Terrorism « Democrashield.com

What We’re Up Against

June 6, 2009, 5:50 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Rights, Terrorism | Tags: Barack Obama, Choice, Daniel James Murray, Democrats, George Tiller, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City Bombing, Radicalism, Republicans, Waco

CRAZY

Dangerous times:

Authorities have arrested a man who allegedly told bank tellers while cleaning out his savings account in Utah that he was on a mission to kill President Barack Obama.

The Secret Service said Daniel James Murray, 36, was arrested Friday outside a casino in Laughlin, Nev., a gambling town 100 miles from Las Vegas on the Nevada-Arizona line.

[...]

On May 27, as a teller counted out bills no larger than $50, Murray delivered a rambling discourse on the probability of economic and social disorder, ending with “We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States,” a bank employee told the Secret Service.

Very dangerous times:

George Tiller Funeral Attended By Hundreds

[...]

[D]emonstrators showed up from Westboro Baptist Chursh, known for picketing soldiers’ funerals to present its message that their deaths are God’s punishment for Americans’ tolerance of homosexuality.

They held signs such as “God sent the shooter” and “Abortion is bloody murder.”

[All emphasis mine]

The last time we had a Democratic President, the right-wing culture of paranoia gave us Waco, the Oklahoma City Bombing and three dead abortion doctors. Now that we have another Democratic President, it looks like the right-wing culture of paranoia is making a comeback.

People are dying, yet conservatives seem all too content to stoke the fires of right-wing paranoia. My question is, how many people have to die before conservatives reign in their radical wing and tone down their radical rhetoric? How long until we have another tragic event carried out by a conservative activist who took their rhetoric to heart and went just one step too far?

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Closing Guantanamo (UPDATED X2)

May 21, 2009, 7:37 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, IOKIYAR, International, Iraq, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: Barack Obama, Democrats, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Guantanamo Bay, Hypocrisy, Lies, Republicans, Supermax

Once again, the GOP is engaging in blatant dishonesty–this time about the President’s plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and relocate its inmates.

The Republicans pretend like the Obama administration is proposing to just dump these guys off on a corner in Duluth or something is some of the most idiotic, willfully dishonest garbage I’ve ever heard. We Democrats are proposing putting these guys in supermax prisons, which are the most secure prisons in the world designed to house the worst of the worst; anyone who talks about releasing Guantanamo detainees “on American soil” or “into our communities” is misleading the public.

One of Dick Cheney’s main points today was that Guantanamo detainees are nothing like anyone we’ve ever dealt with before–but that’s just not true. America has been imprisoning terrorists in supermax prisons for decades: domestic terrorists like Eric Rudolph, Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski have all been kept in supermax.

We’ve also been holding Islamic jihadists in supermax prisons–Ramzi Yousef and Omar Abdel-Ragman, the men behind the 1993 WTC bombing, are in supermax prisons. So is 9-11 plotter Zacarias Moussaoui and Abdul Hakim Murad, an Al-Qaeda terrorist who planned to shoot 12 airlines out of the sky within a 48-hour period. And in the decades those men have been in supermax prisons, none of them have escaped, organized another terrorist attack, etc.

Republicans also pretend like we’ve never released anyone from Guantanamo before. In fact, before leaving office the Bush administration released nearly 500 Guantanamo detainees. In other words, George W. Bush released more people from Guantanamo than are currently being kept there. So why is moving detainees out of Guantanamo suddenly so controversial?

And, arguably, the Bush administration was more reckless in removing detainees from Guantanamo than the Obama administration will be–take this article from mid-January:

Six detainees were released from the U.S. military’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Department of Defense said Saturday.

Four of the men were transferred to Iraq, one to Algeria and one to Afghanistan, a military spokesman said.

[Emphasis mine]

So George W. Bush sent Guantanamo detainees back to the countries they came from, while Barack Obama wants to try them in American courts and put them in American prisons, which are the most secure in the world. You tell me–would you rather Guantanamo detainees be sent back to their home countries and have God knows what happen to them, or would you rather see them put on trial and incarcerated somewhere they will never leave?

The last stupid talking point I’ve heard is that, if you put Guantanamo detainees in American prisons, they’ll “radicalize” the prison population. But we’re talking about putting them in supermax prisons, which are nothing like the prisons you see on TV: supermax prisoners have very little contact with one another. They’re kept in tiny cells for 23 hours a day and are given only one hour of exercise in small, solitary exercise rooms.

Plus, jihadists are already kept in a separate area of the prison for just that reason:

A correctional officer at ADX told me that inmates are placed on the same range based on their compatibility. Another clue as to why jihadists are housed together comes from Bureau of Prisons director Harley Lappin’s 2003 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that his department’s strategy was to ensure that “inmates with terrorist ties do not have the opportunity to radicalize or recruit other inmates.” They are kept at ADX because, he noted, it’s “our most secure facility.”

[Emphasis mine]

In other words, nothing has changed–the Republicans are still as misleading and dishonest as ever. Once again, Republicans are playing political games with America’s national security and–to use their phrasing–undermining the President during wartime. Nobody who was part of (or even supported) the Bush administration can be trusted on this issue–shuttering Guantanamo while preserving America’s national security would be a huge blow to Bushism as a national security strategy, which is why Republicans are fighting so hard to make sure that Guantanamo stays open. It’s classic, craven, conservative CYA.

UPDATE: As for the “nobody will take Guantanamo detainees” argument–well, like I said, the supermax facility in Florence, Colorado, already houses Islamic terrorists.

Plus, there’s the town of Hardin, Montana:

Economic development officials in Hardin are looking at the soon-to-close detention facility in Guantanamo Bay as a possible fix for the jail sitting empty in Hardin.

[...]

Meanwhile, a 460-bed detention facility sits empty in Hardin. Built by Two Rivers Authority, the city’s economic development arm, the facility was meant to bring economic development to Hardin by creating more than 100 high-paying jobs.

While leaders continue to look for contracts to open the jail, which was completed in 2007, people in Hardin have approached Two Rivers executive director Greg Smith saying they have the answer: Get the contract to hold those prisoners from Guantanamo.

[...]

The Hardin City Council voted Tuesday to support Two Rivers’ efforts.

The council resolution states that the city “fully supports the efforts of the Two Rivers Authority to contact State and Federal officials for the purpose of inquiring into the possibility of housing Guantanamo detainees at the Two Rivers Authority in Hardin, Montana, and to determine whether the Two Rivers Detention Center could provide a safe and secure environment for housing said detainees.”

UPDATE II: As most of you have probably heard, the FBI recently broke up a terror plot being assembled by a group of homegrown Muslim converts.

The FBI went undercover in order to bust the plot, successfully foiling it before any damage could be done or any harm brought upon American citizens.

The alleged perpetrators have been arrested and will be tried in American courts; if guilty, they will be put in high-security American jails.

Most importantly, nobody had to be tortured or waterboarded for this plot to be prevented. Event though this plot involved an impending terrorist attack on American soil, it was the FBI, not the CIA or the Pentagon or anyone like that, who stepped in and kept America safe.

Even though these men are jihadists who wish to wage war against the United States, none of them will be thrown in Guantanamo Bay. They are going to be tried under American law and, when convicted, placed in America’s most secure jails; personally, I hope they end up in Florence’s supermax facility.

What this shows us is that both torture and Guantanamo Bay are unnecessary. We are fully capable of investigating and foiling terrorist attacks and incarcerating those responsible without having to break our laws or sacrifice our values. Whenever the GOP drags out their talking points about torture or Guantanamo, keep this story in mind.

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The Pelosi Diversion

May 19, 2009, 9:31 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Iraq, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Democrats, Incompetence, Intelligence, Iraq, John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Speaker Pelosi, Torture

So DC is consumed with trying to figure out what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about torture and when.

Strange, since I thought that the people who committed crimes were more important than the people who heard about them.

Still, what led to this media-created firestorm? First, some Congressional Democrats–Pelosi included–discussed launching a truth commission to determine who was responsible for the authorization/implementation of torture.

