Glenn Greenwald's Blog, page 134

Obama finds support from the right

All decent, Serious people consider GOP Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell to be the Wicked Witch of the East, one of the nation's greatest and most consequential menaces. As but one of countless examples, the highly accomplished Megan McCain was on the roundtable of ABC's This Week program yesterday, mocking O'Donnell's lack of accomplishments and explaining that her "group of friends" consider O'Donnell to be a "nut job" and "scary." Last week, the Evil Witch participated in a debate with her opponent, Democratic nominee Chris Coons, and said this:

There are many things that I have publicly said that I support the Obama administration on.

I support Obama's decision to send troops to Afghanistan. I support Obama's decision for drones. I support Obama's decision to treat the American who is recruiting terrorists on American soil, who is hiding in Yemen, I support the decision for our intelligence agencies to do whatever it takes to take him out.

I've been a long-time skeptic of the claim from Obama supporters that he would usher in an era of post-partisan harmony, enabling America to transcend its divisive, partisan political conflicts by commanding support for his policies across the political spectrum. In January, 2009, for instance, I pointed to a thoroughly unhinged appearance on Hardball by Dick Armey to argue that the American Right is (and has long been) so extreme, radical, and reliant on divisive cultural tribalism that "all of this chatter about post-partisan transcendence and trans-partisan harmony and the like is so inane," and that "Republicans have made about as clear as possible that even though they'll pay lip service to 'bipartisanship,' they don't actually want that." In December, 2008, I argued that Obama's supposedly "new politics" was little more than a rehash of Bill Clinton's DLC "centrism" and triangulation, and was every bit as unlikely to succeed in disarming and co-opting the Right and ushering in an era of bipartisan harmony as the impeached Bill Clinton's tactics were. I've long thought that the events of the Obama presidency have vindicated that skepticism.

But perhaps, at least in the realm of Terrorism and foreign policy, I was wrong about this. In addition to Christine O'Donnell's effusive praise for Obama's Terrorism and war actions in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, Bush CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden has repeatedly praised Obama's "powerful continuity" with Bush/Cheney in these areas; torture choreographer Condoleezza Rice came out of a meeting with the President on Friday and praised his foreign policy and hailed him as "a defender of America's interests"; and one of the most ardent defenders of Obama's assassination program is the incomparably unhinged anti-Muslim fanatic Andrew McCarthy of National Review.

So here we find at least a glimpse of the post-partisan harmony which Obama and so many of his supporters insisted would be the result of an Obama presidency. Of course, that's not all that difficult to engender if the tactic is simply to embrace their worldview (and Obama is making clear that he intends even more of this "accommodation" after November). As I wrote in the post about Dick Armey:

Beltway "bipartisanship" means that Democrats adopt as many GOP beliefs as possible so what ultimately is done resembles Republican policies as much as possible (anyone doubting that should simply review these "bipartisan" votes of the last eight years). . . . Republicans aren't interested in 'bipartisanship' except to the extent that they can force Democrats to enact their policies even though they have only a small minority thanks to being so forcefully rejected by the citizenry.

That's exactly why Obama -- who is widely criticized for polarizing the electorate -- has found such gushing support among the furthest right-wing elements for what he is doing in the Muslim world in the name of combating Terrorism. Let's hear one more time from the Supremely Crazy Witch Christine O'Donnell on this: "I support Obama's decision to send troops to Afghanistan. I support Obama's decision for drones. I support Obama's decision to treat the American who is recruiting terrorists on American soil, who is hiding in Yemen, I support the decision for our intelligence agencies to do whatever it takes to take him out."

* * * * *

Many of the attempts to demonize tea party candidates are overblown and clearly designed to distract from the Democrats' intense unpopularity and failures (see, for instance, the attacks from Jack Conway on Rand Paul for not being a True Christian), but one genuinely creepy and disturbing incident took place in Alaska last night, when private security guards working for GOP Senate nominee (and Palin-endorsed tea party favorite) Joe Miller handcuffed a reporter who was asking Miller questions he did not want to answer. See this photograph for a taste of how thuggish this behavior was. The next time Miller goes to lecture everyone on how urgent it is that we return to our Constitutional roots, perhaps he can stand next to this photograph of his private goons "arresting" an adversarial reporter. This ought to provoke serious objections from any actual journalists, and these private "guards" (and Miller himself) ought to be investigated and, if warranted, arrested for false imprisonment. This behavior is so clearly intolerable that it's difficult to put into words.

Obama finds support from the Right

All decent, Serious people consider GOP Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell to be the Wicked Witch of the East, one of the nation's greatest and most consequential menaces. As but one of countless examples, the highly accomplished Megan McCain was on the roundtable of ABC's This Week program yesterday, mocking O'Donnell's lack of accomplishments and explaining that her "group of friends" consider O'Donnell to be a "nut job" and "scary." Last week, the Evil Witch participated in a debate with her opponent, Democratic nominee Chris Coons, and said this:

There are many things that I have publicly said that I support the Obama administration on.

