One of the biggest differences between the Clinton presidency and our 8 year nightmare under Bush was the former president's knack for thinking strategically. The Great Game, otherwise known as the global proxy oil wars between the "East" and "West" has been likened to a chess match. Thanks to Bush and Cheney's thickheaded neocons and their fateful lust to grab that last tempting piece (Iraq) the U.S. has been left with strategic weaknesses all across the board. Not only are its pawns no longer solidly connected its once powerful pieces, having been foolishly placed, are now vulnerable and rapidly waning in strength.
For instance Cheney and McCain's greedy blundering has finally cost us one of our strategic allies in the Caucasus. Clinton had plotted a clever role for the energy-poor republic. Georgia was to become part of an "energy corridor" for the export of Caspian basin oil and gas to the West, bypassing Russia altogether. It would start with an "early-oil" pipeline built to carry petroleum from Azerbaijan's energy fields on the Caspian Sea to Supsa on Georgia's Black Sea coast. This would be followed by the tactical construction of a 1,000-mile BTC pipeline from Baku to Tbilisi then on to Ceyhan on Turkey's Mediterranean coast.
But with the typical short-sightedness that guides Bush and the neocons instead of telling Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili, (as Condi Rice supposedly advised) to chill his boots and be satisfied playing his role as pipeline guardian, they backed his crazy fantasies. By trying to retake breakaway regions of Abhkazia and South Ossetia Saakashvili and the neocons handed Putin the opening for a counterattack he craved ever since taking over from Russia's former big man and blunderer-in-chief, Boris Yeltsin.
Unfortunately as recent revelations about Jane Harman's incestuous ties to the neocon cabal have made painfully clear, the warmongering parasites that continue to profit from U.S. foreign policy have their grasping tentacles in every branch and party in Washington.
Showing posts with label Cheney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cheney. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
Untwisting Tortured Justice
"Unfortunately, it may have been legal..." President Obama's excuse for why intelligence officials may be immune from criminal prosecution despite engaging in torture.
Twice in U.S. history has a sitting president defied the courts and ignored the Constitution. Both Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Only Lincoln however did so without the imprimatur of Congress. So while it is distasteful in the extreme that Obama appears unwilling to prosecute Cheney and his henchmen for the disgraceful actions their "redefinitions" of torture inspired it is far from clear that such prosecutions would lead to a desirable outcome.
For that to occur Congress would first have to be pressed to undo their egregious role in this sordid chapter. But seeing the reason Bush was provided his legal fig-leaf was due to Congress' cowardice I would not hold out much hopes for seeing justice done if it depends on the same invertebrate lot that signed on to the abomination known as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 .
Here is its outline as described by the NYTimes:
Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.
Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
Joanne Mariner explains why the Bush Administration was so eager to pass the Act before the 2006 midterm elections:
"The MCA was passed in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a ruling that called into question the legality of the Administration's secret CIA detention program. Hamdan made it clear that abusive interrogation techniques used by the CIA violated international law, and that CIA operatives could be held criminally liable for such abuses.
Reacting to Hamdan, the Bush Administration first pushed to redefine the scope of U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions, in particular Common Article 3, the provision at issue in Hamdan. After opposition from within the Republican Party to such an overt repudiation of universally-accepted international norms, the Administration took a different approach. While the MCA does not explicitly rewrite the Common Article 3, it opens the door to the provision's effective redefinition. It does so by specifying that the War Crimes Act, as amended, satisfies the U.S. obligation to criminalize grave breaches of Common Article 3, and that the president may issue authoritative interpretations of the remainder of the provision.
The law also nullifies the legal impact of the Conventions in domestic courts. Section 5 of the law provides that the Geneva Conventions and related treaties are unenforceable in court in civil cases involving the U.S. government or its agents. It states, specifically, that they may not be invoked "in any habeas corpus or any other civil action or proceeding . . . as a source of rights in any [U.S. or state] court." And another provision of the law bars persons deemed unlawful enemy combatants from invoking these treaties as a source of rights.
Notably, the legislation narrows the scope of the War Crimes Act, decriminalizing certain past acts. Previously, the War Crimes Act criminalized all violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, as well as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Anyone responsible for any Common Article 3 violation, including the cruel, humiliating or degrading treatment of detainees, could be prosecuted under the law.
The MCA revises this portion of the War Crimes Act, replacing the blanket criminalization of Common Article 3 violations with a list of "grave breaches" of Common Article 3, which are specified and defined in the legislation."
