According to this Justice Department memo from Alberto R. Gonzales, legal cousel to Bush (and been so since governor of Texas), the White House was not only aware of the issue of torturing Iraqis, it condoned it. That's the kind of moral "Christians" we have in office and why only John Kerry can use a new broom to sweep them out of office and allow our nation to set things right in the world.
washingtonpost.com
Justice Dept. Memo Says Torture 'May Be Justified'
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 13, 2004; 6:30 PM
Today washingtonpost.com is posting a copy of the Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum (PDF) "Re: Standards of Conduct for Interrogation under 18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A," from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to President Bush.
The memo was the focus of a recent article in The Washington Post.
The memo was written at the request of the CIA. The CIA wanted authority to conduct more aggressive interrogations than were permitted prior to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The interrogations were of suspected al Qaeda members whom the CIA had apprehended outside the United States. The CIA asked the White House for legal guidance. The White House asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for its legal opinion on the standards of conduct under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane and Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
The Office of Legal Counsel is the federal government's ultimate legal adviser. The most significant and sensitive topics that the federal government considers are often given to the OLC for review. In this case, the memorandum was signed by Jay S. Bybee, the head of the office at the time. Bybee's signature gives the document additional authority, making it akin to a binding legal opinion on government policy on interrogations. Bybee has since become a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Another memorandum , dated March 6, 2003, from a Defense Department working group convened by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to come up with new interrogation guidelines for detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, incorporated much, but not all, of the legal thinking from the OLC memo. The Wall Street Journal first published the March memo.
At a recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, senators asked Attorney General John D. Ashcroft to release both memos. Ashcroft said he would not discuss the contents of the Justice and Pentagon memos or turn them over to the committees. A transcript of that hearing is also available.
President Bush spoke on the issue of torture Thursday, saying he expected U.S. authorities to abide by the law. He declined to say whether he believes U.S. law prohibits torture. Here is a link to the transcript of the president's press conference, which included questions and answers on torture.
The Post deleted several lines from the memo that are not germane to the legal arguments being made in it and that are the subject of further reporting by The Post.
Monday, June 14, 2004
Waxman Raises New Questions on Cheney
washingtonpost.com
Waxman Raises New Questions on Cheney
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 14, 2004; Page A04
As the government prepared for war in Iraq in the fall of 2002, a senior political appointee in the Defense Department chose oil services giant Halliburton Co. to secretly plan how to repair Iraqi oil fields, and then briefed Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and other White House officials about the sole-source contract before it was granted.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the new details about the $1.8 million contract, disclosed last week in a Pentagon briefing for congressional staff members, raise new questions about whether the vice president or his office played any role in decisions to give what became billions of dollars worth of government business to Halliburton, where Cheney was chief executive from 1995 to 2000.
Cheney has said neither he nor his office influenced decisions to give contracts to Halliburton.
In a letter to Cheney yesterday, Waxman said the circumstances "appear to contradict your assertions that you were not informed about the Halliburton contracts."
"They also seem to contradict the Administration's repeated assertions that political appointees were not involved in the award of contracts to Halliburton," wrote Waxman, senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and one of the sharpest critics of the government's ties to Halliburton.
Kevin Kellems, a spokesman for Cheney, played down the importance of Waxman's letter, suggesting it was politically motivated. "We stand by our previous statements," Kellems said.
The letter describes a briefing at which Michael H. Mobbs, a political appointee who works closely with undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith, acknowledged that he selected Halliburton for Iraq reconstruction work. Mobbs that he believed Halliburton's KBR subsidiary was most qualified, in part because it was familiar with plans under development by U.S. Central Command, the letter said.
Before making a final decision, Mobbs briefed top officials from several executive agencies, in a group known as the Deputies Committee, to ensure they had no objections. Among those at the meeting were Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's top aide, and White House staff members. After that meeting, Waxman's letter says, a White House official told Feith the group did not object.
A career lawyer from the Army Materiel Command, responsible for another contract with Halliburton for meals and laundry services, said that arrangement should not be expanded to include contingency planning for Iraq's oil infrastructure. "These legal reservations were overruled, however," in part because a Defense Department attorney working with Mobbs intervened, according to Waxman's letter.
Kellems said neither Cheney nor Libby had read Waxman's letter.
Waxman also raised questions about a March 5, 2003, e-mail by an Army Corps of Engineers official that suggested a larger no-bid contract to Halliburton subsidiary was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Stephen Browning, a civilian regional director in the Corps, said in an interview last week that he wrote the note after he and retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner met with Feith about plans to declassify the earlier $1.8 million contract with KBR.
According to Browning, Feith said he had already informed Cheney's office. Three days later, KBR got a $7 billion contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure. The war began March 20, 2003. At the briefing last week, Browning repeated his story, Waxman's letter said.
"These disclosures mean that your office was informed about the Halliburton contracts at least twice at key moments," Waxman wrote.
Waxman asked Cheney to "clarify the nature of your involvements" in the contract awards.
Waxman Raises New Questions on Cheney
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 14, 2004; Page A04
As the government prepared for war in Iraq in the fall of 2002, a senior political appointee in the Defense Department chose oil services giant Halliburton Co. to secretly plan how to repair Iraqi oil fields, and then briefed Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and other White House officials about the sole-source contract before it was granted.
Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said the new details about the $1.8 million contract, disclosed last week in a Pentagon briefing for congressional staff members, raise new questions about whether the vice president or his office played any role in decisions to give what became billions of dollars worth of government business to Halliburton, where Cheney was chief executive from 1995 to 2000.
Cheney has said neither he nor his office influenced decisions to give contracts to Halliburton.
In a letter to Cheney yesterday, Waxman said the circumstances "appear to contradict your assertions that you were not informed about the Halliburton contracts."
"They also seem to contradict the Administration's repeated assertions that political appointees were not involved in the award of contracts to Halliburton," wrote Waxman, senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee and one of the sharpest critics of the government's ties to Halliburton.
Kevin Kellems, a spokesman for Cheney, played down the importance of Waxman's letter, suggesting it was politically motivated. "We stand by our previous statements," Kellems said.
The letter describes a briefing at which Michael H. Mobbs, a political appointee who works closely with undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith, acknowledged that he selected Halliburton for Iraq reconstruction work. Mobbs that he believed Halliburton's KBR subsidiary was most qualified, in part because it was familiar with plans under development by U.S. Central Command, the letter said.
Before making a final decision, Mobbs briefed top officials from several executive agencies, in a group known as the Deputies Committee, to ensure they had no objections. Among those at the meeting were Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's top aide, and White House staff members. After that meeting, Waxman's letter says, a White House official told Feith the group did not object.
A career lawyer from the Army Materiel Command, responsible for another contract with Halliburton for meals and laundry services, said that arrangement should not be expanded to include contingency planning for Iraq's oil infrastructure. "These legal reservations were overruled, however," in part because a Defense Department attorney working with Mobbs intervened, according to Waxman's letter.
Kellems said neither Cheney nor Libby had read Waxman's letter.
Waxman also raised questions about a March 5, 2003, e-mail by an Army Corps of Engineers official that suggested a larger no-bid contract to Halliburton subsidiary was "coordinated" with Cheney's office. Stephen Browning, a civilian regional director in the Corps, said in an interview last week that he wrote the note after he and retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner met with Feith about plans to declassify the earlier $1.8 million contract with KBR.
According to Browning, Feith said he had already informed Cheney's office. Three days later, KBR got a $7 billion contract to restore Iraq's oil infrastructure. The war began March 20, 2003. At the briefing last week, Browning repeated his story, Waxman's letter said.
"These disclosures mean that your office was informed about the Halliburton contracts at least twice at key moments," Waxman wrote.
Waxman asked Cheney to "clarify the nature of your involvements" in the contract awards.
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go
The people who know are calling Bush's foreign policy a failure. John Kerry will bring America back to its place in the world community as a respected leader.
Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go
The 26 ex-diplomats and military leaders say his foreign policy has harmed national security. Several served under Republicans.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer
June 13, 2004
WASHINGTON — A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November.
The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.
"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration," said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's father and one of the group's principal organizers.
Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, include 20 former U.S. ambassadors, appointed by presidents of both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia.
Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East under President Bush's father. Hoar is a prominent critic of the war in Iraq.
Some of those signing the document — such as Hoar and former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill A. McPeak — have identified themselves as supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But most have not endorsed any candidate, members of the group said.
It is unusual for so many former high-level military officials and career diplomats to issue such an overtly political message during a presidential campaign.
A senior official at the Bush reelection campaign said he did not wish to comment on the statement until it was released.
But in the past, administration officials have rejected charges that Bush has isolated America in the world, pointing to countries contributing troops to the coalition in Iraq and the unanimous passage last week of the U.N. resolution authorizing the interim Iraqi government.
One senior Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking said he did not think the group was sufficiently well-known to create significant political problems for the president.
The strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said the signatories were making an argument growing increasingly obsolete as Bush leans more on the international community for help in Iraq.
"Their timing is a little off, particularly in the aftermath of the most recent U.N. resolution," the strategist said. "It seems to me this is a collection of resentments that have built up, but it would have been much more powerful months ago than now when even the president's most disinterested critics would say we have taken a much more multilateral approach" in Iraq.
But those signing the document say the recent signs of cooperation do not reverse a basic trend toward increasing isolation for the U.S.
"We just felt things were so serious, that America's leadership role in the world has been attenuated to such a terrible degree by both the style and the substance of the administration's approach," said Harrop, who served as ambassador to four African countries under Carter and Reagan.
"A lot of people felt the work they had done over their lifetime in trying to build a situation in which the United States was respected and could lead the rest of the world was now undermined by this administration — by the arrogance, by the refusal to listen to others, the scorn for multilateral organizations," Harrop said.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., who was appointed by Reagan as ambassador to the Soviet Union and retained in the post by President Bush's father during the final years of the Cold War, expressed similar views.
"Ever since Franklin Roosevelt, the U.S. has built up alliances in order to amplify its own power," he said. "But now we have alienated many of our closest allies, we have alienated their populations. We've all been increasingly appalled at how the relationships that we worked so hard to build up have simply been shattered by the current administration in the method it has gone about things."
The GOP strategist noted that many of those involved in the document claimed their primary expertise in the Middle East and suggested a principal motivation for the statement might be frustration over Bush's effort to fundamentally reorient policy toward the region.
"For 60 years we believed in quote-unquote stability at the price of liberty, and what we got is neither liberty nor stability," the strategist said. "So we are taking a fundamentally different approach toward the Middle East. That is a huge doctrinal shift, and the people who have given their lives, careers to building the previous foreign policy consensus, see this as a direct intellectual assault on what they have devoted their lives to. And it is. We think what a lot of people came up with was a failure — or at least, in the present world in which we live, it is no longer sustainable."
Sponsors of the effort counter that several in the group have been involved in developing policy affecting almost all regions of the globe.
The document will echo a statement released in April by a group of high-level former British diplomats condemning Prime Minister Tony Blair for being too closely aligned to U.S. policy in Iraq and Israel. Those involved with the new group said their effort was already underway when the British statement was released.
The signatories said Kerry's campaign played no role in the formation of their group. Phyllis E. Oakley, the deputy State Department spokesman during Reagan's second term and an assistant secretary of state under Clinton, said she suspected "some of them [in the Kerry campaign] may have been aware of it," but that "the campaign had no role" in organizing the group.
Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director, also said that the Kerry campaign had not been involved in devising the group's statement.
The document does not explicitly endorse Kerry, according to those familiar with it. But some individual signers plan to back the Democrat, and others acknowledge that by calling for Bush's removal, the group effectively is urging Americans to elect Kerry.
"The core of the message is that we are so deeply concerned about the current direction of American foreign policy … that we think it is essential for the future security of the United States that a new foreign policy team come in," said Oakley.
Much of the debate over the document in the days ahead may pivot on the extent to which it is seen as a partisan document.
A Bush administration ally said that the group failed to recognize how the Sept. 11 attacks required significant changes in American foreign policy. "There's no question those who were responsible for policies pre-9/11 are denying what seems as the obvious — that those policies were inadequate," said Cliff May, president of the conservative advocacy group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
"This seems like a statement from 9/10 people [who don't see] the importance of 9/11 and the way that should have changed our thinking."
Along with Hoar and McPeak, others who have signed it are identified with the Democratic Party.
Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., though named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan, supported Clinton in 1992. Crowe has endorsed Kerry. Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner served as Carter's director of central intelligence and has also endorsed Kerry. Matlock said he was a registered Democrat during most of his foreign service career, though he voted for Reagan in 1984 and the elder Bush twice and now is registered as an independent.
Several on the group's list were appointed to their most important posts under Reagan and the elder Bush. These include Matlock and Harrop, as well as Arthur A. Hartman, who served as Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1981 through 1987; H. Allen Holmes, an assistant secretary of state under Reagan; and Charles Freeman, ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the elder Bush.
Many on the list have not been previously identified with any political cause or party. Several "are the kind who have never spoken out before," said James Daniel Phillips, former ambassador to Burundi and the Congo.
Oakley, Harrop and Matlock said the effort began this year. Matlock said it was sparked by conversations among "colleagues who had served in senior positions around the same time, most of them for the Reagan administration and for the first Bush administration."
Oakley said frustration over the Iraq war was "a large part" of the impetus for the statement, but the criticism of President Bush "goes much deeper."
The group's complaint about Bush's approach largely tracks Kerry's contention that the administration has weakened American security by straining traditional alliances and shifting resources from the war against Al Qaeda to the invasion of Iraq.
