Why Bush folded on Iran
Reality, of the military and petroleum-based variety, forced the administration to change course. Now Bush sounds like Obama.
By Juan Cole
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/31/iran/index.html
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Chalmers Johnson - Salon.com (June 31, 2008)
When war goes corporate
Grave threats to our national security may now include the mass privatization of U.S. intelligence and military operations.
Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Tom Dispatch.com.
By Chalmers Johnson
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/31/military_complex/
Grave threats to our national security may now include the mass privatization of U.S. intelligence and military operations.
Editor's note: This article originally appeared on Tom Dispatch.com.
By Chalmers Johnson
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/31/military_complex/
N.Y. Times (July 31, 2008)
July 31, 2008
Editorial
A Senate Lion Brought Down
Any member of Congress should be able to see the larger lesson in the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaskan patriarch accused of concealing more than $250,000 in home improvements and furnishings allegedly bestowed by the state’s chief power broker.
Unfortunately, that lesson — beware of favor-seekers bearing gifts — strikes so directly to the heart of the back-scratching political culture of Washington that time and again lawmakers become inured to the risks and put their careers in jeopardy.
Mr. Stevens denies any corrupt behavior and insists that he paid for everything he received from William Allen, one of his state’s dominant oil magnates until last year, when he admitted to bribing a half-dozen state politicians to get government favors. That will be up to a jury to decide. But Mr. Stevens’s constituents have a right to wonder why their revered senator, a Republican who has served them fiercely for four decades, ever agreed to have his home richly upgraded by someone so obviously hunting for the inside track to politicians.
No bribery charge or quid pro quo is specified, which is always a difficult case for prosecutors to prove. Rather, Senate ethics violations are the core of the case, and this is as it should be. The senator is accused of concealing the alleged gifts from required disclosure to the public. At the same time, prosecutors say that Mr. Stevens “did use his official position and his office” to help Mr. Allen with oil deals ranging from Russia and Pakistan to special grants and contracts in Alaska.
In the money-driven context of American politics, the perks of incumbency can transform into a sense of personal entitlement as V.I.P. back-slappers relentlessly donate and entreat their way into a grateful politician’s inner circle.
Voters are on to this downward spiral, even if too many lawmakers are in denial. Congress’s esteem is at an all-time low, despite the spate of ethics reforms that helped bring the Democrats back to power in 2006. To its credit, the House is finally starting up a panel of outsiders to oversee its ethics; senators proudly rejected their august chamber’s need for such an attempt to regain public trust.
In the case of the continuing Alaska investigation, it’s revealing that an outside force — an op-ed newspaper essay by a suspicious observer — eventually triggered the federal raids that convicted state officials and indicted Mr. Stevens. Taxpayers should question whether government watchdogs would otherwise still be snoozing. In fact, statehouse lawmakers cited in the article first reacted by mockingly donning C.B.C. (Corrupt Bastards Club) baseball caps.
HUBRIS would have been the more appropriate logo. The tragedy in the indictment of Mr. Stevens is that overweening pride too easily befalls politicians.
Editorial
A Senate Lion Brought Down
Any member of Congress should be able to see the larger lesson in the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaskan patriarch accused of concealing more than $250,000 in home improvements and furnishings allegedly bestowed by the state’s chief power broker.
Unfortunately, that lesson — beware of favor-seekers bearing gifts — strikes so directly to the heart of the back-scratching political culture of Washington that time and again lawmakers become inured to the risks and put their careers in jeopardy.
Mr. Stevens denies any corrupt behavior and insists that he paid for everything he received from William Allen, one of his state’s dominant oil magnates until last year, when he admitted to bribing a half-dozen state politicians to get government favors. That will be up to a jury to decide. But Mr. Stevens’s constituents have a right to wonder why their revered senator, a Republican who has served them fiercely for four decades, ever agreed to have his home richly upgraded by someone so obviously hunting for the inside track to politicians.
No bribery charge or quid pro quo is specified, which is always a difficult case for prosecutors to prove. Rather, Senate ethics violations are the core of the case, and this is as it should be. The senator is accused of concealing the alleged gifts from required disclosure to the public. At the same time, prosecutors say that Mr. Stevens “did use his official position and his office” to help Mr. Allen with oil deals ranging from Russia and Pakistan to special grants and contracts in Alaska.
In the money-driven context of American politics, the perks of incumbency can transform into a sense of personal entitlement as V.I.P. back-slappers relentlessly donate and entreat their way into a grateful politician’s inner circle.
Voters are on to this downward spiral, even if too many lawmakers are in denial. Congress’s esteem is at an all-time low, despite the spate of ethics reforms that helped bring the Democrats back to power in 2006. To its credit, the House is finally starting up a panel of outsiders to oversee its ethics; senators proudly rejected their august chamber’s need for such an attempt to regain public trust.