That cover makes bringing the actors to the bar of justice extremely complicated. As Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia University law school. explains, "If we’re talking about holding a particular individual liable, we’re talking about drawing a straight line between opinions given and acts done-- people who really were hurt by the government in ways that are legally offensive ought to have some sort of forum to get compensation or vindication-- but to go from there to say that part of that process should involve singling out one or two subpresidential actors in an area where the president really does dominate policymaking is a stretch for me.”
With a Democratic POTUS hopes were high that the lawbooks would be purged of this monstrosity, but seeing that our craven leaders (over 50 Democrats voted for that horrendous legislation) are no less culpable the chances of Justice winning the day may require a radically different Congress, not to mention a far more confident White House.
Twice in U.S. history has a sitting president defied the courts and ignored the Constitution. Both Abraham Lincoln and George W. Bush suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Only Lincoln however did so without the imprimatur of Congress. So while it is distasteful in the extreme that Obama appears unwilling to prosecute Cheney and his henchmen for the disgraceful actions their "redefinitions" of torture inspired it is far from clear that such prosecutions would lead to a desirable outcome.
For that to occur Congress would first have to be pressed to undo their egregious role in this sordid chapter. But seeing the reason Bush was provided his legal fig-leaf was due to Congress' cowardice I would not hold out much hopes for seeing justice done if it depends on the same invertebrate lot that signed on to the abomination known as the Military Commissions Act of 2006 .
Here is its outline as described by the NYTimes:
Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.
Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
Joanne Mariner explains why the Bush Administration was so eager to pass the Act before the 2006 midterm elections:
"The MCA was passed in the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, a ruling that called into question the legality of the Administration's secret CIA detention program. Hamdan made it clear that abusive interrogation techniques used by the CIA violated international law, and that CIA operatives could be held criminally liable for such abuses.
Reacting to Hamdan, the Bush Administration first pushed to redefine the scope of U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions, in particular Common Article 3, the provision at issue in Hamdan. After opposition from within the Republican Party to such an overt repudiation of universally-accepted international norms, the Administration took a different approach. While the MCA does not explicitly rewrite the Common Article 3, it opens the door to the provision's effective redefinition. It does so by specifying that the War Crimes Act, as amended, satisfies the U.S. obligation to criminalize grave breaches of Common Article 3, and that the president may issue authoritative interpretations of the remainder of the provision.
The law also nullifies the legal impact of the Conventions in domestic courts. Section 5 of the law provides that the Geneva Conventions and related treaties are unenforceable in court in civil cases involving the U.S. government or its agents. It states, specifically, that they may not be invoked "in any habeas corpus or any other civil action or proceeding . . . as a source of rights in any [U.S. or state] court." And another provision of the law bars persons deemed unlawful enemy combatants from invoking these treaties as a source of rights.
Notably, the legislation narrows the scope of the War Crimes Act, decriminalizing certain past acts. Previously, the War Crimes Act criminalized all violations of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, as well as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. Anyone responsible for any Common Article 3 violation, including the cruel, humiliating or degrading treatment of detainees, could be prosecuted under the law.
The MCA revises this portion of the War Crimes Act, replacing the blanket criminalization of Common Article 3 violations with a list of "grave breaches" of Common Article 3, which are specified and defined in the legislation."
That cover makes bringing the actors to the bar of justice extremely complicated. As Daniel Richman, a professor at Columbia University law school. explains, "If we’re talking about holding a particular individual liable, we’re talking about drawing a straight line between opinions given and acts done-- people who really were hurt by the government in ways that are legally offensive ought to have some sort of forum to get compensation or vindication-- but to go from there to say that part of that process should involve singling out one or two subpresidential actors in an area where the president really does dominate policymaking is a stretch for me.”
With a Democratic POTUS hopes were high that the lawbooks would be purged of this monstrosity, but seeing that our craven leaders (over 50 Democrats voted for that horrendous legislation) are no less culpable the chances of Justice winning the day may require a radically different Congress, not to mention a far more confident White House.
Monday, October 13, 2008
The GOP's 1st Commandment: Blame The Victim
As I outlined in my previous post, "Mission Accomplished", the politicization of the U.S. Justice Department allowed Bush and his cronies to assume extra-constitutional powers in order to rape and steal with impunity. As James Galbraith explains in his most recent book, The Predator State, during the last decade, the neoconservatives in Washington and on Wall Street have conspired to steal elections and occupy the most powerful political and financial institutions in the land so that they might abuse that power. And while it is true that Cheney and Bush could not have achieved so much without the complicity of the courts and Congress, it cannot be overstated that a crucial role continues to be played by the corporate right-wing media.