Oakley said the statement would argue that, "Unfortunately the tough stands [Bush] has taken have made us less secure. He has neglected the war on terrorism for the war in Iraq. And while we agree that we are in unprecedented times and we face challenges we didn't even know about before, these challenges require the cooperation of other countries. We cannot do it by ourselves."
Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go
The 26 ex-diplomats and military leaders say his foreign policy has harmed national security. Several served under Republicans.
By Ronald Brownstein
Times Staff Writer
June 13, 2004
WASHINGTON — A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November.
The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.
"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration," said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's father and one of the group's principal organizers.
Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, include 20 former U.S. ambassadors, appointed by presidents of both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia.
Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East under President Bush's father. Hoar is a prominent critic of the war in Iraq.
Some of those signing the document — such as Hoar and former Air Force Chief of Staff Merrill A. McPeak — have identified themselves as supporters of Sen. John F. Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. But most have not endorsed any candidate, members of the group said.
It is unusual for so many former high-level military officials and career diplomats to issue such an overtly political message during a presidential campaign.
A senior official at the Bush reelection campaign said he did not wish to comment on the statement until it was released.
But in the past, administration officials have rejected charges that Bush has isolated America in the world, pointing to countries contributing troops to the coalition in Iraq and the unanimous passage last week of the U.N. resolution authorizing the interim Iraqi government.
One senior Republican strategist familiar with White House thinking said he did not think the group was sufficiently well-known to create significant political problems for the president.
The strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also said the signatories were making an argument growing increasingly obsolete as Bush leans more on the international community for help in Iraq.
"Their timing is a little off, particularly in the aftermath of the most recent U.N. resolution," the strategist said. "It seems to me this is a collection of resentments that have built up, but it would have been much more powerful months ago than now when even the president's most disinterested critics would say we have taken a much more multilateral approach" in Iraq.
But those signing the document say the recent signs of cooperation do not reverse a basic trend toward increasing isolation for the U.S.
"We just felt things were so serious, that America's leadership role in the world has been attenuated to such a terrible degree by both the style and the substance of the administration's approach," said Harrop, who served as ambassador to four African countries under Carter and Reagan.
"A lot of people felt the work they had done over their lifetime in trying to build a situation in which the United States was respected and could lead the rest of the world was now undermined by this administration — by the arrogance, by the refusal to listen to others, the scorn for multilateral organizations," Harrop said.
Jack F. Matlock Jr., who was appointed by Reagan as ambassador to the Soviet Union and retained in the post by President Bush's father during the final years of the Cold War, expressed similar views.
"Ever since Franklin Roosevelt, the U.S. has built up alliances in order to amplify its own power," he said. "But now we have alienated many of our closest allies, we have alienated their populations. We've all been increasingly appalled at how the relationships that we worked so hard to build up have simply been shattered by the current administration in the method it has gone about things."
The GOP strategist noted that many of those involved in the document claimed their primary expertise in the Middle East and suggested a principal motivation for the statement might be frustration over Bush's effort to fundamentally reorient policy toward the region.
"For 60 years we believed in quote-unquote stability at the price of liberty, and what we got is neither liberty nor stability," the strategist said. "So we are taking a fundamentally different approach toward the Middle East. That is a huge doctrinal shift, and the people who have given their lives, careers to building the previous foreign policy consensus, see this as a direct intellectual assault on what they have devoted their lives to. And it is. We think what a lot of people came up with was a failure — or at least, in the present world in which we live, it is no longer sustainable."
Sponsors of the effort counter that several in the group have been involved in developing policy affecting almost all regions of the globe.
The document will echo a statement released in April by a group of high-level former British diplomats condemning Prime Minister Tony Blair for being too closely aligned to U.S. policy in Iraq and Israel. Those involved with the new group said their effort was already underway when the British statement was released.
The signatories said Kerry's campaign played no role in the formation of their group. Phyllis E. Oakley, the deputy State Department spokesman during Reagan's second term and an assistant secretary of state under Clinton, said she suspected "some of them [in the Kerry campaign] may have been aware of it," but that "the campaign had no role" in organizing the group.
Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director, also said that the Kerry campaign had not been involved in devising the group's statement.
The document does not explicitly endorse Kerry, according to those familiar with it. But some individual signers plan to back the Democrat, and others acknowledge that by calling for Bush's removal, the group effectively is urging Americans to elect Kerry.
"The core of the message is that we are so deeply concerned about the current direction of American foreign policy … that we think it is essential for the future security of the United States that a new foreign policy team come in," said Oakley.
Much of the debate over the document in the days ahead may pivot on the extent to which it is seen as a partisan document.
A Bush administration ally said that the group failed to recognize how the Sept. 11 attacks required significant changes in American foreign policy. "There's no question those who were responsible for policies pre-9/11 are denying what seems as the obvious — that those policies were inadequate," said Cliff May, president of the conservative advocacy group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
"This seems like a statement from 9/10 people [who don't see] the importance of 9/11 and the way that should have changed our thinking."
Along with Hoar and McPeak, others who have signed it are identified with the Democratic Party.
Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., though named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Reagan, supported Clinton in 1992. Crowe has endorsed Kerry. Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner served as Carter's director of central intelligence and has also endorsed Kerry. Matlock said he was a registered Democrat during most of his foreign service career, though he voted for Reagan in 1984 and the elder Bush twice and now is registered as an independent.
Several on the group's list were appointed to their most important posts under Reagan and the elder Bush. These include Matlock and Harrop, as well as Arthur A. Hartman, who served as Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1981 through 1987; H. Allen Holmes, an assistant secretary of state under Reagan; and Charles Freeman, ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the elder Bush.
Many on the list have not been previously identified with any political cause or party. Several "are the kind who have never spoken out before," said James Daniel Phillips, former ambassador to Burundi and the Congo.
Oakley, Harrop and Matlock said the effort began this year. Matlock said it was sparked by conversations among "colleagues who had served in senior positions around the same time, most of them for the Reagan administration and for the first Bush administration."
Oakley said frustration over the Iraq war was "a large part" of the impetus for the statement, but the criticism of President Bush "goes much deeper."
The group's complaint about Bush's approach largely tracks Kerry's contention that the administration has weakened American security by straining traditional alliances and shifting resources from the war against Al Qaeda to the invasion of Iraq.
Oakley said the statement would argue that, "Unfortunately the tough stands [Bush] has taken have made us less secure. He has neglected the war on terrorism for the war in Iraq. And while we agree that we are in unprecedented times and we face challenges we didn't even know about before, these challenges require the cooperation of other countries. We cannot do it by ourselves."
Friday, June 11, 2004
An Economic Legend
June 11, 2004
NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
An Economic Legend
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," a reporter defends prettifying history: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." That principle has informed many of this week's Reagan retrospectives. But let's not be bullied into accepting the right-wing legend about Reaganomics.
Here's a sample version of the legend: according to a recent article in The Washington Times, Ronald Reagan "crushed inflation along with left-wing Keynesian economics and launched the longest economic expansion in U.S. history." Actually, the 1982-90 economic expansion ranks third, after 1991-2001 and 1961-69 — but even that comparison overstates the degree of real economic success.
The secret of the long climb after 1982 was the economic plunge that preceded it. By the end of 1982 the U.S. economy was deeply depressed, with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. So there was plenty of room to grow before the economy returned to anything like full employment.
The depressed economy in 1982 also explains "Morning in America," the economic boom of 1983 and 1984. You see, rapid growth is normal when an economy is bouncing back from a deep slump. (Last year, Argentina's economy grew more than 8 percent.)
And the economic expansion under President Reagan did not validate his economic doctrine. His supply-side advisers didn't promise a one-time growth spurt as the economy emerged from recession; they promised, but failed to deliver, a sustained acceleration in economic growth.
Inflation did come down sharply on Mr. Reagan's watch: it was running at 12 percent when he took office, but was only 4.5 percent when he left. But this victory came at a heavy price. For much of the Reagan era, the economy suffered from very high unemployment. Despite the rapid growth of 1983 and 1984, over the whole of the Reagan administration the unemployment rate averaged a very uncomfortable 7.5 percent.
In other words, it all played out just as "left-wing Keynesian economics" predicted.
In the late 1970's most economists believed that eliminating the high inflation then prevailing in the United States would require inflicting a lot of pain: the economy would have to go through an extended period of high unemployment and depressed output. Once the inflation had been wrung out of the system, the unemployment rate could go back down. And that's exactly what happened. In fact, it's instructive to put a graph showing the actual track of unemployment and inflation during the 1980's next to a figure from a 1978-vintage textbook showing a hypothetical disinflation scenario; the two look almost identical.
Ronald Reagan didn't decide to inflict that pain. The architect of America's great disinflation was Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman. In fact, Mr. Volcker began the process in 1979, when he adopted the tight monetary policy that caused that record unemployment rate. He was also mainly responsible for the recovery that followed: it was his decision to loosen up on the money supply in the summer of 1982 that set the stage for the rebound a few months later.
There was, in short, nothing magical about the Reagan economy. The United States did, eventually, experience an economic miracle — but not until Bill Clinton's second term. Only then did the economy achieve a combination of rapid growth, low unemployment and quiescent inflation that confounded the conventional economic wisdom. (I'm aware, by the way, that this plain statement of fact will generate an avalanche of angry mail. Irrational Clinton hatred remains a powerful force in American life.)
It's a measure of how desperate the faithful are to believe in the Reagan legend that one often reads conservative commentators claiming that the Clinton-era miracle was the result of Mr. Reagan's policies, and indeed vindicated them. Think about it: Mr. Reagan passed his big tax cut right at the beginning of his presidency, and mainly raised taxes thereafter. So we're supposed to believe that a tax cut passed in 1981 was somehow responsible for an economic miracle that didn't materialize until around 1997. Apply the same timing to the good things that happened on Mr. Reagan's watch, and you'll discover that Lyndon Johnson deserves the credit for "Morning in America."
So here's my plea: let's honor Mr. Reagan for his real achievements, not dishonor him — and mislead the nation — with false claims about his economic record.
NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
An Economic Legend
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In the movie "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," a reporter defends prettifying history: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." That principle has informed many of this week's Reagan retrospectives. But let's not be bullied into accepting the right-wing legend about Reaganomics.
Here's a sample version of the legend: according to a recent article in The Washington Times, Ronald Reagan "crushed inflation along with left-wing Keynesian economics and launched the longest economic expansion in U.S. history." Actually, the 1982-90 economic expansion ranks third, after 1991-2001 and 1961-69 — but even that comparison overstates the degree of real economic success.
The secret of the long climb after 1982 was the economic plunge that preceded it. By the end of 1982 the U.S. economy was deeply depressed, with the worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression. So there was plenty of room to grow before the economy returned to anything like full employment.
The depressed economy in 1982 also explains "Morning in America," the economic boom of 1983 and 1984. You see, rapid growth is normal when an economy is bouncing back from a deep slump. (Last year, Argentina's economy grew more than 8 percent.)
And the economic expansion under President Reagan did not validate his economic doctrine. His supply-side advisers didn't promise a one-time growth spurt as the economy emerged from recession; they promised, but failed to deliver, a sustained acceleration in economic growth.
Inflation did come down sharply on Mr. Reagan's watch: it was running at 12 percent when he took office, but was only 4.5 percent when he left. But this victory came at a heavy price. For much of the Reagan era, the economy suffered from very high unemployment. Despite the rapid growth of 1983 and 1984, over the whole of the Reagan administration the unemployment rate averaged a very uncomfortable 7.5 percent.
In other words, it all played out just as "left-wing Keynesian economics" predicted.
In the late 1970's most economists believed that eliminating the high inflation then prevailing in the United States would require inflicting a lot of pain: the economy would have to go through an extended period of high unemployment and depressed output. Once the inflation had been wrung out of the system, the unemployment rate could go back down. And that's exactly what happened. In fact, it's instructive to put a graph showing the actual track of unemployment and inflation during the 1980's next to a figure from a 1978-vintage textbook showing a hypothetical disinflation scenario; the two look almost identical.
Ronald Reagan didn't decide to inflict that pain. The architect of America's great disinflation was Paul Volcker, the Fed chairman. In fact, Mr. Volcker began the process in 1979, when he adopted the tight monetary policy that caused that record unemployment rate. He was also mainly responsible for the recovery that followed: it was his decision to loosen up on the money supply in the summer of 1982 that set the stage for the rebound a few months later.
There was, in short, nothing magical about the Reagan economy. The United States did, eventually, experience an economic miracle — but not until Bill Clinton's second term. Only then did the economy achieve a combination of rapid growth, low unemployment and quiescent inflation that confounded the conventional economic wisdom. (I'm aware, by the way, that this plain statement of fact will generate an avalanche of angry mail. Irrational Clinton hatred remains a powerful force in American life.)
It's a measure of how desperate the faithful are to believe in the Reagan legend that one often reads conservative commentators claiming that the Clinton-era miracle was the result of Mr. Reagan's policies, and indeed vindicated them. Think about it: Mr. Reagan passed his big tax cut right at the beginning of his presidency, and mainly raised taxes thereafter. So we're supposed to believe that a tax cut passed in 1981 was somehow responsible for an economic miracle that didn't materialize until around 1997. Apply the same timing to the good things that happened on Mr. Reagan's watch, and you'll discover that Lyndon Johnson deserves the credit for "Morning in America."
So here's my plea: let's honor Mr. Reagan for his real achievements, not dishonor him — and mislead the nation — with false claims about his economic record.
Wednesday, June 09, 2004
Planet Reagan
Planet Reagan
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 07 June 2004
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
- e.e. cummings, "Buffalo Bill's Defunct"
Ronald Reagan is dead now, and everyone is being nice to him. In every aspect, this is appropriate. He was a husband and a father, a beloved member of a family, and he will be missed by those he was close to. His death was long, slow and agonizing because of the Alzheimer's Disease which ruined him, one drop of lucidity at a time. My grandmother died ten years ago almost to the day because of this disease, and this disease took ten years to do its dirty, filthy, wretched work on her.