I support Obama's decision to send troops to Afghanistan. I support Obama's decision for drones. I support Obama's decision to treat the American who is recruiting terrorists on American soil, who is hiding in Yemen, I support the decision for our intelligence agencies to do whatever it takes to take him out.

I've been a long-time skeptic of the claim from Obama supporters that he would usher in an era of post-partisan harmony, enabling America to transcend its divisive, partisan political conflicts by commanding support for his policies across the political spectrum. In January, 2009, for instance, I pointed to a thoroughly unhinged appearance on Hardball by Dick Armey to argue that the American Right is (and has long been) so extreme, radical, and reliant on divisive cultural tribalism that "all of this chatter about post-partisan transcendence and trans-partisan harmony and the like is so inane," and that "Republicans have made about as clear as possible that even though they'll pay lip service to 'bipartisanship,' they don't actually want that." In December, 2008, I argued that Obama's supposedly "new politics" was little more than a rehash of Bill Clinton's DLC "centrism" and triangulation, and was every bit as unlikely to succeed in disarming and co-opting the Right and ushering in an era of bipartisan harmony as the impeached Bill Clinton's tactics were. I've long thought that the events of the Obama presidency have vindicated that skepticism.

But perhaps, at least in the realm of Terrorism and foreign policy, I was wrong about this. In addition to Christine O'Donnell's effusive praise for Obama's Terrorism and war actions in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, Bush CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden has repeatedly praised Obama's "powerful continuity" with Bush/Cheney in these areas; torture choreographer Condoleezza Rice came out of a meeting with the President on Friday and praised his foreign policy and hailed him as "a defender of America's interests"; and one of the most ardent defenders of Obama's assassination program is the incomparably unhinged anti-Muslim fanatic Andrew McCarthy of National Review.

So here we find at least a glimpse of the post-partisan harmony which Obama and so many of his supporters insisted would be the result of an Obama presidency. Of course, that's not all that difficult to engender if the tactic is simply to embrace their worldview (and Obama is making clear that he intends even more of this "accommodation" after November). As I wrote in the post about Dick Armey:

Beltway "bipartisanship" means that Democrats adopt as many GOP beliefs as possible so what ultimately is done resembles Republican policies as much as possible (anyone doubting that should simply review these "bipartisan" votes of the last eight years). . . . Republicans aren't interested in 'bipartisanship' except to the extent that they can force Democrats to enact their policies even though they have only a small minority thanks to being so forcefully rejected by the citizenry.

That's exactly why Obama -- who is widely criticized for polarizing the electorate -- has found such gushing support among the furthest right-wing elements for what he is doing in the Muslim world in the name of combating Terrorism. Let's hear one more time from the Supremely Crazy Witch Christine O'Donnell on this: "I support Obama's decision to send troops to Afghanistan. I support Obama's decision for drones. I support Obama's decision to treat the American who is recruiting terrorists on American soil, who is hiding in Yemen, I support the decision for our intelligence agencies to do whatever it takes to take him out."

* * * * *

Many of the attempts to demonize tea party candidates are overblown and clearly designed to distract from the Democrats' intense unpopularity and failures (see, for instance, the attacks from Jack Conway on Rand Paul for not being a True Christian), but one genuinely creepy and disturbing incident took place in Alaska last night, when private security guards working for GOP Senate nominee (and Palin-endorsed tea party favorite) Joe Miller handcuffed a reporter who was asking Miller questions he did not want to answer. See this photograph for a taste of how thuggish this behavior was. The next time Miller goes to lecture everyone on how urgent it is that we return to our Constitutional roots, perhaps he can stand next to this photograph of his private goons "arresting" an adversarial reporter. This ought to provoke serious objections from any actual journalists, and these private "guards" (and Miller himself) ought to be investigated and, if warranted, arrested for false imprisonment. This behavior is so clearly intolerable that it's difficult to put into words.

How propaganda is disseminated: WikiLeaks Edition

This is how the U.S. government and American media jointly disseminate propaganda: in the immediate wake of some newsworthy War on Terror event, U.S. Government officials (usually anonymous) make wild and reckless -- though unverifiable -- claims. The U.S. media mindlessly trumpets them around the world without question or challenge. Those claims become consecrated as widely accepted fact. And then weeks, months or years later, those claims get quietly exposed as being utter falsehoods, by which point it does not matter, because the goal is already well-achieved: the falsehoods are ingrained as accepted truth.

I've documented how this process works in the context of American air attacks (it's immediately celebrated that we Killed the Evil Targeted Terrorist Leader [who invariably turns out to be alive and then allegedly killed again in the next air strike], while the dead are always, by definition, "militants"); with covered-up American war crimes, with the Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman frauds -- the same process was also evident with the Israeli attack on the flotilla -- and now we find a quite vivid illustration of this deceitful process in the context of WikiLeaks' release of Afghanistan war documents:

CNN, July 29, 2010:

Top military official: WikiLeaks founder may have 'blood' on his hands

The top U.S. military officer said Thursday that Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, was risking lives to make a political point by publishing thousands of military reports from Afghanistan.

"Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family," Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference at the Pentagon. . . .

In equally stern comments and at the same session, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the massive leak will have significant impact on troops and allies, giving away techniques and procedures.

"The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world," Gates said. "Intelligence sources and methods, as well as military tactics, techniques and procedures will become known to our adversaries."

The Guardian, July 26, 2010:

The White House today condemned whistleblower WikiLeaks, accusing the website of putting the lives of US, UK and coalition troops in danger and threatening America's national security of the US after it posted more than 90,000 leaked US military documents about the war in Afghanistan.

Sen. Carl Levin, CNN, August 1, 2010:

CANDY CROWLEY: I want to turn you to WikiLeaks, which also comes under your bailiwick to a certain extent. Some 90,000 documents with secret information or top secret information. Can you quantify the damage?

LEVIN: Not yet. I think that's being assessed right now as to how many sources of information that gave us information that was useful to us are now in jeopardy. That -- that determination and damage assessment is being made right now by the Pentagon.But there quite clearly was damage.

DoD Spokesman Geoff Morrell, August 5, 2010:

WikiLeaks's public disclosure last week of a large number of our documents has already threatened the safety of our troops, our allies and Afghan citizens who are working with us to help bring about peace and stability in that part of the world.

The Heritage Foundation's Conn Carroll, August 24, 2010:

Julian Assanage -- you know, molesting charges aside -- is a criminal. He broke the law.He is, you know, a murderer of American and Afghani people. His carelessness has killed people.

:

Wikileaks has failed to demonstrate similar discernment in handling classified records, and it will be up to others to try to repair the damage it has caused.

Liz Cheney, August 2, 2010:

Dick Cheney's daughter, Liz Cheney wants the government of Iceland to stop its Wikileaks support. . . . "Our Government should make sure that Mr. Assange, Wikileaks founder and spokesman, never gets a U.S. Visa -- He has blood on his hands," Liz Cheney said.

She didn't stop there. She went on to say: "What he's done is very clearly aiding and abetting al Qaeda. And as I said, he may very well be responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in Afghanistan," she concluded.

Newt Gingrich, Newsmax interview, July 31, 2010:

Q: What does that do the Afghanistan war effort, and how does that put our men and women at risk?

GINGRICH: The release of these documents should be regarded as an act of treason. When you release 70 or 80,000 documents, you don't know how many people you're going to kill . . . . Frankly, I think we should be very aggressive about the website that was set up, WikiLeaks, and I think we should be very, very strong on the condemnation of the newspapers that published them.

Paul Rieckhoff, August 2, 2010:

At the end of the day I think Admiral Mullen is right. I think Julian Assange and WikiLeaks already probably have blood on their hands.

CNN, today:

The online leak of thousands of secret military documents from the war in Afghanistan by the website WikiLeaks did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods, the Department of Defense concluded. . . .

The assessment, revealed in a letter from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), comes after a thorough Pentagon review of the more than 70,000 documents posted to the controversial whistle-blower site in July. . . .

The defense secretary said that the published documents do contain names of some cooperating Afghans, who could face reprisal by Taliban.

But a senior NATO official in Kabul told CNN that there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.

Let's repeat that. Despite Gates' ongoing assertion that "the initial assessment in no way discounts the risk to national security" and that "there is still concern Afghans named in the published documents could be retaliated against by the Taliban," even the DoD and NATO admit that the WikiLeaks release "did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods" and that "there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak." Nonetheless, the accusation that WikiLeaks and Assange have "blood on their hands" was -- as intended -- trumpeted around the world for weeks without much question or challenge.

It's been clear from the start that -- despite the valid concern that WikiLeaks should have been more vigilant in redacting the names of innocent Afghan civilians -- the Pentagon (and its media and pundit servants) were drastically exaggerating the harms, as The Associated Press noted on August 17:

The WikiLeaks leak is unrivaled in its scope, but so far there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation.

Some private analysts, in fact, think the danger has been overstated. "I am underwhelmed by this argument. The Pentagon is hyping," says John Prados, a military and intelligence historian who works for the anti-secrecy National Security Archive. He said in an interview that relatively few names have surfaced and it's not clear whether their present circumstances leave them in jeopardy.

And on August 11, even the DOD was forced to admit to The Washington Post the complete absence of any evidence to support its wild accusations: "'We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents,' [Pentagon spokesman Geoff] Morrell said." Nonetheless, the initial spate of hysterically accusatory rhetoric, combined with the uncritical media dissemination, poisoned public opinion about WikiLeaks, and the fact that those accusations have been subsequently revealed as baseless will receive little attention and undo none of that deceit-based damage.

