Dispassionate Liberal: October 2007

10/31/07

by shep

It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

The different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of human nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole purpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room, and continued a long time traversing my bedchamber, unable to compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured; and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was in vain: I slept, indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams.
--Mary Shelly, Frankenstein

Apparently, Michael Gerson has been having ~~nightmares~~ dreams about the creature he helped to create.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

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10/29/07

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Impeach The Zombies

Monday: 81 87 Iraqis Killed, 57 61 Wounded
Also, eight of 11 tribal chiefs who were kidnapped yesterday
were freed today during a military operation.

Are you fed up with the petty bickering, the one-ups-manship, the tired cliches the right have been hammering us with for thirty years to the point the Democratic Party resembles a battered wife more than a political force to be reckoned with? Fear not. The bullies are all but dead.

Would a rational discussion on Social Security tickle your fancy? No seriously, a diversion of sorts that prepares you for the dog and pony show the candidates will foist on us over the next year or so. Take a glance over at TPM Cafe and read Jared Bernstein's The Death of Conservative Economic Policy: Part II. Part One is the Obituary for Zombie Conservatives, which is a fun read as well in a "See, I told you so" way.

Together they form a simple economic answer for the reasons conservatives still kick our asses, as opposed to the more esoteric , psychological approach Paul Rosenberg has been exploring in his Duality of Right and Left series at Open Left. I took a look at the first three parts of Rosenberg's thesis here and here. Where Bernstein offers up an appealing and easily digestible look at what's going on with the demise of Brand Conservative because their economic models are inherently doomed; Rosenberg goes deeper, to the psychology of it all.

More on the flip.

Rosenberg's picked up where we left off a couple of weeks ago with Part 4 analyzing the political dynamics of the conflict over TeleCo immunity between Harry Reid and Chris Dodd as a function of their respective cognitive awareness -- their alternate perceptions of the forces in play. Rosenberg even favorably quotes Bernstein's "Zombie" piece and they both look to NY Times columnist Paul Krugman's Death of the Machine article which, (like all good political thrillers) follows the money -- the lobbyist money, which is running from the GOP and into Democratic Party coffers.

Rosenberg acknowledges that money has a lot to do with the politics, but discounts it at a fundamental part of his analysis. This is problematic, since a simple understanding of Versailles on the Potomac requires that until the money is taken out of the game, it will be rigged. I'm sure he appreciates this, but embracing this overwhelming factor would probably prevent him from frustrated cries of Cleanup Hitters Needed! ("Can't Anyone Here Play This Game?" Edition). Paul does promise that "all will be revealed."

If you really read all these polemics, and really tried to Grok them, you'd already have a handle on how he starts part 5 (a) and understand that to break this cycle of Democrats channeling all their brain-power into good, sound policy initiatives while neglecting the election winning thing, which is where conservatives function at a higher level, you know we need to Break the Rules to Fix the System.

His conclusion, however, did not take me where I thought it would. Maybe I too was wrapped up in a more limited awareness, because I thought he'd go somewhere along the same lines as John Edwards, and advocate removing the money from politics. Instead in 5 (b) he went where I instinctively (by indoctrination?) didn't expect -- Impeachment.

"Pipe Dream!" I'm thinking. "All this for that?" It can't happen, won't happen, the Senate will never convict and Nancy took it off the table so we'll behave -- like taking the cake off the table so the children don't stick their fingers in it before dinner. If we thought there was a chance, us kids just couldn't help ourselves and rant and rave until we got a slice of the Impeachment goodness. (Mmmm, chocolate.)

But realistically, isn't taking away the rich folks' toys. like influence pedaling and media manipulation, just as fanciful as impeachment? That's why the conservatives are Zombies, just like Bernstein was saying. They've got enough money to keep their monster on life support indefinitely, until another generation forgets how completely wrong, wrong, wrong they are.

Hillary Clinton isn't going to give back all her lobbyist donations any more than Rudy Giuliani is about to fire his national security team and make a campaign stop in Teheran. AT&T isn't going to try and influence politicians who can cost them billions of dollars any more than you or I wouldn't at least try to talk our way out of a speeding ticket with government employee with a badge making decisions about if our car is going to be towed.

