ed with an appeal to Obama's "flexibility"; the President, he urges, should "let Holder know that our civilian courts are off-limits to foreign fighters captured in the war on terrorism."

McConnell's criticism of Holder is patently absurd; the very idea that we should start rounding up people who are legally on U.S. soil and shipping them to Guantanamo -- rather than trying them in a real court -- is menacing, and the fear he invokes (they'll kill us if we put them on trial) is as fictitious as it is cowardly.  But far more interesting than McConnell's trite fear-mongering is the notion that these two individuals are "Terrorists."  Just as McConnell's Op-Ed did, in all the reporting thus far on this case, the fact that their alleged acts constitutes Terrorism has been tacitly assumed (AP: "2 Iraqis charged in Ky. with terrorism plotting"; ABC News: "Kentucky Terror Case"; Politico: "McConnell:  Get Terror Case out of Kentucky").

But look at what they're actually accused of doing.  Those above-linked news reports as well as the unsealed indictment make clear that there are two separate categories of acts forming the basis for these allegations.  The first is that one of the men, Waad Ramadan Alwan, admitted to working with the "Iraqi insurgency" to attack American troops during the first three years of the war.  From the indictment (click on image to enlarge):

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It was that activity which the FBI trumpeted when announcing the indictments:

WASHINGTON—An Iraqi citizen who allegedly carried out numerous improvised explosive device (IED) attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and another Iraqi national alleged to have participated in the insurgency in Iraq have been arrested and indicted on federal terrorism charges in the Western District of Kentucky. . . .

According to the charging documents, the FBI has been able to identify two latent fingerprints belonging to Alwan on a component of an unexploded IED that was recovered by U.S. forces near Bayji, Iraq. . . . Alwan had also allegedly told the CHS how he had used a particular brand of cordless telephone base station in IEDs. Alwan's fingerprints were allegedly found on this particular brand of cordless base station in the IED that was recovered in Iraq.

The second set of acts involves a plot apparently concocted by the FBI, and then presented to Alwan through the use of an informant, to ship weapons and money to "Al Qaeda in Iraq."  I realize that the very mention of the phrase "Al Qaeda" is supposed to stop the brain of all Decent People, but as even AP acknowledges, that group is little more than an insurgency group specific to Iraq, devoted to attacking foreign troops in their country:

Neither is charged with plotting attacks within the United States . . . . Their arrests come after FBI Director Robert Mueller said in February that his agency was taking a fresh look at Iraqi nationals in the U.S. who had ties to al-Qaida's offshoot in Iraq. The group had not previously been considered a threat in the U.S.

Indeed, the FBI -- in touting the plot they created and induced Alwan to become part of -- acknowledged that the plot was devoted exclusively to attacking U.S. troops in Iraq, not civilians:

Over the course of roughly eight years, Waad Ramadan Alwan allegedly supported efforts to kill U.S. troops in Iraq, first by participating in the construction and placement of improvised explosive devices in Iraq and, more recently, by attempting to ship money and weapons from the United States to insurgents in Iraq. His co-defendant, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, is accused of many of the same activities, said Todd Hinnen, Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security.

According to the charging documents, beginning in September 2010, Alwan expressed interest in helping the [confidential human source] CHS provide support to terrorists in Iraq. The CHS explained that he shipped money and weapons to the mujahidin in Iraq by secreting them in vehicles sent from the United States. Thereafter, Alwan allegedly participated in operations with the CHS to provide money, weapons -- including machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, Stinger missiles, and C4 plastic explosives -- as well as IED diagrams and advice on the construction of IEDs to what he believed were the mujahidin attacking U.S. troops in Iraq.

There is no suggestion in any of these reports or documents, not even a hint, that either of the accused ever tried to stage any attacks in the U.S. or target civilians either in the U.S. or Iraq.  Leaving aside the fact that this seems to be yet another case where the FBI manufacturers its own plots which they entrap people into joining, and then praises itself for stopping them, the alleged crimes here are confined entirely to past attacks on U.S. invading forces in their country and current efforts to aid those waging such attacks now.

One can have a range of views about the morality and justifiability of Iraqi nationals attacking U.S. troops in their country.  One could say that it is the right of Iraqis to attack a foreign army brutally invading and occupying their nation, just as Americans would presumably do against a foreign army invading their country (at least those who don't share Mitch McConnell's paralyzing fears and cowardice).  Or one could say that it is inherently wrong and evil to attack U.S. troops no matter what they're doing or where they are in the world, even when waging war in a foreign country that is killing large numbers of innocent civilians.  Or one could say that the American war in Iraq in particular was such a noble effort to spread Freedom and Democracy that only an evil person would fight against it.  Or one could say that it's always wrong for a non-state actor to engage in violence (a very convenient standard for the U.S., given that very few nations around the world could resist U.S. force without reliance on such unconventional means).  And one can recognize that most nations, not only the U.S., would apprehend those engaged in attacks against their troops.