In the case of the continuing Alaska investigation, it’s revealing that an outside force — an op-ed newspaper essay by a suspicious observer — eventually triggered the federal raids that convicted state officials and indicted Mr. Stevens. Taxpayers should question whether government watchdogs would otherwise still be snoozing. In fact, statehouse lawmakers cited in the article first reacted by mockingly donning C.B.C. (Corrupt Bastards Club) baseball caps.
HUBRIS would have been the more appropriate logo. The tragedy in the indictment of Mr. Stevens is that overweening pride too easily befalls politicians.
Joe Conason - Truthdig.com (July 30, 2008)
McCain’s Oil Drilling Hoax
Posted on Jul 30, 2008
By Joe Conason
Forced to cancel a visit to an oil platform off the Mississippi coast last week because of inclement weather—and the untimely leaking of hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from a damaged barge in the area—John McCain finally got his photo op at a California derrick on July 28. Speaking at the Bakersfield site, the Arizona senator delivered extraordinarily good news to the beleaguered gasoline-consuming public as he explained why we must drill offshore.
McCain, basing his remarks on briefings he received from “the oil producers,” said: “There are some instances [that] within a matter of months they could be getting additional oil. In some cases, it would be a matter of a year. In some cases it could take longer than that, depending on the location and whether you use existing rigs or you have to install new rigs, but there’s abundant resources in the view of the people who are in the business that could be exploited within a period of months.”
The prospect of significant new petroleum resources that could be available so soon would be excellent news—aside from the obvious impact of burning still more oil—if only what the senator said was true. But what he said actually made no sense whatsoever, as a statement about the future development of domestic oil, the alleged need to increase drilling off our coasts or the resources that such drilling might produce. So let’s unpack that McCain statement (which was overshadowed by the news that his dermatologist had just removed a small lesion from the 71-year-old melanoma survivor’s right cheek).
It may be true that “existing rigs” could produce additional barrels of domestic oil immediately, whether on land or in the ocean, as McCain suggests. If so, he might want to ask his friends in the oil business why those rigs aren’t producing more oil now, at prices above $120 a barrel. An existing rig by definition is a rig that is operating legally on property already leased for exploration—and can produce oil unencumbered by any environmental constraints on drilling. In case the senator doesn’t understand, an existing rig is where someone has already drilled a well.
Where companies would have to install new rigs, the question is whether a lease already exists or whether the government would have to grant a new lease. New drilling on the outer continental shelf would mean new leases that are now illegal.
But as the Associated Press reported last month, nearly 75 percent of the existing leases on federal lands held by petroleum companies are currently producing no oil. Those companies today hold nearly 30 million acres dormant, according to the AP. Nobody in the federal government even knows whether any exploration has taken place over the past decade.
Perhaps McCain should ask his friends in the industry why they aren’t exploring or producing on the leases they already control. A truthful answer would be that those leases count as financial assets whether productive or not—and adding to them enhances an oil firm’s bottom line.
The senator should also ask an oil company executive to step forward and explain how any new offshore oil lease can produce petroleum within the next few months or even a year. If that is possible, then the Department of Energy analysis of future domestic oil production is scandalously wrong. The department’s Energy Information Agency released a study last year predicting that granting access to new offshore leases would not begin to produce any actual oil until around 2020, and would have no “significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030,” if ever.
As the Republican presidential nominee—and a putative environmentalist—he suddenly seems eager to exploit voter discontent over high gasoline prices to promote offshore drilling. He may even think he can ride the energy crisis into the White House.
Voters may or may not believe the senator’s silly claims about his “briefings” from oilmen, which mainly seem to have involved handing over a fat check. Indeed, so far the only beneficiary of his offshore drilling offensive is the McCain presidential war chest. The Washington Post recently reported that the oil industry “gushed money after [his] reversal on oil drilling” last month.
The oilmen never gave him that kind of money when he talked straight.
Posted on Jul 30, 2008
By Joe Conason
Forced to cancel a visit to an oil platform off the Mississippi coast last week because of inclement weather—and the untimely leaking of hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil from a damaged barge in the area—John McCain finally got his photo op at a California derrick on July 28. Speaking at the Bakersfield site, the Arizona senator delivered extraordinarily good news to the beleaguered gasoline-consuming public as he explained why we must drill offshore.
McCain, basing his remarks on briefings he received from “the oil producers,” said: “There are some instances [that] within a matter of months they could be getting additional oil. In some cases, it would be a matter of a year. In some cases it could take longer than that, depending on the location and whether you use existing rigs or you have to install new rigs, but there’s abundant resources in the view of the people who are in the business that could be exploited within a period of months.”
The prospect of significant new petroleum resources that could be available so soon would be excellent news—aside from the obvious impact of burning still more oil—if only what the senator said was true. But what he said actually made no sense whatsoever, as a statement about the future development of domestic oil, the alleged need to increase drilling off our coasts or the resources that such drilling might produce. So let’s unpack that McCain statement (which was overshadowed by the news that his dermatologist had just removed a small lesion from the 71-year-old melanoma survivor’s right cheek).