The dignity and candor of Reagan's farewell letter to the American people was as magnificent a departure from public life as any that has been seen in our history, but the ugly truth of his illness was that he lived on, and on, and on. His family and friends watched as he faded from the world of the real, as the simple dignity afforded to all life collapsed like loose sand behind his ever more vacant eyes. Only those who have seen Alzheimer's Disease invade a mind can know the truth of this. It is a cursed way to die.
In this mourning space, however, there must be room made for the truth. Writer Edward Abbey once said, "The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads."
The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye.
How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days?
The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard.
Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see.
Mainstream media journalism today is a shameful joke because of Reagan's deregulation policies. Once upon a time, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that the information we receive - information vital to the ability of the people to govern in the manner intended - came from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. Reagan's policies annihilated the Fairness Doctrine, opening the door for a few mega-corporations to gather journalism unto themselves. Today, Reagan's old bosses at General Electric own three of the most-watched news channels. This company profits from every war we fight, but somehow is trusted to tell the truths of war. Thus, the myths are sold to us.
The deregulation policies of Ronald Reagan did not just deliver journalism to these massive corporations, but handed virtually every facet of our lives into the hands of this privileged few. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are all tainted because Reagan battered down every environmental regulation he came across so corporations could improve their bottom line. Our leaders are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the corporations that were made all-powerful by Reagan's deregulation craze. The Savings and Loan scandal of Reagan's time, which cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars, is but one example of Reagan's decision that the foxes would be fine guards in the henhouse.
Ronald Reagan believed in small government, despite the fact that he grew government massively during his time. Social programs which protected the weakest of our citizens were gutted by Reagan's policies, delivering millions into despair. Reagan was able to do this by caricaturing the "welfare queen," who punched out babies by the barnload, who drove the flashy car bought with your tax dollars, who refused to work because she didn't have to. This was a vicious, racist lie, one result of which was the decimation of a generation by crack cocaine. The urban poor were left to rot because Ronald Reagan believed in 'self-sufficiency.'
Because Ronald Reagan could not be bothered to fund research into 'gay cancer,' the AIDS virus was allowed to carve out a comfortable home in America. The aftershocks from this callous disregard for people whose homosexuality was deemed evil by religious conservatives cannot be overstated. Beyond the graves of those who died from a disease which was allowed to burn unchecked, there are generations of Americans today living with the subconscious idea that sex equals death.
The veneer of honor and respect painted across the legacy of Ronald Reagan is itself a myth of biblical proportions. The coverage proffered today of the Reagan legacy seldom mentions impropriety until the Iran/Contra scandal appears on the administration timeline. This sin of omission is vast. By the end of his term in office, some 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, indicted or investigated for misconduct and/or criminal activities.
Some of the names on this disgraceful roll-call: Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Casper Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Deaver, E. Bob Wallach, James Watt, Alan D. Fiers, Clair George, Duane R. Clarridge, Anne Gorscuh Burford, Rita Lavelle, Richard Allen, Richard Beggs, Guy Flake, Louis Glutfrida, Edwin Gray, Max Hugel, Carlos Campbell, John Fedders, Arthur Hayes, J. Lynn Helms, Marjory Mecklenburg, Robert Nimmo, J. William Petro, Thomas C. Reed, Emanuel Savas, Charles Wick. Many of these names are lost to history, but more than a few of them are still with us today, 'rehabilitated' by the administration of George W. Bush.
Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?
One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.
The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.
Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.
In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.
In the final analysis, however, the legacy of Ronald Reagan - whether he had an active hand in its formulation, or was merely along for the ride - is beyond dispute. His famous question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is easy to answer. We are not better off than we were four years ago, or eight years ago, or twelve, or twenty. We are a badly damaged state, ruled today by a man who subsists off Reagan's most corrosive final gift to us all: It is the image that matters, and be damned to the truth.
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 07 June 2004
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
who used to
ride a watersmooth-silver
stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
Jesus
he was a handsome man
and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death
- e.e. cummings, "Buffalo Bill's Defunct"
Ronald Reagan is dead now, and everyone is being nice to him. In every aspect, this is appropriate. He was a husband and a father, a beloved member of a family, and he will be missed by those he was close to. His death was long, slow and agonizing because of the Alzheimer's Disease which ruined him, one drop of lucidity at a time. My grandmother died ten years ago almost to the day because of this disease, and this disease took ten years to do its dirty, filthy, wretched work on her.
The dignity and candor of Reagan's farewell letter to the American people was as magnificent a departure from public life as any that has been seen in our history, but the ugly truth of his illness was that he lived on, and on, and on. His family and friends watched as he faded from the world of the real, as the simple dignity afforded to all life collapsed like loose sand behind his ever more vacant eyes. Only those who have seen Alzheimer's Disease invade a mind can know the truth of this. It is a cursed way to die.
In this mourning space, however, there must be room made for the truth. Writer Edward Abbey once said, "The sneakiest form of literary subtlety, in a corrupt society, is to speak the plain truth. The critics will not understand you; the public will not believe you; your fellow writers will shake their heads."
The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye.
How can this be? The television says Ronald Reagan was one of the most beloved Presidents of the 20th century. He won two national elections, the second by a margin so overwhelming that all future landslides will be judged by the high-water mark he achieved against Walter Mondale. How can a man so universally respected have played a hand in the evils which corrupt our days?
The answer lies in the reality of the corrupt society Abbey spoke of. Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic. Ronald Reagan was, and will always be, the undisputed heavyweight champion of salesmen in this regard.
Reagan was able, by virtue of his towering talents in this arena, to sell to the American people a flood of poisonous policies. He made Americans feel good about acting against their own best interests. He sold the American people a lemon, and they drive it to this day as if it was a Cadillac. It isn't the lies that kill us, but the myths, and Ronald Reagan was the greatest myth-maker we are ever likely to see.
Mainstream media journalism today is a shameful joke because of Reagan's deregulation policies. Once upon a time, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that the information we receive - information vital to the ability of the people to govern in the manner intended - came from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. Reagan's policies annihilated the Fairness Doctrine, opening the door for a few mega-corporations to gather journalism unto themselves. Today, Reagan's old bosses at General Electric own three of the most-watched news channels. This company profits from every war we fight, but somehow is trusted to tell the truths of war. Thus, the myths are sold to us.
The deregulation policies of Ronald Reagan did not just deliver journalism to these massive corporations, but handed virtually every facet of our lives into the hands of this privileged few. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat are all tainted because Reagan battered down every environmental regulation he came across so corporations could improve their bottom line. Our leaders are wholly-owned subsidiaries of the corporations that were made all-powerful by Reagan's deregulation craze. The Savings and Loan scandal of Reagan's time, which cost the American people hundreds of billions of dollars, is but one example of Reagan's decision that the foxes would be fine guards in the henhouse.
Ronald Reagan believed in small government, despite the fact that he grew government massively during his time. Social programs which protected the weakest of our citizens were gutted by Reagan's policies, delivering millions into despair. Reagan was able to do this by caricaturing the "welfare queen," who punched out babies by the barnload, who drove the flashy car bought with your tax dollars, who refused to work because she didn't have to. This was a vicious, racist lie, one result of which was the decimation of a generation by crack cocaine. The urban poor were left to rot because Ronald Reagan believed in 'self-sufficiency.'
Because Ronald Reagan could not be bothered to fund research into 'gay cancer,' the AIDS virus was allowed to carve out a comfortable home in America. The aftershocks from this callous disregard for people whose homosexuality was deemed evil by religious conservatives cannot be overstated. Beyond the graves of those who died from a disease which was allowed to burn unchecked, there are generations of Americans today living with the subconscious idea that sex equals death.
The veneer of honor and respect painted across the legacy of Ronald Reagan is itself a myth of biblical proportions. The coverage proffered today of the Reagan legacy seldom mentions impropriety until the Iran/Contra scandal appears on the administration timeline. This sin of omission is vast. By the end of his term in office, some 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, indicted or investigated for misconduct and/or criminal activities.
Some of the names on this disgraceful roll-call: Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord, Casper Weinberger, Elliott Abrams, Robert C. McFarlane, Michael Deaver, E. Bob Wallach, James Watt, Alan D. Fiers, Clair George, Duane R. Clarridge, Anne Gorscuh Burford, Rita Lavelle, Richard Allen, Richard Beggs, Guy Flake, Louis Glutfrida, Edwin Gray, Max Hugel, Carlos Campbell, John Fedders, Arthur Hayes, J. Lynn Helms, Marjory Mecklenburg, Robert Nimmo, J. William Petro, Thomas C. Reed, Emanuel Savas, Charles Wick. Many of these names are lost to history, but more than a few of them are still with us today, 'rehabilitated' by the administration of George W. Bush.
Ronald Reagan actively supported the regimes of the worst people ever to walk the earth. Names like Marcos, Duarte, Rios Mont and Duvalier reek of blood and corruption, yet were embraced by the Reagan administration with passionate intensity. The ground of many nations is salted with the bones of those murdered by brutal rulers who called Reagan a friend. Who can forget his support of those in South Africa who believed apartheid was the proper way to run a civilized society?
One dictator in particular looms large across our landscape. Saddam Hussein was a creation of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration supported the Hussein regime despite his incredible record of atrocity. The Reagan administration gave Hussein intelligence information which helped the Iraqi military use their chemical weapons on the battlefield against Iran to great effect. The deadly bacterial agents sent to Iraq during the Reagan administration are a laundry list of horrors.
The Reagan administration sent an emissary named Donald Rumsfeld to Iraq to shake Saddam Hussein's hand and assure him that, despite public American condemnation of the use of those chemical weapons, the Reagan administration still considered him a welcome friend and ally. This happened while the Reagan administration was selling weapons to Iran, a nation notorious for its support of international terrorism, in secret and in violation of scores of laws.
Another name on Ronald Reagan's roll call is that of Osama bin Laden. The Reagan administration believed it a bully idea to organize an army of Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union. bin Laden became the spiritual leader of this action. Throughout the entirety of Reagan's term, bin Laden and his people were armed, funded and trained by the United States. Reagan helped teach Osama bin Laden the lesson he lives by today, that it is possible to bring a superpower to its knees. bin Laden believes this because he has done it once before, thanks to the dedicated help of Ronald Reagan.
In 1998, two American embassies in Africa were blasted into rubble by Osama bin Laden, who used the Semtex sent to Afghanistan by the Reagan administration to do the job. In 2001, Osama bin Laden thrust a dagger into the heart of the United States, using men who became skilled at the art of terrorism with the help of Ronald Reagan. Today, there are 827 American soldiers and over 10,000 civilians who have died in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a war that came to be because Reagan helped manufacture both Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
How much of this can be truthfully laid at the feet of Ronald Reagan? It depends on who you ask. Those who worship Reagan see him as the man in charge, the man who defeated Soviet communism, the man whose vision and charisma made Americans feel good about themselves after Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s. Those who despise Reagan see him as nothing more than a pitch-man for corporate raiders, the man who allowed greed to become a virtue, the man who smiled vapidly while allowing his officials to run the government for him.
In the final analysis, however, the legacy of Ronald Reagan - whether he had an active hand in its formulation, or was merely along for the ride - is beyond dispute. His famous question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is easy to answer. We are not better off than we were four years ago, or eight years ago, or twelve, or twenty. We are a badly damaged state, ruled today by a man who subsists off Reagan's most corrosive final gift to us all: It is the image that matters, and be damned to the truth.
Memo Says Bush Not Restricted by Torture Bans
This is not the act of a moral American leader nor a person claiming to be a Christian. Hell, it's not even the act of a normal human being.
Memo Says Bush Not Restricted by Torture Bans
Tue Jun 8, 9:53 PM ET
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush, as commander-in-chief, is not restricted by U.S. and international laws barring torture, Bush administration lawyers stated in a March 2003 memorandum.
The 56-page memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cited the president's "complete authority over the conduct of war," overriding international treaties such as a global treaty banning torture, the Geneva Conventions and a U.S. federal law against torture.
"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority," stated the memo, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.
These assertions, along with others made in a 2002 Justice Department memo, drew condemnation from human rights activists who accused the administration of hunting for legal loopholes for using torture.
"It's like saying the Earth is flat. That's the equivalent of what they're doing with saying that the prohibition of torture doesn't apply to the president," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Media reports of the memos prompted a fierce exchange in a congressional hearing, at which Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to release the documents while Democrats accused the Bush administration of undermining prohibitions on use of torture.
The administration says it observes the Geneva Conventions in Iraq (news - web sites) and other situations where the treaty applies and that it treats terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in a way consistent with the spirit of the accords.
"Our policy is to comply with all our laws and treaty obligations," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
"We have detained some dangerous al Qaeda terrorists. ... While we will seek to gather intelligence from these terrorists to prevent attacks from happening, we will do so consistent with our laws," McClellan added.
INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES
The March 2003 memo was written by a "working group" of civilian and military lawyers named by the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s general counsel.
It came to light as the Pentagon reviewed interrogation techniques used on foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid concerns raised by lawyers within the military and others about interrogation techniques approved by Rumsfeld that deviated from standard practice.
The memo labeled as unconstitutional any laws "that seek to prevent the president from gaining the intelligence he believes necessary to prevent attacks upon the United States."
The memo recommended a presidential directive from Bush allowing for exercise of this power by "subordinates," although it remained unknown whether Bush ever signed such a document.