But whatever one's views are on those moral questions, in what conceivable sense can it be called "Terrorism" for a citizen of a country to fight against foreign invading troops by attacking purely military targets?  This is hardly the first case where we have condemned as Terrorists citizens of countries we invaded for fighting back against invading American troops.  The U.S. shipped numerous people to Guantanamo, branded them Terrorists, and put them in cages for years without charges for doing exactly that (indeed, the Obama administration prosecuted at Guantanamo the first child soldier tried for war crimes, Omar Khadr, for throwing a grenade at U.S. troops in Afghanistan).

I've often written that Terrorism is the most meaningless, and thus most manipulated, term in American political discourse.  But while it lacks any objective meaning, it does have a functional one.  It means:  anyone -- especially of the Muslim religion and/or Arab nationality -- who fights against the United States and its allies or tries to impede their will.  That's what "Terrorism" is; that's all it means.  And it's just extraordinary how we've created what we call "law" that is intended to do nothing other than justify all acts of American violence while delegitimizing, criminalizing, and converting into Terrorism any acts of resistance to that violence.

Just consider:  in American political discourse, it's not remotely criminal that the U.S. attacked Iraq, spent 7 years destroying the country, and left at least 100,000 people dead.  To even suggest that American officials responsible for that attack should be held criminally liable is to marginalize oneself as a fringe and unSerious radical.  It's not an idea that's even heard, let alone accepted.  After all, all Good Patriotic Americans were horrified that an Iraqi citizen would so much as throw a shoe at George Bush; what did he do to deserve such treatment?  The U.S. is endowed with the inalienable right to commit violence against anyone it wants without any consequences of any kind.

By contrast, any Iraqi who fights back in any way against the U.S. invasion -- even by fighting against exclusively military targets -- is not only a criminal, but a Terrorist: one who should be shipped to Guantanamo.  And this notion is so engrained that no media account discussing this case would dare question the application of the "Terrorism" label to what they've done, even though it applies in no conceivable way.

One sees the same manipulative dynamic at play in how the U.S. freely tries to kill foreign leaders of countries it attacks.  The U.S. repeatedly tried to kill Saddam at the start of the Iraq War, and -- contrary to Obama's early pledges -- has done the same to Gadaffi in Libya.  NATO has explicitly declared Gadaffi to be a "legitimate target."  But just imagine if an Iraqi had come to the U.S. and attempted to bomb the White House or kill George Bush, or if a Libyan (or Afghan, Pakistani, or Yemeni) did the same to Obama.  Would anyone in American political circles be allowed to suggest that this was a legitimate act of war?  Of course not:  screaming "Terrorism!" would be the only acceptable reaction.

It's hardly unusual that an empire declares that its violence and aggression are inherently legitimate, and that any resistance to it -- or the very same acts aimed at it -- are inherently illegitimate.  That double-standard decree, more or less, is a defining feature of an empire.  But the nationalistic conceit that all of that is justified by coherent, consistent principles of "law" -- or can be resolved by meaningful application of terms such as "Terrorism" -- is really too ludicrous to endure.

Today in Endless War

As usual, there are multiple events from just the last 24 hours vividly highlighting the nature of America's ongoing -- and escalating -- posture of Endless War:

(1) In December, 2009, President Obama spoke at West Point and, while announcing his decision to (yet again) deploy more troops to Afghanistan, he assured the nation in a much-heralded vow that "after 18 months, our troops will begin to come home."  He repeated that claim in May, 2010, prompting headlines declaring that Obama has set July, 2011 as the target date for when "withdrawal" from Afghanistan will begin.  Now we're less than two weeks away from that target, and The New York Times today makes clear what "withdrawal" actually means:

President Obama plans to announce his decision on the scale and pace of troop withdrawals from Afghanistan in a speech on Wednesday evening . . . Mr. Obama is considering options that range from a Pentagon-backed proposal to pull out only 5,000 troops this year to an aggressive plan to withdraw within 12 months all 30,000 troops the United States deployed to Afghanistan as part of the surge in December 2009.. . . .

Even after all 30,000 troops are withdrawn, roughly 68,000 troops will remain in Afghanistan, twice the number as when Mr. Obama assumed office.

So even under the most "aggressive" withdrawal plan the President is considering -- one that he and media outlets will undoubtedly tout as a "withdrawal plan" (the headline on the NYT front page today: "Obama to Announce Plans for Afghan Pullout") -- there will still be "twice the number" of American troops in that country as there were when George Bush left office and Obama was inaugurated.  That's what "withdrawal" means in American political parlance: doubling the number of troops fighting a foreign war over the course of four years.

 

(2) So frivolous and lawless are Obama's excuses for waging war in Libya in violation of the War Powers Resolution that they have provoked incredibly harsh condemnations even from those who typically defend the President.  In The Washington Post today, Eugene Robinson aggressively denounces Obama's arguments for waging war without Congress:

Let's be honest: President Obama's claim that U.S. military action in Libya doesn't constitute "hostilities" is nonsense, and Congress is right to call him on it.