Rosenberg promotes the idea that just as Conservatives crave power for power's sake, we should demand impeachment for the sake of reinforcing the system that created it -- using the system for the system's sake --to protect the power of impeachment for future use and like the Sword of Damacles, it's threat alone will continue to keep this and future administrations in check. Rosenberg calls for...

the use of impeachment proceedings to expose Bush Administration lawlessness and the moral bankruptcy of movement conservatism, but without the intention to remove him from office.

In the end, this conclusion might leave a bad taste in your mouth. He makes the case that even though it won't get anywhere in the sense of removing Bush or Cheney, as a cathartic exersize in "National Truth-telling" it will at least shame the GOP into behaving within the rules the Founders set out. The GOP will abandon lawlessness if only to prove how useless the impeachment proceeding is and that they are indeed innocent of the high crimes and misdemeanors they have all but institutionalized.

Fear the GOP will accuse Democrats of wasting valuable time should be utterly ignored, since working for the last month on alternate drafts of a Children's Health Care bill to attract enough Republican supporters to override another Bush veto only got them accused of wasting time. You think we're wasting time now, George? You ain't seen how much time they can waste if Nancy Pelosi only would unleash John Conyers on your crime syndicate. Think about the country you're leaving your grandchildren Nancy, and not your job.

Say what you will about the despicable nature of Newt Gingrich, he could never be accused of being dim witted. He would never have let a Democratic President come even close to the overreach of the Bush/Cheney cabal, and long ago would have started an impeachment proceeding -- for the good of the country.

For the good of the country, Please Mrs. Pelosi, Loose The Hounds!

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Philbin, Fake FEMA Phony Flack Fired

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Domestic Fascism Awareness Week Kickoff

Courtesy Blogenfreude at
Agitprop: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Propaganda.

I know, I know ... the first word that popped into your mind was "Giuliani", wasn't it?

The kickoff begins with a tribute to the inspirational (or is that, "inspirational") David Horowitz and his praise of Disaster Capitalism's hero, Pinochet, of the "Miracle Economy."

Free Image Hosting at allyoucanupload.com

One can only hope progressives everywhere learn from the horrible mistake of hounding this old tyrant, a sad case of Activist International Tribunals, and Leave Rummy Alone.

Rumsfeld flees France fearing arrest

Former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fled France today fearing arrest over charges of “ordering and authorizing” torture of detainees at both the American-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the US military’s detainment facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, unconfirmed reports coming from Paris suggest.

US embassy officials whisked Rumsfeld away yesterday from a breakfast meeting in Paris organized by the Foreign Policy magazine after human rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the man who spearheaded President George W. Bush’s “war on terror” for six years.

Under international law, authorities in France are obliged to open an investigation when a complaint is made while the alleged torturer is on French soil.

According to activists in France, who greeted Rumsfeld shouting “murderer” and “war criminal” at the breakfast meeting venue, US embassy officials remained tight-lipped about the former defense secretary’s whereabouts citing “security reasons”.

Anti-torture protesters in France believe that the defense secretary fled over the open border to Germany, where a war crimes case against Rumsfeld was dismissed by a federal court. But activist point out that under the Schengen agreement that ended border checkpoints across a large part of the European Union, French law enforcement agents are allowed to cross the border into Germany in pursuit of a fleeing fugitive.

“Rumsfeld must be feeling how Saddam Hussein felt when US forces were hunting him down,” activist Tanguy Richard said. “He may never end up being hanged like his old friend, but he must learn that in the civilized world, war crime doesn’t pay.”

International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) along with the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), and the French League for Human Rights (LDH) filed the complaint on Thursday after learning that Rumsfeld was scheduled to visit Paris.
U.S.A.

Run Rummy! RUN!

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Zombie Chalabi, Just In Time For Halloween

10/28/07

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Disturbing

10/27/07

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What Is Up With The DNI?

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Why I'm Right And You Are Sometimes Wrong

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Greatest Blog Post of All Time

10/26/07

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Arming the Terrorists

by shep

Certain people, who need not be named but who whisper in the ear of the president and the leading Republican candidate to replace him and who are hired by the most prestigious (and not so much) news organizations to share their opinions with the public, think we should attack the country of Iran for providing (completely unproven) support for insurgents fighting against the US occupation of Iraq.

Well, who wouldn’t want to attack the country that arms its enemies, who end up killing their troops? Still, the main moral difference between Iraq/Iran and this seems to be that the Soviets were actually invited into Afghanistan by its government (much like our own venture into Vietnam). (Can you imagine if they simply came up with some phony excuse to invade and occupy the country, hanging its leaders and killing a million innocent Afghanis?)