In psychology the term "projection" is described as belonging to one who perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest. It is a characteristic increasingly on display now that the neocons have had their greed and lies exposed.
Take the latest talking points being spouted on Fox News and by CNN commentators like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs. First they blamed the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods. Now that the public is onto their game the right-wing's strident mouthpieces have turned to braying that everything would have been rosy were it not for "those white liberals" and their "need to appease" those unworthy blacks and latinos.
Blaming the CRA has been peddled by Charles Krauthammer, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, and the National Review. But as the global markets continue to tumble and the truthtellers finally get a hearing, it is clear that their dog won't hunt.
Take the recent conservative claim that it was the government's push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans that precipitated the current crisis. Janet Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, debunked it from early last March:
"Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans. The CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."
In fact, Federal Reserve Board data show that:
It is crucial to note that it was Angela Merkel's promise to back her own German banks that put pressure on the rest of the Europeans who (at least for the moment) have successfully averted the neocons' $780 billion swindle. It is also encouraging to see Barack Obama finally finding the courage to lead the way: he now proposes that "government buy ownership in the major banks to keep them afloat while cutting capital gains taxes for investments in small business"
It's a start but as president Obama will have to ignore the right-wing noise machine and take more drastic action, such as the Nation's William Greider has previously proposed:
First, he should take due bills from any financial firms providing there is a hard contract that repays taxpayers from any future profits. Second, Wall Street must be prohibited from exercising their usual manipulations of the political system. They must call off their lobbyists, bar them from the bribery disguised as campaign contributions. Any contact or conversations between the assisted bankers and financial houses with government agencies or elected politicians must be promptly reported to the public, just as regulated industries are required to do when they call on government regulars.
To get out of this financial mess at the very minimum we need a Second New Deal. One that allows government to lend directly to established businesses, solvent banks, as well as the consumer markets. Only time will tell if Obama and/or the American public have the savvy and guts to demand it.
In psychology the term "projection" is described as belonging to one who perceives in others the motive he denies having himself. Thus the cheat is sure that everyone else is dishonest. It is a characteristic increasingly on display now that the neocons have had their greed and lies exposed.
Take the latest talking points being spouted on Fox News and by CNN commentators like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs. First they blamed the subprime lending mess on the Community Reinvestment Act, a 31-year-old law aimed at freeing credit for underserved neighborhoods. Now that the public is onto their game the right-wing's strident mouthpieces have turned to braying that everything would have been rosy were it not for "those white liberals" and their "need to appease" those unworthy blacks and latinos.
Blaming the CRA has been peddled by Charles Krauthammer, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, and the National Review. But as the global markets continue to tumble and the truthtellers finally get a hearing, it is clear that their dog won't hunt.
Take the recent conservative claim that it was the government's push to make housing more affordable to lower-class Americans that precipitated the current crisis. Janet Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, debunked it from early last March:
"Most of the loans made by depository institutions examined under the CRA have not been higher-priced loans. The CRA has increased the volume of responsible lending to low- and moderate-income households."
In fact, Federal Reserve Board data show that:
-More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
-Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
-Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics.
When their racist smear did not catch on the right-wing pundits shifted to claim it was those government sponsored entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that created the financial meltdown. In reality, Fannie and Freddie don't lend money, to minorities or anyone else. They purchase loans from private lenders who actually underwrite those loans. And it was Bush's deliberate expansion of these security transactions made possible by the Gramm/Bliley Act that repealed Glass/Steagall that led Wall Street to indulge in their decriminalized shenanigans.
As the McClatchy Papers explain: Fannie and Freddie didn't pressure lenders to sell them more loans; they struggled to keep pace with their private sector competitors. In fact, their regulator, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, imposed new restrictions in 2006 that led to Fannie and Freddie losing even more market share in the booming subprime market.
What's more, only commercial banks and thrifts must follow CRA rules. The investment banks don't, nor did the now-bankrupt non-bank lenders such as New Century Financial Corp. and Ameriquest that underwrote most of the subprime loans.
These private non-bank lenders enjoyed a regulatory gap, allowing them to be regulated by 50 different state banking supervisors instead of the federal government. And mortgage brokers, who also weren't subject to federal regulation or the CRA, originated most of the subprime loans.
