Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 114

Yet another illegal war -- now in Yemen

Both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post report today that the Obama administration is planning to exploit the disorder from the civil war in Yemen by dramatically escalating a CIA-led drone bombing campaign.  In one sense, this is nothing new.  Contrary to false denials, the U.S., under the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been bombing Yemen for the last two years, including one attack using cluster bombs that killed dozens of civilians.  But what's new is that this will be a CIA drone attack program that is a massive escalation over prior bombing campaigns; as the Post put it: "The new tasking for the agency marks a major escalation of the clandestine American war in Yemen, as well as a substantial expansion of the CIA's drone war."

Leaving aside the standard issue -- that continuously slaughtering civilians in the Muslim world is going to exacerbate every problem which ostensibly justifies the bombing, beginning with Terrorism -- Kevin Drum asks the obvious question:

Exactly what theory of military action allows President Obama to do this without congressional approval? In Afghanistan and Nicaragua in the 80s, you could argue that we were merely funding allies, not fighting a war ourselves. In Grenada and Panama, you could argue that we were merely pursuing small-scale police actions.

In Pakistan, you can argue that our operations are all part of the Afghanistan war. You might not like any of those arguments, but at least they're something.

But what's the theory here? This is obviously not a short-term operation (it began well over a year ago). It's obviously not part of the Afghanistan war. You'd have to twist yourself into a pretzel to pretend that the post-9/11 AUMF applies here. (The fact that Congress is considering an extension of the 2001 AUMF in order to cover operations like this is a tacit admission that the old AUMF doesn't apply. (GG: the 2001 resolution authorized force against "those nations, organizations, or persons [the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001," which is not remotely applicable to militants in Yemen)). Nor does the fact that Yemen's president has given it his blessing really mean anything from a war powers standpoint.

In practice, the theory seems to be that unmanned drones are somehow not as real as actual manned fighter jets. After all, does anyone seriously believe that Obama could send sortie after sortie of F-22s over Yemen and not have anyone complain about it? I doubt it.

The one point of Kevin's with which I disagree is his last one: I absolutely believe that if he sent F-22s into Yemen to bomb, very few people would object.  Not only has virtually nobody objected to prior bombing campaigns in that country, but he's currently waging a war in Libya without a whiff of Congressional approval, and nobody seems to mind.  That's because -- for all the Democratic mockery of Richard Nixon's "If-the-President-does-it-it's-not-illegal" decree, bolstered by the Cheney/Yoo/Addington theory of presidential omnipotence -- that's exactly how this President is viewed, by his followers and himself.  If he wants to fight a war somewhere, that -- his will, his decree -- is all that is needed.  Such matters, as the once-discredited-but-now-vindicated John Yoo put it, "are for the President alone to decide."

Headline revelations

(updated below - Update II)

Dan Gillmor observes that the two top New York Times headlines this morning "sum up the Obama administration":

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The first article, by Charlie Savage, details numerous new powers the FBI has granted to its agents to spy on and surveill American citizens in the absence of any evidence of wrongdoing: "to search databases, go through household trash or use surveillance teams to scrutinize the lives of people who have attracted their attention." That policy expands upon a Bush era decision to allow FBI agents to conduct national security investigations aimed at citizens even in the absence of suspicion of wrongdoing and by using racial and religious considerations in determining targets.  As Savage details with his typical thoroughness, the new Obama policy expands the surveillance activities the FBI is authorized to exploit for investigations opened under the "low threshold" created by Bush. 

Like last month's White-House-backed, reform-free Patriot Act extension, this is yet another step the Surveillance State inexorably takes: constantly gathering more and more data on citizens who have been accused of and are suspected of having done nothing wrong, without any oversight or accountability.  This is par for Obama's course.  As Yale Professor Jack Balkin recently put it to Jane Mayer about the Obama presidency: "We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state."  This state, as much as anything, is devoted to gathering as much intrusive data as possible about as many citizens as possible without a shred of oversight or suspicion of wrongdoing: exactly that which has proven to create inevitable abuse and exactly that which the Fourth Amendment sought to bar.

But it's the article on Obama's efforts to re-woo the Wall Street tycoons who funded much of his 2008 campaign that is particularly revealing, as it highlights the real election taking place:

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.

"The first goal was to get recognition that the administration has led the economy from an unimaginably difficult place to where we are today," said Blair W. Effron, an investment banker closely involved in Mr. Obama's fund-raising efforts. "Now the second goal is to turn that into support" . . . .

Members of the president's economic team and his chief of staff, William M. Daley, a former banking executive, have been more active in reaching out to Wall Street executives about policy issues, donors said.

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.

The article notes that "the president's top financial industry supporters say they are confident that the support Mr. Obama needs will ultimately be there." That confidence -- despite his early, isolated anti-tycoon rhetoric and his tepid financial reform package, both of which petulant Wall Street executives disliked -- seems wholly warranted. While millions upon millions of Americans continue to suffer greatly under the country's ongoing economic woes without any end in sight, the Obama years have, indeed, been very, very good to this tiny constituency of wealth he's now eagerly courting.  And with a Chief of Staff like Bill Daley and a Treasury Secretary like Tim Geithner, it's hard to imagine this effort triggering anything other than ultimate success.

The article also notes that one possible threat to Obama's plan would be a Romney candidacy, as Wall Street would love to back one of their own, and Romney -- who amassed a fortune by saddling companies with debt and then firing huge numbers of their employees -- is the very essence of what Wall Street loves.  Thus, what we would very possibly have in 2012 are two presidential candidates who endlessly tout their populist credentials while doing everything in reality to compete with one another over who can best serve the nation's oligarchs. In other words, it would be a perfect microcosm for our political system -- just like Obama's expanding the Surveillance State while simultaneously trolling for Wall Street cash.