Yet the ~~IEDs~~ Stinger missiles and other support supplied by our ~~Quds Force~~ CIA and China, Pakistan and Iran (~~”The Coalition of the Willing”~~), killed 10,000 or more Soviet troops (good thing the Soviets didn’t have nuclear weapons and strategic bombing capability, huh?).

The (most ironic) poison fruit, poisons us still:

“Some American groups, particularly neoconservatives came to believe that they were responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union. The Islamists that fought also believed that they were responsible for the fall of the union, and this may have indirectly lead to 9/11. Osama bin Laden, for example asserting the credit for ‘the collapse of the Soviet Union ... goes to God and the mujahidin in Afghanistan ... the US had no mentionable role,’ but ‘collapse made the US more haughty and arrogant.’”

But, as we have learned from tragic effect, they are absolutely incapable of learning anything from history:

“Some participants felt leverage was not the main issue; rather, US policymakers
knowingly abandoned Afghanistan to the Pakistanis and Saudis to ‘sort out’ Afghanistan’s future. However, the participant said, ‘The Pak-Saudi agenda for Afghanistan was totally ruinous . . . it was [that] agenda which leads to Al Qaeda and all the rest of it. . . . Did you not see this in
1992, as it emerges?’”

The obvious answer is either “no” or they just didn’t think it mattered very much.

Regardless, the Soviets didn’t attack the US over arming its enemies in Afghanistan, we didn’t attack China for arming our enemies in Korea and Vietnam and China didn’t attack us for arming theirs. Pakistan has illegal nuclear weapons, Maddrassas, a Muslim population that is far more radicalized than Iran and it arms Islamic radicals who kill our troops in Afghanistan while it provides safe haven to Osama bin Laden (if he's still alive). We call it an ally.

In any event, the people who have shaped the foreign and military policy of the United States for the past seven years (especially Vice President Cheney) are not the people who should be allowed anywhere near that sort of power ever again. Just as their authoritarianism, bellicosity and aggression has made Osama bin Laden’s fondest wishes come true it has also driven the price of oil to record highs, funneling ever more $billions to countries like Iran and Russia even as it unites Muslim nations against us and weakens us economically and militarily.

If the nation’s political and media leaders had either the slightest bit of level-headed judgement or a functioning moral compass the neoconservatives wouldn't be setting the agenda, they would be driven from the public sphere in shame and eventually tried for their crimes against humanity.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

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Signs Of Spine

10/25/07

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Of Course This Means Petraeus Is Full Of It

Petraeus has abandoned his counterinsurgency doctrine of patience and the simple "clear, hold and build" strategy as outlined in his COIN manual (pdf) opting instead for bombing neighborhoods where bad guys can't be ferreted out.

CLEAR-HOLD-BUILD

COIN efforts should begin by controlling key areas. Security and influence then spread out from these secured areas like an oil spot. The pattern of this approach is to clear, hold, and build one village, area, or city, and then to expand to other areas, reinforcing success. This approach aims to develop a long term, effective HN government framework and presence that secures the people and facilitates the meeting of their basic needs, thereby reinforcing the legitimacy of the HN government. The primary tasks to accomplish clear-hold-build are—
Provide continuous security for the local populace.
Eliminate insurgent presence.
Reinforce political primacy.
Enforce the rule of law.
To create success that can spread, a clear-hold-build operation should not begin by assaulting the main insurgent stronghold or by focusing on areas where the population overtly supports the insurgents.

But throughout Wingnuttystan, they are hailing the "success" of the current tactics and declaring the war all but won on the basis of the reduced casualty count of the last month. But there's a reason for this aberration, and they are ignoring what the troops are doing and the increase in Iraqi deaths over the same period.

Oh, and we've already reached a new record for US casualties, and it's only October. "But, but . . .but --Shut Up!" It's a simple matter of counting and comparing:

First of all, the assertion that US troop deaths have fallen is extremely misleading. In fact, It is only late October and already more US troops were killed in Iraq in 2007 than in all of 2006. Indeed, 2007 will almost certainly hold the record for the year of the most US military deaths since the war began.

According to the Iraq Casualties Site, these are the yearly numbers of death of US military personnel in Iraq:

Year US Deaths
2003 486
2004 849
2005 846
2006 822
2007 832

It is true that October is on track to be the least deadly for US troops since March of 2006.