The benefits to the Government from spewing baseless accusations against WikiLeaks are obvious: they inure the public to the thuggish steps being taken to cripple and otherwise intimidate the whistleblowing site from exposing more government secrets about the truth of our wars. WikiLeaks' American spokesman, Jacob Appelbaum, was detained for hours at the airport when entering the U.S. in August, had his property seized (his laptop and cellphones), and was threatened with similar treatment each time he re-enters the U.S., and the following day was interrogated by FBI agents at a conference at which he spoke in New York. This week, WikiLeaks was notified that the service it uses to collect online donations "had closed down its account because it had been put on an official US watchlist and on an Australian government blacklist." And, of course, both the organization itself and Julian Assange have been repeatedly and publicly threatened with prosecution.

The effort to smear WikiLeaks is a by-product not only of anger over past disclosures, but fear of future ones as well. As CBS News reported yesterday: "The Pentagon is bracing for the possible release of as many as 400,000 potentially explosive secret military documents on the U.S.-Iraq war by WikiLeaks. The self-described whistleblower website could release the files as early as Sunday. . . . part of the fear about the potential release is the unknown: Defense officials are not sure exactly what documents WikiLeaks has."

Whatever else is true about this latest release (and future leaks by WikiLeaks as well), substantially greater caution is obviously warranted when assessing and repeating Pentagon accusations about the damage caused by these new documents and the supposed recklessness of WikiLeaks in releasing them. But that is unlikely to happen. If our established media is governed by any overarching principle, it's this: when the U.S. military speaks, its pronouncements -- especially in the beginning -- are to be respected, believed and repeated without question or challenge no matter how many times that deference proves to be unwarranted.

* * * * *

In order to combat the Obama supporter claim that his failures are due to an obstructionist Congress, Jane Hamsher has been asking various people to identify steps which Obama could take now to address various problems that require no action from Congress. My response is here; Alan Grayson's is here; James Galbraith's is here; Bill Black's is here.

A political culture free of accountability

Wolf Blitzer, CNN, January 10, 2003:

Last September 8, I interviewed President Bush's National Security Adviser, Dr. Condoleezza Rice. I was pressing her on Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities. . . .

"We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon," she told me. . . .

Dr. Rice then said something that was ominous and made headlines around the world.

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

ABC News, April 9, 2008:

Sources: Top Bush Advisers Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies. . . .

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said. . . .

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News.

Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."

Associated Press, today:

Obama, Rice huddle on arms treaty, other issues

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama is meeting with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to talk about a pending arms treaty with Russia and other issues .

A White House official said Rice and Obama have a "cordial relationship," and the president looks forward to Friday's meeting covering "a range of foreign policy topics."

In other words:  Prosecute Bush officials who broke the law and instituted a worldwide torture regime?  Please.  I'm doing the opposite:  I'm going to select some of them to occupy the highest positions in my administration and then meet with others in order to drink from the well of their wisdom on a wide range of foreign policy matters.   

I realize this is very childish, shrill and unpragmatic of me.  All Serious people know that it's critical to let Bygones be Bygones and that Serious National Security officials must meet with one another across partisan lines to share their wisdom and insights.  Still, the fact that Obama is not only shielding from all accountability, but meeting in the Oval Office with, the person who presided over the Bush White House's torture-approval-and-choreographing meetings and who was responsible for the single most fear-mongering claim leading to the Iraq War, speaks volumes about the accountability-free nature of Washington culture and this White House.

John Aschroft was probably right that "history will not judge kindly" what these Rice-led officials did.  But that's obviously not true of contemporary amoral Washington or its current President.

The Wars on Drugs and Terror: mirror images

On November 2, Californians will vote on Proposition 19, a referendum which (roughly speaking) would legalize marijuana. I have an Op-Ed in Politico today (a phrase I never expected to write) on the resounding success of drug decriminalization in Portugal and how that empirical data should affect the California debate. That Op-Ed is based on the comprehensive report I wrote for the Cato Institute after conducting research in Portugal in late 2008, documenting how decriminalization has single-handedly enabled that country to manage, control and even reduce the problems associated with drug usage far more effectively than other nations (i.e., other EU states and the U.S.) which continue to criminalize drugs.

I'm convinced that drug prohibition, and especially the "War on Drugs" which enables it, is going to be one of those policies which, decades from now, future generations will be completely unable to understand how we could have tolerated.  So irrational and empirically false are the justifications for drug prohibition, and so costly is the War waged in its name, that it is difficult to imagine a more counter-productive policy than this (that's why public opinion is inexorably realizing this despite decades of Drug War propaganda and the absence of any real advocacy for decriminalization on the part of national political leaders).  In that regard, and in virtually every other, the War on Drugs is a mirror image of the War on Terror:  sustained with the same deceitful propaganda, driven by many of the same motives, prosecuted with similar templates, and destructive in many of the same ways.