"It shows us that there were senior people in the Bush administration who were seriously contemplating the use of torture, and trying to figure out whether there were any legal loopholes that might allow them to commit criminal acts," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch.
"They seem to be putting forward a theory that the president in wartime can essentially do what he wants regardless of what the law may say," Malinowski added.
Amnesty International called for a special counsel to investigate "whether administration officials are criminally liable for acts of torture or guilty of war crimes."
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Rumsfeld in April 2003 approved 24 "humane" interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo, four of which required Rumsfeld's personal review before being used. Whitman said 34 techniques were considered by a working group of Defense Department legal and policy experts before Rumsfeld approved the final list.
"None were determined to be tortuous in nature (by the working group). They were all found to be within internationally accepted practice," Whitman said.
Memo Says Bush Not Restricted by Torture Bans
Tue Jun 8, 9:53 PM ET
By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush, as commander-in-chief, is not restricted by U.S. and international laws barring torture, Bush administration lawyers stated in a March 2003 memorandum.
The 56-page memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cited the president's "complete authority over the conduct of war," overriding international treaties such as a global treaty banning torture, the Geneva Conventions and a U.S. federal law against torture.
"In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority," stated the memo, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.
These assertions, along with others made in a 2002 Justice Department memo, drew condemnation from human rights activists who accused the administration of hunting for legal loopholes for using torture.
"It's like saying the Earth is flat. That's the equivalent of what they're doing with saying that the prohibition of torture doesn't apply to the president," said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Media reports of the memos prompted a fierce exchange in a congressional hearing, at which Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to release the documents while Democrats accused the Bush administration of undermining prohibitions on use of torture.
The administration says it observes the Geneva Conventions in Iraq (news - web sites) and other situations where the treaty applies and that it treats terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere in a way consistent with the spirit of the accords.
"Our policy is to comply with all our laws and treaty obligations," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
"We have detained some dangerous al Qaeda terrorists. ... While we will seek to gather intelligence from these terrorists to prevent attacks from happening, we will do so consistent with our laws," McClellan added.
INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES
The March 2003 memo was written by a "working group" of civilian and military lawyers named by the Pentagon (news - web sites)'s general counsel.
It came to light as the Pentagon reviewed interrogation techniques used on foreign terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid concerns raised by lawyers within the military and others about interrogation techniques approved by Rumsfeld that deviated from standard practice.
The memo labeled as unconstitutional any laws "that seek to prevent the president from gaining the intelligence he believes necessary to prevent attacks upon the United States."
The memo recommended a presidential directive from Bush allowing for exercise of this power by "subordinates," although it remained unknown whether Bush ever signed such a document.
"It shows us that there were senior people in the Bush administration who were seriously contemplating the use of torture, and trying to figure out whether there were any legal loopholes that might allow them to commit criminal acts," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch.
"They seem to be putting forward a theory that the president in wartime can essentially do what he wants regardless of what the law may say," Malinowski added.
Amnesty International called for a special counsel to investigate "whether administration officials are criminally liable for acts of torture or guilty of war crimes."
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Rumsfeld in April 2003 approved 24 "humane" interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo, four of which required Rumsfeld's personal review before being used. Whitman said 34 techniques were considered by a working group of Defense Department legal and policy experts before Rumsfeld approved the final list.
"None were determined to be tortuous in nature (by the working group). They were all found to be within internationally accepted practice," Whitman said.
Tell Ashcroft To Release The Torture Memo
JUSTICE
Tell Ashcroft to Stop Stonewalling Congress
Testifying yesterday before Congress, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to disclose or discuss an unclassified 2002 Justice Department memorandum to the White House that, according to news reports, describes legal justifications for torture. Ashcroft acknowledged that the memo was not confidential advice to the president and was "widely distributed throughout the executive branch." Ashcroft has decided to thwart the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch because he believes it is "not good policy" to release the memo. Ashcroft had no such compunctions when he declassified a 1995 memo in a cynical attempt to distort the facts and discredit 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick. Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov and tell him to stop stonewalling Congress.
Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov
I sent the following to Ashcroft.
Re: Stonewalling over Torture Memo Release
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft,
You are a servant of the people of the United States and claim to be a Christian. Either would not condone torture and would not hide any memo outlining such barbaric and inhuman treatment for use under an American flag. Besides the moral grounds the American use of torture opens up its use against our own captured soldiers in combat by other countries. This is unthinkable.
Portions of the torture memo have already been circulated in the press.
RELEASE THE ENTIRE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MEMO NOW.
The people of this country demand to know if our leaders are performing irresponsibly in their name. This is still America and a democracy not your and George Bush's dictatorship. As a free citizen of the United States of America I will work to mobilize forces in and outside of the government to have this torture memo released publicly. You have brought nothing but shame and disgrace upon your country for this despicable act and I even question what kind of black soul you harbor in your heart.
Sam F. Park
Tell Ashcroft to Stop Stonewalling Congress
Testifying yesterday before Congress, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to disclose or discuss an unclassified 2002 Justice Department memorandum to the White House that, according to news reports, describes legal justifications for torture. Ashcroft acknowledged that the memo was not confidential advice to the president and was "widely distributed throughout the executive branch." Ashcroft has decided to thwart the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch because he believes it is "not good policy" to release the memo. Ashcroft had no such compunctions when he declassified a 1995 memo in a cynical attempt to distort the facts and discredit 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick. Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov and tell him to stop stonewalling Congress.
Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov
I sent the following to Ashcroft.
Re: Stonewalling over Torture Memo Release
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft,
You are a servant of the people of the United States and claim to be a Christian. Either would not condone torture and would not hide any memo outlining such barbaric and inhuman treatment for use under an American flag. Besides the moral grounds the American use of torture opens up its use against our own captured soldiers in combat by other countries. This is unthinkable.
Portions of the torture memo have already been circulated in the press.
RELEASE THE ENTIRE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MEMO NOW.
The people of this country demand to know if our leaders are performing irresponsibly in their name. This is still America and a democracy not your and George Bush's dictatorship. As a free citizen of the United States of America I will work to mobilize forces in and outside of the government to have this torture memo released publicly. You have brought nothing but shame and disgrace upon your country for this despicable act and I even question what kind of black soul you harbor in your heart.
Sam F. Park
Tell Ashcroft To Release The Torture Memo
JUSTICE
Tell Ashcroft to Stop Stonewalling Congress
Testifying yesterday before Congress, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to disclose or discuss an unclassified 2002 Justice Department memorandum to the White House that, according to news reports, describes legal justifications for torture. Ashcroft acknowledged that the memo was not confidential advice to the president and was "widely distributed throughout the executive branch." Ashcroft has decided to thwart the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch because he believes it is "not good policy" to release the memo. Ashcroft had no such compunctions when he declassified a 1995 memo in a cynical attempt to distort the facts and discredit 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick. Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov and tell him to stop stonewalling Congress.
Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov
I sent the following to Ashcroft.
Re: Stonewalling over Torture Memo Release
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft,
You are a servant of the people of the United States and claim to be a Christian. Either would not condone torture and would not hide any memo outlining such barbaric and inhuman treatment for use under an American flag. Besides the moral grounds the American use of torture opens up its use against our own captured soldiers in combat by other countries. This is unthinkable.
Portions of the torture memo have already been circulated in the press.
RELEASE THE ENTIRE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MEMO NOW.
The people of this country demand to know if our leaders are performing irresponsibly in their name. This is still America and a democracy not your and George Bush's dictatorship. As a free citizen of the United States of America I will work to mobilize forces in and outside of the government to have this torture memo released publicly. You have brought nothing but shame and disgrace upon your country for this despicable act and I even question what kind of black soul you harbor in your heart.
Sam F. Park
Tell Ashcroft to Stop Stonewalling Congress
Testifying yesterday before Congress, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to disclose or discuss an unclassified 2002 Justice Department memorandum to the White House that, according to news reports, describes legal justifications for torture. Ashcroft acknowledged that the memo was not confidential advice to the president and was "widely distributed throughout the executive branch." Ashcroft has decided to thwart the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight of the executive branch because he believes it is "not good policy" to release the memo. Ashcroft had no such compunctions when he declassified a 1995 memo in a cynical attempt to distort the facts and discredit 9/11 commission member Jamie Gorelick. Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov and tell him to stop stonewalling Congress.
Email John Ashcroft at askdoj@usdoj.gov
I sent the following to Ashcroft.
Re: Stonewalling over Torture Memo Release
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft,
You are a servant of the people of the United States and claim to be a Christian. Either would not condone torture and would not hide any memo outlining such barbaric and inhuman treatment for use under an American flag. Besides the moral grounds the American use of torture opens up its use against our own captured soldiers in combat by other countries. This is unthinkable.
Portions of the torture memo have already been circulated in the press.
RELEASE THE ENTIRE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MEMO NOW.
The people of this country demand to know if our leaders are performing irresponsibly in their name. This is still America and a democracy not your and George Bush's dictatorship. As a free citizen of the United States of America I will work to mobilize forces in and outside of the government to have this torture memo released publicly. You have brought nothing but shame and disgrace upon your country for this despicable act and I even question what kind of black soul you harbor in your heart.
Sam F. Park
A Nice Guy's Nasty Policies
Reagan was no saint.
A Nice Guy's Nasty Policies
Robert Scheer
June 8, 2004
I liked Ronald Reagan, despite the huge divide between us politically. Reagan was a charming old pro who gave me hours of his time in a series of interviews beginning in 1966 when he was running for governor, simply because he enjoyed the give and take. In fact, I often found myself defending the Gipper whenever I was confronted with an East Coast pundit determined to denigrate anyone, particularly actors, from my adopted state. Yet, looking back at his record, I am appalled that I warmed to the man as much as I did.
The fact is that Reagan abandoned the Roosevelt New Deal — which he admitted had saved his family during the Great Depression — in favor of a belief in the efficacy of massive corporate welfare inculcated in him by his paymasters at Warner Bros., General Electric and the conservative lecture circuit. Though Reagan the man was hardly mean-spirited, Reagan the politician betrayed the social programs and trade unionism he once believed in so fiercely.
Let's start with his leadership of California, where he launched attacks on the state's once- incomparable public universities and devastated its mental health system. Foreshadowing future trumped-up invasions of tiny Grenada and Nicaragua, he sent thousands of National Guardsmen to tear-gas Berkeley.
It also became increasingly clear that although the man wasn't unintelligent, his ability to mingle truth with fantasy was frightening. At different times, Reagan — who infamously said that "facts are stupid things" — falsely claimed to have ended poverty in Los Angeles; implied he was personally involved in the liberation of Europe's concentration camps; argued that trees cause most pollution; said that the Hollywood blacklist, to which he contributed names, never existed; described as "freedom fighters" the Contra thugs and the religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan who would later become Al Qaeda; and claimed that fighting a "limited" nuclear war was not an insane idea.
But to see him as only a bumpkin — as some did — was to very much underestimate him. Like Nixon, the Teflon president was a survivor who'd come up the hard way, and many journalists and politicians who didn't understand that invariably were surprised by his resiliency and savvy. Although he generally was compliant with his handlers, whenever the campaign pros or rigid ideologues got in the way of his or Nancy's instincts, they were summarily discarded.
Even when his ideas were silly, his intentions often seemed good. For example, one of his dumbest and costliest pet projects, the "Star Wars" missile defense program, which he first announced when I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times in 1980, was touted by Reagan as a peace offering to the Soviets.
And his legendary ability to effectively project an upbeat, confident worldview managed to obscure many of the negative consequences of his policies. For example, he made the terrible mistake of willfully ignoring the burgeoning AIDS epidemic at a time when action could have saved millions. Unlike many conservatives, however, he was not driven by homophobia. Instead, Reagan allowed AIDS to spread for the same reason he pointedly savaged programs to help the poor: He was genuinely convinced that government programs exacerbated problems — unless they catered to the needs of the businessmen he had come to revere.
In the White House, he ran up more debt than any earlier president — primarily to serve the requests of what Republican President Eisenhower had, with alarm, termed the "military- industrial complex." (George W. Bush has broken that record.)
Apologists for this waste argue that throwing money at the defense industry broke the back of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. But the Soviet Union was already broken, as Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged quite freely when he came to power in the 1980s. Rather, what Reagan does deserve considerable credit for is ignoring the dire warnings of the hawks and responding enthusiastically to Gorbachev in their historic ReykjavÃk summit, where the two leaders called for a nuclear-free world.
Let it be remembered, then, that in the closing scene of his presidency Reagan embraced the peacemakers, rejecting the cheerleaders of Armageddon and was then loudly castigated by the very neoconservatives — most vociferously Richard Perle — who have claimed the Reagan mantle for the post-Cold War militarism of the current administration.
*
Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times.
A Nice Guy's Nasty Policies
Robert Scheer
June 8, 2004
I liked Ronald Reagan, despite the huge divide between us politically. Reagan was a charming old pro who gave me hours of his time in a series of interviews beginning in 1966 when he was running for governor, simply because he enjoyed the give and take. In fact, I often found myself defending the Gipper whenever I was confronted with an East Coast pundit determined to denigrate anyone, particularly actors, from my adopted state. Yet, looking back at his record, I am appalled that I warmed to the man as much as I did.
The fact is that Reagan abandoned the Roosevelt New Deal — which he admitted had saved his family during the Great Depression — in favor of a belief in the efficacy of massive corporate welfare inculcated in him by his paymasters at Warner Bros., General Electric and the conservative lecture circuit. Though Reagan the man was hardly mean-spirited, Reagan the politician betrayed the social programs and trade unionism he once believed in so fiercely.