Blasting dictator Moammar Gaddafi's troops and installations from above with unmanned drone aircraft may or may not be the right thing to do, but it's clearly a hostile act. Likewise, providing intelligence, surveillance and logistical support that enable allied planes to attack Gaddafi's military -- and, increasingly, to target Gaddafi himself -- can only be considered hostile. These are acts of war.

Yet Obama, with uncommon disregard for both language and logic, takes the position that what we are doing in Libya does not reach the "hostilities" threshold for triggering the War Powers Act, under which presidents must seek congressional approval for any military campaign lasting more than 90 days. House Speaker John Boehner said Obama's claim doesn't meet the "straight-face test," and he's right. . . .

Most important, what are we doing there? Are we in Libya for altruistic or selfish reasons? Principles or oil? Assuming Gaddafi is eventually deposed or killed, then what? Do we just sail away? Or will we be stuck with yet another ruinously expensive exercise in nation building?

There's also a moral question to consider. The advent of robotic drone aircraft makes it easier to wage war without suffering casualties. But without risk, can military action even be called war? Or is it really just slaughter?

Afghan War advocate Andrew Exum similarly condemns Obama's attempt to justify violation of the WPR as "simply one of the stupidest things I've read in some time" and -- echoing Robinson -- proclaims that "it does not pass the laugh test."  And in The New York Times, Yale Law Professor Bruce Ackerman explains that, through their lawyer-cherry-picking, "the White House has shattered the traditional legal process the executive branch has developed to sustain the rule of law over the past 75 years," and adds:

From a moral perspective, there is a significant difference between authorizing torture and continuing a bombing campaign that may save thousands of Libyans from slaughter by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. But from a legal viewpoint, Mr. Obama is setting an even worse precedent.

Although Mr. Yoo's memos made a mockery of the applicable law, they at least had the approval of the Office of Legal Counsel. In contrast, Mr. Obama's decision to disregard that office's opinion and embrace the White House counsel's view is undermining a key legal check on arbitrary presidential power.

And it's always worth recalling that this is being done by a President who made restoration of "the rule of law" a centerpiece of his campaign.

 

(3) In Mother Jones, NYU Law School's Karen Greenberg notes a trend that was as predictable as it is destructive: rather than signal an end to the "War on Terror," the killing of Osama bin Laden has been seized upon by the bipartisan National Security State -- led by the Obama administration -- to expand its posture of Endless War and accelerate its assault on civil liberties.  Citing multiple examples subsequent to the bin Laden killing, she correctly observes:

The Obama administration and Congress have interpreted the killing of al-Qaeda's leader as a virtual license to double down on every "front" in the war on terror. . . . One thing could not be doubted. The administration was visibly using the bin Laden moment to renew George W. Bush's Global War on Terror (even if without that moniker). . . . In other words, Washington now seems to be engaged in a wholesale post-bin Laden ratification of business as usual, but this time on steroids.

One of the more absurd (though, as a matter of hope, understandable) claims I've heard in quite awhile was that the killing of bin Laden would trigger a reduction in the abuses of the War on Terror -- as though bin Laden was truly the cause of those abuses rather than the pretext for them.  The morning after the bin Laden killing, I wrote the following, addressing those optimistically proclaiming its likely benefits:

Are we going to fight fewer wars or end the ones we've started? Are we going to see a restoration of some of the civil liberties which have been eroded at the altar of this scary Villain Mastermind? Is the War on Terror over? Are we Safer now?

Those are rhetorical questions. None of those things will happen. If anything, I can much more easily envision the reverse. Whenever America uses violence in a way that makes its citizens cheer, beam with nationalistic pride, and rally around their leader, more violence is typically guaranteed. Futile decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may temporarily dampen the nationalistic enthusiasm for war, but two shots to the head of Osama bin Laden -- and the We are Great and Good proclamations it engenders -- can easily rejuvenate that war love. One can already detect the stench of that in how Pakistan is being talked about: did they harbor bin Laden as it seems and, if so, what price should they pay? We're feeling good and strong about ourselves again -- and righteous -- and that's often the fertile ground for more, not less, aggression.

Read Greenberg's piece, including the numerous examples she examines, to see if there's any doubt that this is exactly what is happening.

 

(4) The war in Libya is starting to resemble virtually every other war: commenced with claimed humanitarian justifications; supported by well-meaning people convinced by the stated, official objectives; hailed as a short and easy task ("days, not weeks"); and then warped into a bloody, protracted conflict far from the original claims and without any real end in sight.  Earlier this week, one of the war's most vocal supporters, Juan Cole, produced a list he entitled "Top Ten Mistakes in the Libya War," including Obama's failure to get Congressional approval, that "NATO has focused on a 'shock and awe' strategy of pounding the capital, Tripoli," and that "NATO put its emphasis on taking out command and control in the capital instead of vigorously protecting civilian cities under attack."