Second, the CIA released several documents showing that Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats were briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques” in 2002. There was no indication which techniques were described, nor was there indication of whether Congress was told those techniques were purely hypothetical or being implemented.

Nonetheless, Republicans jumped on the documents of proof that Speaker Pelosi knew about waterboarding in 2002 and was therefore somewhat culpable in the torture coverup. But that conclusion isn’t borne out by the evidence–it makes assumptions about what was in those briefings that aren’t grounded in reality.

The CIA alleged that Congress was told exactly what they were doing; Pelosi contradicted them and said the CIA was misleading the public, just like they had mislead Congress in 2002. Since there are no solid records of what the CIA told Congress–since these were classified intelligence briefings–we don’t know who is telling the truth.

Conservatives are taking the CIA’s side because it’s politically advantageous to them, but it’s not very sensible. It’s hardly as if the CIA is an objective, unbiased player in all this–doesn’t it serve the CIA’s interest to divert attention away from the implementation of torture and onto a political sideshow? I mean, if there was a comprehensive investigation into torture, wouldn’t it put the entire CIA under a microscope? They have a vested interest in clouding up the investigation with political posturing and conflict, since it saves them from having to confront–and be held responsible for–their role in torture.

Plus, the CIA is pulling together records of these briefings from whatever they have lying around from 2002. Remember, the CIA circa 2002 wasn’t a bastion of competence and credibility; that was about the same time they were gathering the faulty intelligence that led to the Iraq War. As much as John Boehner may cry about the poor maligned “intelligence professionals” I don’t think you can give them the benefit of the doubt.

This story is only a few days old and we’re already seeing evidence that the CIA’s recollection of events isn’t accurate. Take this, for instance:

Almost every briefing described in the document — including the September 2002 Pelosi briefing that’s directly at issue — refers to “EITs,” or enhanced interrogation techniques, as a subject that was discussed. But according to a former intelligence professional who has participated in such briefings, that term wasn’t used until at least 2006.

That’s not just an issue of semantics. The former intel professional said that by using the term in the recently compiled document, the CIA was being “disingenuous,” trying to make it appear that the use of such techniques was part of a “formal and mechanical program.” In fact, said the former intel pro, it wasn’t until 2006 that — amid growing concerns about the program among some in the Bush administration — the EIT program was formalized, and the “enhanced interrogation techniques” were properly defined and given a name.

And this:

Rep. David Obey has sent a letter to [CIA Director Leon] Panetta complaining that a staffer identified in the documents as being briefed was in fact denied access to the briefing.

And this:

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who chairs the oversight subcommittee of the House intelligence committee, told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz (h/t Democratic Underground):

On our subcommittee we are beginning an inquiry into a situation … initiated by the ranking minority member to look at a situation where the CIA did mislead the Congress … a documented issue of the CIA misleading the Congress.

A Schakowsky spokesman told TPMmuckraker that she was referring to the findings of a CIA inspector general report, portions of which were released last fall, which concluded that the agency had withheld crucial information from Congress and DOJ investigators who were probing whether CIA personnel committed crimes relating to the shooting of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001.

[Emphasis added]

And:

April 2002 (two briefings), September 2002: When Bob Graham first asked the CIA when they had briefed him on torture, they gave him a list of four dates, two in April 2002, and two in September 2002. However, when Graham reviewed his famously detailed notes, he discovered he had not attended any briefing on three of those dates (both April dates and one September date). The CIA conceded he was correct on the issue.

[...]

February 4, 2003: The CIA claims that, along with Pat Roberts and two staffers, it briefed John Rockefeller on EITs “in considerable detail” including “how the water board was used.” Rockefeller says, however, that he “was not present and was not later briefed individually by anyone in the intelligence community.”

And finally, from the CIA themselves:

As the agency has pointed out more than once, its list — compiled in response to congressional requests — reflects the records it has. These are notes, memos, and recollections, not transcripts and recordings.

[Emphasis mine]

In short, the CIA hasn’t proven themselves trustworthy in the past and they don’t appear to be very trustworthy on this particular issue.

Let me be clear: this entire issue is nothing more than a political witchhunt. The CIA is doing classic CYA, trying to keep their complicity in the torture debacle from becoming public. The GOP is piggybcking on the CIA’s CYA in order to attack Speaker Pelosi and Congressional Democrats.

They want to drive a wedge between Pelosi and the anti-torture left by trying to mixing Pelosi up into the Bush administration’s torture program, hoping she’ll be forced to justify at least some of it.

They want to throw enough dirt on Pelosi to keep her from launching a truth commission, in case she ends up implicated.

And most of all, they want a scalp. They want to destroy Pelosi’s career, make that the opening salvo in their much dreamed-of political comeback. All the GOP knows to do anymore is drum up a scandal and ride it to political success; it looks like they’re hoping like that particular chapter of their playbook still works.

Let’s not take our eye off the ball. The Bush administration authorized and implemented torture. They broke the law; they need to be held accountable. Whoever may have been told what when isn’t important; who actually justified torture and made it happen is. Don’t let the real criminals get away; don’t let them divert your attention onto trivial political distractions.

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Torture: False Equivalencies (UPDATED)

May 12, 2009, 4:26 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: CIA, Congress, Democrats, George W. Bush, Nancy Pelosi, Republicans, Shame, Spin, Torture

Recently, CIA released memos indicating that Nancy Pelosi, now Speaker of the House, was briefed on “enhanced interrogation techniques” in 2002.

What those memos don’t indicate is which particular “enhanced interrogation techniques” Pelosi was told about, or whether waterboarding was among them. Those memos also don’t indicate whether those techniques were described as something that American forces were using/planning to use, or whether they were described to Pelosi and other members of Congress as purely hypothetical.

Right now, it’s a he-said she-said conflict between the CIA and Pelosi, and who you give more credibility to depends on where you fall politically.

Regardless, Republicans are pretending that, since Pelosi was briefed in some capacity about hypothetical “enhanced interrogation techniques” that neither she nor any other Democrat has any standing left to criticize the Bush administration or Republicans for the use of torture.

Even if you assume that members of Congress had some idea of what techniques were being implemented, this is still a false equivalence. Apples and oranges. Because there is a huge difference between people who justified and implemented torture and people who were simply told about it.

This is the standard GOP technique when they’re caught in some kind of scandal: claim the Democrats are also culpable in order to diffuse the eventual fallout.

Republicans want to shut down the torture debate because they know that it’s going to end poorly for them. A lot of politicos with vested interests in seeing the investigation end before it even begins are out there making these false equivalencies are trying to poison the well.

UPDATE: And here’s the right’s new talking point: they’re claiming that the government has documents proving definitively that torture works, but the Obama administration is refusing to declassify them in order to make the GOP look bad.

I don’t know whether such documents exist or not, but something tells me they don’t–or, at least, they don’t say what Cheney & co. are claiming they do.

Remember, the Bush administration were masters of the strategic leak, declassifying memos or leaking information at opportune moments in order to provide political cover. If they had smoking gun documents that proved torture worked, why didn’t they declassify them when they still had the power to? Even if they waited until Bush’s very last day in office, if those documents didn’t contain information that needed to be kept top secret, why didn’t they release them to the public and vindicate themselves once and for all?

And here’s the thing–even if those documents don’t exist, it doesn’t matter for Cheney and the Republicans; they can continue to claim they do in order to portray the Obama administration as acting in bad faith. The administration can’t prove that nonexistent documents don’t exist, so the Republicans can simply spin any claims that those documents aren’t there as attempts to keep those documents covered up.

I don’t think the GOP is hoping to prove that torture worked; I think they’re simply trying to taint whatever investigation may be launched. Their claims about secret smoking gun documents dovetail nicely with their allegations that Pelosi knew something and their calls for a “full investigation”; conservatives are trying to taint any investigation into torture as inherently politically-biased.

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Torture Apologists (UPDATED X2)

April 23, 2009, 8:36 AM
Filed under: Conservatives, International, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: Dishonesty, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Los Angeles, Stupidity, Torture, Waterboarding

In order to defend the indefensible, conservatives are turning to their old standby: lying.