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Speaking of illustrative microcosms, I highly recommend this superb Op-Ed by Stephen Kohn on how the Founders viewed the need to protect whistleblowers and how far away we have moved -- and, especially over the last couple years, continue to move -- from that vision.

 

UPDATE:  Do you think the White House's desperation for Wall Street cash for the President's re-election campaign, and their eagerness to deprive the GOP of that cash, had any bearing on the Obama administration's failure to meaningfully investigate -- let alone prosecute -- the criminal role played by Wall Street banks in the 2008 financial collapse?  Perish that thought.  At least New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman continues, at least seemingly, to be indifferent to those considerations.

UPDATE II:  The Huffington Post's Sam Stein obtained a memo from Obama's re-election campaign to the White House regarding one of Obama's top 2008 bundlers -- Ed Haddock, the CEO of for-profit Full Sail University -- who had "stopped being 'helpful' in 2009 and is currently being courted by former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney." The memo urges the White House to make him feel as though he has special access for his policy issues in order to induce financial support, generating this well-supported headline:

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That the White House would provide special access to a top donor is, of course, anything but surprising, though it helps answer the question I posed in the prior Update and is yet another prime example of that against which candidate Obama incessantly inveighed but which President Obama enthusiastically practices.

In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war

When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specifically vowed that "broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake."  This no-fly zone was created in the first week, yet now, almost three months later, the war drags on without any end in sight, and NATO is no longer even hiding what has long been obvious: that its real goal is exactly the one Obama vowed would not be pursued -- regime change through the use of military force.  We're in Libya to forcibly remove Gaddafi from power and replace him with a regime that we like better, i.e., one that is more accommodating to the interests of the West.  That's not even a debatable proposition at this point.

What I suppose is debatable, in the most generous sense of that term, is our motive in doing this.  Why -- at a time when American political leaders feel compelled to advocate politically radioactive budget cuts to reduce the deficit and when polls show Americans solidly and increasingly opposed to the war -- would the U.S. Government continue to spend huge sums of money to fight this war?  Why is President Obama willing to endure self-evidently valid accusations -- even from his own Party -- that he's fighting an illegal war by brazenly flouting the requirements for Congressional approval?  Why would Defense Secretary Gates risk fissures by so angrily and publicly chiding NATO allies for failing to build more Freedom Bombs to devote to the war?  And why would we, to use the President's phrase, "stand idly by" while numerous other regimes -- including our close allies in Bahrain and Yemen and the one in Syria -- engage in attacks on their own people at least as heinous as those threatened by Gaddafi, yet be so devoted to targeting the Libyan leader?

Whatever the answers to those mysteries, no responsible or Serious person, by definition, would suggest that any of this  -- from today's Washington Post -- has anything to do with it:

The relationship between Gaddafi and the U.S. oil industry as a whole was odd. In 2004, President George W. Bush unexpectedly lifted economic sanctions on Libya in return for its renunciation of nuclear weapons and terrorism. There was a burst of optimism among American oil executives eager to return to the Libyan oil fields they had been forced to abandon two decades earlier. . . .

Yet even before armed conflict drove the U.S. companies out of Libya this year, their relations with Gaddafi had soured. The Libyan leader demanded tough contract terms. He sought big bonus payments up front. Moreover, upset that he was not getting more U.S. government respect and recognition for his earlier concessions, he pressured the oil companies to influence U.S. policies. . . .

When Gaddafi made his deal with Bush in 2004, he had hoped that returning foreign oil companies would help boost Libya's output . . . The U.S. government also encouraged American oil companies to go back to Libya. . . .

The companies needed little encouragement. Libya has some of the biggest and most proven oil reserves -- 43.6 billion barrels -- outside Saudi Arabia, and some of the best drilling prospects. . . . Throughout this time, oil prices kept rising, whetting the appetite for greater supplies of Libya's unusually "sweet" and "light," or high-quality, crude oil.

By the time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited in 2008, U.S. joint ventures accounted for 510,000 of Libya's 1.7 million barrels a day of production, a State Department cable said. . . .

But all was not well. By November 2007, a State Department cable noted "growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism." It noted that in his 2006 speech marking the founding of his regime, Gaddafi said: "Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money." His son made similar remarks in 2007.

Oil companies had been forced to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names, the cable said. . . .

The entire article is worth reading, as it details how Gaddafi has progressively impeded the interests of U.S. and Western oil companies by demanding a greater share of profits and other concessions, to the point where some of those corporations were deciding that it may no longer be profitable or worthwhile to drill for oil there.  But now, in a pure coincidence, there is hope on the horizon for these Western oil companies, thanks to the war profoundly humanitarian action being waged by the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner and his nation's closest Western allies:

But Libya's oil production has foundered, sagging to about 1.5 million barrels a day by early this year before unrest broke out. The big oil companies, several of which had drilled dry holes, felt that Libya was not making the best exploration prospects available. One major company privately said that it was on the verge of a discovery but that unrest cut short the project.

With the country torn by fighting, the big international oil companies are treading carefully, unwilling to throw their lot behind Gaddafi or the rebel coalition.

Yet when representatives of the rebel coalition in Benghazi spoke to the U.S.-Libya Business Council in Washington four weeks ago, representatives from ConocoPhillips and other oil firms attended, according to Richard Mintz, a public relations expert at the Harbour Group, which represents the Benghazi coalition. In another meeting in Washington, Ali Tarhouni, the lead economic policymaker in Benghazi, said oil contracts would be honored, Mintz said.

"Now you can figure out who's going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi," Saleri said. "Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The Western companies are positioning themselves."

"Five years from now," he added, "Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in."