Perhaps that's because "vigorously protecting civilians" was the pretext for the war, not the actual aim.  Yesterday, NATO admitted it killed multiple civilians -- apparently including children -- by bombing a house in a residential area.  It's difficult to know exactly how many civilians NATO has killed thus far because Western armies don't count their victims and the Gadaffi government's claims are obviously unreliable, but whatever is true -- including the fact that such killings are not intended --  they are the inevitable by-product of invading and bombing other countries.  The logic of war ensures that almost every conflict becomes more and more about such killing and less and less about the original lofty excuses for why they were started.

It's thus not a surprise that 39 neocons -- hilariously calling themselves "foreign policy experts" (including John Podhoretz, Liz Cheney, Gary Bauer, Marty Peretz, Karl Rove, Marc Theissen, and Bill Kristol) -- issued a letter yesterday urging steadfast support for (and escalation of) the Libya War. Lofty justifications notwithstanding, this is exactly what they favor: long-term, endless domination of the Muslim world through military force and control over their governments.  That's what the war in Libya, intended or not, has become.

 

(5) Perhaps most amazingly of all, this policy of Endless War endures even as official Washington inexorably plans -- in the midst of still-booming economic inequality and suffering -- to slash entitlements in the name of austerity.  Bizarrely, while more and more Republicans continue to recognize the growing foreign policy split in their Party (Ross Douthat and Joe Scarborough are the latest to side with the "isolationists" against the war-mongering neocons), many establishment liberals seem to be laying the groundwork for those cuts.  Yesterday, Matt Yglesias said he was "disillusioned" by alarmism over vast income inequality because, he assured everyone, things aren't particularly good for the super-rich; meanwhile Digby -- in a piece highly worth reading -- examines how some liberal pundits (her example is Ezra Klein) seem to be doing the GOP's work (and, more significantly, the White House's) in (unwittingly or otherwise) justifying entitlement cuts.

Public opinion and Endless War

(updated below)

Sen. Lindsey Graham, yesterday, Meet the Press, to those questioning the war in Libya:

Congress should sort of shut up and not empower Qadhafi.

Sen. John Kerry, May 8, 2011, Face the Nation, to those questioning what happened during the bin Laden killing:

We need to shut up and move on about, you know, the realities of what happened in that building.

Bill Kristol, February 21, 2007, Fox News Sunday, to those questioning the "surge" in Iraq

It's so irresponsible that they can't be quiet for six or nine months and say the president has made a decision. . . .so let's give it a chance to work.

Joe Lieberman, December 7, 2005, Senate floor, to Iraq War critics:

It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be the commander in chief for three more critical years and that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril.

_________

These demands that the nation's continuous use of war and violence not even be questioned are easy to understand.  The nature of being an empire entails not only ruling the world through force, but also ensuring that the Emperor's decrees and actions cannot be meaningfully challenged at home.  That's why the controversy over Obama's refusal to seek Congressional approval for the war in Libya matters: this is an unpopular war, and requiring him to obtain approval preserves at least some residual democratic process -- not just for this war but also future ones.

Beyond the desire to render democratic opinion irrelevant, there is another, more specific reason why war advocates so frequently insist that critics should "shut up": because the policies they are implementing are so ludicrous and indefensible and redound to the benefit of a tiny sliver of the population.  They can't be sustained if there is debate and examination over them. 

Today, The New York Times describes the "growth market" for drones: at a time when Washington conspires to reduce basic entitlements based on alarmist warnings over the deficit, "the Pentagon has asked Congress for nearly $5 billion for drones next year" -- that includes dramatic increases in the number, types and uses of those weapons.  The NYT says this "explosion" is "transforming the way America fights and thinks about its wars":  note how the notion that the U.S. fights multiple "wars" at all times is just a given.  In particular, the NYT correctly notes that the proliferation of drones will also certainly make wars more likely, given the perception that they are cost-free (at least to Americans, but not, of course, to the increasing number of countries bombed by sky robots).  That is another reason to care about the debate over Libya:  if Obama succeeds in entrenching the notion that drone attacks are not "wars" or even "hostilities," he and future presidents will be able to bomb other countries with even fewer constraints than they have now.

This state of Endless War continues despite the fact that, as a new poll shows, 72% of Americans believe the U.S. is fighting too many wars.  The poll itself is revealingly amusing: in what other country could that question -- are we fighting too many wars? -- even be meaningfully asked?  It's also striking that almost 3 out of 4 Americans -- not exactly renown around the world for being war-shy -- believe the U.S. is fighting too many wars given that their country is ruled by a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner.