Right now, some of them are claiming that, because the United States waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a terrorist attack on L.A.’s Library Tower was thwarted.

Well, except for the fact that Bush administration documents claim that particular plot was thwarted in 2002, and KSM wasn’t apprehended by the United States until 2003.

So, we waterboarded KSM 183 times and what did we get? Useless intelligence on a terror plot that we had already thwarted.

Totally worth it, right?

UPDATE: And for those conservatives out there who say waterboarding isn’t torture–Christopher Hitchens had himself waterboarded, and he says it is. Until I see any of you guys strapped down with former Special Forces members pouring water down your throat, I’m going to trust his word over yours.

UPDATE II: Also, this:

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

[Emphasis added]

So, instead of preventing another 9/11, torture may actually be contributing to the next 9/11.

Heckuva job and all that.

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Paranoia Paranoia Everybody’s Coming To Get Me (UPDATED 2X)

April 22, 2009, 7:54 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, IOKIYAR, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: Craziness, Department of Homeland Security, Don't Call It A Comback, Extremism, George W. Bush, Hypocrisy

[Don't call it a comeback.]

A funny thing happened just a few weeks into the Obama administration–conservatives seem to have gone a bit off their rockers, so to speak.

For instance, the Department of Homeland Security finished a report analyzing the growth of–and threat from–”rightwing extremism” within the United States. You think that examining various political movements to determining whether or not they’ve become radicalized and pose a threat to the United States would be a good use of DHS’ time; I seem to remember a radical political movement killing quite a large number of Americans just a few years ago.

Unsurprisingly, though, conservatives went apoplectic over the report–apparently they decided that “rightwing extremist” referred to them and concluded that this was part of a grand conspiracy by the Obama administration to silence them.

As usual, our conservative friends aren’t exactly in touch with reality. Reports like this aren’t unprecedented–they’re not even uncommon. In fact, DHS they released a similar report on “leftwing extremism” back in January, and that report was commissioned by President Bush back when he was in office. Oh, and Bush’s FBI investigated left-wing groups that were “active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief” back in 2005. And Bush’s Department of Energy released a report in 2001 called “Left-Wing Extremism: The Current Threat.”

Yes, sometimes the government investigates domestic political movements for signs of violence, radicalism and extremism. In fact, that’s part of the reason DHS was created in the first place–to protect America from threats within her borders. And, honestly, if you read a government report about political radicalism and extremism and see yourself in it, the problem isn’t the government–it’s you.

Just remember, DHS was created by a Republican administration with the consent of a Republican-controlled Congress; the power they wield stems directly from Republican governance. As Glenn Greenwald said,”When you cheer on a Surveillance State, you have no grounds to complain when it turns its eyes on you.”

UPDATE: Oh goody:

House Republicans are calling on Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to step down or be fired in the wake of a controversial department memo that has sparked indignant battle cries from conservatives and some veterans.

“Singling out political opponents for working against the ruling party is precisely the tactic of every tyrannical government from Red China to Venezuela,” said Texas Rep. John Carter, a member of the party’s elected leadership who has organized an hour of floor speeches Wednesday night to call for Napolitano’s ouster. “The first step in the process is creating unfounded public suspicion of political opponents, followed by arresting and jailing any who continue speaking against the regime.”

This is becoming comical–it seems like every day conservatives find some new reason to crank the outrage up to 11 and break off the knob.

Yes, we get it–you’re unhappy you lost the election and that there’s a Democrat in the White House. But hell, this is already a dog-bites-man story: “CONSERVATIVES DISLIKE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT; HIS POLICIES.” How long until everyone just starts tuning your constant poutrage out?

UPDATE II: Look at me, I’m a prophet–I wrote this in August of 2007:

In college, my favorite professor was a conservative, a fourteen-year veteran of the Air Force and a big George W. Bush supporter; he taught my favorite course in college, which was on military force and foreign policy.

Despite the fact that he was a pro-Bush conservative, he was extremely wary of all the new powers being given to–and taken by–the President. This puzzled some of the more conservative students in the class, who asked him why he felt that way.

His response? You could trust George W. Bush with extraordinary amounts of power–he certainly did–but that didn’t matter. What mattered was, will you be able to trust the next President, and the President after that, with the same powers? Because once you give more power to the executive branch, it’s notoriously hard to take away–you’ve set a precedent.

And he was absolutely right. I don’t think many conservatives understand exactly what they’re doing—they’re not giving power to George W. Bush, they’re giving power to the Presidency itself. So if we wake up on January 20^th, 2009 to see the inauguration of President Hillary Clinton, she will have access to all the power, all the privilege, all the authority that George W. Bush has right now.

So, Republicans, next time you try to prop up your failing Presidency by throwing in a little more Executive power, ask yourself this question—would I trust Hillary with this? Or Barack? Or John Edwards?

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, conservatives.

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17,000

February 17, 2009, 8:01 PM
Filed under: Government, International, Progressives, Terrorism | Tags: 9/11, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Barack Obama, Democrats, FATA, Military, Pakistan, Taliban

That’s about how many additional troops are being sent to Afghanistan:

Defense and congressional officials say President Barack Obama has approved an increase in U.S. forces for the flagging war in Afghanistan. The Obama administration is expected to announce on Tuesday or Wednesday that it will send one additional Army brigade and an unknown number of Marines to Afghanistan this spring. One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the total is about 17,000 troops.

The Bush administration’s neglect of Afghanistan has left that country in a very precarious position. The Taliban cannot be allowed to once again take control of Afghanistan’s government, due to both their history of human rights abuses and the fact that their tolerance of Al-Qaeda made 9/11 possible.

In addition, Afghanistan shares a border with the rapidly-destabilizing Pakistan, thus ensuring that Pakistan’s security is directly related to Afghanistan’s. Pakistan’s security would be severely threatened if the war in Afghanistan were to fail, a potentially-dire situation considering Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

In addition, the federally-administered tribal areas of Pakistan–which border Afghanistan–has become Al-Qaeda’s last refuge; both countries need to be secured and stabilized to the point where the cells operating out of that area can be located and eliminated.

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Foot-In-Mouth Disease

February 5, 2009, 6:20 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Economics, Government, House, Polls, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: Budget, Congress, Economic Stimulus Package, National Republican Congressional Committee, NRCC, Pete Sessions, Republicans, Stupidity, Taliban

In a recent interview, Texas Congressman Pete Sessions (R) said something monumentally stupid about how the Republican Party needs to become an insurgency.

And it went downhill from there:

“Insurgency, we understand perhaps a little bit more because of the Taliban,” Sessions said during a meeting yesterday with Hotline editors. “And that is that they went about systematically understanding how to disrupt and change a person’s entire processes. And these Taliban — I’m not trying to say the Republican Party is the Taliban. No, that’s not what we’re saying. I’m saying an example of how you go about [sic] is to change a person from their messaging to their operations to their frontline message. And we need to understand that insurgency may be required when the other side, the House leadership, does not follow the same commands, which we entered the game with.” […]

When pressed to clarify, Sessions said he was not comparing the House Republican caucus to the Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalist group. “I simply said one can see that there’s a model out there for insurgency,” Sessions said before being interrupted by an aide.

Right. So Sessions isn’t saying the Republican Party is like the Taliban, just that the Republican Party should be like the Taliban. How is that an improvement?

Oh, and Pete Sessions isn’t just another Republican Congressman–he’s the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the branch of the GOP responsible for getting more Republicans elected to Congress. I’m not exactly sure how saying the GOP should be like the Taliban is supposed to help get Republicans elected, but maybe Sessions just knows something I don’t.

And yet, despite incidents like this, we’re all supposed to step aside and let the Republican Party run our economy. Tell me, why should we listen to any of these guys, again?

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What To Do About Gitmo (UPDATED X2)

January 26, 2009, 12:24 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, House, International, Iraq, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: 1993, Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Alcatraz Island, Bill Ritter, California, Colorado, Democrats, Eric Rudolph, Guantanamo Bay, John Boehner, John Walker Lindh, Nancy Pelosi, Oklahoma City, Prisons, Ramzi Yousef, Republicans, Richard Reid, San Francisco, Stupidity, Supermax, Ted Kaczynski, Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh, Zacarias Moussaoui

Now that Guantanamo Bay is closing, conservatives would have us believe that the detainees there represent the worst of the worst from Iraq and Afghanistan, even though no case against them has ever been presented and none of them have ever officially been found guilty of anything.

