Another socialist blog

Bill Maher isn’t always right, but when he’s right, he’s really right. In his April 13 show he took to task the anti-intellectualism of the Bush administration in his “New Rules” segment.

Now that liberals have taken back the word, “liberal,” they also have to take back the word, “elite.” By now, you’ve heard the constant right-wing attacks on the “elite” media and the liberal “elite,” who may or may not be part of the Washington “elite,” a subset of the East Coast “elite,” which is overly influenced by the Hollywood “elite.” So, basically, unless you’re a shit-kicker from Kansas, you’re with the terrorists.

You know, if you played a drinking game where you did a shot every time Rush Limbaugh attacked someone for being elite, you’d almost be as wasted as Rush Limbaugh.

I - I don’t get it. In other fields outside of government, “elite” is a good thing, like an “elite” fighting force; Tiger Woods is an “elite” golfer. If I need brain surgery, I’d like an “elite” doctor. But, in politics, “elite” is bad. The “elite” aren’t down to earth and accessible like you and me and President Shit-for-brains. [He said this while sitting across a desk from Scott McClellan.–DD]

Which is fine, except that whenever there’s a Bush Administration scandal, it always traces back to some incompetent political hack appointment, and you think to yourself, where are they getting these screw-ups from? Well, now we know. From Pat Robertson. I’m not kidding.

Take Monica Goodling, who, before she resigned last week, because she’s smack in the middle of the U.S. Attorneys scandal, was the third-ranking official in the Justice Department of the United States. She’s 33 years old. And though she never even worked as a prosecutor, she was tasked with overseeing the job performance of all 93 U.S. Attorneys.

How do you get to the top that fast? Harvard? Princeton? No, Goodling did her undergraduate work at Messiah College. You know, Messiah, home of the Fighting Christ-ies? And then went on to attend Pat Robertson’s law school. Yes, Pat Robertson, the man who said that the presence of gay people at Disney World would cause earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor, has a law school.

And what kid wouldn’t want to attend? It’s three years, and you only have to read one book. U.S. News & World Report, which does the definitive ranking of colleges, lists Regent as a Tier Four school, which is the lowest score it gives. It’s not a hard school to get into. You have to renounce Satan and draw a pirate on a matchbook.

This is for people who couldn’t get into the University of Phoenix.

Now, would you care to guess how many graduates of this televangelist’s diploma mill work in the Bush Administration? 150. And you wonder why things are so messed up. We’re talking about a top Justice Department official who went to a college funded by a TV host. Would you send your daughter to Maury Povich U.? And if you did, would you expect her to get a job at the White House?

In 200 years, we’ve gone from “We, the people,” to “Up With People.” From “the best and the brightest” to “dumb and dumber.” And where better to find people dumb enough to believe in George Bush than Pat Robertson’s law school?

The problem here in America isn’t that the country is being run by “elites.” It’s that it’s being run by a bunch of hayseeds. And, by the way, the lawyer Monica Goodling just hired to keep her ass out of jail, went to a real law school.

It’s now clear that Alberto Gonzales is not just a liar, but a brazen liar who thinks he can protect his job (or at least his future pardon chances) if he sticks to his unbelievable story about the political firings of eight U.S. Attorneys. Let’s run through an incomplete list of the whoppers that Justice Department officials have been telling us.

• Jan. 18, 2007: Gonzales testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee: “I would never, ever make a change in a United States attorney position for political reasons, or if it would in any way jeopardize an ongoing serious investigation.” You could believe that, but you would have to ignore some suspicious facts about these fired U.S. attorneys.
  • David Iglesias of Albuquerque told lawmakers that he “felt leaned on” by Sen. Pete Domenici and Rep. Heather Wilson, who wanted him to indict Democrats before election day 2006.
  • Carol Lam of San Diego, prosecuted former Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham, now in federal prison for accepting bribes. She had a very positive 2005 performance review, calling her “an effective manager and respected leader.” She was also involved in an ongoing serious investigation, continuing the probe of defense contracting that began with Rep. Cunningham.
  • John McKay of Seattle said he stopped a top aide to Rep. Doc Hastings (R-WA) from asking him detailed questions about an investigation into the disputed election of Washington state’s Democratic governor, Christine Gregoire, in 2004.

  If you choose to believe Gonzales when he claims the firings weren’t political, you have to wonder about all the other lies told in the cause of convincing us.