But what is shown by the results of that poll is that the war policies which America's political elites shield from public debate are extremely and increasingly unpopular.  Indeed, a recent Pew poll revealed that there are roughly equal majorities across the ideological spectrum in favor of greater "isolationism" and a "reduction of overseas military commitments."  Yet the political class and the private National Security State which unimaginably profit from these wars are able to propagate those policies with no end in sight; a NYT article this morning about efforts this week t0 restrict spending for the Libya War provide a glimpse into how that is managed:

Any measures to end or reduce financing for the military's involvement in the NATO-led airstrikes in Libya are likely to divide members of Congress. They are split in both the House and Senate between two slightly incongruous alliances: antiwar Democrats and Republicans who are angry about the usurping of Congressional authority, and Democrats who do not wish to go against the president, joined by hawkish Republicans who strongly support America's role in Libya.

As is true for the war in Afghanistan and Obama's Bush-Cheney-mimicking Terrorism policies, this is the coalition that serves as the Democratic President's key allies: partisan loyalists unwilling to contradict their party's President no matter what he does, and "hawkish" Republicans who are always pro-war and eager to live under an unrestrained Executive.  That is the faction that serves the private defense industry, enables Obama to do what he wants in these realms, and shields these policies from examination.  But the linchpin of those efforts is to ensure that public opinion remains irrelevant in deciding when, why and how often America wages war.  These "shut up" moments are unusual only in that they are candid expressions of that pervasive mindset.

* * * * * 

I was on Democracy Now this morning discussing Obama and Libya and several other related matters.  That segment can be viewed here:

 

 

 

UPDATE:  Speaking of efforts to stifle criticisms, Matt Yglesias cites a poll taken at this weekend's Netroots Nation convention in order to claim that "the proximate problem faced by would-be left-wing critics of President Obama is that they generally have much less credibility with the progressive constituency than the president does himself."  But the poll he cites finds that -- at a convention filled with little other than Democratic Party activists, whose overarching political objective by their own description is to elect Democratic politicians -- only 27% "strongly approve" of Obama; 53% approve only "somewhat," while 20% express some form of disapproval (strong or somewhat). 

Contrary to Yglesias' belief and/or desire, a poll of hard-core Democrats that finds that only 27% "strongly approve" of their own Party's president is hardly some sign that criticisms of him are unwelcome and lack credibility: quite the opposite. It's hardly a surprise that when given a binary choice by Gallup of approve/disapprove, the vast majority of self-identified partisans ("Democrats") will say they "approve" of their party's President -- that's little more than a tribal litmus test to declare which side you're on -- but both polls show a substantial constituency of some degree of dissatisfaction.  Other polls not cited by Yglesias undercut his claim even more:

President Barack Obama emerges from a bruising midterm election with uncertain prospects for the next one in 2012, according to a new McClatchy-Marist poll.

Nearly half of his own base -- 45 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents -- want someone to challenge him for the Democratic nomination, according to the poll. . . .

His political problems start with his own base.

Among Democrats, 41 percent want someone to challenge Obama for the 2012 nomination, while 51 percent don't.

Moreover, a majority of Democratic-leaning independents, 56 percent, want him challenged, while 33 percent don't.

Among pro-Democratic voters who want him challenged: pluralities of women, voters younger than 45, and those without a college degree.

It's pretty difficult to maintain that Obama's critics lack credibility among his base with numbers like that.  Moreover, an expression of general "approval" for the President is not a sign someone is unsympathetic to criticisms or find them lacking credibility; one can agree with even intense criticisms of specific actions yet still "approve" overall.  Indeed, I suspect that many left-wing critics of the President would also, if asked, say they "somewhat approve" of Obama overall.  

There certainly are a lot of people who expend a lot of time and energy trying to prove that Obama's left-wing critics represent only a tiny, fringe minority.  The time and energy spent on that project rather clearly negates the authenticity of that ostensible belief.

Obama rejects top lawyers' legal views on Libya

(updated below)

The growing controversy over President Obama's illegal waging of war in Libya got much bigger last night with Charlie Savage's New York Times scoop.  He reveals that top administration lawyers --  Attorney General Eric Holder, OLC Chief Caroline Krass, and DoD General Counsel Jeh Johnson -- all told Obama that his latest, widely panned excuse for waging war without Congressional approval (that it does not rise to the level of "hostilities" under the War Powers Resolution (WPR)) was invalid and that such authorization was legally required after 60 days: itself a generous intepretation of the President's war powers.  But Obama rejected those views and (with the support of administration lawyers in lesser positions:  his White House counsel and long-time political operative Robert Bauer and State Department "legal adviser" Harold Koh) publicly claimed that the WPR does not apply to Libya.

As Savage notes, it is, in particular, "extraordinarily rare" for a President "to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice."  Just imagine if George Bush had waged a war that his own Attorney General, OLC Chief, and DoD General Counsel all insisted was illegal (and did so by pointing to the fact that his White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and a legal adviser at State agreed with him).  One need not imagine this, though, because there is very telling actual parallel to this lawless episode:

In 2007, former Bush Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee about an amazing event.  Bush's then-Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, had blocked Comey from testifying for two years -- once Democrats took over Congress, that obstruction was no longer possible -- and it quickly became apparent why Gonzales was so desperate to suppress these events.