But now we’re learning that there aren’t even case files on many of the inmates at Guantanamo:

President Obama’s plans to expeditiously determine the fates of about 245 terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and quickly close the military prison there were set back last week when incoming legal and national security officials — barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees — discovered that there were no comprehensive case files on many of them.

Instead, they found that information on individual prisoners is “scattered throughout the executive branch,” a senior administration official said.

[...]

Several former Bush administration officials agreed that the files are incomplete and that no single government entity was charged with pulling together all the facts and the range of options for each prisoner. They said that the CIA and other intelligence agencies were reluctant to share information, and that the Bush administration’s focus on detention and interrogation made preparation of viable prosecutions a far lower priority.

[...]

“All but about 60 who have been approved for release,” assuming countries can be found to accept them, “are either high-level al-Qaeda people responsible for 9/11 or bombings, or were high-level Taliban or al-Qaeda facilitators or money people,” said [a] former official who, like others, insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters about such matters. He acknowledged that he relied on Pentagon assurances that the files were comprehensive and in order rather than reading them himself.

[Emphasis mine]

(Yes, because we all know how credible the Pentagon’s analyses are.)

But there is a strong chance that the above-quoted official is right about how dangerous some of the men at Guantanamo are. Unfortunately, we don’t know whether they’re actually guilty of the crimes they’re alleged to have committed ; in fact, for many of them there aren’t even any comprehensive case files to review. With the closing of Guantanamo, though, cases will be built against those inmates who have done something wrong.

The question is, what do we do with those inmates after the criminal justice system has their say? Well, the GOP’s solution is–and I’m not kidding–”send them to Nancy Pelosi’s district!” Minority Leader Boehner actually suggested sending them to San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island, even though Alcatraz hasn’t been a functional prison in decades. So, while the adults are trying to figure out what to do with Guantanamo’s inmates, the Republicans are content to fling rubber bands from the back of the classroom (and they wonder why nobody votes for them anymore).

Here’s how you deal with the inmates from Guantanamo–first, find a place for those 60 inmates already cleared for release, as well as those found not guilty in a court of law. Fortunately, several European nations have already agreed to take inmates found not guilty and who therefore pose no security risk.

Second, we need to determine where we will imprison those detainees actually found guilty of engaging in terrorist activity. That also won’t be too difficult–Colorado Governor Bill Ritter is open to the idea of housing inmates at Florence, CO’s supermax prison.

Supermax prisons are built to house the worst of the worst, the inmates who pose the greatest threat to civilians and who are too dangerous to even be allowed to interact with other inmates. Some of the current residents of the Florence supermax are: Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, American Taliban John Walker Lindh, 20th hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui, Oklahoma City bomber and Timothy McVeigh partner Terry Nichols, would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph and 1993 World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.

In other words, the American justice system already has a place where extraordinarily dangerous mass murderers are kept. And conditions at the Florence supermax are not ideal:

They exist alone in soundproof cells as small as 7 feet by 12 feet, with a concrete-poured desk, bed and stool, a small shower and sink, and a TV that offers religious and anger-management programs.

They are locked down 23 hours a day.

Larry Homenick, a former U.S. marshal who has taken prisoners to Supermax, said that there was a small triangular recreation area, known as “the dog run,” where solitary Supermax prisoners could occasionally get a glimpse of sky.

[...]

Life there is harsh. Food is delivered through a slit in the cell door. Prisoners don’t leave their cells to see a lawyer, a doctor or a prison official; those visitors must go to the cell.

[...]

The federal Supermax prison in Colorado was opened in November 1994. Nobody has escaped.

Inmates at supermax facilities are there for incapacitation, not punishment; there is no pretense that any of the inmates held there will ever be released or returned to society. Heck, that’s the entire point.

In other words, it’s just like Guantanamo Bay, except there’s no torture and the inmates there have actually been found guilty of something. Make no mistake about it, those at Guantanamo who are found guilty deserve to be locked up for life, but we should make sure that those being imprisoned indefinitely have actually done something to deserve it, first. And the unseriousness of the Republican Party on this issue is simply astounding.

UPDATE: On further consideration, I have two more things to add.

First, why do Republicans have such a problem with Obama releasing inmates from Guantanamo? The Bush administration released hundreds of inmates from Gitmo over the years with hardly a protest at all from Republicans.

At it’s peak, Guantanamo held nearly 600 detainees; now there are only 245, meaning that President Obama will end up releasing far fewer detainees than President Bush ever did. So why is there an outcry against doing this now when there wasn’t one before?

Second, this entire Guantanamo mess was created by the Bush administration in the first place. They figured they would throw these guys in a hole and let some future administration deal with them. What did Republicans think would happen–that we’d keep those detainees there forever? That 50 years from now we’d have a few hundred grizzled terrorists under lock and key at a military prison in Cuba? Didn’t they stop and think that, at some point, something would have to be done with the inmates at Guantanamo?

The Bush administration created a system they knew was untenable in the long term. Instead of simply trying the detainees and incarcerating the guilty ones in a supermax prison (or a high security military prison like Ft. Leavenworthth), they chose to dump them in a hole somewhere without a trial and didn’t even bother compiling complete case files on them.

So now we have a few hundred detainees of dubious guilt being kept indefinitely in a military prison and we have to figure out what to do with them. If Republicans want to complain about Obama closing Gitmo, maybe they should be blaming the Bush administration for instituting this system in the first place and leaving us with 245 men with possible (but unproven) guilt who we have to now deal with. Had the Bush administration come up with a better solution years ago, President Obama wouldn’t have to worry about what to do about Gitmo.

UPDATE II: Someone’s walking back his claims:

According to the Jan. 25 account, Charles D. “Cully” Stimson, who served as deputy assistant defense secretary for detainee affairs in 2006-2007, “said he had persistent problems in attempts to assemble all information on individual cases.”

[...]

But in a brief interview to double-check his statement Monday afternoon, Stimson maintained, “I never said they were in disarray.”

“They were spread throughout the government – that’s true,” Stimson added. He said his aides could obtain the records via a computer data search or a specific request to the CIA or other agency.

“Not all information was in a single database. It was appropriately compartmented in appropriate places in the federal government,” he said.

[...]

“I may be that Obama’s officials,” Stimson said, “or at least some of some of them, don’t have any government experience.”

See, the files aren’t in disarray! The information just isn’t all in one place. In fact, it’s scattered across a variety of government agencies. And you have to go to each separately in order to get complete information on any detainee. And you have to have an intricate knowledge of the federal bureaucracy to figure the whole system out.

Stimson is currently employed by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, which tells you everything you need to know about this correction. And it’s not much of a correction–saying that the information is spread across a variety of agencies and that you need to know the federal bureaucracy like the back of your hand to get it all means that, yes, the case files are in disarray. If they weren’t, all the information would be in one place easily accessible to top-ranking officials.

Nice try, though.

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Phoenix Rising From The Legacy Of Ashes

January 25, 2009, 8:59 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Iraq, Progressives, Terrorism | Tags: Abu Ghraib, Al-Qaeda, Barack Obama, Democrats, Gaza, George W. Bush, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Israel, Muslim World, Republicans, Torture

Just a few days into office, President Obama has already become an obstacle to Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups:

Obama has been called a “hypocrite,” a “killer” of innocents, an “enemy of Muslims.” He was even blamed for the Israeli military assault on Gaza, which began and ended before he took office.

“He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection,” an al-Qaeda spokesman declared in a grainy Internet video this month.

The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under al-Qaeda’s skin. The departure of George W. Bush deprived al-Qaeda of a polarizing American leader who reliably drove recruits and donations to the terrorist group.

With Obama, al-Qaeda faces an entirely new challenge, experts say: a U.S. president who campaigned to end the Iraq war and to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and who polls show is well liked throughout the Muslim world.