As the late Federal Reserve Governor Ed Gramlich wrote back in 2007 "only one-third of all CRA loans had interest rates high enough to be considered sub-prime and that to the pleasant surprise of commercial banks there were low default rates. Banks that participated in CRA lending had found, 'that this new lending is good business.'"It is crucial to note that it was Angela Merkel's promise to back her own German banks that put pressure on the rest of the Europeans who (at least for the moment) have successfully averted the neocons' $780 billion swindle. It is also encouraging to see Barack Obama finally finding the courage to lead the way: he now proposes that "government buy ownership in the major banks to keep them afloat while cutting capital gains taxes for investments in small business"
It's a start but as president Obama will have to ignore the right-wing noise machine and take more drastic action, such as the Nation's William Greider has previously proposed:
First, he should take due bills from any financial firms providing there is a hard contract that repays taxpayers from any future profits. Second, Wall Street must be prohibited from exercising their usual manipulations of the political system. They must call off their lobbyists, bar them from the bribery disguised as campaign contributions. Any contact or conversations between the assisted bankers and financial houses with government agencies or elected politicians must be promptly reported to the public, just as regulated industries are required to do when they call on government regulars.
To get out of this financial mess at the very minimum we need a Second New Deal. One that allows government to lend directly to established businesses, solvent banks, as well as the consumer markets. Only time will tell if Obama and/or the American public have the savvy and guts to demand it.
Saturday, October 11, 2008
"Mission Accomplished"
Buried in the avalanche of dire news on the financial meltdown is a scathing report from government investigators from both the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility who now confirm that political pressure led to the firing of United States Attorneys.
Just as the Bush Administration's refusal to oversee Wall Street has led the markets into chaos, it's politicization of the Justice Department has produced a cancer threatening the very heart of our wounded democracy. It is impossible to firmly assess the extent of the tumor without a proper biopsy, but we know that it grew from the intent to suppress Democratic voters in the 2004 elections. As the Boston Globe reported: the Bush appointee in the Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman, clearly disregarded voting rights law in order to elect Republicans.
Joseph Rich, who was chief of the voting rights section of the Civil Rights Division under Schlozman, stated that: "Schlozman didn't know anything about voting law. . . . All he knew is he wanted to be sure that the Republicans were going to win."
When U.S. attorneys refused to bring bogus charges against Democratic candidates Karl Rove's political appointees in the Justice Department simply replaced them illegally. At the same time, the Guardian's investigative reporter, Greg Palast had begun to uncover that: "In the 2004 presidential election, Republican operatives blocked a quarter-million new voters nationwide from voting on grounds they brought the wrong IDs to the polls."
But the rot in the Bush Justice Department was not confined to corruption of our vote. Not only was it discovered on the eve of the elections that Halliburton had received no bid contracts from the Pentagon worth billions of dollars, the same company formerly run by Vice President Richard Cheney, had obtained a secret $7 billion deal for its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), to restore Iraq’s oil fields from before Bush ordered the invasion.
It has since come to light that several of Halliburton's female employees had been sexually harassed and in at least one case, gang-raped by co-workers in Iraq. Yet despite dozens of similar charges having been lodged by women working for US defense contractors in the Middle East, the Justice Department has so far declined to pursue their cases. As a result, claims that US security contractors are abusing their employees continue to emerge. One lawyer in Houston, says that at last count his firm had fifteen clients who had suffered incidents of sexual assault, sexual harassment and retaliation.
But as destructive as the corrosion of our judicial system has been for victimized citizens, the unprecedented power that the Bush Administration has managed to obtain in order to insulate itself from criminal prosecution becomes even more alarming when one realizes that the power grab was facilitated by both the federal courts and the U.S. Congress.
Destroying the "Balance of Powers"
The Bush White House basically declared war on our laws supporting open government. In an article entitled: "Is Cheney 'Beyond the Reach of the Law'?" former Nixon White House counsel John Dean finds it extraordinary that the vice-president would attempt to claim that he is immune from Congressional oversight and that members of the Supreme Court would seek to validate such a radical "expanse of executive powers.”
For the last 8 years we have not been a country governed by Law but a land ruled by men who proved ruthless in pursuing their lust for wealth and power. It is not hard to appreciate the irony of our present predicament. In 2003, George Bush declared that he was invading Iraq to remove an "evil dictator" who defies the "rule of law" and in achieving that end Bush now presumes to possess the prerogatives of Saddam Hussein and Josef Stalin.
[Legal scholar, Jonathan Turley on the signing of the Military Commissions Act had warned that, "Congress just gave the president despotic powers…I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking - overtaking - almost absolute power."]
Of course, just as we watch the craven cowards stampede us into a second Depression, Bush and Bin Laden succeeded by stoking our fears.