Comey explained that, in 2004, shortly after he became Deputy AG, he reviewed the NSA eavesdropping program Bush had ordered back in 2001 and concluded it was illegal.  Other top administration lawyers -- including Attorney General John Ashcroft and OLC Chief Jack Goldsmith -- agreed with Comey, and told the White House they would no longer certify the program's legality.  It was then that Bush dispatched Gonzales and Andy Card to Ashcroft's hospital room to try to extract an approval from the very sick Attorney General, but, from his sickbed, Ashcroft refused to overrule Comey.  

Bush decided to reject the legal conclusions of his top lawyers and ordered the NSA eavesdropping program to continue anyway, even though he had been told it was illegal (like Obama now, Bush pointed to the fact that his own White House counsel (Gonzales), along with Dick Cheney's top lawyer, David Addington, agreed the NSA program was legal).  In response, Ashcroft, Comey, Goldsmith, and FBI Director Robert Mueller all threatened to resign en masse if Bush continued with this illegal spying, and Bush -- wanting to avoid that kind of scandal in an election year -- agreed to "re-fashion" the program into something those DOJ lawyers could approve (the "re-fashioned" program was the still-illegal NSA program revealed in 2005 by The New York Times; to date, we still do not know what Bush was doing before that that was so illegal as to prompt resignation threats from these right-wing lawyers).

That George Bush would knowingly order an eavesdropping program to continue which his own top lawyers were telling him was illegal was, of course, a major controversy, at least in many progressive circles.  Now we have Barack Obama not merely eavesdropping in a way that his own top lawyers are telling him is illegal, but waging war in that manner (though, notably, there is no indication that these Obama lawyers have the situational integrity those Bush lawyers had [and which Archibald Cox, Eliot Richardson and William Ruckelshaus had before them] by threatening to resign if the lawlessness continues).  

There's another significant and telling parallel between Obama's illegal war and the Bush eavesdropping scandal.  One of the questions frequently asked about the NSA scandal was why Bush and Cheney decided to eavesdrop in violation of the law rather than having Congress approve their program; in the wake of 9/11, both parties in Congress were as subservient as could be, and would have offered zero resistance to requests by the administration for increased eavesdropping powers (the same question was asked of Bush's refusal to seek Congressional approval for the detention and military commissions regime at Guantanamo).  The answer to that question ultimately became clear:  they did not want to seek Congressional approval, even though they easily could have obtained it, because they wanted to establish the "principle" that the President is omnipotent in these areas and needs nobody's permission (neither from Congress nor the courts) to do what the President wants.

The exact same question emerges here.  From the start, the GOP leadership was vocally supportive of the war in Libya.  In fact, John McCain was demanding the war begin before Obama even committed to it, while Lindsey Graham was urging the war be waged more aggressively.  On the eve of the war, GOP House Speaker John Boehner -- while calling on Obama to be clear about the mission -- issued a statement declaring:  "The United States has a moral obligation to stand with those who seek freedom from oppression and self-government for their people. It's unacceptable and outrageous for Qadhafi to attack his own people, and the violence must stop."

Indeed, Obama's most valuable allies on Libya from the start (as is true for his war in Afghanistan and other Terrorism policies)  have been Republican leaders.  As The Washington Post reported in early June, Boehner -- acting as an "unlikely ally" of Obama -- introduced a meaningless resolution as a means of preventing passage of a more meaningful anti-Libya resolution: namely, Rep. Kucinich's bill to compel withdrawal within 15 days.  Moreover, most of the GOP House leadership just this week voted (along with Democratic leaders) against Brad Sherman's amendment to cut off funds for Libya if Obama refuses to comply with the WPR.  Right-wing support for Obama's Libya policy continues to be strong, as yesterday Bill Kristol and other assorted neocons issued a letter urging steadfast support for the war.

It should go without saying that even if the GOP had refused to support the war, that would not remotely be an excuse for violating the law and waging it without Congressional approval.  Obviously, the law (and the Constitution) does not require Congressional approval for wars only where Congress favors the wars, but in all instances (it should also go without saying that a belief in the morality of this war is not an excuse for waging it illegally, any more than Bush followers' claims that warrantless eavesdropping and torture were beneficial excused their illegality).  All that aside, what is undeniable is that Obama could have easily obtained Congressional approval for this war -- just as Bush could have for his warrantless eavesdropping program -- but consciously chose not to, even to the point of acting contrary to his own lawyers' conclusions about what is illegal. 

Other than the same hubris -- and a desire to establish his power to act without constraints -- it's very hard to see what motivated this behavior.  Whatever the motives are, it's clear that he's waging an illegal war, as his own Attorney General, OLC Chief and DoD General Counsel have told him.

* * * * *

For more on the absurdity and lawlessness of Obama's excuse-making in refusing to obtain Congressional approval, see The Atlantic's James Fallows and The New Yorker's Amy Davidson.