• Feb. 6, 2007: Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee: “In every single case where a United States attorney position is vacant, the administration is committed to filling that position with the United States attorney who is confirmed by the Senate.” He repeated that tale today despite an email from Kyle Sampson, his former chief of staff, saying the exact opposite. The email tells how the office intended to use the USA-PATRIOT act to appoint replacements without Senate confirmation. The very existence of that provision in the law is reason to believe the administration wants to dispense with advise and consent by Congress. Probably not what the Senators wanted to hear.
• Feb. 23, 2007: Acting Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling sends several members of Congress a letter saying, in part, “The [Justice] Department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin.” On March 28 the Justice Department itself tells Congress that letter is “contradicted by Department documents.” Perhaps those documents include an email from Gonzales’ chief of staff saying they are “still waiting for a green light from the White House” before firing the U.S. attorneys. Of course Rove is involved. And if Rove is involved, of course the operation is political.
• March 13, 2007: Gonzales give the dog-ate-my-homework excuse, insisting that he knew nothing, nnnnothing, about what was going on in the Department of which he is in charge. “I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood.” When Gonzales attended an hour-long meeting to discuss the matter on November 27, 2006, he perhaps was not paying attention?

Those who call for Gonzales to resign, and they are legion, are missing the point entirely. The fact that the Attorney General is a crook is scandalous, but not as scandalous as the fact that the President has known and tolerated unethical conduct at Justice. And even that is not nearly as scandalous as the likelihood that the President gave the orders. You can take out the Cabinet trash, but the White House will still stink when you’re done. Whoever claims outrage at the conduct of the Attorney General should be calling, not for his resignation, but for the impeachment of the President and Vice President.

So there we were, watching the 2000 Presidential campaign, and over and over we listened to George W. Bush talk about how he was going to bring “honor and dignity” back to the White House. I can’t think of a more significant pack of lies told in my lifetime. And I’m old enough to have heard Richard Nixon say “I am not a crook” on the evening news.

Like Nixon, Bush seems to have surrounded himself with criminals. Now that Louis “Scooter” Libby is a convicted felon, and Rove and Cheney are clearly identified as unindicted co-conspirators, it’s a good time to remember how many conservatives have held up George Bush as not just a moral leader, but a moral example. Indeed.

And what a blessing it is to have a moral leader at the helm as we continue to make war against Afghanistan, the war that Bush says God told him to start. On March 4th an American patrol was attacked near Jalalabad, and reacted by shooting indiscriminately into a crowd of civilians. Twenty civilians not involved in the original attack were killed and thirty more were wounded. Adding insult to injury, American troops threatened reporters covering the story and confiscated film and video of the dead civilians. This is not the way people behave when a moral leader is Commander in Chief. Rather, this is the way people behave when the know they have committed a crime and they are desperate to destroy the evidence. This is not the first atrocity committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Lest you think these were isolated incidents, don’t forget the murder of Nicola Calipari, an Italian, by U.S. solders in Iraq. Journalist Giuliana Sgrena was wounded in the attack, and has been adamant that the soldiers were not acting in self-defense, nor even manning a checkpoint as they have claimed. The Italian government has indicted a U.S. serviceman, Mario Lozano, in the shooting. Italian authorities have complained that the U.S. has refused to cooperate in the investigation and have refused to deliver Lozano to stand trial.

So basically we have a government of people who constantly proclaim the rule of law even as they are breaking the law, constantly tell us they are protecting us from thugs and murderers, while conducting themselves like thugs and murderers. And on the evidence, they are going to get away with it.

Gerald Ford, the only unelected President of the United States, has died at the age of 93. Many have stepped forward to say a kind word about him, as we should about any man who has died. But Ford was more than a man, he was a historical figure, and kindness toward the dead should never trump an accurate account of history.

The Vietnam War ended on President Ford’s watch, over the objections of Ford, which ought to tarnish his nice-guy reputation just a bit. In 1974 Ford made a speech to Congress trying to persuade them to vote more funding for Vietnam. Congress refused, and some freshmen members of Congress got up and walked out of the speech, to their credit. Today’s Congress could follow that example.

Ford has an entirely undeserved reputation, in the mainstream media at least, as the “healer of the nation” because of the Nixon pardon. The Chicago Tribune’s comments are typical: Stanley I. Kutler claims that “the pardon spared us years of court proceedings, riding a wave of national obsession about Watergate.” Indeed, that’s what Ford said he was doing when he pardoned Nixon for all crimes he committed as President, even though no charges had yet been filed.

The obvious response is, where were the conservatives when the Bill Clinton legal proceedings were going on and on and on, all the way to impeachment? Where was the concern for “national obsession” then? (And since when does “national obsession” give anybody a Get Out of Jail Free card? By that logic, O.J. Simpson should have been pardoned before trial.) Allow me to supply the obvious answer: the interminable Clinton investigations were allowed to proceed because they were politically expedient for Republicans. And the years of court proceedings against Richard Nixon were halted—before charges could even be filed!—because it would have been disastrous for Republicans. Go ahead and call me cynical; I learned how to be a cynic from Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. The message of the pardon is simply that you can get away with anything if you have sufficiently powerful friends. The long history of Presidential criminality since Nixon tells me that the message was heard loud and clear.