The similarities are obvious.  Both wars rely upon cartoon depictions of Scary Villains (The Drug Kingpin, Mexican Cartels, the Terrorist Mastermind) to keep the population in a state of heightened fear and thus blind them to rational discourse.  But both wars are not only complete failures in eradicating those villains, but they both do more to empower those very villains than any other single cause -- the War on Drugs by ensuring that cartels' profits from the illegal drug trade remain sky-high, and the War on Terror by ensuring more and more support and recruits for anti-American extremists.  And both, separately and together, endlessly erode basic American liberties by convincing a frightened public that they can Stay Safe only if they cede more and more power to the state.  Many of the civil liberties erosions from the War on Terror have their genesis in the War on Drugs.

The most important commonality between these two wars is that they continue -- and will continue -- for reasons having nothing to do with their stated justifications.  Both wars ensure an unlimited stream of massive amounts of money into the private war-making industries which fuel them.  By itself, the increasingly privatized American prison industry -- fed a constant stream of human beings put in cages as a result of drug prohibition laws -- is obscenely profitable.  Add to these powerful profit centers the political fear that officials have of being perceived as abandoning any war before it is "won," and these two intrinsically unwinnable wars -- unwinnable by design -- seem destined to endure forever, or at least until some sort of major financial collapse simply permits them no longer.

It's the perfect deceit.  These wars, in an endless loop, sustain and strengthen the very menaces which, in turn, justify their continuous escalation.  These wars manufacture the very dangers they are ostensibly designed to combat.  Meanwhile, the industries which fight them become richer and richer.  The political officials those industries own become more and more powerful.  Brutal drug cartels monopolize an unimaginably profitable, no-competition industry, while Terrorists are continuously supplied the perfect rationale for persauding huge numbers of otherwise unsympathetic people to join them or support them.  Everyone wins -- except for ordinary citizens, who become poorer and poorer, more and more imprisoned, meeker and meeker, and less and less free.

Robert Gibbs, hypocritical transparency crusader

(updated below)

The controversy over Chamber of Commerce election funding raises a very real and important  issue:  the genuine threat posed to our political system by unknown funders who can pour massive amounts of money into negative ads while hiding who they are.  The White House's arguments about the need for more disclosure are largely correct, although that legitimate issue has been obscured by reckless, sloppy and somewhat McCarthyite behavior in accusing the Chamber of Commerce -- with no evidence whatsoever -- of using nefarious "foreign money" to pay for these ads, and then demanding that the Chamber reveal its funders in order to prove its innocence.  That is lamentable both because guilty-until-proven-innocent attacks are inherently misguided, and more so, because that attack has obscured the genuine issue over the dangers posed by undisclosed sources of campaign money.

But even regarding the White House's legitimate arguments about disclosure, there is some major hypocrisy taking place.  White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has been leading the charge against the Chamber, citing what he called "the spirit of disclosure" when telling CBS' Mark Knoller this earlier this week:

I think it's important when you don't know - when you don't know who those people are, when you don't know what their agenda is. I think as the president has said that it is a threat very fundamentally to our democracy.

But what makes it so infuriating to watch Gibbs make this argument is that Gibbs himself -- back in 2003 and 2004 -- was heavily involved in exactly the same kind of anonymous-funded negative campaign the Chamber is running now, when the brand-new advocacy group for which he was the spokesman invoked the same excuses as the Chamber is invoking now to conceal its donors.  As Chris Moody recalls, when Howard Dean was the 2004 Democratic front-runner, a new group abruptly popped up -- calling itself "Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values" -- and, shortly before the Iowa primary, began running an extremely ugly anti-Dean TV ad campaign, featuring images of Osama bin Laden, along with ominous claims that Howard Dean would fail to Keep Us Safe, that he could not "compete with George Bush on foreign policy."  This was the ad:

The Dean campaign was furious that fellow Democrats would run an ad like this that so obviously relied on (and reinforced) core Rovian, fear-mongering attacks, but more so, they were absolutely incensed that nobody knew who had funded this group, of which the very same Robert Gibbs, having supposedly just left his position as press secretary with the Kerry campaign, was the spokesman.  And just as the Chamber is doing now, Gibbs' group categorically refused to disclose its funders until the law compelled it to do so -- i.e., months later, once the Dean campaign was destroyed.  Just read this Dec. 16, 2003, New York Times article on the controversy to see how similar this was, and how hypocritical it is for Robert Gibbs of all people to be trumpeting "the fundamental threat to our democracy" posed by nondisclosure of campaign funding sources:

A new Democratic group that is running advertisements against Howard Dean and has not yet disclosed its sources of financing has introduced by far the toughest commercial of the primary election season.

The spot opens with a Time magazine cover featuring Osama bin Laden as synthesizer music seemingly out of a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie is heard.

As the camera focuses on Mr. bin Laden's eyes. the following words flash on the screen: "Dangerous World," "Destroy Us," "Dangers Ahead" and "No Experience."

"Americans want a president who can face the dangers ahead," an announcer intones. "But Howard Dean has no military or foreign policy experience. And Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy. It's time for Democrats to think about that and think about it now."