 

UPDATE:  Also in The New York Times this morning, Scott Shane describes the still-escalating war on whistleblowers being waged by the Obama administration, including the press-freedom-threatening prosecution of WikiLeaks.  As sysprog astutely observes in comments: "if the Administration and Congress are successful in squelching the publication of secrets, that may prevent future scoops like today's by Charlie Savage." 

That, of course, is precisely the point of this war: to suffocate one of the only remaining avenues for learning what the government actually does, as opposed to what they want the public to believe they do.  As Thomas Jefferson long ago observed:  avenues of disclosure are "the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

The Weiner resignation: our political system in a nutshell

The New York Times, December 16, 2005 ("Bush lets U.S. spy on callers without courts"):

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying. . . Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three year . . .

The Washington Post, November 2, 2005 ("CIA holds terror suspects in secret prisons"):

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe . . . The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago. . . revelations of widespread prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq by the U.S. military. . . have increased concern among lawmakers, foreign governments and human rights groups about the opaque CIA system.

New York Times, December 11, 2008 ("Report Blames Rumsfeld for Detainee Abuse"):

A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee said top Bush administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bore major responsibility for the abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib in Iraq; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and other military detention centers. . . .

The report was issued jointly by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the panel, and Senator John McCain of Arizona, the top Republican. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the report says, "was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own" but grew out of interrogation policies approved by Mr. Rumsfeld and other top officials, who "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees."

The Guardian, March 19, 2008 ("What is the real death toll in Iraq?"):

The US would count its own dead (now close to 4,000), but the toll the war was taking on Iraqis was not a matter the Pentagon or any other US government department intended to quantify . . . . So five years after Bush and Tony Blair launched the invasion of Iraq against the wishes of a majority of UN members, no one knows how many Iraqis have died. We do know that more than two million have fled abroad. Another 1.5 million have sought safety elsewhere in Iraq. . . . There is no shortage of estimates [of Iraqi dead], but they vary enormously. . . The results range from just under 100,000 dead to well over a million.

New York Times, November 8, 2006 ("Pelosi: Bush impeachment 'off the table'"):

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi promised Wednesday that when her party takes over, the new majority will not attempt to remove President Bush from office. . . . "I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table," Pelosi, D-Calif., said during a news conference.

New York Times, January 11, 2009 ("Obama Reluctant to Look Into Bush Programs"):

President-elect Barack Obama signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administration programs like domestic eavesdropping or the treatment of terrorism suspects. . . . Mr. Obama added that he also had "a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards."

__________

New York Times, today ("Weiner Quits House Seat Over 'Mistakes'"):

Representative Anthony D. Weiner, an influential Democrat who had been considered a leading candidate to be the next mayor of New York City, said Thursday that he was resigning from Congress following revelations of lewd online exchanges with several women. . . . 

The news came as Democratic leaders prepared to hold a meeting on Thursday to discuss whether to strip the 46-year-old congressman of his committee assignments, a blow that would severely damage his effectiveness. . . . Pressure on Mr. Weiner to leave the House has been building for days, with top House Democrats, including Ms. Pelosi, the minority leader, coming forward over the weekend . . . . That pressure intensified earlier this week when President Obama publicly suggested that Mr. Weiner should step down and Ms. Pelosi told reporters that she was prepared to strip Mr. Weiner of his committee assignments if he did not leave.

That, more or less, summarizes everything one needs to know about our political culture.

Rep. Brad Sherman on the illegality of the Libyan War

When I wrote earlier this week of a potential left/right coalition emerging against the National Security State, a commenter replied -- a bit snidely but mostly accurately -- that I've "been predicting a 'bipartisan coalition emerging . . . for five or more years now."  "Hoping for" and "advocating" are probably more accurate terms than "predicting," but, as I detailed in that post, events over the last couple months provide ample support for that development.  That is even more true with events over the last week.

The GOP presidential debate on Tuesday included numerous candidates, beyond Ron Paul, expressing serious skepticism about America's posture of Endless War, so much so that The New York Times today -- in an article entitled "Candidates Show G.O.P. Less United on Goals of War" -- finally took note of this trend: "The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view."  Today, a new bill was introduced -- by liberal Sen. Ron Wyden and Tea Party GOP Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah -- to limit the ability of government agents to track the location of cars and cell phones. 

And most significantly, on Tuesday night, an amendment sponsored by the Democratic hawk and AIPAC loyalist Rep. Brad Sherman of California -- to cut off funds for the war in Libya unless and until the President complies with the War Powers Resolution -- passed the House by a substantial majority, with roughly equal support from both parties, though with the leadership of both parties (Pelosi, Boehner, Hoyer, Cantor) in opposition.  Relatedly, a bipartisan group of House members today sued Obama and Defense Secretary Gates, claiming the war in Libya is illegal and unconstitutional.  And Boehner, seeking to satisfy his caucus, wrote a letter to President Obama warning him that the war in Libya would soon be in violation of the War Powers Resolution if he failed to obtain Congressional authorization.