"Thanks to the overreaction by the Bush/Cheney administration along with the neocons and free market fundamentalists of the Republican Party, Bin Laden has succeeded in harming America far beyond his wildest dreams, much as the overreaction by the leaders of the Politburo to Reagan's arms build-up undermined an already faltering Soviet system"-- Miles Mogulescu.
No doubt, as they watch the financial markets crumble after an eight year binge of lawlessness, corruption and greed, those who supported Messrs Bush and Bin Laden are boasting "Mission Accomplished."
Just as the Bush Administration's refusal to oversee Wall Street has led the markets into chaos, it's politicization of the Justice Department has produced a cancer threatening the very heart of our wounded democracy. It is impossible to firmly assess the extent of the tumor without a proper biopsy, but we know that it grew from the intent to suppress Democratic voters in the 2004 elections. As the Boston Globe reported: the Bush appointee in the Civil Rights Division, Bradley Schlozman, clearly disregarded voting rights law in order to elect Republicans.
Joseph Rich, who was chief of the voting rights section of the Civil Rights Division under Schlozman, stated that: "Schlozman didn't know anything about voting law. . . . All he knew is he wanted to be sure that the Republicans were going to win."
When U.S. attorneys refused to bring bogus charges against Democratic candidates Karl Rove's political appointees in the Justice Department simply replaced them illegally. At the same time, the Guardian's investigative reporter, Greg Palast had begun to uncover that: "In the 2004 presidential election, Republican operatives blocked a quarter-million new voters nationwide from voting on grounds they brought the wrong IDs to the polls."
But the rot in the Bush Justice Department was not confined to corruption of our vote. Not only was it discovered on the eve of the elections that Halliburton had received no bid contracts from the Pentagon worth billions of dollars, the same company formerly run by Vice President Richard Cheney, had obtained a secret $7 billion deal for its subsidiary, Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), to restore Iraq’s oil fields from before Bush ordered the invasion.
It has since come to light that several of Halliburton's female employees had been sexually harassed and in at least one case, gang-raped by co-workers in Iraq. Yet despite dozens of similar charges having been lodged by women working for US defense contractors in the Middle East, the Justice Department has so far declined to pursue their cases. As a result, claims that US security contractors are abusing their employees continue to emerge. One lawyer in Houston, says that at last count his firm had fifteen clients who had suffered incidents of sexual assault, sexual harassment and retaliation.
But as destructive as the corrosion of our judicial system has been for victimized citizens, the unprecedented power that the Bush Administration has managed to obtain in order to insulate itself from criminal prosecution becomes even more alarming when one realizes that the power grab was facilitated by both the federal courts and the U.S. Congress.
Destroying the "Balance of Powers"
The Bush White House basically declared war on our laws supporting open government. In an article entitled: "Is Cheney 'Beyond the Reach of the Law'?" former Nixon White House counsel John Dean finds it extraordinary that the vice-president would attempt to claim that he is immune from Congressional oversight and that members of the Supreme Court would seek to validate such a radical "expanse of executive powers.”
For the last 8 years we have not been a country governed by Law but a land ruled by men who proved ruthless in pursuing their lust for wealth and power. It is not hard to appreciate the irony of our present predicament. In 2003, George Bush declared that he was invading Iraq to remove an "evil dictator" who defies the "rule of law" and in achieving that end Bush now presumes to possess the prerogatives of Saddam Hussein and Josef Stalin.
[Legal scholar, Jonathan Turley on the signing of the Military Commissions Act had warned that, "Congress just gave the president despotic powers…I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking - overtaking - almost absolute power."]
Of course, just as we watch the craven cowards stampede us into a second Depression, Bush and Bin Laden succeeded by stoking our fears.
"Thanks to the overreaction by the Bush/Cheney administration along with the neocons and free market fundamentalists of the Republican Party, Bin Laden has succeeded in harming America far beyond his wildest dreams, much as the overreaction by the leaders of the Politburo to Reagan's arms build-up undermined an already faltering Soviet system"-- Miles Mogulescu.
No doubt, as they watch the financial markets crumble after an eight year binge of lawlessness, corruption and greed, those who supported Messrs Bush and Bin Laden are boasting "Mission Accomplished."
Monday, September 15, 2008
Wipeout
The Iraq Invasion and Occupation was supposed to make it all better. The Iraqis would welcome the U.S. as liberators and in their undying gratitude give us their oil at rock bottom prices. The remarkable thing is-- it might actually have worked were it not for the fact that George W Bush has the diplomatic acumen of a 5th century Vandal and Dick Cheney loves money more than his own mother or even Donald Rumsfeld.