Let's start with his leadership of California, where he launched attacks on the state's once- incomparable public universities and devastated its mental health system. Foreshadowing future trumped-up invasions of tiny Grenada and Nicaragua, he sent thousands of National Guardsmen to tear-gas Berkeley.
It also became increasingly clear that although the man wasn't unintelligent, his ability to mingle truth with fantasy was frightening. At different times, Reagan — who infamously said that "facts are stupid things" — falsely claimed to have ended poverty in Los Angeles; implied he was personally involved in the liberation of Europe's concentration camps; argued that trees cause most pollution; said that the Hollywood blacklist, to which he contributed names, never existed; described as "freedom fighters" the Contra thugs and the religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan who would later become Al Qaeda; and claimed that fighting a "limited" nuclear war was not an insane idea.
But to see him as only a bumpkin — as some did — was to very much underestimate him. Like Nixon, the Teflon president was a survivor who'd come up the hard way, and many journalists and politicians who didn't understand that invariably were surprised by his resiliency and savvy. Although he generally was compliant with his handlers, whenever the campaign pros or rigid ideologues got in the way of his or Nancy's instincts, they were summarily discarded.
Even when his ideas were silly, his intentions often seemed good. For example, one of his dumbest and costliest pet projects, the "Star Wars" missile defense program, which he first announced when I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times in 1980, was touted by Reagan as a peace offering to the Soviets.
And his legendary ability to effectively project an upbeat, confident worldview managed to obscure many of the negative consequences of his policies. For example, he made the terrible mistake of willfully ignoring the burgeoning AIDS epidemic at a time when action could have saved millions. Unlike many conservatives, however, he was not driven by homophobia. Instead, Reagan allowed AIDS to spread for the same reason he pointedly savaged programs to help the poor: He was genuinely convinced that government programs exacerbated problems — unless they catered to the needs of the businessmen he had come to revere.
In the White House, he ran up more debt than any earlier president — primarily to serve the requests of what Republican President Eisenhower had, with alarm, termed the "military- industrial complex." (George W. Bush has broken that record.)
Apologists for this waste argue that throwing money at the defense industry broke the back of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. But the Soviet Union was already broken, as Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged quite freely when he came to power in the 1980s. Rather, what Reagan does deserve considerable credit for is ignoring the dire warnings of the hawks and responding enthusiastically to Gorbachev in their historic ReykjavÃk summit, where the two leaders called for a nuclear-free world.
Let it be remembered, then, that in the closing scene of his presidency Reagan embraced the peacemakers, rejecting the cheerleaders of Armageddon and was then loudly castigated by the very neoconservatives — most vociferously Richard Perle — who have claimed the Reagan mantle for the post-Cold War militarism of the current administration.
*
Robert Scheer writes a weekly column for The Times.
Twisting American Values
Bush's moral failure as a leader on condoning torture goes against everything America stands for. Plus it gives other nations a perverted example to follow in torturing our own soldiers captured in combat. This is nothing less than a huge breakdown across the ranks of the administration.
LA TIMES EDITORIAL
Twisting American Values
June 9, 2004
"Everything changed after 9/11" became, in 2001, the slogan that justified new approaches to national security, including curtailment of civil liberties. Nearly three years later, we learn that even the use of torture was being justified when it came to terror suspects. The Bush administration's Justice Department turned the Constitution on its head by telling the White House in an August 2002 memo — written nearly a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — not only that torture "may be justified" but that laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" in the U.S. war on terror.
Those are the words of out-of-control government servants willing to discard the most fundamental values of this nation. But the declaration became the basis for a secret draft report in March 2003 by Pentagon lawyers to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. That report said the president's "inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign" meant prohibitions on torture did not apply.
It is not known if the language of the draft survived in a final report, and Pentagon officials said the document had no effect on revised interrogation procedures for Guantanamo Bay inmates issued in April 2003. But the memo's willingness to discard international and domestic laws adds strength to questions about the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A 2001 memo from Rumsfeld's office, for instance, said intelligence officers should "take the gloves off" when interrogating the so-called American Talib, John Walker Lindh.
"A few bad apples" was the dismissive phrase used by the White House after photos of brutality by U.S. forces in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison leaked out. The fact that there were numerous soldiers, including alleged Army intelligence officers, in some of the pictures immediately chipped at that claim. New reports of abuse or torture of inmates in Afghanistan rolled in. Last month, the Pentagon said 32 inmates had died in U.S. custody in Iraq and five in Afghanistan; so far, eight of the deaths appear to have been homicides.
Congress must determine how far up the chain of command the abuse stretched and who authorized or tolerated it. The torture memo, all drafts of the report to Rumsfeld and the names of those who received them should be made public. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft refused such a request Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The effort shouldn't stop there.
In 1994, the U.S. ratified the international Convention Against Torture, which states there are "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever" to justify torture. Torture is morally wrong and practically ineffective. This was especially true at Abu Ghraib, where most detainees were not suspected terrorists. Mistreatment of inmates invites retaliation against captured U.S. soldiers, one reason many uniformed Pentagon lawyers opposed the memo's conclusions.
The administration should open its files and explain its interrogation procedures. Anything less reinforces the image of a brutal nation unfettered by the rule of law.
LA TIMES EDITORIAL
Twisting American Values
June 9, 2004
"Everything changed after 9/11" became, in 2001, the slogan that justified new approaches to national security, including curtailment of civil liberties. Nearly three years later, we learn that even the use of torture was being justified when it came to terror suspects. The Bush administration's Justice Department turned the Constitution on its head by telling the White House in an August 2002 memo — written nearly a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon — not only that torture "may be justified" but that laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" in the U.S. war on terror.
Those are the words of out-of-control government servants willing to discard the most fundamental values of this nation. But the declaration became the basis for a secret draft report in March 2003 by Pentagon lawyers to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. That report said the president's "inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign" meant prohibitions on torture did not apply.
It is not known if the language of the draft survived in a final report, and Pentagon officials said the document had no effect on revised interrogation procedures for Guantanamo Bay inmates issued in April 2003. But the memo's willingness to discard international and domestic laws adds strength to questions about the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq and the U.S. facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A 2001 memo from Rumsfeld's office, for instance, said intelligence officers should "take the gloves off" when interrogating the so-called American Talib, John Walker Lindh.
"A few bad apples" was the dismissive phrase used by the White House after photos of brutality by U.S. forces in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison leaked out. The fact that there were numerous soldiers, including alleged Army intelligence officers, in some of the pictures immediately chipped at that claim. New reports of abuse or torture of inmates in Afghanistan rolled in. Last month, the Pentagon said 32 inmates had died in U.S. custody in Iraq and five in Afghanistan; so far, eight of the deaths appear to have been homicides.
Congress must determine how far up the chain of command the abuse stretched and who authorized or tolerated it. The torture memo, all drafts of the report to Rumsfeld and the names of those who received them should be made public. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft refused such a request Tuesday by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The effort shouldn't stop there.
In 1994, the U.S. ratified the international Convention Against Torture, which states there are "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever" to justify torture. Torture is morally wrong and practically ineffective. This was especially true at Abu Ghraib, where most detainees were not suspected terrorists. Mistreatment of inmates invites retaliation against captured U.S. soldiers, one reason many uniformed Pentagon lawyers opposed the memo's conclusions.
The administration should open its files and explain its interrogation procedures. Anything less reinforces the image of a brutal nation unfettered by the rule of law.
The Roots of Abu Ghraib
George Bush is no Christian but a screwed-up bastard with no regard for American values nor any healthy human understanding.
June 9, 2004 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
The Roots of Abu Ghraib
In response to the outrages at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has repeatedly assured Americans that the president and his top officials did not say or do anything that could possibly be seen as approving the abuse or outright torture of prisoners. But disturbing disclosures keep coming. This week it's a legal argument by government lawyers who said the president was not bound by laws or treaties prohibiting torture.
Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration. It is part of the price the nation must pay for President Bush's decision to take the extraordinary mandate to fight terrorism that he was granted by a grieving nation after 9/11 and apply it without justification to Iraq.
Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke into public view, the administration has contended that a few sadistic guards acted on their own to commit the crimes we've all seen in pictures and videos. At times, the White House has denied that any senior official was aware of the situation, as it did with Red Cross reports documenting a pattern of prisoner abuse in Iraq. In response to a rising pile of documents proving otherwise, the administration has mounted a "Wizard of Oz" defense, urging Americans not to pay attention to inconvenient evidence.
This week, The Wall Street Journal broke the story of a classified legal brief prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in March 2003 after Guantánamo Bay interrogators complained that they were not getting enough information from terror suspects. The brief cynically suggested that because the president is protecting national security, any ban on torture, even an American law, could not be applied to "interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority." Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt reported yesterday in The Times that the document had grown out of a January 2002 Justice Department memo explaining why the Geneva Conventions and American laws against torture did not apply to suspected terrorists.
In the wake of that memo, the White House general counsel advised Mr. Bush that Al Qaeda and the Taliban should be considered outside the Geneva Conventions. But yesterday, Attorney General John Ashcroft assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that Mr. Bush had not ordered torture. These explanations might be more comforting if the administration's definition of what's legal was not so slippery, and if the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House were willing to release documents to back up their explanation. Mr. Rumsfeld is still withholding from the Senate his orders on interrogation techniques, among other things.
The Pentagon has said that Mr. Rumsfeld's famous declaration that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in Afghanistan was not a sanction of illegal interrogations, and that everyone knew different rules applied in Iraq. But Mr. Rumsfeld, his top deputies and the highest-ranking generals could not explain to the Senate what the rules were, or even who was in charge of the prisons in Iraq. We do not know how high up in the chain of command the specific sanction for abusing prisoners was given, and we may never know, because the Army is investigating itself and the Pentagon is stonewalling the Senate Armed Services Committee. It may yet be necessary for Congress to form an investigative panel with subpoena powers to find the answers.
What we have seen, topped by that legalistic treatise on torture, shows clearly that Mr. Bush set the tone for this dreadful situation by pasting a false "war on terrorism" label on the invasion of Iraq.
June 9, 2004 NY TIMES EDITORIAL
The Roots of Abu Ghraib
In response to the outrages at Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has repeatedly assured Americans that the president and his top officials did not say or do anything that could possibly be seen as approving the abuse or outright torture of prisoners. But disturbing disclosures keep coming. This week it's a legal argument by government lawyers who said the president was not bound by laws or treaties prohibiting torture.
Each new revelation makes it more clear that the inhumanity at Abu Ghraib grew out of a morally dubious culture of legal expediency and a disregard for normal behavior fostered at the top of this administration. It is part of the price the nation must pay for President Bush's decision to take the extraordinary mandate to fight terrorism that he was granted by a grieving nation after 9/11 and apply it without justification to Iraq.
Since the Abu Ghraib scandal broke into public view, the administration has contended that a few sadistic guards acted on their own to commit the crimes we've all seen in pictures and videos. At times, the White House has denied that any senior official was aware of the situation, as it did with Red Cross reports documenting a pattern of prisoner abuse in Iraq. In response to a rising pile of documents proving otherwise, the administration has mounted a "Wizard of Oz" defense, urging Americans not to pay attention to inconvenient evidence.
This week, The Wall Street Journal broke the story of a classified legal brief prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in March 2003 after Guantánamo Bay interrogators complained that they were not getting enough information from terror suspects. The brief cynically suggested that because the president is protecting national security, any ban on torture, even an American law, could not be applied to "interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority." Neil A. Lewis and Eric Schmitt reported yesterday in The Times that the document had grown out of a January 2002 Justice Department memo explaining why the Geneva Conventions and American laws against torture did not apply to suspected terrorists.
In the wake of that memo, the White House general counsel advised Mr. Bush that Al Qaeda and the Taliban should be considered outside the Geneva Conventions. But yesterday, Attorney General John Ashcroft assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that Mr. Bush had not ordered torture. These explanations might be more comforting if the administration's definition of what's legal was not so slippery, and if the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House were willing to release documents to back up their explanation. Mr. Rumsfeld is still withholding from the Senate his orders on interrogation techniques, among other things.
The Pentagon has said that Mr. Rumsfeld's famous declaration that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in Afghanistan was not a sanction of illegal interrogations, and that everyone knew different rules applied in Iraq. But Mr. Rumsfeld, his top deputies and the highest-ranking generals could not explain to the Senate what the rules were, or even who was in charge of the prisons in Iraq. We do not know how high up in the chain of command the specific sanction for abusing prisoners was given, and we may never know, because the Army is investigating itself and the Pentagon is stonewalling the Senate Armed Services Committee. It may yet be necessary for Congress to form an investigative panel with subpoena powers to find the answers.
What we have seen, topped by that legalistic treatise on torture, shows clearly that Mr. Bush set the tone for this dreadful situation by pasting a false "war on terrorism" label on the invasion of Iraq.
Sunday, June 06, 2004
Storm warnings for Bush in Ohio
Bring it on!
Storm warnings for Bush in Ohio
The John Kerry campaign offices may still be dark in this key battleground state, but an invisible tidal wave is growing here against the President.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Tim Russo
June 4, 2004 |
The road-rage Republicans are out early this year in Ohio.
It's only June, but already the John Kerry bumper sticker on my car gets me cut off on I-71 by obese white males in their pickups and Camaros who upon seeing my Kerry sticker, roar past, swerve into my lane, and flip me the bird out their window.
Such folks form the backbone of the George W. Bush "Amway"-model campaign detailed recently in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Prospecting the prefab suburban wilderness for votes, the Bush machine's efforts in Ohio raise the obvious question: What are Democrats doing in response?