I was not one of those calling for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld didn’t get the war wrong, the entire U.S. government got foreign policy wrong. It’s not that we have a “job” to “get done” in Iraq, a job that Rumsfeld did badly. The entire enterprise was a crime from the beginning, and the entire administration should resign, not just Rumsfeld. Better than half of the Congress should go with them.

But Rumsfeld is out, and now we have Robert M. Gates nominated to succeed him. Lest you think that the Bush administration has learned its lesson, consider these highlights from the Gates bio:

• He has a history of cooking the intelligence: Intelligence cherry-picked for ideological purposes; the claims of a single, unreliable source treated as fact and stovepiped straight up to the White House; a National Intelligence Estimate riddled with dubious claims; efforts made to connect an enemy regime with international terrorism. This will no doubt remind you of 2003 and the run-up to the war against Iraq, but no, these charges come from the 1980s and come from his coworkers at the CIA. Ray McGovern served in the CIA for 27 years and was Gates’s branch chief at the CIA in the early ’70s. He comments that
  

  Bill Casey had this bizarre notion that the Soviets were going to come up through Nicaragua and Mexico into Texas. Reagan even said such things. And Bobby Gates sort of played on that kind of shibboleth. And when Casey mined the harbors, well, Gates wrote a memo that said we ought to bomb them, as well, bomb the tanks. So, you know, whether he believed that or not, this was a deliberate sort of pandering to the known proclivities of Bill Casey and, of course, the President.

• He has a history of lying to Congress about criminal conspiracies in the Executive branch. He told the Iran-Contra independent counsel that he, the deputy director of the CIA, knew nothing at all about Oliver North’s illegal contra resupply operation, the diversion to the contras of profits from covert arms sales to Iran, or the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran. These claims of innocence were contradicted by other CIA officials .

George W. Bush couldn’t have nominated a better guy to shred documents for him.

The Bush government is fond of giving lip service to the rule of law. And when they give something lip service, they really give it lip service. These are people who know how to stick to the script. Just today we have comments in support of the rule of law from Bush himself, from Condoleeza Rice, and from State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey, to pick just a few low-hanging examples. There could hardly be a better example of doublespeak. These people who claim to love the rule of law hold it in utter contempt. There are so many examples, but the atrocity of the detainee tribunals in Guantanamo, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, will be the example of the day.

NPR reports on a study of 393 tribunal transcripts. The study reveals the tribunals to be empty of actual due process.

• In 100% of the cases the detainee was eventually found to be an enemy combatant.
• In 100% of the cases the government presented no witnesses at all.
• In 96% of the cases the government presented no evidence at all, relying instead on secret evidence that detainees were not allowed to see.
• In three cases there was a unanimous finding that the defendant was not an enemy combatant. The Defense Department ordered re-hearings in each case. In two of the three re-hearings the defendant was found to be enemy combatants. In the third, the tribunal again found unanimously that the detainee was not an enemy combatant, so the Defense Department orded a re-re-hearing for that prisoner. At this point the tribunal apparently got the message and found that, by golly, he is an enemy combatant after all.
• Detainees have a nominal right to call witnesses, but the only witnesses actually available to them are their fellow detainees. The U.S. State Department, which is responsible for producing witnesses from other countries on request, have produced none since the tribunals started.

It’s Kafkaesque. The government’s secret evidence is presumed to be reliable. The defendant, who has the burden to prove he is not an enemy combatant, has the right to rebut the government’s evidence. But without being able to see the evidence, he cannot know what there is to rebut, and cannot even get access to witnesses who might be able to take a stab at it. And finally, even if the prisoner is found not to be an enemy combatant, the result of the tribunal is simply vetoed by the Pentagon.

Americans should be deeply ashamed to be associated with this kind of injustice, and doubly ashamed and the hypocrisy of their leaders.

The Bush administration line on torture is now “We want clarity.” They claim to fear that well-intentioned U.S. interrogators would run afoul of the “nebulous language” in the Geneva Conventions. The President called on Congress to pass a law giving “clear guidelines”.

This debate is occurring because of the Supreme Court’s ruling that said that we must conduct ourselves under the Common Article III of the Geneva Convention. And that Common Article III says that there will be no outrages upon human dignity. It’s very vague. What does that mean, “outrages upon human dignity”? That’s a statement that is wide open to interpretation. And what I’m proposing is that there be clarity in the law so that our professionals will have no doubt that that which they are doing is legal.