It is, however, not clear why exactly US troop deaths have fallen so much in October. It is possible that they are being given few military missions and spending more time on base.
--Juan Cole

Airstrikes. It really is simple. We're raining hell from above -- on urban neighborhoods, collateral damage (that would be innocent men, women and children) be damned.

In other words, in the first nine months of 2007, Air Force planes dropped munitions on targets in Iraq more often than in the previous three years combined.

More telling still, the number of airstrikes soared most dramatically at about the same time that U.S. troop fatalities declined.

Take this week's bombing of Sadr City where we killed at least 49 people from the air and missed the one man we were trying to get. In some more civilized time, bombing a building resulting in the indiscriminate deaths of mostly children and civilians would be considered a war crime -- as is being investigated by the Maliki government. Our claim that our targeting is so precise that we can hit a heavily populated slum and only take out gunman and no civilians is absurd on its face.

It's not just Iraq, but we're doing this in Afghanistan too, and civilian deaths are on the rise.

The battle of the blogosphere will not be as bloody, and should center around a new argument, what should always have been the center of discussion. Instead of mindlessly chanting that Petraeus is saintly and untouchable because he's getting results (US GI casualties are indeed down); or insisting that he is a political tool of the White House and a duplicitous monster -- we can ask the question of whether these developments bring us closer to closing out this horrible chapter in our history. When you encounter this "we're winning so you American-hating libs are losing" drivel, change the argument to the goals of the mission, but don't ignore the ALL the facts on the ground.

We need to ask, now that we have some real data, whether it's working, and what goal is it working towards. Mind you, this is a higher level question than most war apologists are capable of addressing coherently. Moreover, many on the left get too distracted by the minutiae to make this THE question.

To be fair, on first blush this looks like a very positive development. But of course, if reduced US casualties is your measure of success in Iraq, quite a few of us on the left have been suggesting a fool-proof way of reducing troop deaths in Iraq to zero . . . so, that's obviously not a mutually acceptable definition of what we're trying to accomplish.

I have to conclude, therefore, that in the overall scheme of things, while a good thing for the families of US service men and women, it's not so good if you are an Iraq civilian who hasn't the means or desire to leave. Sounds like a draw at best, Petreaus' surge is meaningless and no longer even attempting the mission he went there to accomplish.

If we're going to bunker down and let the Air Force do the heavy lifting, I don't see much reason to keep such large force in Iraq when they would be just as effective redeployed and reduced in numbers. The problem has always been, if you study Patreaus' COIN Field Manual, is that even the increased number of troops sent in the surge are still inadequate to the parameters that mission requires.

It would take almost all the troops we have in the country just to pacify Baghdad itself. Add in the mercenaries like Blackwater and you're still just barely there when it comes to manpower -- and this violates another tenant of the COIN Manual, unity of command. Blackwater is run out of the State Department, the Iraqi police are useless and infiltrated by militias, and the Iraqi Army still doesn't seem effective and checks in with Maliki before taking Patreaus' orders.

It's a mess operationally. Petraeus really has no choice but use a blunt instrument like airstrikes without more boots on the ground, but of course this is not only counter to counterinsurgency doctrine, or the idea of winning hearts and minds, it's also against international law.

But if you hadn't figured it out already, Neuremberg trials are held by victors against the vanquished. And since no one will answer for the war crimes being committed in our names, we all will pay a price for permitting it to happen, even those of us typing into the ether that it must stop. I'd settle for Bush and his clan being exiled to his new pad in Paraguay -- which conveniently prohibits any American from being extradited to the International Criminal Court via our extradition treaty with them.

And you thought Bush was stupid.

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A Spine Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

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Higazy

Glancing at the Washington Post's Nation Section, I was pleasantly
surprised that beyond the headline of the day covered by every major
paper -- the California wildfires -- they were reporting on real news
this morning. It's a shame this "news" was stuff I already knew from reading blogs.

Nothing really new here, but the good news is that they didn't blow these stories off. Especially the Higazy case, which is the first time I've come across a court opinion that was yanked and reissued with sections redacted for "national security" reasons. Just because the story is a week old doesn't make it less important, both for the world to know about how the threat of torture or of retribution to one's family is a common practice in the law enforcement community -- even before "9/11 changed everything."