[Emphasis mine]

Of course, Obama’s honeymoon with the Muslim world–and with Americans, for that matter–won’t last forever.

But what this underscores is what a lot of we progressives have been saying for a long time: that George Bush has been a boon for terrorist recruitment. Everything from Iraq to Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib to waterboarding and “enhanced interrogation techniques” have vindicated the poisonous propaganda terrorists have spread throughout the Muslim world about the United States. Having a president who rejects those policies poses a significant threat to terrorist groups, who have used the strife and bloodshed of the past 8 years or to advance their savage agendas.

Global terrorism increased under George Bush because of the policies he employed; hopefully President Obama will heal some of the wounds that have infected the Muslim world’s view of the United States.

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Intelligence

January 23, 2009, 11:36 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: 9/11, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Democrats, George W. Bush, Marc Thiessen, Republicans

Here’s a former Bush administration official discussing President Obama’s first few days in office:

The CIA program [Obama] is effectively shutting down is the reason why America has not been attacked again after 9/11. He has removed the tool that is singularly responsible for stopping al-Qaeda from flying planes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, Heathrow Airport, and London’s Canary Warf, and blowing up apartment buildings in Chicago, among other plots. It’s not even the end of inauguration week, and Obama is already proving to be the most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office.

[Emphasis added]

Those are some pretty strong accusations. I wonder, who is this person? What kind of expertise do they have to know that the CIA interrogation program singlehandedly prevented terrorist attacks? Or to be able to say definitively that Obama is the “most dangerous” president we’ve ever had? Is he CIA? DOD? State Department? Military?

Nope. That’s from former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, who gives no evidence at all to support his argument (like there is any).

In case any of us ever feel the urge to temper our opinion of the Bush adminsitration or to think that things maybe weren’t as bad as we remembered, just keep in mind the kind of far-right hacks that George Bush and the Republican Party spent 8 years elevating to the highest reaches of government. George Bush fully deserves his place as one of the worst presidents in American history, and the Republican Party deserves a ton of blame for propping him up for so long.

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Three Orders (UPDATED)

January 23, 2009, 1:01 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: Abu Ghraib, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Democrats, Executive Orders, Extraordinary Rendition, Guantanamo Bay, Interrogation, Stupidity, Terrorism, Torture

President Obama has signed a series of executive orders that will close Guantanamo Bay, outlaw torture and shutter the CIA’s secret detention centers. Naturally, conservatives are now up in arms, alleging that these orders are somehow going to be a boon to terrorists.

First off, do conservatives know anything about terrorism? Do they really think that a bunch of people willing to die for their cause are really going to be deterred by the prospect of being sent to Gitmo? Do conservatives really think that the risk of going to prison causes terrorists around the globe to unstrap their suicide vests, lay down their AK-47s and pack in their RPGs?

These guys don’t care about the consequences of their actions. And isn’t that what makes them so dangerous–they don’t care what happens to them as long as they accomplish their goal?

Second, it’s not like these orders will simply throw open Guantanamo’s gates and let everyone free. If Gitmo detainees really are guilty of the heinous crimes they’re alleged to have committed then prosecutors will build a case against them and ensure they are tried, convicted and imprisoned. So, effectively, all this executive order really means is that the inmates at Guantanamo will be trading one prison for another.

Third, you’re incredibly naive if you don’t think that torture and the existence of places like Guantanamo and the CIA’s detention centers haven’t been used by terrorist groups as recruiting tools. The images from Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay and tales of waterboarding and harsh interrogation tactics have been broadcast across the Muslim world in order to drum up support for groups like Al-Qaeda.

And what do we get in return for spurring all this terrorist recruitment? Very little–if any–usable intelligence. And hey, don’t take my word for it that torture doesn’t work–listen to the guy who got significant amounts of effective, actionable intelligence by using conventional, non-violent interrogation techniques.

Look, I understand why conservatives are opposed to what Obama is doing–for years, they have dutifully defended Bush’s system of interrogation, secret prisons and indefinite detention. They have been working off the assumption that those are the only things standing between America and more terrorist attacks.

But if the Obama administration ends those policies and effectively processes terrorists through the criminal justice system, it will prove that Bush and his supporters were wrong and that the constitutional violations perpetuated by the Bush administration were unnecessary.

UPDATE: And beware suspect reporting like this:

Pentagon: Gitmo detainees returning to fight

At least 61 are believed to have signed up for terror missions upon release

Because:

The Seton Hall Center for Policy and Research has issued a report which rebuts and debunks the most recent claim by the Department of Defense (DOD) that “61, in all, former Guantánamo detainees are confirmed or suspected of returning to the fight.”

Professor Denbeaux of the Center for Policy & Research has said that the Center has determined that “DOD has issued ‘recidivism’ numbers 43 times, and each time they have been wrong—this last time the most egregiously so.”

Denbeaux stated: “Once again, they’ve failed to identify names, numbers, dates, times, places, or acts upon which their report relies. Every time they have been required to identify the parties, the DOD has been forced to retract their false IDs and their numbers. They have included people who have never even set foot in Guantánamo—much less were they released from there. They have counted people as ‘returning to the fight’ for their having written an Op-ed piece in the New York Times and for their having appeared in a documentary exhibited at the Cannes Film Festival. The DOD has revised and retracted their internally conflicting definitions, criteria, and their numbers so often that they have ceased to have any meaning—except as an effort to sway public opinion by painting a false portrait of the supposed dangers of these men.

And beware stories like this poorly-sourced gem:

A Saudi man released from Guantanamo after spending nearly six years inside the U.S. prison camp is now the No. 2 of Yemen’s branch, according to a purported Internet statement from the terror network.

[...]

The Internet statement, which could not immediately be verified, said al-Shihri was the group’s second-in-command in Yemen, and his prisoner number at Guantanamo was 372.

“He managed to leave the land of the two shrines (Saudi Arabia) and join his brothers in al-Qaida,” the statement said.

[Emphasis mine]

I think it goes without saying that questionable, poorly-sourced stories on the internet shouldn’t dictate America’s counterterrorism policies.

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The Schadenfraud (UPDATED X2)

January 22, 2009, 11:19 AM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Iraq, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Democrats, Ethics Reform, Extraordinary Rendition, First 100 Days, Guantanamo Bay, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Stupidity, Torture

So now that President Obama has been inaugurated and sworn in (twice) and has finally gotten to work, conservatives have coughed up a novel new talking point: Obama will be Bush’s third term.

Yup, apparently due to Obama’s inaugural address, conservatives are crowing that Obama will govern just like Bush, and that all of us stupid liberals are going to be so surprised when we find out that Obama and Bush are almost completely identical.

Well, except for this:

Obama to Shut Guantánamo Site and C.I.A. Prisons

President Obama is expected to sign executive orders Thursday directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year, government officials said.

The orders, which would be the first steps in undoing detention policies of former President George W. Bush, would rewrite American rules for the detention of terrorism suspects.

And this over here:

In a grinding first full day as president, Barack Obama moved decisively to distance himself from the previous administration, pushing top military leaders for a plan to withdraw combat troops from Iraq and issuing a string of orders to make government more open.

And don’t forget this:

Moving quickly to undo the Bush administration’s regime of secrecy, President Obama on Wednesday repealed a 2001 executive order granting former presidents, and even vice presidents, the ability to keep documents secret long past the 12 years allowed by law.

It was one of Mr. Obama’s first official acts, and was hailed as a rebuke of the past eight years. In announcing the order, Mr. Obama said it will even tie his own hands.

And dude’s only been in office two days.

Of course, none of those stories are news to conservatives–in fact, most of them have been criticizing Obama for implementing those very policies. They don’t think Obama is going to be identical to Bush; they’re just looking for some tidbit they can use to mock progressives to make themselves feel better, a sad little attempt to drum up some fake schadenfreude (or schadenfraud).

Sorry, guys, but that dog won’t hunt. Nobody expects Obama to do a complete 180 from the previous administration on every single issue imaginable. But–as we’ve seen–he has set out to reverse some of the most disastrous, idiotic, self-defeating policy decisions of the last 8 years.