But thanks to cronyism, hubris and greed, along with some treasonous subterfuge,the war has been a debacle featuring incompetence, corruption, and brutality, all of mind-bending proportions and tragic consequences. When histories are written a hundred years hence on the remarkable decline of the American Empire, the war for Iraq will likely be judged as the greatest act of self-destruction the world has ever seen.
So here we are, five years after "Mission Accomplished", with an economy in the toilet, unemployment hovering at 13%, a government debt of nearly 10 trillion dollars and an annual deficit running @ $700 billion. The path to our swift disintegration we can trace to the great Ronald Reagan who convinced us and his clueless supplicant George W Bush., that by putting the poor in debt while pampering the rich we could eat cake every day and always have a good-paying job in the offing. His future vice-president George Bush Sr. described it aptly as "Voodoo Economics". Judging from his son, that may have been the last honest thing the man ever said.
So how has sailing a country of 300 million souls in a sea of red ink worked out? Well Fanny and Freddie, our two mortgage giants, are about to be shored up by more tax-payer credit, meanwhile Merrill Lynch and the Lehmann Brothers have just fallen on their knees, praying that our brave leverage king, Bank of America, will survive the bloodbath and be their savior. However, as much as I'd like to lay all the blame at the feet of Sir Ronald, credit for the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression belongs to the moronic Phil Gramm, he of the infamous Enron Loophole, and the peerless Alan Greenspan who can't resist blowing bubbles and apparently has never met with a white-shoe banker without experiencing the urge to genuflect.
All of which means that the fiscal discipline responsible Democrats tend to practice in public and in private-- you know the idea that it's better to invest in the public as well as in private to insure the country's future-- has just gone up in smoke-- blown with the wind just like the neo-con dream that we would conquer all of Arabia, drill oil from now until eternity and live happily ever after, singing praises to dear Dick and Donny.
But thanks to cronyism, hubris and greed, along with some treasonous subterfuge,the war has been a debacle featuring incompetence, corruption, and brutality, all of mind-bending proportions and tragic consequences. When histories are written a hundred years hence on the remarkable decline of the American Empire, the war for Iraq will likely be judged as the greatest act of self-destruction the world has ever seen.
So here we are, five years after "Mission Accomplished", with an economy in the toilet, unemployment hovering at 13%, a government debt of nearly 10 trillion dollars and an annual deficit running @ $700 billion. The path to our swift disintegration we can trace to the great Ronald Reagan who convinced us and his clueless supplicant George W Bush., that by putting the poor in debt while pampering the rich we could eat cake every day and always have a good-paying job in the offing. His future vice-president George Bush Sr. described it aptly as "Voodoo Economics". Judging from his son, that may have been the last honest thing the man ever said.
So how has sailing a country of 300 million souls in a sea of red ink worked out? Well Fanny and Freddie, our two mortgage giants, are about to be shored up by more tax-payer credit, meanwhile Merrill Lynch and the Lehmann Brothers have just fallen on their knees, praying that our brave leverage king, Bank of America, will survive the bloodbath and be their savior. However, as much as I'd like to lay all the blame at the feet of Sir Ronald, credit for the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression belongs to the moronic Phil Gramm, he of the infamous Enron Loophole, and the peerless Alan Greenspan who can't resist blowing bubbles and apparently has never met with a white-shoe banker without experiencing the urge to genuflect.
All of which means that the fiscal discipline responsible Democrats tend to practice in public and in private-- you know the idea that it's better to invest in the public as well as in private to insure the country's future-- has just gone up in smoke-- blown with the wind just like the neo-con dream that we would conquer all of Arabia, drill oil from now until eternity and live happily ever after, singing praises to dear Dick and Donny.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
The Anthrax Mystery (updated 8/5/08)
"On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was "a precaution," according to one person directly involved."
The story literally disappears until Newsweek mentions it in passing in a profile of Cheney from 2006. The article claims that "knowledgeable former officials" had recently revealed that a "mysterious letter" had turned up at the vice president's mansion three weeks after 9/11. Except, as Judicial Watch notes in its suit against the White House it had been widely reported that Cheney and his staff had received their doses immediately after the attacks.
The story literally disappears until Newsweek mentions it in passing in a profile of Cheney from 2006. The article claims that "knowledgeable former officials" had recently revealed that a "mysterious letter" had turned up at the vice president's mansion three weeks after 9/11. Except, as Judicial Watch notes in its suit against the White House it had been widely reported that Cheney and his staff had received their doses immediately after the attacks.