A Democrat looking for solace in the obvious places will find little encouragement. Walking into a Democratic Party office anywhere in this key presidential battleground state is like walking into a morgue. The Cleveland party office, the epicenter of the most important region of the state for Democrats, is a deserted storefront that until last week didn't have a single Kerry for President sign. Locked doors greet potential volunteers who peer into the emptiness inside.
Dying of dry rot for more than 10 years, the Ohio Democratic operation's only significant victory since Bill Clinton won Ohio in 1992 was when Bill Clinton won the state again in 1996. That's it. Taking full advantage of this political vacuum, Republicans have established one-party rule at the state level, a legislative cabal so right wing they are known as the "caveman caucus."
Like a desperate and bedraggled street-corner supplicant, the state Democratic Party has been begging talk-show host Jerry Springer for divine deliverance for more than two years. Springer probably can't believe his luck; his sights set on the governor's mansion in 2006, he has stumbled on the biggest bargain fixer-upper political party in the United States Sprinkling his pennies from heaven all over the state gained Springer the "Ohio Democrat of the Year Award" this May, as well as an at-large delegate appointment to the party's presidential convention in Boston, despite having lived out of state for almost 20 years.
Doesn't look good for Kerry in Ohio, does it?
Not so fast.
During primary season, I dragged my apolitical friend Lori from Meetup to Meetup all over Cleveland, the two of us shopping around for a new president on snowy winter nights that would keep normal people huddled indoors. The Meetup groups we encountered were nonpolitical types from various economic, racial, and educational backgrounds whose average was 40-ish. People who looked way outside their comfort zone at a political meeting. People like Lori herself, who was unimpressed with the turnouts, which totaled 20 to 30 people as a rule. "Seems pretty low," she kept saying. "What do you think?"
Having grown up in Ohio politics, working with every presidential election in the state since 1988, and acutely aware of the cobwebs, crickets and tumbleweed of the Ohio Democratic Party, I had a very different perspective.
"Are you kidding me?" I shot back. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."
Wesley Clark's Cleveland Meetup the night before Super Tuesday was particularly eye-opening. The organizers were prepared with lists of phone numbers in Oklahoma, which had a primary the next day. Ten attendees used their cellphones to call Oklahoma for an hour.
Do the math. If each of those 10 people talked to 10 others, that's 100 contacts from the downtown Cleveland Meetup. There were 10 Meetups in Cleveland that night, adding up to 1,000 contacts from Cleveland. There are 10 major counties in Ohio. If each had made 1,000 contacts, that's 10,000 cross-state voter contacts made the night before Oklahoma's election -- which Clark won, in his only victory of the primary season, by less than 1,500 votes.
Imagine this grass-roots effort pumped up and targeted at George W. Bush in the fall, and things start to look a little better for Kerry in Ohio.
There's more. All winter, there were fliers at every Meetup that read, "ACT Ohio Hiring; $8 an hour. Make a Difference." America Coming Together (ACT), the George Soros-funded anti-Bush organization, has been paying canvassers (many of them recently laid-off steelworkers) in Ohio to knock on doors, register voters, identify their preference, and get them out to vote in November. This isn't big news; it's happening in swing states all over the country.
The news is that it's been going on in Ohio for more than a year, which itself is staggering. Such get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio have at best been sporadic, unscientific and short-lived in the past. The earliest I've ever observed any such effort to get out Democratic votes in a presidential year in Ohio, with paid staff or unpaid volunteers, was August, two months before the election.
The hundreds of large, mostly urban precincts in Ohio where Democrats get more than 90 percent of the vote, but where the turnout is less than 20 percent, have been a particularly hard nut to crack. Increasing their turnout by mere percentage points would lead to a landslide victory for a Democrat, and it is in those precincts that ACT is most heavily focused.
ACT renders quaint the Bush "Amway" model. Haphazardly targeting garages with golf clubs in them while passing on union halls (note to Karl Rove: Democrats do golf; union members do vote Republican), Bush's minions seek out friends in places like Delaware County, the rarest of Ohio birds -- a county with people actually moving into it from out of state, rather than fleeing it like a burning building.
Ohio's many solidly Republican counties are numerous but low in population. Their Bush votes could be quickly swamped if ACT succeeds in getting out the vote in populous, Democratic-rich counties.
And then there's my mom.
My mother is known among my friends as "the zeitgeist of the American electorate." She's a typical ethnic, blue-collar, middle-class west-side Clevelander. She barely engages in politics, and yet her political behavior is almost exactly predictive. She is the Ohio voter.
Mom voted twice for Ronald Reagan. Dismissed Michael Dukakis in 1988 and voted for George H.W. Bush. In 1992, after flirting with Ross Perot, she voted for Bill Clinton. Clinton again in 1996. In 2000, she went back and forth for months and ended up voting for George W. Bush. She never loses.
This year she took the Democratic primary ballot for the first time in her life and voted for John Edwards.
This thing is over.
Analysts in presidential years tend to look in the obvious places for the ups and downs of the election, at the pathetically empty Democratic Party offices in Cleveland, or the oh-so-cute Bush volunteer pyramid directed by Karl Rove like the Wizard of Oz from behind a curtain.
But out in the real world, something much bigger is happening. Like an invisible earthquake thousands of miles away at the bottom of the sea that produces a tsunami, a growing wave of voter discontent is taking shape in Ohio, as the electorate sours on Bush's handling of the war, the economy and perhaps even the man himself. Recent Ohio polling shows the race has gone from a dead heat to a healthy seven- to nine-point margin for Kerry in the state, reflecting the movement of first-time Meetup attendees and people like my mother into the "Anybody but Bush" crowd.
At the same time, Ohio is experiencing a level of organic political activity in 2004 that I've never seen in my entire career in Ohio politics. It's happening earlier, with more intensity, and it involves more new people than ever. It's both planned and spontaneous. It is everywhere.
And every ounce of its energy is directed against George W. Bush.
A perfect storm is brewing in Ohio. The Bush road-rage bird-flippers know it's coming.
But it's worse than they think.
Mr. Rove, feel free to flip us off as you drive your U-Haul through Ohio on your way back to Texas in November.
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About the writer
Tim Russo is a Cleveland freelance writer who has worked with numerous Democratic campaigns in the state. In 2002 he was a general consultant for Tim Ryan, the youngest Democrat in Congress, who took the place of Jim Traficant.
Storm warnings for Bush in Ohio
The John Kerry campaign offices may still be dark in this key battleground state, but an invisible tidal wave is growing here against the President.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Tim Russo
June 4, 2004 |
The road-rage Republicans are out early this year in Ohio.
It's only June, but already the John Kerry bumper sticker on my car gets me cut off on I-71 by obese white males in their pickups and Camaros who upon seeing my Kerry sticker, roar past, swerve into my lane, and flip me the bird out their window.
Such folks form the backbone of the George W. Bush "Amway"-model campaign detailed recently in the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Prospecting the prefab suburban wilderness for votes, the Bush machine's efforts in Ohio raise the obvious question: What are Democrats doing in response?
A Democrat looking for solace in the obvious places will find little encouragement. Walking into a Democratic Party office anywhere in this key presidential battleground state is like walking into a morgue. The Cleveland party office, the epicenter of the most important region of the state for Democrats, is a deserted storefront that until last week didn't have a single Kerry for President sign. Locked doors greet potential volunteers who peer into the emptiness inside.
Dying of dry rot for more than 10 years, the Ohio Democratic operation's only significant victory since Bill Clinton won Ohio in 1992 was when Bill Clinton won the state again in 1996. That's it. Taking full advantage of this political vacuum, Republicans have established one-party rule at the state level, a legislative cabal so right wing they are known as the "caveman caucus."
Like a desperate and bedraggled street-corner supplicant, the state Democratic Party has been begging talk-show host Jerry Springer for divine deliverance for more than two years. Springer probably can't believe his luck; his sights set on the governor's mansion in 2006, he has stumbled on the biggest bargain fixer-upper political party in the United States Sprinkling his pennies from heaven all over the state gained Springer the "Ohio Democrat of the Year Award" this May, as well as an at-large delegate appointment to the party's presidential convention in Boston, despite having lived out of state for almost 20 years.
Doesn't look good for Kerry in Ohio, does it?
Not so fast.
During primary season, I dragged my apolitical friend Lori from Meetup to Meetup all over Cleveland, the two of us shopping around for a new president on snowy winter nights that would keep normal people huddled indoors. The Meetup groups we encountered were nonpolitical types from various economic, racial, and educational backgrounds whose average was 40-ish. People who looked way outside their comfort zone at a political meeting. People like Lori herself, who was unimpressed with the turnouts, which totaled 20 to 30 people as a rule. "Seems pretty low," she kept saying. "What do you think?"
Having grown up in Ohio politics, working with every presidential election in the state since 1988, and acutely aware of the cobwebs, crickets and tumbleweed of the Ohio Democratic Party, I had a very different perspective.
"Are you kidding me?" I shot back. "I've never seen anything like this in my life."
Wesley Clark's Cleveland Meetup the night before Super Tuesday was particularly eye-opening. The organizers were prepared with lists of phone numbers in Oklahoma, which had a primary the next day. Ten attendees used their cellphones to call Oklahoma for an hour.
Do the math. If each of those 10 people talked to 10 others, that's 100 contacts from the downtown Cleveland Meetup. There were 10 Meetups in Cleveland that night, adding up to 1,000 contacts from Cleveland. There are 10 major counties in Ohio. If each had made 1,000 contacts, that's 10,000 cross-state voter contacts made the night before Oklahoma's election -- which Clark won, in his only victory of the primary season, by less than 1,500 votes.
Imagine this grass-roots effort pumped up and targeted at George W. Bush in the fall, and things start to look a little better for Kerry in Ohio.
There's more. All winter, there were fliers at every Meetup that read, "ACT Ohio Hiring; $8 an hour. Make a Difference." America Coming Together (ACT), the George Soros-funded anti-Bush organization, has been paying canvassers (many of them recently laid-off steelworkers) in Ohio to knock on doors, register voters, identify their preference, and get them out to vote in November. This isn't big news; it's happening in swing states all over the country.
The news is that it's been going on in Ohio for more than a year, which itself is staggering. Such get-out-the-vote efforts in Ohio have at best been sporadic, unscientific and short-lived in the past. The earliest I've ever observed any such effort to get out Democratic votes in a presidential year in Ohio, with paid staff or unpaid volunteers, was August, two months before the election.
The hundreds of large, mostly urban precincts in Ohio where Democrats get more than 90 percent of the vote, but where the turnout is less than 20 percent, have been a particularly hard nut to crack. Increasing their turnout by mere percentage points would lead to a landslide victory for a Democrat, and it is in those precincts that ACT is most heavily focused.
ACT renders quaint the Bush "Amway" model. Haphazardly targeting garages with golf clubs in them while passing on union halls (note to Karl Rove: Democrats do golf; union members do vote Republican), Bush's minions seek out friends in places like Delaware County, the rarest of Ohio birds -- a county with people actually moving into it from out of state, rather than fleeing it like a burning building.
Ohio's many solidly Republican counties are numerous but low in population. Their Bush votes could be quickly swamped if ACT succeeds in getting out the vote in populous, Democratic-rich counties.
And then there's my mom.
My mother is known among my friends as "the zeitgeist of the American electorate." She's a typical ethnic, blue-collar, middle-class west-side Clevelander. She barely engages in politics, and yet her political behavior is almost exactly predictive. She is the Ohio voter.
Mom voted twice for Ronald Reagan. Dismissed Michael Dukakis in 1988 and voted for George H.W. Bush. In 1992, after flirting with Ross Perot, she voted for Bill Clinton. Clinton again in 1996. In 2000, she went back and forth for months and ended up voting for George W. Bush. She never loses.
This year she took the Democratic primary ballot for the first time in her life and voted for John Edwards.
This thing is over.
Analysts in presidential years tend to look in the obvious places for the ups and downs of the election, at the pathetically empty Democratic Party offices in Cleveland, or the oh-so-cute Bush volunteer pyramid directed by Karl Rove like the Wizard of Oz from behind a curtain.
But out in the real world, something much bigger is happening. Like an invisible earthquake thousands of miles away at the bottom of the sea that produces a tsunami, a growing wave of voter discontent is taking shape in Ohio, as the electorate sours on Bush's handling of the war, the economy and perhaps even the man himself. Recent Ohio polling shows the race has gone from a dead heat to a healthy seven- to nine-point margin for Kerry in the state, reflecting the movement of first-time Meetup attendees and people like my mother into the "Anybody but Bush" crowd.
At the same time, Ohio is experiencing a level of organic political activity in 2004 that I've never seen in my entire career in Ohio politics. It's happening earlier, with more intensity, and it involves more new people than ever. It's both planned and spontaneous. It is everywhere.
And every ounce of its energy is directed against George W. Bush.
A perfect storm is brewing in Ohio. The Bush road-rage bird-flippers know it's coming.
But it's worse than they think.
Mr. Rove, feel free to flip us off as you drive your U-Haul through Ohio on your way back to Texas in November.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
About the writer
Tim Russo is a Cleveland freelance writer who has worked with numerous Democratic campaigns in the state. In 2002 he was a general consultant for Tim Ryan, the youngest Democrat in Congress, who took the place of Jim Traficant.
Saturday, June 05, 2004
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
From online's Capitol Hill Blue. It's looking more and more like Bible salesman Greg Stillson (Stephen King's "THE DEAD ZONE") was elected to the White House.
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 4, 2004, 06:15
President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”
In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.
“We’re at war, there’s no doubt about it. What I don’t know anymore is just who the enemy might be,” says one troubled White House aide. “We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.”
Aides say the President gets “hung up on minor details,” micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally reviewing and approving every attack ad against his Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on economic issues.