And, like I said, dude’s only been in office two days. Not a bad start for #44 if I do say so myself.

UPDATE: And then there’s this:

One of President Barack Obama’s first acts Tuesday was to put the brakes on all pending regulations that the Bush administration tried to push through in its waning days.

The order went out shortly after Obama was inaugurated president, in a memorandum signed by new White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

Former President George W. Bush’s administration moved into overdrive in the last year or so on a host of new regulatory proposals. Now the Obama administration will review everything that is still pending.

UPDATE II: And this:

Obama has just rescinded the rule that would have let Bush’s heirs continue to claim executive privilege over his papers:

The Executive Order on Presidential Records brings those principles [of openness and tranparency] to presidential records by giving the American people greater access to these historic documents. This order ends the practice of having others besides the President assert executive privilege for records after an administration ends. Now, only the President will have that power, limiting its potential for abuse. And the order also requires the Attorney General and the White House Counsel to review claims of executive privilege about covered records to make sure those claims are fully warranted by the Constitution.

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Goodbye Gitmo, Part 2

January 13, 2009, 4:11 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Progressives, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: Barack Obama, Catherine Powell, Courts, Cuba, Democrats, Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay, Judiciary, Mark P. Denbeaux, Republicans, Torture, Transition

Here’s more on President-elect Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo Bay:

President-elect Barack Obama plans to issue an executive order on his first full day in office directing the closing of the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, people briefed by Obama transition officials said Monday.

But experts say it is likely to take many months, perhaps as long as a year, to empty the prison that has drawn international criticism since it received its first prisoners seven years ago this week. One transition official said the new administration expected that it would take several months to transfer some of the remaining 248 prisoners to other countries, decide how to try suspects and deal with the many other legal challenges posed by closing the camp.

People who have discussed the issues with transition officials in recent weeks said it appeared that the broad outlines of plans for the detention camp were taking shape. They said transition officials appeared committed to ordering an immediate suspension of the Bush administration’s military commissions system for trying detainees.

In addition, people who have conferred with transition officials said the incoming administration appeared to have rejected a proposal to seek a new law authorizing indefinite detention inside the United States. The Bush administration has insisted that such a measure is necessary to close the Guantánamo camp and bring some detainees to the United States.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly said he wants to close the camp. But in an interview on Sunday on ABC, he indicated that the process could take time, saying, “It is more difficult than I think a lot of people realize.” Closing it within the first 100 days of his administration, he said, would be “a challenge.”

[...]

Aside from analyzing intelligence and legal filings on each of the remaining detainees, diplomats and legal experts have said the new administration will need to begin an extensive new international effort to resettle as many as 150 or more of the remaining men. Portugal and other European countries have recently broken a long diplomatic standoff, saying they would work with the new administration and might accept some detainees who cannot be sent to their home countries because of concerns about their potential treatment.

[...]

Catherine Powell, an associate professor of law at Fordham, said transition officials appeared most interested at a meeting last month in showing international critics that they were returning to what they see as traditional American legal values.

“They are really looking for tools that we have in our existing system short of creating an indefinite detention system,” Ms. Powell said.

Mark P. Denbeaux, a Seton Hall law professor who has been a prominent lawyer for Guantánamo detainees, said that at a briefing he attended with senior officials of the transition last month the officials seemed to have decided to suspend the military commissions immediately.

“Their position is they’re a complete and utter failure,” Mr. Denbeaux said.

[Emphasis mine]

Closing Gitmo will take a lot of time, nobody is doubting that. Every case will have be reviewed as thoroughly as possible, and afterwards determinations will have to be made as to the fate of the detainees. In particular, decisions will have to be made on who to prosecute, who to release and how to release them.

But the fact that Obama will begin the end of Guantanamo Bay in his first week is a huge step, and it’s a clear rebuke of the neoconservative, Bushean policies of indefinite detainment and prisoner abuse–policies that belong in the dustbin of American history.

Closing Gitmo will be the crucial first step in reforming America’s battered image abroad and restoring the rule of law in all that the United States of America does. It’s about time.

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Legacy Of Ashes, Part 2.

January 11, 2009, 5:18 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Progressives, Terrorism | Tags: 9/11, Barack Obama, Counterterrorism, Democrats, Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Homeland Security, Military, National Counterterrorism Center, National Security, RAND Corporation, Republicans

Here’s another nail in the “at least Bush kept us safe” coffin:

bushbubblepng

nctcdeaths3dpng

If global terrorism has increased under Bush’s watch, how exactly did he keep us safe? Just because there hasn’t been another major terrorist attack doesn’t mean there won’t be one, and Bush’s will leave behind a world with far more terrorism than there was when he took office. Even if a major terrorist attack occurs under the Obama administration, the roots of such an attack will be in the growth of global terrorism that occurred under Bush.

So we haven’t been attacked, but the likelihood we will be attacked is higher than ever. If this is the best thing George W. Bush and his supporters can take away from the past eight years, he truly has left us all with a legacy of ashes.

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Legacy Of Ashes

January 10, 2009, 9:13 PM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Terrorism | Tags: 9/11, Al-Qaeda, Foreign Policy, George W. Bush, Legacy, Lockheed Martin, Military, Norm Augustine, Republicans, Stupidity

Norm Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin, writes about Bush’s legacy:

If Nothing Else, We’ve Been Safe

[...]

President Bush’s overall greatest achievement was that America has not suffered another 9/11 tragedy.

First off, Augustine conveniently ignores the fact that the first 9/11 tragedy happened on Bush’s watch, putting him dead last among American Presidents in terms of preventing major terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. Saying Bush was successful for preventing two major terrorist attacks is like saying Herbert Hoover was successful because he prevented two major economic collapses; it entirely misses the point.

Second, Augustine assumes that the fact that there hasn’t been another major terrorist attack is due solely to Bush’s counterterrorism policies, an obviously flawed assumption. Groups like Al-Qaeda spend years preparing for major attacks; the fact that there hasn’t been another 9/11 could simply be due to the fact that nobody has tried to carry out another 9/11. It’s like saying you have a magic ring that wards off man-eating tigers because, ever since you started wearing that ring, you’ve never been attacked by man-eating tigers. Your explanation could be correct, sure, but it’s far more likely there are other factors at play there you’re not considering.

Plus, global terrorism has been increasing in recent years, so I don’t see how you can argue that we’re safer since terrorism is more common than it was before 9/11. Overall, it’s a pretty silly argument to make and it sets an extraordinarily low bar to success. As Brad at Sadly, No! says:

The fact we haven’t (yet!) all died gruesome, hideous deaths under Bush’s watch is considered an “achievement?” Are you serious? This is considered a standard for success?

Now, I don’t know if there’s some kind of document out there that lists bare minimum requirements for being president. But if there is one, I’ll bet that making sure the majority of your citizens don’t get senselessly slaughtered is at the very top of it.

Yeah, pretty much.

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Necessary Evils (UPDATED)

January 9, 2009, 9:05 AM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, International, Media, Progressives, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Terrorism | Tags: Barack Obama, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Israel, Palestine, Republicans

This is a good development:

The incoming Obama administration is prepared to abandon George Bush’s doctrine of isolating Hamas by establishing a channel to the Islamist organisation, sources close to the transition team say.

The move to open contacts with Hamas, which could be initiated through the US intelligence services, would represent a definitive break with the Bush presidency’s ostracising of the group. The state department has designated Hamas a terrorist organisation, and in 2006 Congress passed a law banning US financial aid to the group.

[...]

There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he is being urged by advisers to initiate low-level or clandestine approaches, and there is growing recognition in Washington that the policy of ostracising Hamas is counter-productive. A tested course would be to start contacts through Hamas and the US intelligence services, similar to the secret process through which the US engaged with the PLO in the 1970s.

Our policy of isolating groups like Hamas isn’t working–they’re going to launch attacks regardless of whether or not the United States talks to them. But, by talking to them, we have an opportunity to prevent those attacks (and the wars that result from them).