I have two points to make about all this:

(1) The reason -- the only reason -- we know about any of this is because WikiLeaks (and, allegedly, Bradley Manning) disclosed to the world the diplomatic cables which detail these conflicts.  Virtually the entirety of the Post article -- like most significant revelations over the last 12 months, especially in the Middle East and North Africa -- are based exclusively on WikiLeaks disclosures.  That's why we know about Gaddafi's increasingly strident demands for the "Libyanization" of his country's resource exploitation.  That's how we know about most of the things we've learned about the world's most powerful political and corporate factions over the last 12 months.  Is there anything easier to understand than why U.S. Government officials are so eager to punish WikiLeaks and deter future transparency projects of this sort?

(2) Is there anyone -- anywhere -- who actually believes that these aren't the driving considerations in why we're waging this war in Libya?  After almost three months of fighting and bombing -- when we're so far from the original justifications and commitments that they're barely a distant memory -- is there anyone who still believes that humanitarian concerns are what brought us and other Western powers to the war in Libya?  Is there anything more obvious -- as the world's oil supplies rapidly diminish -- than the fact that our prime objective is to remove Gaddafi and install a regime that is a far more reliable servant to Western oil interests, and that protecting civilians was the justifying pretext for this war, not the purpose?  If (as is quite possible) the new regime turns out to be as oppressive as Gaddafi but far more subservient to Western corporations (like, say, our good Saudi friends), does anyone think we're going to care in the slightest or (at most) do anything other than pay occasional lip service to protesting it?  Does anyone think we're going to care about The Libyan People if they're being oppressed or brutalized by a reliably pro-Western successor to Gaddafi?

In 2006, George Bush instructed us that there was a "responsible" and an "irresponsible" way for citizens to debate the Iraq War: the "responsible" way was to suggest that there may be better tactics for waging the war more effectively, while the "irresponsible" way was to outrageously insinuate that perhaps oil or Israel or deceit played a role in the invasion:

Yet we must remember there is a difference between responsible and irresponsible debate -- and it's even more important to conduct this debate responsibly when American troops are risking their lives overseas.

The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it. They know the difference between honest critics who question the way the war is being prosecuted and partisan critics who claim that we acted in Iraq because of oil, or because of Israel, or because we misled the American people. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right.

Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton hosted a meeting of top executives from a wide array of corporations -- Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Halliburton, GE, Chevron, Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, Occidental Petroleum, etc. etc. -- to plot how to exploit "economic opportunities in the new Iraq."  And one WikiLeaks "diplomatic" cable after the next reveals constant government efforts to promote the interests of Western corporations in the developing world.  Nonetheless, the very notion that the U.S. wages wars not for humanitarian or freedom-spreading purposes, but rather to exploit the resources of other nations for its own large corporations, is deeply "irresponsible" and unSerious.  As usual, the ideas stigmatized with the most potent taboos are the ones that are the most obviously true.

It's certainly possible to contend reasonably that (as was true for Iraq) removing a heinous dictator and other humanitarian outcomes will be the incidental by-product of our war in Libya even if not its purpose (although, as was also true in Iraq, one would need to see the regime that replaces Gaddafi to know if that's true).  And it's fine -- or at least candid -- to argue, as Ann Coulter often does, that "of course we should go to war for oil. . . .We need oil. That's a good reason to go to war." But to believe that humanitarianism (protection of Libya civilians) was why we went to war in Libya requires a blindness so willful and complete that it's genuinely difficult to describe.

Speech on media propaganda

The 30-minute speech I gave last month at the Symphony Space in New York is now available on video, and is posted below in three YouTube segments (the first segment also contains the 4-minute introduction of my speech). The speech pertains to the evolution of my views on media criticism, the nature of media propaganda and what drives it, and what can be done to combat it. A DVD of the entire event -- featuring the three other speeches: from Amy Goodman, Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore -- is available at FAIR's website.

I want to note one example, from today, that vividly illustrates many of the themes I discussed in that speech.  It is found in the following passage from this Reuters article on Obama's escalation of the covert war in Yemen and his targeting of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki for assassination:

A U.S. official confirmed to Reuters that a U.S. strike last Friday killed Abu Ali al-Harithi, a midlevel al Qaeda operative, which followed last month's attempted strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

Whether Awlaki has any operational role in Al Qaeda at all is a matter of intense controversy.  The U.S. Government has repeatedly asserted that he does, but has presented no verifiable evidence to support that accusation.  But what is not in dispute is the notion that Awlaki is "the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."  He unquestionably is not, and never has been, as multiple Yemen experts have repeatedly noted.  The Reuters claim is factually and entirely false.

Whatever one's views are on Obama's assassination program, targeting U.S. citizens without due process obviously raises extraordinary and vitally important questions.  As The New York Times' Scott Shane put it when confirming Awlaki's inclusion on Obama's hit list: "The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen. . . . It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said."  Given that, one would think that media outlets would be interested in covering the weighty issued raised by this assassination program.

Here, though, we have Reuters doing exactly the opposite: they're ending the debate before it even begins by "reporting" -- falsely -- that Awlaki "is the leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."  If he really were that, who would object to Obama's efforts to kill him?  Very few people, as it would make him the Osama bin Laden of Yemen.  So instead of raising vital questions about Obama's extraordinary conduct, Reuters suffocates those questions by disseminating false fear-mongering propaganda on behalf of the U.S. Government (he's the leader of Al Qaeda!!) to justify what the administration is doing.  Overwhelmingly, that's what the role and function of the establishment media is.  This isn't the most significant or notable  example ever: to the contrary, it's depressingly common, and I note it only because it happened to occur on the very day that I was preparing to post this speech about how the U.S. media subserviently disseminates and amplifies government propaganda, the very antithesis of what they claim to do and were intended to do:

WikiLeaks Grand Jury investigation widens

Last month, I reported that the FBI had served a Cambridge resident with a subpoena compelling his testimony in the active Grand Jury investigation into WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, and that the subpoena revealed a very broad scope to the criminal investigation.  A similar subpoena has now been served on David House -- one of the founders of the Bradley Manning Support Network who helped publicized the oppressive conditions of Manning's detention and who then had his laptop seized by the government without a warrant  -- compelling his testimony before the Grand Jury next Wednesday.  The subpoena and accompanying documents received by House can be viewed here and here.