The Post also tips it's the hat to the blogosphere that not only kept the story alive, but preserved the evidence of what the government considers proper information to keep from the public -- which turned out to be more embarassing than any kind of state secret of sources or methods of intelligence gathering.

Oh, and I did learn something from the article. That radio Higazy was suspected of using as a homing beacon for the jets that crashed into the Trade Center Towers belonged to someone else.

Three days later, an airline pilot from Ohio who had stayed one floor below Higazy on Sept. 11 walked into the Millenium Hilton
and asked for his radio. Within two days, Higazy was released, and a
hotel security guard eventually pleaded guilty to making false
statements to FBI agents about the location of the radio.

"What if that pilot had not walked into the Millenium Hotel?" Abady
said. "We know that Mr. Higazy could have spent the rest of his life in
prison."

This case is the poster child of why torture, or even the threat of torture should be left to the pages of a more barbaric time and place. It doesn't work and we lose a bit of our humanity even discussing it's utility. There is no reason whatsoever to see it practiced in the 21st century.

For more background, including the redacted portions of the opinion and links to the original, look at my previous post from Tuesday.

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Next They'll Blame Smokey The Bear

Wednesday: 2 GIs, 38 Iraqis Killed, 60 Wounded;
Turks Kill 34 PKK Rebels in Iraq

I had no idea that there were so many liberal arsonists. But Rush Limbaugh blames us for the California wildfires.

When I first saw Michele Malkin blame the "demented ... spittle-flecked Left," I didn't think to much about it, because of course I don't think too much of Michele at all. But then I started seeing a rash of sad, yet predictable stupidity that really belongs on the pages of the Onion.

Naturally it didn't take long for this ridiculous little theory to percolate up through the comment sections of Right Wing Blogistan like this little gem at Wizbang:

Lets blame it right where it belong [sic] right there on liberals and the eco-wackos who have been holding up proper land management with their stupid lawsuits and wacky ideas lets put the eco-wackos on these fires

Thank you Spurwing Plover, noted mental patient, frequently annoying wingnut commenter, and animal hater -- who has never been seen in the same room at the same time as Ron Paul. I guess the jig is up. Liberal tree huggers burned down the forests of California.

At my favorite site to find worshipers of all things that go bang, the Armorer just couldn't let go of the impulse to blame, at least a little bit, the "rich people . . . because they insist on building in fire-prone, or mud-slide prone, or flood-prone, or earthquake-prone areas, because they're exclusive, or have great views, whatever."

And the Freepers, of course, couldn't agree more. Except they think the evil rich liberals are really illegal aliens trying the old distraction trick.

How does the fire know to stop at the mexican border? I’d wager that illegals are lighting them to help out their amigos in getting through.

What? No? The TV guys are getting in the act too?

This just in . . . Fox News looses the hounds by blaming al Qaeda itself for the California wildfires. Now it's on! A free-for-all blame game. And Fox has the goods -- a four year old memo speculating that some angry freak might set some fires somewhere completely different that was never confirmed. Heckuvajob Fox. I hear the would-be fictional terrorist/arsonist does indeed wear a flag on his lapel, do he can't be all bad.

Marie Osmand blames the fires on her fainting on Dancing With The Stars -- but rumor has it (a rumor I'm starting right now) that that Fox Television is really to blame for the fires. It's all an ingenious attempt to sabtoge Osmand's performance on a rival network.

Not to be outdone, CNN's professional victim hater, and all around pompous ass Glenn Beck took up the charge, blaming the “damn environmentalists.” "But NO!" shrieks Pam Atlas, it was a muslamonazi terrorist on a motorbike!!! Or maybe even the work of Amerika hating Allah himself in a vengeful fit of wrath. [Shut up Pam, watch the professionals work. And change your panties.]

CBS get's it half right, quoting Barba Boxer for blaming it all on Iraq since so much of the needed equipment is there, not here, as well men and women of the National Guard who would be working these fires instead of ducking bullets in the Middle East sandbox. [3,000 members of the California National Guard and half of their equipment is in Iraq according to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.]

But instead of looking at the climate change contributions to the heat and drought conditions that made the area a tinderbox; and the anti-science, pro-timber industry policies of the Bush administration, CBS went for the comparison of the government's response to the Superdome tragedy with the relative order at San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium -- which has things like running water, electricity, air conditioning, a roof, and unswamped access to the rest of the world. Really a stark comparison. Go figure.