The advertisement is the latest salvo in what amounts to a "stop Dean" campaign sponsored by the new Democratic group, Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values ... Its spokesman, Robert Gibbs, recently resigned as the press secretary for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, another presidential candidate.

The mystery about who is financing the group, which began its efforts about two weeks ago with an advertisement highlighting past support for Dr. Dean from the National Rifle Association, infuriated Dr. Dean's campaign staff.

"Whoever is behind this should crawl out from underneath their rock and have the courage to say who they are," said Tricia Enright, a spokeswoman for Dr. Dean. "It is hateful, it's cynical, it's exactly the kind of ad that keeps people from voting, that keeps people from getting involved in the process."

Mr. Jones, the group's treasurer, said in response, "We will disclose donors when the law requires."

As Moody notes, The Chicago Tribune's Lynn Sweet, months later, did a post-mortem on the collapse of the Dean campaign, and attributed a large part of its demise to "the 18 individuals, two corporations and six unions [Democratic fund-raiser David] Jones persuaded to donate to his Americans for Jobs, Healthcare and Progressive Values fund."  As Sweet noted, this smear-Dean group was created with the specific purpose of circumventing campaign finance disclosure laws and hiding its funders until after the key primaries were held:

Jones conceived the anti-Dean operation last year and became the treasurer of what is called a 527 organization, named for the section of the Internal Revenue Code under which these groups operate ...

Jones' group would operate in initial anonymity because it did not have to file a report disclosing donors with the IRS until Jan. 31 to reflect money collected in 2003. That would be after the Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina contests. That's a reason most of the stories written about Jones' group -- really a fund since there were only a few people involved, despite the name -- described it as "shadowy" and "secretive."

Once the full funding was finally disclosed -- after the Dean campaign was essentially dead -- it turned out that its largest donor was the "Center for Middle East Peace," which bankrolled it for $200,000, along with the YES Network ($125,000), the Senate campaign fund of Bob Torricelli (who had been forced not to seek reelection in disgrace over a campaign finance scandal and is now a lobbyist), and various unions.  All of that was actively concealed from voters while these smear ads ran against Dean; and it stay steadfastly concealed until well after the dirty deed was done.  In other words, in order to destroy Howard Dean's candidacy, the group for which Robert Gibbs was the spokesman did exactly that which the Chamber of Commerce is now doing (albeit Gibbs' group did it on a much smaller scale), and invoked the same rationale to justify its covert actions.  

When Obama chose Gibbs to be his campaign spokesman, Jerome Armstrong -- who had worked on the Dean campaign -- was outraged precisely because of Gibbs' involvement in this ad.  He argued (presciently, one could say) that Obama's affection for someone who would be responsible for such a covert, right-wing-replicating, fear-mongering Rovian attack ad against a progressive candidate reflected what type of politician Obama was.

I'm well aware that most Democrats do not want to hear any of this right now.  Many believe that Democrats have finally found an effective weapon in these Chamber-of-Commerce attacks and are completely uninterested in whether Robert Gibbs (and his former anti-Dean Democratic group) is guilty of exactly the same cardinal sin as he's accusing the Chamber of committing.  I have no doubt that many believe that there's some sort of partisan duty to overlook such unpleasant facts in order to help the Democrats win.  But this type of totally empty, soul-less, dishonest advocacy is why so many people turn away from the political process and become increasingly apathetic about the outcomes of these two-party wars.  Remember all the "corrosive cynicism" talk from the Obama campaign?  This is what causes that.  It'd be nice if Robert Gibbs actually believed in the "disclosure" arguments he is making.  I believe in them.  But he obviously does not believe in them, and would have no trouble -- he had no trouble -- embracing exactly the opposite view if it advanced his political interests.  Look at the corpse of the 2004 Howard Dean campaign if you have doubts about that.

 

UPDATE:  Think Progress, which originally raised these questions about the Chamber's financing, has a new, well-documented update today demonstrating that the Chamber receives substantial amounts of funds from foreign companies.  The Chamber's response is that it segregates that money and doesn't spend it on elections (and the response to that is that money, being fungible, can't be segregated that way).   I have no objection at all to the questions Think Progress is raising.  I think those are valuable.  As I said, nondisclosure is a serious threat.  But it's a different issue entirely for the president to be tossing accusations and innuendo at private actors that he doesn't know are true and then demanding that they disclose evidence to disprove it, and it's another thing entirely for Robert Gibbs, who did exactly the same thing on behalf of a Democratic Party advocacy group, to be righteously condemning this behavior.

Kagan's first steps on the Court

Since Elena Kagan was confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, the Court has not yet issued any written rulings on appeals it has accepted for review.  But there are two cases in which Kagan's actions shed some minimal light on how she is approaching her role -- minimal, though still worth noting, particularly in light of how much time and attention was devoted here to her being named as Justice Stevens' replacement.