This latest subpoena reveals how active the criminal investigation is and how committed the Obama administration is to criminally pursuing the whistleblowing site.  Also receiving subpoenas in addition to House and the Cambridge resident have been ex-Manning boyfriend Tyler Watkins, and a cryptography expert at Princeton, Nadia Heninger (whose Princeton photo is credited to Jacob Appelbaum, the persistently harassed American once identified as a WikiLeaks spokesman). 

But it also highlights a very important potential controversy: the refusal of numerous witnesses to cooperate in any way with this pernicious investigation.  One witness who has appeared before the Grand Jury has already refused to answer any questions beyond the most basic biographical ones (name and address), invoking the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination to do so, and other witnesses are highly likely to follow suit.  

One option for federal prosecutors when facing a witness who refuses to answer questions on this basis is to offer them immunity, meaning that nothing they say when testifying can be used to prosecute them (they can still be prosecuted, just not with the aid of anything they say while testifying).  Such an offer then precludes further invocations of the self-incrimination privilege as a grounds for refusing to answer questions, as it means there is no longer any danger that the witness could incriminate themselves by testifying.  In the event the government makes such an offer, the court would almost certainly compel the witness to answer questions.  But at least some of those witnesses -- ones who have already been subpoenaed or are likely to be -- intend to refuse to answer questions anyway, risking an almost-certain finding of contempt of court, which typically carries jail terms as a means of forcing testimony.

One witness or potential witness who is considering that form of civil disobedience told me they view the attempt to criminalize WikiLeaks as such a profound assault on basic freedoms, including press freedoms -- one motivated by a desire to conceal government wrongdoing and illegality -- that they would rather be imprisoned than cooperate in any way with those efforts. That is the mindset of true principled heroism, and if it actually comes to that, anyone committed to transparency and preservation of press freedoms should do everything possible to support such persons in any way they can (a similar conflict is possible with the Obama DOJ's subpoena served on New York Times reporter James Risen to force him to testify against his alleged source, a subpoena Risen has vowed to fight). 

The attempt to criminalize WikiLeaks is clearly a leading prong in the Obama administration's truly odious and dangerous war on whistleblowers.  Just today, The Washington Post reports that the Obama DOJ's espionage prosecution against Thomas Drake -- who exposed substantial waste, corruption and illegality at the NSA -- is falling apart.  The Nation today examines how diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show that the U.S. worked cooperatively with large American corporations (Fruit of the Loom, Haines, Levi's) to block attempts by the Haitian Parliament to raise the meager minimum wage to $5/day for Haitian workers who labor in factories producing t-shirts and underwear (in the portions of his purported chat log selectively released by Wired, Bradley Manning said that part of his motive was that the diplomatic cables show "how the first world exploits the third").  It is because of revelations like those that the Government is so desperate to punish and deter future disclosures.

It is not hyperbole to say that the Obama administration is waging an all-out war against transparency and whistleblowing (and the transparency groups who obsequiously awarded Obama a transparency award [one accepted in secret] are as disgraceful as the five Norwegians who awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize as he continues to do things like this).  The persecution of WikiLeaks -- for engaging in the crux of investigative journalism -- along with anyone who supports it is one particularly dangerous weapon in that war.  And anyone who defies or resists that war deserves, and will need, ample public support.

The joys of repressed voyeuristic titillation

There are few things more sickening -- or revealing -- to behold than a D.C. sex scandal.  Huge numbers of people prance around flamboyantly condemning behavior in which they themselves routinely engage.  Media stars contrive all sorts of high-minded justifications for luxuriating in every last dirty detail, when nothing is more obvious than that their only real interest is vicarious titillation.  Reporters who would never dare challenge powerful political figures who torture, illegally eavesdrop, wage illegal wars or feed at the trough of sleazy legalized bribery suddenly walk upright -- like proud peacocks with their feathers extended -- pretending to be hard-core adversarial journalists as they collectively kick a sexually humiliated figure stripped of all importance.  The ritual is as nauseating as it is predictable.

What makes the Anthony Weiner story somewhat unique and thus worth discussing for a moment is that, as Hendrick Hertzberg points out, the pretense of substantive relevance (which, lame though it was in prior scandals, was at least maintained) has been more or less brazenly dispensed with here.  This isn't a case of illegal sex activity or gross hypocrisy (i.e., David Vitter, Larry Craig, Mark Foley (who built their careers on Family Values) or Eliot Spitzer (who viciously prosecuted trivial prostitution cases)).  There's no lying under oath (Clinton) or allegedly illegal payments (Ensign, Edwards).  From what is known, none of the women claim harassment and Weiner didn't even have actual sex with any of them.  This is just pure mucking around in the private, consensual, unquestionably legal private sexual affairs of someone for partisan gain, voyeuristic fun and the soothing fulfillment of judgmental condemnation.  And in that regard, it sets a new standard: the private sexual activities of public figures -- down to the most intimate details -- are now inherently newsworthy, without the need for any pretense of other relevance. 

I'd really like to know how many journalists, pundits and activist types clucking with righteous condemnation of Weiner would be comfortable having that standard applied to them.  I strongly suspect the number is very small.  Ever since the advent of Internet commerce, pornography -- use of the Internet for sexual gratification, real or virtual -- has has been, and continues to be, a huge business.  Millions upon millions of people at some point do what Weiner did.  I know that's a shocking revelation that will cause many Good People to clutch their pearls in fragile Victorian horror, but it's nonetheless true.  It's also true that marital infidelity is incredibly common.  