But perhaps the most bi-polar, amnesiac response to the crisis to date comes directly from Versailles on the Potomac itself in the form of Dana the Wonder-Spokesmistress:

Q But you do admit, at least, that scenarios, income-levels, people who have a little bit more money are able to move, go somewhere, versus people who don't --

MS. PERINO: I think that's logical. Absolutely that happens. And I think that when we see hurricanes that hit -- for example, when the hurricane hit Haiti, it affects people differently, and a lot of people lost shelter completely and didn't have anywhere else to go...We're very fortunate in America to have the means to take care of our citizens.

And yes, and let's just forget all those kids who made it to the Huston Astrodome via the New Orleans Superdome -- who were all doing so much better than when they were living in that scummy place at the end of the Mississippi River. What a great country -- if you can afford it.

10/24/07

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There, I said It

10/23/07

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They Don't Need To Lie To Us To Scare Us

It's one thing when A NASA spokesman said that denying the Associated Press’s request to see a database on safety lapses in U.S. aviation on the grounds that it might scare the public.

It's typical, bureaucrats trying to save face, keeping us in the dark to protect themselves from embarrassment. Wrong as it is, the public's right to know the facts of the situation certainly outweighs the natural human tendency to put themselves in the best light even if it distorts our ability make informed public policy decisions. But it is forgivable, understandable.

But when the usually serious Media Matt says, "Holy Shit!" it's worth paying attention. The Higazy case is neither forgivable nor excusable, especially the court's complicity in the government's cover-up. Sure, it is understandable if you understand that the Rule of Law now means we make up rules as we go along, changing the very nature of common language to fit a new interpretation of the law which now has exactly the opposite effect that the ills it was enacted to aleviate. (Well, they are making their own imperial reality, of course.)

You can decide for yourself exactly what National Security interest justifies this level of secrecy.

Basically, the FBI coerced an innocent man into confessing by threatening his family with torture, eventually the man's innocence became clear and an appeals court ruled in his favor, but the opinion was swiftly pulled off the web.

National Security? Can't give the "enemy" any insight to our ~~torture~~ enhanced in-terror-gation "methods" can we. Folks, this isn't the CIA dealing with an enemy spy or the military pressing an "unlawful combatant," this was a guy who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and wearing the skin and nationality of someone with the wrong color -- and had a suspicious gizmo with him that allegedly could communicate with jets.

The FBI thought they had a 9/11 conspirator in their grasp and in true Jack Bauer like form, were willing to take extraordinary means to extract information. That's not the debate here. We'll leave that for another time. As a wrongfully accused and illegally confined legal resident, he did what you do and sued for false arrest, But by redacting what the FBI did to Higazy, the court is complicit with what so many classification decisions come down to -- covering up an embarrassment. Or at least they attempted to.

The government admit in the basics for purposes of the summar judgment motion, that the confession the FBI obtained was "coerced." And it appears that the Plaintiff, Abdallah Higazy, was not himself subject to torture, but only threatened that his family might be in for a world of hurt back in Egypt. He told the FBI what they wanted to hear, which wasn't the truth. Higazy has not been put under a gag order, or silenced like Valerie Plame, or Sibel Edmonds. So just what, or who is being protected here? Since the original decision has been preserved for all time thanks to the Intertoobz you can read the redacted part of the case under the fold.

Higazy alleges that during the polygraph, Templeton told him that he should cooperate, and explained that if Higazy did not cooperate, the FBI would make his brother “live in scrutiny” and would “make sure that Egyptian security gives [his] family hell.” Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: “that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don’t advise people of their rights, they don’t – yeah, probably about torture, sure.”
Higazy later said, "I knew that I couldn't prove my innocence, and I knew that my family was in danger." He explained that "[t]he only thing that went through my head was oh, my God, I am screwed and my family's in danger. If I say this device is mine, I'm screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent Templeton made it quite clear that cooperate had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

Higazy explained why he feared for his family:

The Egyptian government has very little tolerance for anybody who is —they’re suspicious of being a terrorist. To give you an idea, Saddam’s security force—as they later on were called his henchmen—a lot of them learned their methods and techniques in Egypt; torture, rape, some stuff would be even too sick to . . . . My father is 67. My mother is 61. I have a brother who developed arthritis at 19. He still has it today. When the word ‘torture’ comes at least for my brother, I mean, all they have to do is really just press on one of these knuckles. I couldn’t imagine them doing anything to my sister.