The very pro-Obama blogger Booman today astutely argued that the GOP is of course being hypocritical in its sudden assertion of Congressional war powers (Boehner, for instance, long argued against the law's viability), but that -- regardless of the hypocrisy -- this is nonetheless a positive development.  Indeed it is.  The very idea that the President can start and prosecute wars on his own, without democratic consent, is not only lawless but is the hallmark of an empire, and it's long past time to put an end to that abuse.  Even Bush went through the motions of having Congress endorse his wars.

The growing bipartisan pressure on the White House today forced the President to once again offer a painfully ludicrous justification for why he is permitted to wage this war in Libya: namely, that the U.S. role is so limited that it does not require Congressional approval.  John Cole gives that claim the derisive treatment it deserves, but it is also worth noting that the War Powers Resolution, on its face, is not triggered by a "war," but rather "any case in which U.S. Armed Forces are introduced into hostilities."

I interviewed Rep. Sherman earlier today with regard to these matters, and this 10-minute podcast discussion can be heard by pressing PLAY on the recorder below.  In particular, Sherman scoffed at Obama's new excuse by pointing out that the U.S. is flying sorties and engaging in numerous other acts of war and, indeed, Secretary Gates has been continuously complaining that NATO's failure to bear its share of the burden has necessitated that the U.S. do far more in this war than it wants to do.  The very notion that the U.S. isn't engaged in "hostilities" is so patently false -- so Orwellian -- that it is the same type of we-create-our-own-reality pathology for which Bush officials were so notorious in order to evade the law at will.  The discussion with Rep. Sherman can be heard here:

 

A different kind of candidate and campaign

(updated below)

Along with presumably tens if not hundreds of thousands of other people, I recieved a charming email today from "Barack Obama" -- subject matter: "Dinner?" -- offering me and "four supporters like [me]" the chance to have dinner with him. It won't be anything fancy: just a "kind of casual meal among friends" -- provided I donate $5 or more to his re-election campaign. This is necessary because he's a special kind of politician once again running a special kind of campaign:

Most campaigns fill their dinner guest lists primarily with Washington lobbyists and special interests.

We didn't get here doing that, and we're not going to start now. We're running a different kind of campaign. We don't take money from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs -- we never have, and we never will.

We rely on everyday Americans giving whatever they can afford -- and I want to spend time with a few of you.

From The New York Times, Monday:

A few weeks before announcing his re-election campaign, President Obama convened two dozen Wall Street executives, many of them longtime donors, in the White House's Blue Room. . . .

The event, organized by the Democratic National Committee, kicked off an aggressive push by Mr. Obama to win back the allegiance of one of his most vital sources of campaign cash -- in part by trying to convince Wall Street that his policies, far from undercutting the investor class, have helped bring banks and financial markets back to health.

Last month, Mr. Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, traveled to New York for back-to-back meetings with Wall Street donors, ending at the home of Marc Lasry, a prominent hedge fund manager, to court donors close to Mr. Obama's onetime rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton. And Mr. Obama will return to New York this month to dine with bankers, hedge fund executives and private equity investors at the Upper East Side restaurant Daniel. . . .

One Democratic financier invited to this month's dinner, who asked for anonymity because he did not want to anger the White House, said it was ironic that the same president who once criticized bankers as "fat cats" would now invite them to dine at Daniel, where the six-course tasting menu runs to $195 a person.

And let us not forget where Obama was when, prior to the 2010 midterm election, he mocked the Left for being insufficiently grateful for all of his fantastic accomplishments; that took place at "a Democratic National Committee dinner [] held at the sprawling Greenwich estate of Richard and Ellen Schapps Richman. The price per plate [was] said to be [] around $30,000."

Though I think it's quite revealing, I don't really have any objection to Obama's efforts to persuade Wall Street and other oligarchs to (once again) fill his coffers with cash.  Virtually every politician, especially at this level, is going to troll for money wherever they can get it, if, for no other reason, than to deprive their opponents of that cash.  I just don't want to have to once again endure 18 months of the propagandizing (and false) mythologizing conceit that this is some sort of special campaign propelled by plucky, small-donor enthusiasts driving him back to the White House $5 and $10 at a time so that he can stand up on their behalf to special interests.

 

UPDATE:  The New York Times today describes how the nation's banking industry was desperate for a special law to serve its interests in a protracted patent dispute -- after many futile "years of fighting . . . .at the federal Patent Office, in court and across a negotiating table" -- and thus turned to "one of their best friends in Congress," Sen. Chuck Schumer, who quickly and dutifully gave them what they wanted by inserting that special protection into a new law.  As the NYT previously detailed, Schumer has long been one of the key cogs in the Democratic Party's fundraising machinery by serving the interests of Wall Street, which in return lavishes the Party with massive largesse.  But if you give Barack Obama $5 or more for his re-election campaign, you'll win the chance to sit down with him for dinner -- a "kind of casual meal among friends" -- because that's the Party of the little guy and gal.