“This is what is killing us on Iraq,” one aide says. “We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.”
Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves shut out of access to the President or other top advisors. Among top officials, Bush’s inner circle is shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen out of favor because of his growing doubts about the administration’s war against Iraq.
The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.
"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."
Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."
God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration’s lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft “the Blues Brothers” because “they’re on a mission from God.”
“The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion,” says one aide. “They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.”
But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them “fucking assholes” in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him “unpatriotic” or “anti-American.”
“The mood here is that we’re under siege, there’s no doubt about it,” says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. “In this administration, you don’t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the record.
© Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue
Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 4, 2004, 06:15
President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as “enemies of the state.”
Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.
“It reminds me of the Nixon days,” says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. “Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That’s the mood over there.”
In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be “God’s will” and then tells aides to “fuck over” anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.
“We’re at war, there’s no doubt about it. What I don’t know anymore is just who the enemy might be,” says one troubled White House aide. “We seem to spend more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing.”
Aides say the President gets “hung up on minor details,” micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally reviewing and approving every attack ad against his Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on economic issues.
“This is what is killing us on Iraq,” one aide says. “We lost focus. The President got hung up on the weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable reasons for the war but the President insisted the focus stay on those two, tenuous items.”
Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves shut out of access to the President or other top advisors. Among top officials, Bush’s inner circle is shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen out of favor because of his growing doubts about the administration’s war against Iraq.
The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an example of how he works.
"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide. "That would have been the opportune time to make a change, not in the middle of an election campaign but when the director challenged the President during the meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty. I want your resignation and I want it now."
Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday morning. One aide says the President actually described the decision as "God's will."
God may also be the reason Attorney General John Ashcroft, the administration’s lightning rod because of his questionable actions that critics argue threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution, remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers call Bush and Ashcroft “the Blues Brothers” because “they’re on a mission from God.”
“The Attorney General is tight with the President because of religion,” says one aide. “They both believe any action is justifiable in the name of God.”
But the President who says he rules at the behest of God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as disloyal, calling them “fucking assholes” in front of other staff, berating one cabinet official in front of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him “unpatriotic” or “anti-American.”
“The mood here is that we’re under siege, there’s no doubt about it,” says one troubled aide who admits he is looking for work elsewhere. “In this administration, you don’t have to wear a turban or speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All you have to do is disagree with the President.”
The White House did not respond to requests for comment on the record.
© Copyright 2004 Capitol Hill Blue
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Bush Campaign Seeks Help From Thousands of Congregations
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
Can anyone deny that the First Amendment guarantees the principle of religious liberty, even though those words do not appear there? Similarly, the First Amendment guarantees the principle of the separation of church and state - by implication, because separating church and state is what allows religious liberty to exist.
Separation of Church and State
June 3, 2004 NY TIMES
Bush Campaign Seeks Help From Thousands of Congregations
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The Bush campaign is seeking to enlist thousands of religious congregations around the country in distributing campaign information and registering voters, according to an e-mail message sent to many members of the clergy and others in Pennsylvania.
Liberal groups charged that the effort invited violations of the separation of church and state and jeopardized the tax-exempt status of churches that cooperated. Some socially conservative church leaders also said they would advise pastors against participating in such a partisan effort.
But Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush administration, said "people of faith have as much right to participate in the political process as any other community" and that the e-mail message was about "building the most sophisticated grass-roots presidential campaign in the country's history."
In the message, dated early Tuesday afternoon, Luke Bernstein, coalitions coordinator for the Bush campaign in Pennsylvania, wrote: "The Bush-Cheney '04 national headquarters in Virginia has asked us to identify 1,600 `Friendly Congregations' in Pennsylvania where voters friendly to President Bush might gather on a regular basis."
In each targeted "place of worship," Mr. Bernstein continued, without mentioning a specific religion or denomination, "we'd like to identify a volunteer who can help distribute general information to other supporters." He explained: "We plan to undertake activities such as distributing general information/updates or voter registration materials in a place accessible to the congregation."
The e-mail message was provided to The New York Times by a group critical of President Bush.
The campaign's effort is the latest indication of its heavy bet on churchgoers in its bid for re-election. Mr. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and officials of Mr. Bush's campaign have often said that people who attended church regularly voted for him disproportionately in the last election, and the campaign has made turning out that group a top priority this year. But advisers to Mr. Bush also acknowledge privately that appearing to court socially conservative Christian voters too aggressively risks turning off more moderate voters.
What was striking about the Pennsylvania e-mail message was its directness. Both political parties rely on church leaders — African-American pastors for the Democrats, for example, and white evangelical Protestants for the Republicans — to urge congregants to go the polls. And in the 1990's, the Christian Coalition developed a reputation as a political powerhouse by distributing voters guides in churches that alerted conservative believers to candidates' position on social issues like abortion and school prayer. But the Christian Coalition was organized as a nonpartisan, issue-oriented lobbying and voter-education organization, and in 1999 it ran afoul of federal tax laws for too much Republican partisanship.
The Bush campaign, in contrast, appeared to be reaching out directly to churches and church members, seeking to distribute campaign information as well as ostensibly nonpartisan material, like issue guides and registration forms.
Trevor Potter, a Washington lawyer and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said the campaign's solicitation raised delicate legal issues for congregations.
"If the church is doing it, it is a legal problem the church," Mr. Potter said. "In the past, the I.R.S. has sought to revoke and has succeeded in revoking the tax-exempt status of churches for political activity."
If a member of the congregation is disseminating the information, however, the issue is more complicated. If the congregation had a table where anyone could make available any information whatsoever without any institutional responsibility or oversight, then a member might be able to distribute campaign literature without violating tax laws. But very few churches have such open forums, Mr. Potter said. "The I.R.S. would ask, did the church encourage this? Did the church permit this but not other literature? Did the church in any way support this?"
Mr. Bernstein, the e-mail message's author, declined to comment. Mr. Schmidt, the campaign spokesman, said the e-mail message only sought individual volunteers from among the "friendly congregations," not the endorsements of the any religious organizations or groups.
"The e-mail is targeted to individuals, asking individuals to become involved in the campaign and to share information about the campaign with other people in their faith community," Mr. Schmidt said. "Yesterday, a liberal judge from San Francisco overturned a partial-birth abortion ban which banned that abhorrent procedure. That is an example of an issue that people of faith from across the United States care about."
He said that the Pennsylvania e-mail message was part of a larger national effort. The number of congregations mentioned - 1,600 in just one state - suggests an operation on a vast scale.
But even some officials of some conservative religious groups said they were troubled by the notion that a parishioner might distribute campaign information within a church or at a church service.
"If I were a pastor, I would not be comfortable doing that," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. "I would say to my church members, we are going to talk about the issues and we are going to take information from the platforms of the two parties about where they stand on the issues. I would tell them to vote and to vote their conscience, and the Lord alone is the Lord of the conscience."
The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the liberal Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argued that any form of distributing campaign literature through a church would compromise its tax-exempt status. He called the effort "an absolutely breathtakingly large undertaking," saying, "I never thought anyone could so attempt to meld a political party with a network of religious organizations."
In a statement, Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, a liberal group, called the effort "an astonishing abuse of religion" and "the rawest form of manipulation of religion for partisan gain." He urged the president to repudiate the effort.
In a statement, Mara Vanderslice, director of religious outreach for the Kerry campaign, said the effort "shows nothing but disrespect for the religious community." Ms. Vanderslice continued: "Although the Kerry campaign actively welcomes the participation of religious voices in our campaign, we will never court religious voters in a way that would jeopardize the sanctity of their very houses of worship."
How many congregations or worshippers will choose to cooperate remains to be seen. In an interview yesterday, the Rev. Ronald Fowlkes, pastor of the Victoria Baptist Church in Springfield, Pa., said he had not seen the e-mail message but did not think much of the idea.
"We encourage people to get out and vote," Mr. Fowlkes said, but as far as distributing information through church, "If it were focused on one party or person, that would be too much."
Can anyone deny that the First Amendment guarantees the principle of religious liberty, even though those words do not appear there? Similarly, the First Amendment guarantees the principle of the separation of church and state - by implication, because separating church and state is what allows religious liberty to exist.
Separation of Church and State
June 3, 2004 NY TIMES
Bush Campaign Seeks Help From Thousands of Congregations
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
The Bush campaign is seeking to enlist thousands of religious congregations around the country in distributing campaign information and registering voters, according to an e-mail message sent to many members of the clergy and others in Pennsylvania.
Liberal groups charged that the effort invited violations of the separation of church and state and jeopardized the tax-exempt status of churches that cooperated. Some socially conservative church leaders also said they would advise pastors against participating in such a partisan effort.
But Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for the Bush administration, said "people of faith have as much right to participate in the political process as any other community" and that the e-mail message was about "building the most sophisticated grass-roots presidential campaign in the country's history."
In the message, dated early Tuesday afternoon, Luke Bernstein, coalitions coordinator for the Bush campaign in Pennsylvania, wrote: "The Bush-Cheney '04 national headquarters in Virginia has asked us to identify 1,600 `Friendly Congregations' in Pennsylvania where voters friendly to President Bush might gather on a regular basis."
In each targeted "place of worship," Mr. Bernstein continued, without mentioning a specific religion or denomination, "we'd like to identify a volunteer who can help distribute general information to other supporters." He explained: "We plan to undertake activities such as distributing general information/updates or voter registration materials in a place accessible to the congregation."
The e-mail message was provided to The New York Times by a group critical of President Bush.
The campaign's effort is the latest indication of its heavy bet on churchgoers in its bid for re-election. Mr. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and officials of Mr. Bush's campaign have often said that people who attended church regularly voted for him disproportionately in the last election, and the campaign has made turning out that group a top priority this year. But advisers to Mr. Bush also acknowledge privately that appearing to court socially conservative Christian voters too aggressively risks turning off more moderate voters.
What was striking about the Pennsylvania e-mail message was its directness. Both political parties rely on church leaders — African-American pastors for the Democrats, for example, and white evangelical Protestants for the Republicans — to urge congregants to go the polls. And in the 1990's, the Christian Coalition developed a reputation as a political powerhouse by distributing voters guides in churches that alerted conservative believers to candidates' position on social issues like abortion and school prayer. But the Christian Coalition was organized as a nonpartisan, issue-oriented lobbying and voter-education organization, and in 1999 it ran afoul of federal tax laws for too much Republican partisanship.
The Bush campaign, in contrast, appeared to be reaching out directly to churches and church members, seeking to distribute campaign information as well as ostensibly nonpartisan material, like issue guides and registration forms.
Trevor Potter, a Washington lawyer and former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, said the campaign's solicitation raised delicate legal issues for congregations.
"If the church is doing it, it is a legal problem the church," Mr. Potter said. "In the past, the I.R.S. has sought to revoke and has succeeded in revoking the tax-exempt status of churches for political activity."
If a member of the congregation is disseminating the information, however, the issue is more complicated. If the congregation had a table where anyone could make available any information whatsoever without any institutional responsibility or oversight, then a member might be able to distribute campaign literature without violating tax laws. But very few churches have such open forums, Mr. Potter said. "The I.R.S. would ask, did the church encourage this? Did the church permit this but not other literature? Did the church in any way support this?"
Mr. Bernstein, the e-mail message's author, declined to comment. Mr. Schmidt, the campaign spokesman, said the e-mail message only sought individual volunteers from among the "friendly congregations," not the endorsements of the any religious organizations or groups.
"The e-mail is targeted to individuals, asking individuals to become involved in the campaign and to share information about the campaign with other people in their faith community," Mr. Schmidt said. "Yesterday, a liberal judge from San Francisco overturned a partial-birth abortion ban which banned that abhorrent procedure. That is an example of an issue that people of faith from across the United States care about."
He said that the Pennsylvania e-mail message was part of a larger national effort. The number of congregations mentioned - 1,600 in just one state - suggests an operation on a vast scale.
But even some officials of some conservative religious groups said they were troubled by the notion that a parishioner might distribute campaign information within a church or at a church service.
"If I were a pastor, I would not be comfortable doing that," said Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. "I would say to my church members, we are going to talk about the issues and we are going to take information from the platforms of the two parties about where they stand on the issues. I would tell them to vote and to vote their conscience, and the Lord alone is the Lord of the conscience."
The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the liberal Americans United for Separation of Church and State, argued that any form of distributing campaign literature through a church would compromise its tax-exempt status. He called the effort "an absolutely breathtakingly large undertaking," saying, "I never thought anyone could so attempt to meld a political party with a network of religious organizations."
In a statement, Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, a liberal group, called the effort "an astonishing abuse of religion" and "the rawest form of manipulation of religion for partisan gain." He urged the president to repudiate the effort.
In a statement, Mara Vanderslice, director of religious outreach for the Kerry campaign, said the effort "shows nothing but disrespect for the religious community." Ms. Vanderslice continued: "Although the Kerry campaign actively welcomes the participation of religious voices in our campaign, we will never court religious voters in a way that would jeopardize the sanctity of their very houses of worship."
How many congregations or worshippers will choose to cooperate remains to be seen. In an interview yesterday, the Rev. Ronald Fowlkes, pastor of the Victoria Baptist Church in Springfield, Pa., said he had not seen the e-mail message but did not think much of the idea.
"We encourage people to get out and vote," Mr. Fowlkes said, but as far as distributing information through church, "If it were focused on one party or person, that would be too much."
Democrats Ask Special Halliburton/Cheney Counsel
Democrats Ask Special Halliburton/Cheney Counsel
Wed Jun 2, 6:40 PM ET
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Democrats urged a special counsel on Wednesday to probe whether Vice President Dick Cheney broke the law through any involvement in the award of a government contract in Iraq to his old company, Halliburton Co.