If Chris Matthews or Brian Williams or any politician ever patronized or even visited a porno site on the Internet or had a sexually charged IM chat with someone who isn't their spouse, shouldn't that now be splashed all over the Internet so we can all read it -- not just the fact of its existence but all the gory details?  After all, this is about character, judgment, veracity: these are Important Journalists and Politicians, and how can we trust them if they're not even faithful to their spouse?  Isn't that the standard now -- the one they're gleefully propagating?

Yes, Anthony Weiner lied -- about something that is absolutely nobody's business but his and his wife's.  If you're not his wife, you have absolutely no legitimate reason to want to know about -- let alone pass judgment on -- what he does in his private sexual life with other consenting adults.  Particularly repellent is the pretense of speaking out on behalf of his wife, as though anyone knows what her perspectives on such matters are or what their relationship entails.  The only reason to want to wallow in the details of Anthony Weiner's sex life is because of the voyeuristic titillation it provides: a deeply repressed culture celebrates when it finds cause to be able to talk about penises and naked pictures and oral sex while hiding behind some noble pretext.  On some level, I find the behavior of the obviously loathsome Andrew Breitbart preferable; at least he's honest about his motive:  he hates Democrats and liberals and wants sadistically to destroy them however he can.  It's the empty, barren, purse-lipped busybodies who cannot stay out of other adult's private and sexual lives -- while pretending to be elevated  -- that are the truly odious villains here.

In The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf argues that the private consensual sexual activities of politicians are none of our business, and in reply, Megan McArdle insists that "society has [an] interest in whether people keep their vows" in marriage and thus it's a good thing "to use a few of our precious news hours to say, 'Hey, not okay'!"  Except McArdle has absolutely no idea what vows Weiner and his wife have made to each other, and she shouldn't know, because it's none of her business, despite her eagerness to learn about it and publicly condemn it.  Even if she had any idea of what she was talking about -- and she plainly doesn't -- nothing is less relevant than Megan McArdle's views of the arrangement Anthony Weiner and his wife have for their marriage and whether each partner is adhering to that arrangement.  That a journalist at The Atlantic wants to talk about this, and dig into the details, and issue judgments about it, says all one needs to know about our press corps.

Can one even imagine how much different -- and better -- our political culture would be if our establishment media devoted even a fraction of the critical scrutiny and adversarial energy it devoted to the Weiner matter to things that actually matter?  But that won't happen, because the people who comprise that press corps, with rare exception, are both incapable of focusing on things that matter and uninterested in doing so.  Talking about shirtless pictures and expressing outrage about private sexual behavior -- like some angry, chattering soap opera fan furious that one of their best-known characters cheated -- is about the limit of their abilities and their function.  And doing so is so easy, so fun, so self-justifying, and so exciting in that evasively tingly sort of way.

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Let me add one point:  I am not and have never been an Anthony Weiner fan.  While I agree with him on many issues, his overriding concern always seemed to me to be his own career, and, as I've noted before, he is one of the most extremist AIPAC loyalists in the Congress, which is not an easy distinction to achieve.  This is about the principle, not the person.  

Is a bipartisan coalition emerging to oppose the National Security State?

When Dennis Kucinich earlier this month introduced a bill to compel the withdrawal of all American troops from Libya within 15 days, the leadership of both parties and the political class treated it the way they do most of Kucinich's challenges to establishment political orthodoxy:  they ignored it except to mock its unSeriousness.  But a funny thing happened: numerous liberal House Democrats were joined by dozens of conservative GOP members to express support for his bill, and the White House and GOP House leadership became jointly alarmed that the bill could actually pass; that's why GOP House Speaker John Boehner introduced a Resolution purporting to rebuke Obama for failing to comply with the War Powers Resolution, but which, in fact, was designed to be an utterly inconsequential act.  Its purpose was to protect Obama's war by ensuring that Kucinich's bill failed; the point of Boehner's alternative was to provide a symbolic though meaningless outlet for those House members angry over Obama's failure to get Congressional support.

Still, Kucinich's bill attracted an extraordinary amount of support given that it would have forced the President to withdraw all troops from an ongoing war in a little over 2 weeks.  A total of 148 House members voted for it; even more notable was how bipartisan the support was:  61 Democrats and 87 Republicans.  Included among those voting for mandatory withdrawal from Libya were some of the House's most liberal members (Grijalva, Holt, Woolsey, Barney Frank) and its most conservative members identified with the Tea Party (McClintock, Chaffetz, Bachmann).  Boehner's amendment -- demanding that Obama more fully brief Congress -- ultimately passed, also with substantial bipartisan support, but most media reports ultimately recognized it for what it was:  a joint effort by the leadership of both parties and the White House to sabotage the anti-war efforts of its most liberal and most conservative members.

A similar dynamic asserted itself during the joint efforts by the White House and the GOP Congressional leadership to ensure an extension of the Patriot Act without any reforms.  What The Nation correctly described as a "Left-Right coalition" blocked the joint GOP/Democratic scheme to force the extension through on an expedited basis, without any debate.  Similarly, opposition to ultimate enactment of the Patriot Act was led by some of the most conservative GOP members of the Senate (Rand Paul, Mike Lee) and some of its most liberal (Bernie Sanders, Jeff Merkley).  Like the Libya War, the Patriot Act was protected by a union of the White House and GOP Congressional leadership against this dissident, bipartisan coalition.  Much the same occurred when Alan Grayson and Ron Paul joined with members from the Right and Left -- and against the establishment of both parties -- to pass a bill compelling an audit of the Fed.

And today, The New York Times profiles the very conservative GOP Congressman Walter Jones of North Carolina.  After cheerleading for the Iraq War -- Jones was the one who notoriously forced the House cafeteria to change "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries" as a rebuke to the anti-war French -- he quickly came to deeply regret that support, alienating much of his right-wing constituency by opposing the Iraq War and then the Afghanistan War at a time when few -- especially in his party -- were doing so.  Since the end of Bush's first term, Jones has been one of the most outspoken and consistent antiwar and pro-civil-liberties voices; along with Ron Paul, one could say he's been the only Republican with a national platform expressing those views. 