And Higazy added:

[L]et’s just say a lot of people in Egypt would stay away from a family that they know or they believe or even rumored to have anything to do with terrorists and by the same token, some people who actually could be —might try to get to them and somebody might actually make a connection. I wasn’t going to risk that. I wasn’t going to risk that, so I thought to myself what could I say that he would believe. What could I say that’s convincing? And I said okay.

There are two basic questions I have here. Just how many similar episodes don't we know about because the government was entirely successful in it's cover-up? And, Just what kind of people have we become?

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Is THIS an Acceptable Level of Shrill?

10/22/07

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Gee, Jay, How's That Intel Report Coming?

Monday Update: 69 82 Iraqis Killed, 73 75 Wounded

Are there no honest men (or women) in Washington?

Executives at the two biggest phone companies contributed more than $42,000 in political donations to Senator John D. Rockefeller IV this year while seeking his support for legal immunity for businesses participating in National Security Agency eavesdropping.

The surge in contributions came from a Who's Who of executives at the companies, AT&T and Verizon, starting with the chief executives and including at least 50 executives and lawyers at the two utilities, according to campaign finance reports.

So, I guess that means that the administration gets exactly what it wants in the FISA ~~capitulation~~ bipartisan compromise bill, including immunity for the telecos. Chalk another one up for Cheney. His pet Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee has come through for him again, with a little help in the spare change department. For a Rockefeller, this guy comes cheap.

More on Jello Jay under the fold.

I mean, didn't you think that it was all too convenient that Jay Rockefeller (D-Verizon) always seemed to cave when it looked like standing up to the dodges, lies and secrecy of the administration was the right prescription. Now the excuse is that they're too busy looking the other way on domestic spying to stand up to President 24%.

Well, now we know. don't we. They never were going to seriously look into the manipulation of intel leading up to the war and release the so-called Phase II report. You did hear that they were "shelving" that, didn't you?

The Phase II investigation is supposed to focus on two things: "examining the role of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and...contrasting the statements of public officials with what the intelligence community was saying at the time."

Oh, that's right. I forgot it was just supposed to quietly go away and only live on in myth, like the Kennedy assassination investigation into that magic bullet thingy. But come on. I don't need Jay Rockefeller to tell me they fixed the intelligence around the policy -- that they were going to trump up some reason to go to war against Iraq even before 9/11. They didn't need Curveball to con them into invading. He was just conveniently available to add to their house of cards.

Of course in a nation where 33% of the people STILL believe that Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11, and 41% are pretty sure there was some kind of direct connection between the hijackers and Iraq, people like me will always believe that Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Elliot Abrams cooked up enough smoke and mirrors at Cheney's direction to make Bush believe what HE will always believe -- that there was some sort of rational explanation why we went into Iraq in the first place.

No doubt in some twisted corners, twisting the intelligence was seen as a patriotic duty.

Allowing this administration and their buddies to get off -- again -- scott free, is beyond the usualy spinelessness of the Democratic Leadership, something we've grown accustomed to ever since Pelosi's "Off the Table" moment. But hey, I've always wondered what a guy named Rockefeller was doing in the Democratic Party anyway. True, his clan were never really considered true conservatives, and 42 Grand is chump change to the Rockefeller family.

But a populist? Someone who was going to "take it to the man," he is not. BooMan is livid about the Intel Committee finding better things to do . . . than their job . . .

I call bullshit. Where is the urgency? You call this 'absolute committment'? I call it a total whitewash. At this point we should be moving onto Phase III: How the Intelligence Community is using psychological operations to maintain support for a failed war. And Phase IV: How the intelligence is being fixed around the policy of obliterating Iran.
We've seen this before...it was called Iran-Contra, and it was far less serious that what we are facing now. I saw Fred Thompson, on a post-debate show last night, tell Alan Colmes that Iran is trying to take over the entire Middle East and that we are therefore justified in spending hundreds of billions on discretionary defense spending. He told Colmes 'to read something' and then he might understand that our budget problems are all about entitlements and have nothing to do with preventing the 1000-year Persian empire.
The Republicans are out there in some alternate reality...a reality that has no connection to reality. Their ideology is dangerous. And the Democrats are covering their ass.
This has to stop.

Thanks to Avedon, you can read a little bit more on Rockefellers new BFF's at Democracy Now.