Now with a new administration looming we learn that "one of the nation's top biodefense researchers has died in Maryland from an apparent suicide, just as the Justice Department was to file criminal charges against him in the anthrax mailing"
"Bruce E. Ivins, 62, who for the past 18 years worked at the government's elite biodefense research laboratories at Fort Detrick, Md., had been informed of the impending prosecution, people familiar with Ivins, his suspicious death and with the FBI investigation said.
Ivins died Tuesday at Frederick Memorial Hospital after having ingested a massive dose of prescription Tylenol mixed with codeine, said a friend and colleague who declined to be identified out of concern, he said, that he would be harassed by the FBI."
The death -- without any mention of suicide -- was announced to Ivins' colleagues at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, or USAMRIID, through a staffwide e-mail.
Suddenly a string of baffling murders that seemed impossible to solve is put to rest with barely a question.
This is how the AP reports the response of the victims:
"Closure for families of anthrax attack victims"
But is that assertion even close to the truth? Let's see what a few local papers are reporting about the victims' reactions: "There is no closure " Burrus said. "It's still an open issue. If the government decides to go forward with a complete review of the evidence and a final decision as to who was responsible, we'll weigh that as it's presented."
Survivor Patrick O'Donnell: "It seems like it just never ends," he said. "This is the last thing I wanted to hear. I do not want to say anything bad. This [Ivins] family is going through enough."
For reasons that appear more and more disturbing ever since November of 2000, the Associated Press, like the Washington Post and the NYTimes, feels free to concoct a story that is fundamentally backwards.
How does Ivins committing suicide square with the rest of his story.
Anthrax slip-ups raise fears about planned biolabs
"Bruce Ivins was troubled by the dust, dirt and clutter on his officemate's desk, and not just because it looked messy. He suspected the dust was laced with anthrax.
In 2001, a scientist opens a letter addressed to Sen. Patrick Leahy that contained anthrax.
And he was in a position to know. Ivins, a biodefense expert, and his officemate were deeply involved in Operation Noble Eagle — the government's response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans and the anthrax attacks that killed five more less than a month later.
It was December 2001. Ivins, an authority on anthrax, was one of the handful of researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Md., who prepared spores of the deadly bacteria to test anthrax vaccines in animals. He knew enough to grow alarmed when his officemate complained, as she had frequently of late, about sloppy handling of samples coming into the lab that could be tainted with anthrax.
"I swabbed approximately 20 areas of (her) desk, including the telephone computer and desktop," Ivins later reported to Army investigators. Half of the samples, he found, "were suspicious for anthrax," betraying the clumpy brown appearance of anthrax colonies under a microscope."
"If he in fact was the correct person, he was actually put in charge of analyzing the evidence of his own crime," said ABC News consultant Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent who worked on the anthrax case until his retirement from the bureau last year.
"All of the scientists there who worked with us were supposed to have been investigated and given polygraph tests," Garrett said....
Friends there say he [Ivins]was well known to be susceptible to deep depression and was concerned he would be falsely linked to the anthrax attacks.
"They took an innocent man, a distinguished scientist, and smeared his reputation, dishonored him, questioned his children and drove him to take his life," said one outraged colleague, who asked that his named not be used for fear "the FBI will come after me."
Why the Cover-Up?
If the FBI was truly interested in a criminal investigation it would have had to ask the primary question -- cui bono?
September 1998-- A small government lab in Michigan developing an anthrax vaccine is bought for $24.8 million by a secretive group calling themselves BioPort. These investors include George Bush Sr, James Baker III, and Frank Carlucci under the name of the Carlyle Group. It also includes Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., former chair of the joint chiefs of staff under Reagan who also served as US ambassador to Britain under President Clinton. According to Maj. Glenn MacDonald USAR, Crowe abetted the sale of anthrax to Saddam Hussein in the hopes Iraq would use the deadly disease against Iran.
A major stockholder is Fuad El-Hibri, a man known to be close with the wealthy bin Ladens. El-Hibri became BioPort's CEO. El-Hibri ran a vaccine manufacturing company called Porton Products International of Porton Down in the 1990's, located in the UK. One of the anthrax strains originating from Ft. Detrick and related to the isolates used in the anthrax attacks is called the Porton strain for the Porton lab. Timothy Read, provides evidence that a potential route for the anthrax that ended up in the 2001 attacks was via Porton Down.
Later that Sept-- BioPort wins a contract from the Dept. of Defense worth $45 million to produce an anthrax vaccine. The DOD agrees to pay three times the cost of the original contract, upping payment for vaccine from $3.50 a dose to $10 a dose.