Last month, Jones co-sponsored a bill -- along with liberal House member Jim McGovern -- to compel the Obama administration to offer a withdrawal plan for Afghanistan.  Most of the Democratic caucus, along with more than 2 dozen GOP House members, voted for it, and it thus almost passed, shocking the political class.  As a result, the NYT suggests today that there is growing anti-war sentiment in the GOP, including among the Tea Party, thus making Jones "no longer a pariah":

Some foreign policy analysts now see Mr. Jones, 68, Representative Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, and a small coterie of Tea Party stalwarts as the leading edge of a conservative movement to rein in American military power — a break from the muscular foreign policy of President George W. Bush.

"They reflect a growing discontent within the Republican Party about the wars and a growing feeling that they don't want to spend money on them anymore," said John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World, an advocacy group that promotes arms control. "They are military noninterventionists."

Mr. Jones agreed, saying: "We can't police the world anymore. We're not the world power. It's China. Our economy is in chaos right now."

Conversations with voters in Mr. Jones's district, which embraces much of North Carolina's Atlantic coastline, suggest voters who were baffled or infuriated by his opposition to Iraq in 2005 are liking his views on Afghanistan in 2011. . . .

Polls suggest Republican voters are moving in Mr. Jones's direction. In a New York Times/CBS News poll last month, 43 percent of Republicans said the United States should reduce troop strength in Afghanistan, double the number who said that in November 2009. Some prominent Republicans, including Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi and Grover Norquist, the antitax champion, have also begun questioning the American mission in Afghanistan.

Is there really genuine anti-war sentiment growing among the GOP?  I sincerely doubt it.  If the last two years have taught us anything, it's that the true test of the authenticity of claimed political convictions is whether they endure regardless of which party controls the White House.  Democratic loyalists spent many years pretending to care about civil liberties and wars because doing so allowed them opportunistically to bash a GOP President; as soon as a Democratic President adopted those policies, the purported concerns for such matters all but vanished (just imagine the sustained progressive outcry if George Bush -- rather than Barack Obama -- were conducting an illegal war without Congressional approval, or if Bush had tripled the detainee population at Bagram while insisting that detainees there have no rights of any kind).  Obviously, widespread Democratic opposition to Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies was motivated primarily by partisan advantage, not actual conviction.

Identically, the intense fear of expanded federal power incessantly touted by "small-government" conservatives in the 1990s -- dark tales of black U.N. helicopters, Janet Reno's goon squads (i.e., federal law enforcement agencies), and domestic eavesdropping warrants issued by the secret and nefarious FISA court -- instantly vanished as soon as a GOP administration began wildly expanding federal powers in the name of 9/11.  With rare exception, there was no new federal power these "small-government" conservatives weren't willing to cheer on once their party was the one wielding the power (just as there is no civil-liberties assault Democratic loyalists are unwilling to defend now).  Given that history, it seems abundantly clear that the newfound GOP opposition to war and civil liberties incursions is grounded in the opportunity to oppose the policies of a Democratic President, not any actual belief.  I'll believe in its sincerity if -- and only if -- it endures into a GOP administration.

That said, insincerely motivated anti-war and pro-civil-liberties sentiment is better than none at all.  I've long argued that the only way for a meaningful defense of civil liberties -- and meaningful opposition to the excesses of the National Security State -- to arise is by removing those issues from the partisan prism.  All Americans have an interest in barring the government from transgressing Constitutional limits (if, for no other reason, than because a politically hostile President from the other party may use those powers against them: see this Tom Tomorrow cartoon on the Democrats' support for the Patriot Act).  All non-oligarchical Americans are harmed by the insatiable piggishness of the corporatist beneficiaries of excessive military spending.  And all Americans are inculcated with an instinctive belief in due process and distrust of government power exercised without transparency and checks. 

It is because these inherently non-partisan and non-ideological principles have been deliberately warped into prongs in the partisan wars -- partisans care about anti-war and pro-civil liberties issues only when their party is out of power -- that no effective constituency for them can be created.  Beyond that, trans-partisan and trans-ideological coalitions are extremely difficult to assemble because tribal loyalties render them sinful and heretical: the benefit of trivial, daily partisan bickering (the Weiner Scandal; Sarah Palin's "Paul Revere" comments) is that they prevent citizens with common interests from banding together against the political establishment and the financial elites who own it.  Anything that can erode those impenetrable walls -- even if motivated by ignoble ends -- is to be welcomed; if nothing else, right-wing anti-war sentiment and civil liberties concerns open up the debate by signaling to GOP voters that these are acceptable positions to express (Bill Kristol certainly sees anti-war sentiment among the Tea Party movement as a serious threat to his neoconservative vision of Endless War, which is why he has publicly inveighed against it).

Even if one assumes (as I do) that newly discovered anti-war and pro-civil-liberties positions among the GOP are largely motivated by partisan politics rather than sincere conviction, that doesn't make them harmful.  To the contrary, one of the checks on political power is supposed to be steadfast opposition from other factions; an opposing party is (within reason) supposed to be adversarial to the other party in power.  That's what made the Democratic Party's acquiescence to the Bush/Cheney Terrorism and civil liberties agenda so disgraceful; even as they pretended to their voters with their rhetoric that they opposed those policies, they did virtually nothing to stop them and much to enable them.  They abjectly failed in their duty to be a meaningful opposition party.  Had they blocked those policies for partisan ends (rather than due to actual conviction), that would have been preferable to their acquiescence to and/or support for them.  That is how growing GOP anti-war opposition and pro-civil-liberties posturing can be seen as well:  as beneficial, something that can be exploited for positive ends, regardless of what motivates it.