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So Negative

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No.

In case I wasn't clear in my last post why I included Nancy Pelosi as a symbol of the Versailles Courtiers whose very existence is like an infection on the body politic -- or more precisely a boil on the anal pore that is Washington DC, I can only explain in Blogtopian parlance . . .

What Bill in Portland Maine said . . .

Retroactive immunity for the telcos? "No." War funding for anything other than the redeployment of our troops out of Iraq? "No." Continuing to deny Habeas Corpus rights? "No." Illegal wiretapping? "No, no, no."
And how about doing something about all those witnesses---like Karl Rove and Harriet Miers---who gave you the middle finger by not showing up for congressional hearings?
But no.

It's as simple as that Nancy. Or weren't you paying attention when that other Nancy from the southern part of your State was saying, "Just Say No!"?

Quit apologizing for doing nothing and start making sure the folks in the Palace on the Potomac do no more. You might even want to beginning rolling back the crap the Courtiers have been getting away with for the last seven years. Quit being Gutless and Gullible.

One more thing for the sake of clarity. There no doubt is a certain utility in having a comedian like Stephen Colbert on Meet The Press. (And that comedian actually in performance mode, unlike Bill Cosby's unwatchable appearance the week before.) It brings the young-un's in.

More on the flip.

For the first time across the nation as whole new batch of teenagers watched at least part of MTP for the first time, ever. That's a good thing. The way Colbert and Jon Stewart make current events appealing to young and old alike beats the crap out of the traditionally lame way kids are "taught" about what's happening in their world today.

However, it's still a sad commentary that we must resort to pure entertainment to reach the otherwise blithely uninformed -- and Meet The Press, even on good days, is nothing more than an piece of entertainment served up for mass consumption.

And that is, and always has been, why the tax-cutting theme the GOP owns outright gets everybody's attention. For so many, seeing a few dollars more or less on their paystub is the one and only piece of "news" they absorb and understand on a weekly basis. Everything else is someone else's problem -- just more bread and circuses -- taxes touch them directly, even if that deduction box never really changed. The very idea, the promise of it going down is delightful, and all they remember.

In fact, the constant drone of incompetence and over reach by the conservatives displayed as entertainment on the T.V. simply reinforces the general population's disdain for the Federal Government and adds to the resentment of that deduction box on their pay check feeding this beast. The media play of faux balance also reinforces this narrative -- they all do it, so let's go with the guys who say they hate government too. No surprise there that the government haters suck at governing.

Sadly, the Fourth Estate, their quest for access and fear of being considered biased driving their insipid consistency of presenting "both" sides of an issue no mater how absurd one side's views may be, has completely lost touch with the very nature of their power they scrupulously attempt to disguise.

What the media absolutely fails to do is simply say no. So fearful of being banished from Versailles, they don't say "No" when Ann Coulter's publicist calls to book an interview. They don't say, "No" when they get a juicy titbit from an administration official who demands that they can only use the information if it is sourced anonymously, or even deliberately misleading the public the media exists to inform -- like when Libby insisted he be referred to as a "former Hill staffer."

The corporate megaphones have lost track of the fact the politicians need them more than they need the politicians. Who cares if FOX gets the scoop on everyone else in the Versailles Press if they start demanding some accountability in our public officials. FOX will get the "exclusives" anyway, and everyone else will wink and nod and understand that Petreaus spending an hour on FOX is acceptable propaganda, that Cheney only appearing on Limbaugh is acceptable propaganda, and competing for these kinds of "scoops" is a fool's errand.

If CNN and NBC/MSNBC and the NY Times and Washington Post and Disney and Viacom and the LA Times all collectively start saying, "No, Mr. Rove" we will not refrain from reporting your words as Your Words when you want to spin us and provide "background."

What are the big media outlets afraid of? That they'll lose out on that exclusive sit-down with Commander Guy? FOX will be getting those exclusives whether you play ball or not. Grow. A. Pair. These guys need the media to give the illusion of legitimacy to their destruction of everything we as Americans should hold dear. If Mr. 24% can only reach the cult watching Bill O'Reilly, his minions will come back with their hat in their hand, begging for advise on what they need to do to get in the media's good graces.

It seems that today, at least in Washington, you CAN play ALL the Courtiers for suckers ALL THE TIME. One simple word ends the charade.

10/21/07

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