On September 23, 41-year-old convicted murderer Teresa Lewis became the first woman executed in the United States in over five years, when the State of Virginia administered a lethal injection into her arm.  That occurred only because the Supreme Court, two days earlier refused, by a 7-2 vote, to stay her execution.  Lewis' lawyers argued that execution was unjust because "she is borderline mentally retarded, with the intellectual ability of about a 13-year-old," because she "had been used by a much smarter conspirator," because she had no prior history of violence and had been a model prisoner, and because "the two men who fired the shots received life terms."  The two "liberal" justices on the Court -- Ginsburg and Sotomayor -- voted to stay the execution, but Elena Kagan voted with Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, and Breyer to allow it to proceed. It's impossible to know for certain how Justice Stevens would have voted, but he did proclaim in a 2008 decision that he believes the death penalty to be unconstitutional pursuant to the Constitutional bar on "cruel and unusual punishment".

Yesterday, a similar pattern emerged.  In 2005, two Denver residents were removed from a Bush campaign event solely due to a bumper sticker on their car which read:  "No More Blood for Oil."  They sued, alleging their First Amendment rights had been violated, but the lower court dismissed the case and the appeals court upheld the dismissal.  The Supreme Court yesterday refused to review that dismissal, but in a fairly unusual written opinion dissenting from that refusal, Ginsburg -- joined by Sotomayor -- argued that these ejections constituted a clear violation of these citizens' First Amendment rights which the Court should adjudicate.  She wrote:  "ejecting them for holding discordant views could only have been a reprisal for the expression conveyed by the bumper sticker."  Kagan, again, refused to join those two Justices, siding instead with the conservative bloc and Breyer in voting to refuse the case.

Caution is warranted against reading too much into Kagan's actions, particularly the latter one.  There are multiple factors which the Court must consider in deciding which cases to take, and a refusal to review a case does not denote agreement with the outcome in the lower court (of the two decisions, Kagan's refusal to stay the execution is more revealing).  Moreover, in both cases, the outcome would not have changed had Kagan joined Ginsburg and Sotomayor, so it's possible that her joining with the majority was merely some sort of strategic calculation to curry favor early on.  Still, these two decisions not to join Ginsburg and Sotomayor are substantive ones, and are at least worth noting as very preliminary signs of Kagan's approach on the Court.

* * * * *

As for the Obama administration's defense in court of both The Defense of Marriage Act and Don't Ask/Don't Tell, as well as the President's generally anemic approach to gay issues, my views are roughly the same as those expressed here by Andrew Sullivan.  I intend to write more in the next few days about the contours and limits of the DOJ's duty to defend the constitutionality of duly enacted statutes even where the President purports to disagree with those laws. 

They hate us for our occupations

In 2004, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld commissioned a task force to study what causes Terrorism, and it concluded that "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies":  specifically, "American direct intervention in the Muslim world" through our "one sided support in favor of Israel"; support for Islamic tyrannies in places like Egypt and Saudi Arabia; and, most of all, "the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan" (the full report is here).  Now, a new, comprehensive study from Robert Pape, a University of Chicago political science professor and former Air Force lecturer, substantiates what is (a) already bleedingly obvious and (b) known to the U.S. Government for many years:  namely, that the prime cause of suicide bombings is not Hatred of Our Freedoms or Inherent Violence in Islamic Culture or a Desire for Worldwide Sharia Rule by Caliphate, but rather.  . . . foreign military occupations.  As summarized by Politico's Laura Rozen:

Pape. . . will present findings on Capitol Hill Tuesday that argue that the majority of suicide terrorism around the world since 1980 has had a common cause: military occupation.

Pape and his team of researchers draw on data produced by a six-year study of suicide terrorist attacks around the world that was partially funded by the Defense Department's Defense Threat Reduction Agency. They have compiled the terrorism statistics in a publicly available database comprised of some 10,000 records on some 2,200 suicide terrorism attacks, dating back to the first suicide terrorism attack of modern times - the 1983 truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 241 U.S. Marines.

"We have lots of evidence now that when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns, ... and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign," Pape said in an interview last week on his findings.

Pape said there has been a dramatic spike in suicide bombings in Afghanistan since U.S. forces began to expand their presence to the south and east of the country in 2006. . . . Deaths due to suicide attacks in Afghanistan have gone up by a third in the year since President Obama added another 30,000 U.S. troops. "It is not making it any better," Pape said.

Pape believes his findings have important implications even for countries where the U.S. does not have a significant direct military presence, but is perceived by the population to be indirectly occupying.

For instance, across the border from Afghanistan, suicide terrorism exploded in Pakistan in 2006 as the U.S. put pressure on then Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf "to divert 100,000 Pakistani army troops from their [perceived] main threat [India] to western Pakistan," Pape said.

Imagine that.  Isn't Muslim culture just so bizarre, primitive, and inscrutable?  As strange as it is, they actually seem to dislike it when foreign militaries bomb, invade and occupy their countries, and Western powers interfere in their internal affairs by overthrowing and covertly manipulating their governments, imposing sanctions that kill hundreds of thousands of Muslim children, and arming their enemies.  Therefore (of course), the solution to Terrorism is to interfere more in their countries by continuing to occupy, bomb, invade, assassinate, lawlessly imprison and control them, because that's the only way we can Stay Safe.  There are people over there who are angry at us for what we're doing in their world, so we need to do much more of it to eradicate the anger.  That's the core logic of the War on Terror.  How is that working out?