November of '98-- Crowe and Bush, Sr. travel to Saudi Arabia where they meet with members of the bin Laden family.
Between 1997 and Oct of 2001-- BioPort repeatedly fails to pass FDA inspections. These inspections were termed by experts to be "an unmitigated disaster," expose contamination, sloppy record-keeping and careless procedures.
March 1999-- testimony presented to Congress reveals the company's sordid history, an Army cover-up of negative responses elicits questions about the anthrax vaccine. Over 50 adverse symptoms are substantially linked to the subjects of the vaccine regimen. The report also reveals that the ONLY veterans of the first Gulf War not displaying symptoms of Gulf War Syndrome were the French -the LONE population among Gulf War soldiers who did not receive the vaccine.
Gulf War vets appeal to Congress
February 17, 2000-- Congressional report recommends terminating anthrax vaccine program due to BioPort's mismanagement and injury reports.
July, 2000-- Congressional hearings are held on BioPort which reveal that the company has engaged in Enron-style accounting, manipulating earnings projections and drawing secret funds directly from the Pentagon violating official recommendations.
November, 2000-- The Hartford Courant reports that BioPort has failed to track deadly reactions in people receiving its anthrax vaccine, including deaths. Approximately 1,200 servicemen and women have had severe reactions, with some deaths traceable to the vaccine. US Rep. Chris Shays of Ct. accuses BioPort of indifference
July 2001-- FDA gives BioPort the go-ahead to use quarantined lots of anthrax vaccine on the public in the event of an attack -giving the company carte blanche to dump questionable, perhaps dangerous vaccines onto the public.
August 2001-- News leaks that the White House has started passing out Cipro to staff. Recipients include both George Bush and Dick Cheney.
September 2001-- the Associated Press suggests that Battelle Memorial Institute in West Jefferson, Ohio is engaged in a secret project in which "a new and highly lethal strain of anthrax" was being developed at its labs. Meanwhile Battelle hires anthrax expert, William C. Patrick III, to test the possibility of mailing powdered anthrax through the post. Battelle is said to have a "working relationship" with BioPort.
September 20, 2001-- The first anthrax attack kills photographer Robert Stevens in Florida.
October 2001-- BioPort fails another FDA inspection.
October 2001-- Bush sends the national guard to "protect" BioPort 24/7. No such protection is provided for nuclear power plants or other facilities engaged in biological warfare research.
October 2001-- Donald Rumsfeld presses to get BioPort approved despite FDA objections
November 2001-- Manuals from BioPort are discovered in an Al Qaeda hideout in Afghanistan -the report promptly disappears from the mainstream news within hours.
January 2002-- Bush administration gives BioPort go-ahead to begin shipping anthrax vaccine.
1) why was Ivins, presumably a prime suspect, put in charge of the anthrax investigation?
2) Why did ABC consistently report the White House's false claim that the anthrax strain had conclusively come from Saddam Hussein?
3) Why of all his targets would Ivins' first victim be the very Florida photographer who just happened to have snapped embarrassing pictures of Bush's daughters?
4) And how did a homicidal psychopath under psychiatric treatment manage to retain his top security clearance in a bio-weapons lab?
5) And just how does a first-year social worker with an associate's degree learn the details of a terrorism case before it even makes it to a grand jury-- and why is she in hiding?
Interestingly, it would not be first time an insider ended up committing "suicide" after running foul of Rumsfeld and Cheney. The circumstances surrounding Olsen's death are eerily similar.
Four days later, his mood had improved and he was eager to come home the following day. But six hours later he plunged to his death from a window on the thirteenth floor of the Hotel Statler (now the Hotel Pennsylvania), across Seventh Avenue from Pennsylvania Station.
In 1975, as this information was exposed, the government paid $750,000 restitution to Army biochemist Dr. Frank Olson's family, after admitting the CIA slipped Dr. Olson LSD days before his 1953 fall from a New York City building. When the Ford administration finally came clean, they promised they'd revealed everything. Yet key officials, including White House aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, pushed to continue to conceal information. "The family has learned that the Ford administration was keeping information from the family," the Baltimore Sun reported in 2002. "Among those who advocated keeping quiet were Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the vice president and defense secretary, the Olsons learned from memos and other papers received last year from the Gerald R. Ford Library."
Perhaps one day when we've finally exposed a few of the disinformation specialists infecting our news media we will learn the truth.*
*Latest: Bruce Ivins Wasn't the Anthrax Culprit
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