WashPost: criminal law is not for political elites

(updated below)

The Washington Post Editors work in a city and live in a nation in which huge numbers of poor and minority residents are consigned to cages for petty and trivial transgressions of the criminal law -- typically involving drugs -- and pursuant to processes that are extremely tilted toward the State.  Post Editors virtually never speak out against that, if they ever have.  But that all changes -- that indifference disappears -- when political elites are targeted for prosecution, even for serious crimes:

The Post Editors, July 3, 2007:

IN COMMUTING I. Lewis Libby's prison sentence yesterday, President Bush took the advice of, among others, William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who wrote on the opposite page last month that Mr. Libby should neither be pardoned nor sent to prison. We agree that a pardon would have been inappropriate and that the prison sentence of 30 months was excessive. . . . Add to that Mr. Libby's long and distinguished record of public service, and we sympathize with Mr. Bush's conclusion "that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."

The Post Editors, October 27, 2007:

The biggest sticking point [in agreeing to a new FISA bill] concerns the question of retroactive immunity from lawsuits for communications providers that cooperated with the administration's warrantless surveillance program. As we have said, we do not believe that these companies should be held hostage to costly litigation in what is essentially a complaint about administration activities.

The Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, August 30, 2009:

[T]his is also a nation where two political parties compete civilly and alternate power peacefully. Regimes do not seek vengeance, through the courts or otherwise, as they succeed each other. Were Obama to criminally investigate his predecessor for what George W. Bush believed to be decisions made in the national interest, it could trigger a debilitating, unending cycle. . . . There is a better, though not perfect, solution, one that the administration reportedly considered, rejected and should consider again: a high-level, respected commission to examine the choices made in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, and their consequences. . . . The alternative, for Obama, is a series of debilitating revelations, prosecutions and arguments that could drip-drip-drip through the full length of his presidency.

The Post Editors, November 28, 2010:

THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) schemed to get around a Texas law prohibiting corporate contributions to political campaigns . . .  .Mr. DeLay's conduct was wrong. It was typical of his no-holds-barred approach to political combat. But when Mr. DeLay, following the conviction, assailed "the criminalization of politics," he had a fair point.

The Post Editors, June 3, 2011:

LET'S STIPULATE: There are very likely good grounds to prosecute deposed Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak. . . . The decision by Egypt's ruling military council and state prosecutors to begin a trial of the former strongman on Aug. 3 — before the country holds its first democratic elections — is nevertheless a mistake.

The Post Editors, today:

[W]e would not be particularly troubled by the effort to impose a fine [on John Edwards]. But a criminal case based on this novel application of the law goes too far. . . . Mr. Edwards is a cad, to put it mildly. His deplorable conduct would appear to have ended a once promising political career. It is troubling that the Justice Department would choose to devote its scarce resources to pursuing this questionable case.

In some of these cases (Libby, Mubarak), the Post couches its defense of political elites in terms of concerns about the process while claiming they're receptive to the possibility of punishment.  In others (Edwards), the concerns they raise are not invalid.  But whatever else is true, Post Editors are deeply and almost invariably disturbed when political elites are subjected to criminal accountability for their wrongful acts, but wholly indifferent -- if not supportive -- when ordinary Americans are mercilessly prosecuted for far less serious wrongdoing.

And it's not just Post Editors, but their stable of Op-Ed columnists, who reflexively defend political elites when they break the law.  The late Dean of the Washington Press Corps, David Broder, was one of the first and most vocal advocates of one of the earliest expressions of elite immunity:  Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, and Broder repeated that defense in 2006 upon Ford's death ("I thought and wrote at the time that he was well justified to spare the country further struggling with the Nixon legacy").  The Post's Broder also vigorously defended President Obama's decision to oppose prosecution of Bush officials:  "he was just as right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government.  And he was right when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices."

The Post's current roster of columnists is equally devoted to defending political elites who get caught breaking the law.  See, for instance: David Ignatius (opposing torture prosecutions as the provenance of "liberal score-settlers"); Ruth Marcus (defending Reagan's pardon of FBI agents who engaged in illegal domestic spying and opposing torture and eavesdropping prosecutions for Bush officials); and Richard Cohen (defending Bush 41 pardon of Casper Weinberger ["Cap, my Safeway buddy, walks, and that's all right with me"], opposing Lewis Libby's conviction ["neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off"], and opposing torture prosecutions ["we have to be respectful of those who were in that Sept. 11 frame of mind, who thought they were saving lives -- and maybe were -- and who, in any case, were doing what the nation and its leaders wanted"].

The political satirist Finley Peter Dunne famously said that the most valuable role of journalism is that it "comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable."  The Post -- speaking on behalf of the establishment political culture it represents -- has perfected the art of doing exactly the opposite.

* * * * *

I believe I recall -- though cannot find and thus cannot say with certainty -- that the Post Editorial Page and/or one of its business columnists also opposed criminal investigations of Wall Street for its role in the 2008 financial crisis and the mortgage fraud scheme.  If someone finds and posts the link to that in the comment section (or emails me), I'll add it.

 

UPDATE:  I omitted numerous relevant examples, which was necessary because elite immunity is basically the guiding religion of The Washington Post and D.C. political culture.  The very first commenter, Ahzeld, adds this recent example, from the Post Editors on May 31:

AGENTS FROM the FBI arrested Abdullah al-Kidd at Dulles International Airport in 2003. Mr. Kidd, who was headed to Saudi Arabia to study, was wanted as a material witness in an ongoing terrorism investigation.

Mr. Kidd, a U.S. citizen whose parents and wife, also U.S. citizens, all resided in the United States, was held for 16 days in three different facilities and kept in cells that were lighted 24 hours a day; he was strip-searched multiple times. After his release, he was subjected to domestic travel restrictions for two years, forced to report his whereabouts and submit to in-home visits from a probation officer.