For the second day running, Democrats demanded more answers to questions raised by a newly unearthed Army e-mail that said Cheney's office "coordinated" action on a contract to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure that was awarded to Halliburton...
Wed Jun 2, 6:40 PM ET
By Susan Cornwell
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House Democrats urged a special counsel on Wednesday to probe whether Vice President Dick Cheney broke the law through any involvement in the award of a government contract in Iraq to his old company, Halliburton Co.
For the second day running, Democrats demanded more answers to questions raised by a newly unearthed Army e-mail that said Cheney's office "coordinated" action on a contract to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure that was awarded to Halliburton...
Army Plan Aims to Keep Soldiers on Duty
Bush and his neocon administration have been wrong on every count since starting this war on false pretenses. So now they are penalizing our troops with extended tours of combat duty for their own incompetence.
Army Plan Aims to Keep Soldiers on Duty
Thu Jun 3, 1:05 AM ET
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will be required to stay if their units are ordered to Iraq or Afghanistan.
The announcement Wednesday, an expansion of a program called "stop-loss," affects units that are 90 days or less from deploying, said Lt. Gen. Frank L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel.
Commanders can make exceptions for soldiers with special circumstances. Otherwise, soldiers won't be able to leave the service or transfer from their units until they return to their home bases after their deployments end.
The Army is struggling to find fresh units to continue the occupation of Iraq. Almost every combat unit has faced or will face duty there or in Afghanistan, and increased violence has forced the deployment of an additional 20,000 troops to the Iraq region, straining units even further...
Army Plan Aims to Keep Soldiers on Duty
Thu Jun 3, 1:05 AM ET
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will be required to stay if their units are ordered to Iraq or Afghanistan.
The announcement Wednesday, an expansion of a program called "stop-loss," affects units that are 90 days or less from deploying, said Lt. Gen. Frank L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel.
Commanders can make exceptions for soldiers with special circumstances. Otherwise, soldiers won't be able to leave the service or transfer from their units until they return to their home bases after their deployments end.
The Army is struggling to find fresh units to continue the occupation of Iraq. Almost every combat unit has faced or will face duty there or in Afghanistan, and increased violence has forced the deployment of an additional 20,000 troops to the Iraq region, straining units even further...
AP: Administration Freed Terror Suspect
This administration throws innocents in jail and lets the real threats go free. Time for the cleam broom of John Kerry in November to remove these asses.
AP: Administration Freed Terror Suspect
Thu June 3
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Nabil al-Marabh, once imprisoned as the No. 27 man on the FBI's list of must-capture terror suspects, is free again. He's free despite telling a Jordanian informant he planned to die a martyr by driving a gasoline truck into a New York City tunnel, turning it sideways, opening its fuel valves and having an al-Qaida operative shoot a flare to ignite a massive explosion.
Free despite telling the FBI he had trained on rifles and rocket propelled grenades at militant camps in Afghanistan and after admitting he sent money to a former roommate convicted of trying to blow up a hotel in Jordan.
Free despite efforts by prosecutors in Detroit and Chicago to indict him on charges that could have kept him in prison for years. Those indictments were rejected by the Justice Department in the name of protecting intelligence. Even two judges openly questioned al-Marabh's terror ties.
The Bush administration in January deported al-Marabh to Syria — his home and a country the U.S. government long has regarded as a sponsor of terrorism.
The quiet end to al-Marabh's case provides a stark contrast to other cases in which the Bush administration has held suspects without lawyers as enemy combatants. It also contrasts with the terms FBI agents used to describe al-Marabh in internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Al-Marabh "intended to martyr himself in an attack against the United States," an FBI agent wrote in December 2002. A footnote in al-Marabh's deportation ruling last year added, "The FBI has been unable to rule out the possibility that al-Marabh has engaged in terrorist activity or will do so if he is not removed from the United States."...
AP: Administration Freed Terror Suspect
Thu June 3
By JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Nabil al-Marabh, once imprisoned as the No. 27 man on the FBI's list of must-capture terror suspects, is free again. He's free despite telling a Jordanian informant he planned to die a martyr by driving a gasoline truck into a New York City tunnel, turning it sideways, opening its fuel valves and having an al-Qaida operative shoot a flare to ignite a massive explosion.
Free despite telling the FBI he had trained on rifles and rocket propelled grenades at militant camps in Afghanistan and after admitting he sent money to a former roommate convicted of trying to blow up a hotel in Jordan.
Free despite efforts by prosecutors in Detroit and Chicago to indict him on charges that could have kept him in prison for years. Those indictments were rejected by the Justice Department in the name of protecting intelligence. Even two judges openly questioned al-Marabh's terror ties.
The Bush administration in January deported al-Marabh to Syria — his home and a country the U.S. government long has regarded as a sponsor of terrorism.
The quiet end to al-Marabh's case provides a stark contrast to other cases in which the Bush administration has held suspects without lawyers as enemy combatants. It also contrasts with the terms FBI agents used to describe al-Marabh in internal documents obtained by The Associated Press.
Al-Marabh "intended to martyr himself in an attack against the United States," an FBI agent wrote in December 2002. A footnote in al-Marabh's deportation ruling last year added, "The FBI has been unable to rule out the possibility that al-Marabh has engaged in terrorist activity or will do so if he is not removed from the United States."...
Bush May Hire Lawyer in Probe Over CIA Leak
What happened to Bush's claim of taking full personal responsibility for his actions?
Bush May Hire Lawyer in Probe Over CIA Leak
Wed Jun 2, 8:10 PM ET
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has sought a lawyer to represent him in the criminal probe into who was responsible for a leak that was seen as retaliation against a critic of the Iraq war, the White House said on Wednesday.
"The president has had discussions with an outside attorney, and in the event that he needs advice he would retain him," said White House spokesman Allen Abney, naming the lawyer as Jim Sharp.
A federal grand jury has been hearing testimony since January from administration and government officials in an attempt to establish who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media last year.
Plame is the wife of Joe Wilson, a former ambassador who was asked by the CIA to travel to Niger in February 2002 to check reports that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country.
Wilson dismissed the reports as unfounded, but Bush nevertheless included a reference to the supposed deal in his State of the Union speech in 2003, citing it as one of the reasons to invade Iraq.
The CIA later acknowledged that the uranium reports were based on forged documents and the White House said they should not have been mentioned in the State of the Union speech.
A newspaper columnist disclosed Plame's identity in July last year and Wilson accused the Bush administration of having leaked the information to pay him back for having publicly taken issue with the president's uranium claim.
It is illegal under U.S. law to disclose the name of a covert agent who has served outside the country in the previous five years.
Reports that Bush had contacted an attorney were first carried on Wednesday by CBS Evening News.
Bush May Hire Lawyer in Probe Over CIA Leak
Wed Jun 2, 8:10 PM ET
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush has sought a lawyer to represent him in the criminal probe into who was responsible for a leak that was seen as retaliation against a critic of the Iraq war, the White House said on Wednesday.
"The president has had discussions with an outside attorney, and in the event that he needs advice he would retain him," said White House spokesman Allen Abney, naming the lawyer as Jim Sharp.
A federal grand jury has been hearing testimony since January from administration and government officials in an attempt to establish who leaked the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media last year.
Plame is the wife of Joe Wilson, a former ambassador who was asked by the CIA to travel to Niger in February 2002 to check reports that Iraq had tried to buy enriched uranium from the African country.
Wilson dismissed the reports as unfounded, but Bush nevertheless included a reference to the supposed deal in his State of the Union speech in 2003, citing it as one of the reasons to invade Iraq.
The CIA later acknowledged that the uranium reports were based on forged documents and the White House said they should not have been mentioned in the State of the Union speech.
A newspaper columnist disclosed Plame's identity in July last year and Wilson accused the Bush administration of having leaked the information to pay him back for having publicly taken issue with the president's uranium claim.
It is illegal under U.S. law to disclose the name of a covert agent who has served outside the country in the previous five years.
Reports that Bush had contacted an attorney were first carried on Wednesday by CBS Evening News.
Monday, May 31, 2004
June 1, 2004
NY TIMES OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Great Escape
By CRAIG UNGER
Americans who think the 9/11 commission is going to answer all the crucial questions about the terrorist attacks are likely to be sorely disappointed — especially if they're interested in the secret evacuation of Saudis by plane that began just after Sept. 11.
We knew that 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudis. We knew that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was behind 9/11. Yet we did not conduct a police-style investigation of the departing Saudis, of whom two dozen were members. of the bin Laden family. That is not to say that they were complicit in the attacks.
Unfortunately, though, we may never know the real story. The investigative panel has already concluded that there is "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace." But the real point is that there were still some restrictions on American airspace when the Saudi flights began.
In addition, new evidence shows that the evacuation involved more than the departure of 142 Saudis on six charter flights that the commission is investigating. According to newly released documents, 160 Saudis left the United States on 55 flights immediately after 9/11 — making a total of about 300 people who left with the apparent approval of the Bush administration, far more than has been reported before. The records were released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative, nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington.
The vast majority of the newly disclosed flights were commercial airline flights, not charters, often carrying just two or three Saudi passengers. They originated from more than 20 cities, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Houston. One Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left Kennedy Airport on Sept. 13 with 46 Saudis. The next day, another Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left with 13 Saudis.
The panel has indicated that it has yet to find any evidence that the F.B.I. checked the manifests of departing flights against its terror watch list. The departures of additional Saudis raise more questions for the panel. Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, told The Hill newspaper recently that he took full responsibility for approving some flights. But we don't know if other Bush administration officials participated in the decision.
The passengers should have been questioned about any links to Osama bin Laden, or his financing. We have long known that some faction of the Saudi elite has helped funnel money to Islamist terrorists —inadvertently at least. Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who has been accused of being an intermediary between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud, boarded one of the evacuation planes in Kentucky. Was he interrogated by the F.B.I. before he left?
If the commission dares to address these issues, it will undoubtedly be accused of politicizing one of the most important national security investigations in American history — in an election year, no less.
But if it does not, it risks something far worse — the betrayal of the thousands of people who lost their lives that day, not to mention millions of others who want the truth.
Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties."
________________________________________________________________________
NY TIMES OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
The Great Escape
By CRAIG UNGER
Americans who think the 9/11 commission is going to answer all the crucial questions about the terrorist attacks are likely to be sorely disappointed — especially if they're interested in the secret evacuation of Saudis by plane that began just after Sept. 11.
We knew that 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudis. We knew that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, was behind 9/11. Yet we did not conduct a police-style investigation of the departing Saudis, of whom two dozen were members. of the bin Laden family. That is not to say that they were complicit in the attacks.
Unfortunately, though, we may never know the real story. The investigative panel has already concluded that there is "no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace." But the real point is that there were still some restrictions on American airspace when the Saudi flights began.
In addition, new evidence shows that the evacuation involved more than the departure of 142 Saudis on six charter flights that the commission is investigating. According to newly released documents, 160 Saudis left the United States on 55 flights immediately after 9/11 — making a total of about 300 people who left with the apparent approval of the Bush administration, far more than has been reported before. The records were released by the Department of Homeland Security in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative, nonpartisan watchdog group in Washington.
The vast majority of the newly disclosed flights were commercial airline flights, not charters, often carrying just two or three Saudi passengers. They originated from more than 20 cities, including Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit and Houston. One Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left Kennedy Airport on Sept. 13 with 46 Saudis. The next day, another Saudi Arabian Airlines flight left with 13 Saudis.
The panel has indicated that it has yet to find any evidence that the F.B.I. checked the manifests of departing flights against its terror watch list. The departures of additional Saudis raise more questions for the panel. Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar, told The Hill newspaper recently that he took full responsibility for approving some flights. But we don't know if other Bush administration officials participated in the decision.
The passengers should have been questioned about any links to Osama bin Laden, or his financing. We have long known that some faction of the Saudi elite has helped funnel money to Islamist terrorists —inadvertently at least. Prince Ahmed bin Salman, who has been accused of being an intermediary between Al Qaeda and the House of Saud, boarded one of the evacuation planes in Kentucky. Was he interrogated by the F.B.I. before he left?
If the commission dares to address these issues, it will undoubtedly be accused of politicizing one of the most important national security investigations in American history — in an election year, no less.
But if it does not, it risks something far worse — the betrayal of the thousands of people who lost their lives that day, not to mention millions of others who want the truth.
Craig Unger is the author of "House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties."
________________________________________________________________________
May 31, 2004 NY TIMES LETTERS
Hastert and McCain
To the Editor:
So according to the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, Senator John McCain, of all people, does not know the meaning of sacrifice ("Hastert, the Reticent Speaker, Suddenly Has Plenty to Say," news article, May 24).
Given the administration's abysmal record — on all fronts, from economic policy to security to military affairs — it is not surprising that Mr. Hastert and other Congressional Republicans respond to criticism with personal attacks.
But you know they're desperate when they attack someone like Mr. McCain for daring to question the fiscal irresponsibility of this administration and its Congressional supporters.
SILVIO LEVY
Berkeley, Calif., May 24, 2004
Hastert and McCain
To the Editor:
So according to the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, Senator John McCain, of all people, does not know the meaning of sacrifice ("Hastert, the Reticent Speaker, Suddenly Has Plenty to Say," news article, May 24).
Given the administration's abysmal record — on all fronts, from economic policy to security to military affairs — it is not surprising that Mr. Hastert and other Congressional Republicans respond to criticism with personal attacks.
But you know they're desperate when they attack someone like Mr. McCain for daring to question the fiscal irresponsibility of this administration and its Congressional supporters.
SILVIO LEVY
Berkeley, Calif., May 24, 2004
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