Well, if you can’t figure out what an outrage upon human dignity is, perhaps you would recognize one when you saw it? Perhaps you would agree that throwing a prisoner’s Koran in the shit bucket would be an example. Maybe we could all agree that summarily executing bound prisoners would be covered. Maybe, just maybe, decent civilized people could agree that keeping a prisoner suspended by the arms until he died, or suffocating him with a plastic bag, would be an outrage against human dignity. How much debate could there be?

Yeah, right.

The problem is not that they don’t understand the rules. The problem is that everybody in the world understands the rules. The problem is that they want to ignore the rules and torture prisoners, but they know they might go to prison if they do. Their solution is to get rid of the Geneva Conventions by “clarifying” them.

When they’re done, the word “torture” will be like the word “terrorism”—it won’t mean what it did before, rather, it will refer only to what our enemies do, never to what we do. And the word “clarify” will be entirely meaningless.

Having admitted to running secret prisons outside the reach of U.S. law and public scrutiny, the Bush administration has chosen to brazen it out. Yes, as a matter of fact we ARE running secret prisons, and now that it’s politically expedient we’ll brag about it. German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the obvious point in her low-key way:

“The existence of such prisons is incompatible with my idea of the rule of law. Even in the fight against terrorism… the ends do not justify the means.”

Ouch. The U.S. claims at all times to uphold the rule of law, and here’s a foreigner pointing out that we do the opposite. And then she reviews an elementary moral principle for a head of state who claims not only to be a moral leader but claims to be on a mission from God. I guess she’s not his girlfriend any more.

Of course they haven’t bothered to explain why the secret prisons were secret in the first place. They like secrets, and they don’t like explaining. I’ve said it before, official secrets are to protect official liars. If they are keeping their European and Asian prisons secret, it’s because there’s something going on there that they don’t want American voters to know about. Even if I didn’t cynically assume that means the prisoners are tortured we have the accounts of some of the victims of “extraordinary rendition,” such as Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen grabbed in New York:

After three consecutive days of beating and interrogation, he said, “I could not take the pain any more and I falsely confessed of having been to Afghanistan.” After the Canadian government intervened, Syrian authorities released him in October 2003 — more than one year after his ill-fated attempt to change planes in New York City — with an acknowledgment that there was no evidence that he was ever involved in terrorism.

Do you feel safer yet?

Molly Ivins has written one of the most sensible comments on George W. Bush’s torture policy I’ve yet seen.

A string of prisons in Eastern Europe in which suspects are held and tortured indefinitely, without trial, without lawyers, without the right to confront their accusers, without knowing the evidence or the charges against them, if any. Forever. It’s “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” Another secret prison in the midst of a military camp on an island run by an infamous dictator. Prisoner without a name, cell without a number.

Who are we? What have we become? The shining city on a hill, the beacon and bastion of refuge and freedom, a country born amidst the most magnificent ideals of freedom and justice, the greatest political heritage ever given to any people anywhere.

The last month’s news has been surreal indeed, even by the standards of this Presidency. The Senate has passed the McCain amendment outlawing torture of prisoners. I don’t know what’s more bizarre, the fact that some Senators voted against it, or the fact that the Senators think international law against torture needs to be fleshed out.

Then we have the President brazenly claiming, against mountains of evidence, that we simply don’t torture—but simultaneously threatening to veto the bill containing the McCain amendment, and refusing to say what the bill would require him to do differently.

The justification goes like this. We want the terrorists (read: anyone we take prisoner) to think we’ll torture them. So we can’t make it illegal to torture them. But trust us, we’re bluffing. We don’t torture. Never mind the childishness of this argument, as if the 300 million Americans were somehow keeping a big secret from the rest of the world. It reminds me of the goofball logic of nuclear deterrence, in which we have to believe the enemy is rational, and they have to believe we’re crazy. Here we are, self-appointed moral leaders of the world, deliberately broadcasting the message that we are amoral savages. No wonder terrorism is up.

When they say Saddam will be brought to justice, apparently they mean frontier justice. Human Rights Watch has released a report indicating that when Saddam and other former Iraqi officials go on trial October 19, they will likely be deprived of a fair trial.

Saddam has yet to be charged officially. His attorneys cannot get a written copy of the rules of the tribunal that will try him. These flaws alone suggest that his defense cannot possibly be ready any time soon, but there are more and more serious problems. The prosecution is not required to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. If the tribunal issues a death sentence, it is illegal for any Iraqi official to commute the sentence, and the sentence must be carried out with 30 days.

That the U.S. is no friend of international law goes without saying, but it’s clear that as George Galloway says, standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington. The so-called liberation of Iraq will culminate in a trial that would never be allowed to take place in a civilian court in this country. It is a pretense at a trial. Saddam is to be summarily executed.

Why not just dispatch a death squad and be done with it?