Mr. Kidd sued former attorney general John D. Ashcroft after the government neither charged him nor called him as a witness, arguing that Mr. Ashcroft had violated his constitutional rights by knowingly misusing the material witness warrant to detain him.On Tuesday, a unanimous Supreme Court handed federal law enforcement a victory by ruling that Mr. Kidd was barred from suing Mr. Ashcroft. It is the right decision . . . In 2003, at the time of Mr. Kidd's arrest, no court had squarely addressed the issue of whether a material witness warrant could be used to hold an individual suspected of terrorist activity. As such, there was no way for Mr. Ashcroft to know conclusively whether such an action contravened the Constitution.

If there's a powerful political (or financial) elite being subjected to the criminal process -- a process that is meant only for the low-level rabble selling drugs on the corner -- The Washington Post will be there contriving excuses and justifications for what they've done, or at least spouting reasons they should not be punished.

The war in Libya growing more illegal by the day

To the extent that the War Powers Resolution (WPR) authorized President Obama to fight a war in Libya for 60 days without Congressional approval -- and, for reasons I described here, it did not -- that 60-day period expired 12 days ago.  Since that date, the war has been unquestionably illegal even under the original justifications of Obama defenders, though I realize that objecting to "illegal wars" -- or wars generally -- is so very 2005.  After making clear that they intended to contrive "some plausible theory" to justify this illegal war, the White House finally settled on the claim that the war in Libya -- despite featuring substantial U.S. military action with the goal of destroying a foreign army and removing that nation's leader -- is too small and limited to be a real "war" under the Constitution and the WPR. 

Even the White House seemed to recognize the absurdity of that excuse -- the WRP explicitly applies "in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced (1) into hostilities" -- and the President thus subsequently requested a Resolution from Congress approving the war.  That authorization, however, never came, and now it seems that Congress is closer to doing the opposite: approving a bipartisan bill opposing the war:

On Wednesday, 74 days after U.S. forces joined the military operation in Libya, President Obama seemed to run out of goodwill on Capitol Hill.

A group of both liberals and conservatives -- defying the leaders of both parties --- threw their support behind a bill to pull the U.S. military out of the Libya operation. That prospect led GOP leaders to shelve the bill before it came to a vote. . . .

On Wednesday, the bill at issue was far more drastic. Introduced by Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio), it would demand that Obama withdraw forces from the Libyan operation within 15 days. That would be a crippling loss for the NATO-led campaign, which relies heavily on U.S. air power.

The resolution looked, a week before, like a legislative long shot.

Then, on Wednesday, it wasn't.

"There's been disquiet for a long time," said Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), one of those who supported it. "Republicans have been too eager to support some military ventures abroad. And this, I think, is perhaps a little more consistent with traditional conservatism."

Conservatives expressed support for the bill in a closed meeting, but GOP leaders put off the vote.

Waging a war for 74 days without Congressional approval is illegal enough.  Doing so when there is a growing bipartisan movement in Congress to compel an end to the war -- rather than approve it -- is even worse.  And note the individuals on whom Obama is now relying to protect him from this bipartisan effort to put an end to his illegal war:  "GOP House leaders" -- John Boehner and Eric Cantor, who refused to allow the bill to come up for a vote despite ample support among conservative members of their caucus as well as numerous liberal House members.  Can we hear more now about how the two parties are so radically different that bipartisan cooperation is impossible?  The Emperor has decreed that we will fight this war, and thus we will -- that seems to be the prevailing mindset.

* * * * * 

Last week, I delivered the keynote address to the ACLU in Massachusetts for their annual Bill of Rights dinner. The topic was the Bipartisan National Security State and President Obama's continuation of it, and it obviously relates to the Libya issue. Those interested in listening to the 25-minute speech can do so here.

The WH/Politico attack on Seymour Hersh

Seymour Hersh has a new article in The New Yorker arguing that there is no credible evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons; to the contrary, he writes, "the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein's Iraq eight years ago -- allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state's military capacities and intentions."  This, of course, cannot stand, as it conflicts with one of the pillar-orthodoxies of Obama foreign policy in the Middle East (even though the prior two National Intelligence Estimates say what Hersh has said).  As a result, two cowardly, slimy Obama officials ran to Politico to bash Hersh while hiding behind the protective womb of anonymity automatically and subserviently extended by that "news outlet":

the Obama administration is pushing back strongly, with one senior official saying the article garnered "a collective eye roll" from the White House . . . two administration officials told POLITICO's Playbook that's not the case. . . . a senior administration official said. . . . "There is a clear, ongoing pattern of deception" from Iran . . ."the senior administration official added" . . . And a senior intelligence official also ripped Hersh, saying his article amounted to nothing more than "a slanted book report on a long narrative that's already been told many times over" . . .  

Dutifully writing down what government officials say and then publishing it under cover of anonymity is what media figures in D.C. refer to as "real reporting."  But the most hilarious part of this orgy of cowardly anonymity comes at the end, when Politico explains what is supposedly the prime defect in Hersh' journalism:

Hersh has faced criticism for his heavy reliance on anonymous sources, but New Yorker editor David Remnick has repeatedly said he stands by his reporter's work.

That's the criticism that ends an article that relies exclusively on anonymous government sources, appearing in a D.C. gossip rag notorious for granting anonymity to any powerful figure who requests it for any or no reason.  The difference, of course, is that the Pulitzer Prize-winning, five-time-Polk-Award-recipient investigative journalist who uncovered the My Lai massacre and the Abu Ghraib scandal grants anonymity to those who are challenging the official claims of those in power (that's called "journalism"), while Politico uses it (as it did here) to serve those in power and shield them from all accountability as they spew their propaganda (which is called being a "lowly, rank Royal Court propagandist").