Conservatives won’t be happy about this, but their opinion on this matter is hardly credible–after 8 years of Bush-style isolation, Hamas and Israel are fighting a full-blown war; whatever the point of isolation was, it clearly didn’t work.

I figure there will be two arguments conservatives use against engaging with groups like Hamas:

By talking to them we legitimize them.

Let’s face it, they don’t need the United States for legitimacy. Terrorist groups have enough popular support to make them dangerous, which is what makes them a problem worthy of our attention in the first place. Plus, in the last Palestinian elections Hamas won by a wide margin; they’ve already been legitimized through popular support. By isolating them we’re not de-legitimizing them, we’re just ignoring opportunities to neutralize them as a threat.

We can’t appease terrorist groups.

There is a difference between talking to someone and negotiating with them, and there’s an even bigger difference between negotiating with someone and appeasing them. Nobody is talking about making any kind of concessions to–or even agreement with–Hamas; America doesn’t give anything up by establishing low-level contact with them.

UPDATED: But I do agree with this:

Whether one agrees with the notion of the U.S. opening a direct diplomatic channel to Hamas or not, talking about it right now is very poor timing. If nothing else it makes it appear that Hamas is being rewarded for its behavior in the past month.

If low-level talks with Hamas are initiated, there needs to be space between when the current conflict and when talks start; America definitely can’t be seen as rewarding Hamas, even if that’s not why this is happening.

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BREAKING: Next CIA Chief Announced

January 5, 2009, 2:50 PM
Filed under: Breaking, Conservatives, Government, International, Progressives, Terrorism

MSNBC is reporting it and the New York Times is confirming it:

President-elect Barack Obama has selected Leon E. Panetta, the former congressman and White House chief of staff, to take over the Central Intelligence Agency, an organization that Mr. Obama criticized during the campaign for using interrogation methods he decried as torture, Democratic officials said Monday.

Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. If confirmed by the Senate, he will take control of the agency most directly responsible for hunting senior Al Qaeda leaders around the globe, but one that has been buffeted since the Sept. 11 attacks by leadership changes and morale problems.

Given his background, Mr. Panetta is a somewhat unusual choice to lead the C.I.A., an agency that has been unwelcoming to previous directors perceived as outsiders, such as Stansfield M. Turner and John M. Deutch. But his selection points up the difficulty Mr. Obama had in finding a C.I.A. director with no connection to controversial counterterrorism programs of the Bush era.

Is Panetta better than torture supporter John Brennan? Yes. But this still strikes me as an odd pick, considering that Panetta has no intelligence experience whatsoever. His management skills might be exemplary, but you’d think the head of an intelligence agency should know a thing or two about intelligence.

Then again, as the New York Times piece notes:

[T]wo of the agency’s most successful directors, John McCone and George H.W. Bush, had little or no intelligence intelligence experience when they took over at C.I.A.

So this might not be as odd of a pick as it first seems. Obama needs someone who can come to the agency without any major baggage, particularly support of the Bush administration’s questionable tactics.

Perhaps after eight years of implementing some disastrous policies and tactics, the CIA needs an outsider to clean things up. I guess we’ll just have to see how this gambit plays out.

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Cut And Dry

January 4, 2009, 9:02 AM
Filed under: Conservatives, Government, Progressives, Terrorism | Tags: Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Military, Supreme Court, Torture

Barack Obama is going to have to make a big decision just one month into his Presidency:

Just a month after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, he must tell the Supreme Court where he stands on one of the most aggressive legal claims made by the Bush administration — that the president may order the military to seize legal residents of the United States and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime.

There should be nothing in their brief which validates the Bush administration’s lawless, extra-constitutional views on indefinite detainment. I hope this is a cut and dry issue for the Obama administration. I really, really do.

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BREAKING: Israel Invades Gaza

January 3, 2009, 3:57 PM
Filed under: Breaking, Government, International, Terrorism | Tags: Foreign Policy, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Military, Palestine

The Israel-Palestine conflict has escalated into a ground war:

Israeli tanks and troops swept across the border into Gaza on Saturday night, opening a ground war against the militant group Hamas after a week of intense airstrikes.

The Israeli military said in a statement that the objective of the ground campaign was “to destroy the terrorist infrastructure of Hamas,” the militant Islamic group that controls the area, “while taking control of some of the rocket launching sites” that Hamas uses to fire at southern Israel.

The ground campaign brought new risks to the Israeli Army, not least because Hamas has had 18 months since Israel withdrew from the territory to smuggle in more lethal weapons against tanks and troops. Hamas’s more sophisticated arsenal has been on display over the last weeks, as it has launched scores of longer range rockets from Gaza into Israeli cities.

Israeli officials said they want to strike a hard blow against Hamas, improve Israeli deterrence and significantly change the security situation in southern Israel, where residents have been plagued by rocket fire out of Gaza for years.

[...]

Officials have stated repeatedly that the aim is not to fully reoccupy Gaza. But it was clear that the military was leaving the door open for a long-term operation; a spokesman said Saturday that the ground push “will continue on the basis of ongoing situational assessments.” And it remained an open question whether Israel would try to eliminate the Hamas government.

In all likelihood, Israel will either topple the Hamas government, or at least cripple their ability to govern enough to effectively topple them.

Unfortunately, this is a setback for both sides. The Palestinians lost the ground they gained when Israel withdrew from Gaza and turned over control of the territory. And Israel’s invasion will probably strengthen Hamas’ standing with the Palestinian people, radicalizing them and making future progress more difficult.

1 Comment

“Constitutional Conservatism”

January 3, 2009, 6:01 AM
Filed under: Conservatives, Economics, Government, Health Care, Immigration, International, Iraq, Progressives, Race, Rights, Terrorism | Tags: Abortion, Brown v. Board of Ed, Bush v. Gore, Choice, Courts, Democrats, Education, Foreign Policy, Gay Marriage, Hoover Institution, Judiciary, Medicare, Peter Berkowitz, Privatization, Republicans, Social Security, Supreme Court

The Hoover Institution’s Peter Berkowitz has a new philosophy that will help conservatives find their way out of the wilderness. Calling it “constitutional conservatism,” he lays out some positions (many of which have surprisingly little to do with the Constitution):

-An economic program, health-care reform, energy policy and protection for the environment grounded in market-based solutions.

First, good job with the specifics. Second, how can anyone seriously advocate “market-based” solutions considering the current state of our economy? In light of the recent economic collapse, maybe we shouldn’t run our government like those Wall Street businesses that are currently going under.

- A foreign policy that recognizes America’s vital national security interest in advancing liberty abroad but realistically calibrates undertakings to the nation’s limited knowledge and restricted resources.

In other words, Berkowitz is promising more Iraqs, but we’ll get them right next time for sure. I find that highly questionable.

- A commitment to homeland security that is as passionate about security as it is about law, and which is prepared to responsibly fashion the inevitable, painful trade-offs.

By “painful trade-offs,” he means trading off constitutional rights for security. Well, not really security, just the illusion of security which doesn’t significantly reduce the threat of terrorism. Just like the past few years.

- A focus on reducing the number of abortions and increasing the number of adoptions.

We Democrats already have this talking point; we call it “safe, legal and rare.”

- Efforts to keep the question of same-sex marriage out of the federal courts and subject to consideration by each state’s democratic process.

Why aren’t courts part of the democratic process? The judiciary is a separate and equal branch of the government; I’m not sure why it’s being singled out to have it’s powers limited more than any other branch.

Plus, since same-sex marriage raises constitutional questions–particularly regarding the 14th amendment and equal protection–doesn’t it belong in federal court? I mean, that’s what the federal judiciary does–they decide constitutional questions. If you had kept Brown v. Board of Ed. out of the federal courts and subjected segregation to “each state’s democratic processes,” segregation might still exist. Don’t we sometimes need the courts to decide certain issues?

- Measures to combat illegal immigration that are emphatically pro-border security and pro-immigrant.

Like those efforts to improve border security and provide immigrants with a path to citizenship, which were torpedoed by right-wing Republicans? If Berkowitz can get the right-wing Republicans on board, this could be a good idea.