* * * * * 

Akbar Ahmed, the Chair of Islamic Studies at American University, was on Bloggingheads TV yesterday with Robert Wright discussing convicted attempted Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, and said this:

Take the case of Faisal Shahzad.  He seems to be, if you put him in a category . . .  he grows up with the reputation of being a party guy, a party boy in the tribal areas [in Pakistan]. . . . He then comes to America and all the pictures are of a modern young man. . . . He changes, but he changes, again, for interesting reasons. The media would have us believe that it's the violence in the Koran and the religion of Islam.  But hear what he's saying.  He's in fact saying:  I am taking revenge for the drone strikes in the tribal areas.  So he's acting more like a tribesman whose involvement in Pashtun values . . .  one of the primary features of that is revenge, rather then saying I'm going to have a jihad or I've been trained by literalists . . . .

That is confirmed by mountains of evidence not only about what motivated Shahzad but most anti-American Terrorists as well:  severe anger over the violence and interference the U.S. brings to their part of the world.  The only caveat I'd add to Professor Ahmed's remarks is that a desire to exact vengeance for foreign killings on your soil is hardly a unique attribute of Pashtun culture.  It's fairly universal.  See, for instance, the furious American response to the one-day attack on 9/11 -- still going strong even after 9 years.  As Professor Pape documents:  "when you put the foreign military presence in, it triggers suicide terrorism campaigns . . . and that when the foreign forces leave, it takes away almost 100% of the terrorist campaign."  It hardly takes a genius to figure out the most effective way of reducing anti-American Terrorism; the only question is whether that's the actual goal of those in power. 

Collapsing empire watch

It's easy to say and easy to document, but quite difficult to really internalize, that the United States is in the process of imperial collapse.  Every now and then, however, one encounters certain facts which compellingly and viscerally highlight how real that is.  Here's the latest such fact, from a new study in Health Affairs by Columbia Health Policy Professors Peter A. Muennig and Sherry A. Glied (h/t):

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.  The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world.  As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

Just to underscore the rapidity of the decline, as recently as 1999, the U.S. was ranked by the World Health Organization as 24th in life expectancy.  It's now 49th.  There are other similarly potent indicators.  In 2009, the National Center for Health Statistics ranked the U.S. in 30th place in global infant mortality rates.  Out of 20 "rich countries" measured by UNICEF, the U.S. ranks 19th in "child well-being."  Out of 33 nations measured by the OECD, the U.S. ranks 27th for student math literacy and 22nd for student science literacy.  In 2009, the World Economic Forum ranked 133 nations in terms of "soundness" of their banks, and the U.S. was ranked in 108th place, just behind Tanzania and just ahead of Venezuela. 

There is, however, some good news:  the U.S. is now in fifth place in total number of executions, behind only China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and comfortably ahead of Yemen and Sudan, while there are two categories in which the U.S. has been and remains the undisputed champion of the world -- this one and this one.  And, of course, the U.S. is not just objectively the greatest country on the planet, but the greatest country ever to exist in all of human history -- as Dave Roberts put it in response to these life expectancy numbers:  "but we're No. 1 in bestness!" -- so we're every bit as exceptional as ever.

Collapsing Empire watch

It's easy to say and easy to document, but quite difficult to really internalize, that the United States is in the process of imperial collapse.  Every now and then, however, one encounters certain facts which compellingly and viscerally highlight how real that is.  Here's the latest such fact, from a new study in Health Affairs by Columbia Health Policy Professors Peter A. Muennig and Sherry A. Glied (h/t):

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.  The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world.  As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

Just to underscore the rapidity of the decline, as recently as 1999, the U.S. was ranked by the World Health Organization as 24th in life expectancy.  It's now 49th.  There are other similarly potent indicators.  Out of 20 "rich countries" measured by UNICEF, the U.S. ranks 19th in "child well-being."  Out of 33 nations measured, the U.S. ranks 27th for student math literacy and 22nd for student science literacy.  In 2009, the World Economic Forum ranked 133 nations in terms of "soundness" of their banks, and the U.S. was ranked in 108th place, just behind Tanzania and just ahead of Venezuela. 

There is, however, some good news:  the U.S. is now in fifth place in total number of executions, behind only China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and comfortably ahead of Yemen and Sudan, while there are two categories in which the U.S. has been and remains the undisputed champion of the world -- this one and this one.  And, of course, the U.S. is not just objectively the greatest country on the planet, but the greatest country on the planet ever to exist in all of human human history -- as Dave Roberts put it in response to these life expectancy numbers:  "but we're No. 1 in bestness!" -- so we're every bit as exceptional as ever.