- A case for school choice as an option that enhances individual freedom while giving low-income, inner-city parents opportunities to place their children in classrooms where they can obtain a decent education.

More warmed-over right-wing rhetoric. What sense does it make to abandon the public school system and essentially privatize education? If we had privatized Social Security and Medicare our country would be worse off right now, so why are we going to go down that road with education?

- A demand that public universities abolish speech codes and vigorously protect liberty of thought and discussion on campus.

With all the problems our country is facing, he’s talking about university speech codes? Since when has this been an issue anybody but right-wing ideologues care about? Talk about being out of touch…

- The appointment of judges who understand that their function is to interpret the Constitution and not make policy, and, therefore, where the Constitution is most vague, recognize the strongest obligation to defer to the results of the democratic process.

Again, there’s that assumption that courts aren’t part of the “democratic process.” And Berkowitz contradicts himself–he says courts should interperet the Constitution, but then he says when it’s vague the courts should “defer to the results of the democratic process,” whatever that means. Aren’t vagueries the reason we need judicial interpretation in the first place?

And let’s face it, conservatives don’t care about “judicial activism” when the courts are ruling in their favor; if you want to see one of the most egregious examples of “judicial activism” in modern history, just look up Bush v. Gore. The GOP certainly didn’t have a problem with that one.

The GOP’s problems won’t be fixed with band-aids. Rehashing the same policies and throwing in bizarre, pointless ideas like eliminating university speech codes aren’t going to solve conseravtism’s problems. The Republican Party is out of touch, and–unfortunately for them–Peter Berkowitz’s laundry list of ideas isn’t fixing that at all.

(h/t Digby)

2 Comments

Israel-Palestine: Unintended Consequences

December 31, 2008, 9:51 AM
Filed under: International, Media, Terrorism | Tags: Daoud Kuttab, Egypt, Fatah, Foreign Policy, Hamas, Israel, Jordan, Middle East, Palestine, Syria

Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab writes in the Washington Post:

The disproportionate and heavy-handed Israeli attacks on Gaza have been a bonanza for Hamas. The movement has renewed its standing in the Arab world, secured international favor further afield and succeeded in scuttling indirect Israeli-Syrian talks and direct Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. It has also greatly embarrassed Israel’s strongest Arab neighbors, Egypt and Jordan.

While it is not apparent how this violent confrontation will end, it is abundantly clear that the Islamic Hamas movement has been brought back from near political defeat while moderate Arab leaders have been forced to back away from their support for any reconciliation with Israel

In all likelihood, Israel is probably trying to weaken Hamas, not strengthen them; but, just like the war in Iraq, their attempt to reduce terrorism simply ended up increasing it. Violence and victiminzation are extremely effective recruiting tool for terrorist organizations, who wave the bloody shirt of what they portray as western aggression to radicalize Middle Eastern Muslims and swell their own ranks.

It’s in Israel’s–and probably Palestine’s–best interests for Hamas to become weakend, so they will be replaced by the more moderate Fatah in the next elections. Unfortunately for everyone, Israel’s heavy-handed actions (even though they do have a right to defend themselves, their response was a bit over the top), which have lead to the deaths of between 300 and 400 Palestinians, has virtually guaranteed that Hamas will remain in power, further complicating the road to peace.

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Legacy

December 30, 2008, 3:43 AM
Filed under: 2008 Election, Conservatives, Economics, Environment, Government, International, Right-Wing Noise Machine, Scandal, Terrorism | Tags: 9/11, George W. Bush, Hamas, Hurricane Katrina, Incompetence, Israel, Louisiana, New Orleans, New York, New York City, Osama Bin Laden, Palestine, Texas

While hundreds of people are being killed in fighting between Israel and Palestine, with Israel declaring “all-out war” on Palestinian group Hamas, the 43rd President of the United States is on vacation.

And he is refusing to end his vacation to go back to Washington and deal with the crisis. Which isn’t surprising, considering 43’s status as the most vacation-happy president in all of American history, despite the myriad crises that have occurred during his tenure.

That, above all else, will be the legacy of George W. Bush: inaction.

In August, 2001, while on vacation, George W. Bush received an intelligence briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In US.” That briefing warned about terrorist recruitment and activity in New York City and cautioned that Osama Bin Laden was planning to use hijacked airplanes in a terrorist attack. Bush remained on vacation.

In August, 2005, President Bush was on another vacation in Texas. In Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, threatening that city’s unfinished network of protective levees. It was known well in advance what kind of damage a storm of Katrina’s caliber would do, leaving much of the city underwater and disproportionately harming those too old, too sick or too poor to evacuate. Even after Katrina made landfall, Bush remained on vacation.

Despite what he and his advisers may say, history will not remember George W. Bush kindly–it’s more likely he will be remembered as a modern-day Nero, fiddling away while the world around him burned.

The rotting core of the Bush administration was incompetence, which is timeless. Historians far into the future will still remember what that word means, and that’s the word they will use to describe America’s government from 2001-2009.

That, unfortunately for all of us, will be the legacy of George W. Bush. History will only ever remember him more kindly if it turns out to be easier than expected to fix the messes he created. There is just too little good in the past eight years to build a remotely salvageable legacy out of.

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Israel-Palestine: Break The Cycle

December 29, 2008, 12:27 AM
Filed under: International, Terrorism | Tags: Foreign Policy, Israel, Middle East, Military, Palestine

The cycle of violence needs to end.

The war between Israel and Palestine has been raging for generations, and the most recent fighting are the latest battle in that war. But at some point, someone needs to step up and end the conflict.

Part of the problem here is that both sides are simultaneously defensible and indefensible. Israel says they have a right to defend themselves against attacks using whatever force is necessary, even if it’s disproportionate. They say Hamas kills innocent people with the sanction of the Palestinian people. They say they have to respond to terrorism with significant force in order to both kill terrorist leaders and and dissuade potential terrorists.

The Palestinians say they have a right to defend themselves, too. They say that Israel is the aggressor here, first by taking their land and then by occupying and blockading their territories, leading to oppression and starvation. They say Israel’s use of force against them is disproportionate and indiscriminate, leading to the deaths of innocents. They say they’re simply trying to protect their people against future Israeli aggression.

Both sides are right and wrong. Innocent people are killed on both sides of the border. Collective punishment is exacted by–and on–both sides. That’s the problem with a cycle of violence–it’s cyclical. Both sides feed the other, leading to an intractable war.

I’m not sure if any of the players on either side can act in good faith. But there is only so much the US and the EU and the rest of the world can do–at some point, someone is going to have to stand up and break the cycle.

Look at Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi–they saw a cycle of violence and oppression and they set out to end it, once and for all. They were criticized for being weak and lacking the resolve to fight their enemies. They were attacked, beaten, arrested and thrown in jail, but they never resorted to that which they sought to eliminate. And, in the end, they won because they never wavered from their commitment to peace.

Someone in this fight is going to have to commit themselves to ending the violence and stick to it, no matter what. You can’t create peace by engaging in war, just like you can’t heal with sickness or feed with hunger. The question is, who will step up and commit themselves to peace? Who in this fight has the guts to respond to violence with non-violence, to eschew the easy road of retaliation for the harder road of reconciliation?

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Israel-Palestine, Pt. 2

December 28, 2008, 4:54 PM
Filed under: Breaking, Immigration, International, Terrorism | Tags: Egypt, Foreign Policy, Gaza, Israel, Military, Palestine, War

There are new developments in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Palestinians are now crossing the border into Egypt in order to flee Israeli rocket strikes in the Gaza strip. One group of Palestinians has even “commandeered a bulldozer,” according to some reports, in order to create more openings along the border.

In response, Egypt’s military has opened fire Palestinians crossing the border:

Egyptian border guards have opened fire on Palestinians who breached the border to escape Israel’s assault on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

An Egyptian security official said there were at least five breaches along the nine-mile border and hundreds of Palestinian residents were pouring in.

At least 300 Egyptian border guards have been rushed to the area to reseal the border, the official added on condition on anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

A resident of the Gaza Strip side of the border, Fida Kishta, said that Egyptian border guards opened fire to drive back the Palestinians.

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