It may be true that “existing rigs” could produce additional barrels of domestic oil immediately, whether on land or in the ocean, as McCain suggests. If so, he might want to ask his friends in the oil business why those rigs aren’t producing more oil now, at prices above $120 a barrel. An existing rig by definition is a rig that is operating legally on property already leased for exploration—and can produce oil unencumbered by any environmental constraints on drilling. In case the senator doesn’t understand, an existing rig is where someone has already drilled a well.
Where companies would have to install new rigs, the question is whether a lease already exists or whether the government would have to grant a new lease. New drilling on the outer continental shelf would mean new leases that are now illegal.
But as the Associated Press reported last month, nearly 75 percent of the existing leases on federal lands held by petroleum companies are currently producing no oil. Those companies today hold nearly 30 million acres dormant, according to the AP. Nobody in the federal government even knows whether any exploration has taken place over the past decade.
Perhaps McCain should ask his friends in the industry why they aren’t exploring or producing on the leases they already control. A truthful answer would be that those leases count as financial assets whether productive or not—and adding to them enhances an oil firm’s bottom line.
The senator should also ask an oil company executive to step forward and explain how any new offshore oil lease can produce petroleum within the next few months or even a year. If that is possible, then the Department of Energy analysis of future domestic oil production is scandalously wrong. The department’s Energy Information Agency released a study last year predicting that granting access to new offshore leases would not begin to produce any actual oil until around 2020, and would have no “significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030,” if ever.
As the Republican presidential nominee—and a putative environmentalist—he suddenly seems eager to exploit voter discontent over high gasoline prices to promote offshore drilling. He may even think he can ride the energy crisis into the White House.
Voters may or may not believe the senator’s silly claims about his “briefings” from oilmen, which mainly seem to have involved handing over a fat check. Indeed, so far the only beneficiary of his offshore drilling offensive is the McCain presidential war chest. The Washington Post recently reported that the oil industry “gushed money after [his] reversal on oil drilling” last month.
The oilmen never gave him that kind of money when he talked straight.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
L.A. Times (July 29, 2008)
Pasadena's Parsons Corp. blamed in failure of $40-million Iraq prison project
A U.S. government audit says the engineering firm received $142 million for facilities in the country, including Khan Bani Saad, that were never completed.
By Jim Puzzanghera and Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 29, 2008
WASHINGTON — A half-completed prison in Iraq that cost $40 million marked the biggest reconstruction failure identified to date by a U.S. government watchdog, which on Monday laid responsibility for the project with a Pasadena contractor.
The company, Parsons Corp., said the project was too dangerous to finish.
The Khan Bani Saad Correctional Facility, just north of Baghdad, was one of several projects cited in an audit of Parsons' security and justice-related contracts released by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The audit found that Parsons, one of the largest construction contractors in the $50-billion U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq, received $142 million for prisons and other facilities that were never completed.
"It's the largest shortfall we've uncovered for a single project," Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said of the Khan Bani Saad facility. His office has spent four years auditing efforts to rebuild the war-torn country.
The shortfall tops that of another Parsons project, the Baghdad Police College. Bowen's office estimated last year that the U.S. government would end up paying Parsons $62 million to construct and renovate the police facility, a project that was poorly managed and riddled with severe plumbing problems.
"At least the Baghdad Police College is open, operating and graduating police officers," Bowen said in an interview. "The Khan Bani Saad prison will apparently never house prisoners."
In a lengthy statement, Parsons said it did its best given the violence in Iraq. It noted that one of its subcontractors on the prison project was fatally shot while sitting in his office in Khan Bani Saad.
"The Khan Bani Saad corrections facility was a uniquely difficult assignment," the firm said. "The facility was located in a region plagued by violent sectarian warfare, particularly during the months that Parsons was on that project."
The 48-page audit highlighted the difficulties the Pentagon has encountered in trying to rebuild key facilities and infrastructure after the U.S.-led invasion to oust former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Parsons landed one of the largest rebuilding contracts -- $900 million -- focusing on security infrastructure.
The audit said the projects Parsons completed "resulted in material improvements in Iraqi security and justice infrastructure." But only 18 of the 53 construction projects were considered successful and completed. About two-thirds were terminated or canceled, accounting for $142 million of the $333 million Parsons has received from the U.S. for its work in Iraq.
"Far less was accomplished under this contract than was originally planned," the audit said.
Parsons received the contract to build the Khan Bani Saad prison in May 2004. The facility -- including one maximum-security building, three medium-security buildings and 15 other structures -- had a price tag of $73 million. But "continued schedule slips" and "massive cost overruns" led the U.S. government to cancel Parsons' contract in 2006.
Bowen said that the prison was left "grievously incomplete." When U.S. authorities attempted to turn it over to the Iraqi government, the deputy justice minister "refused to accept it," saying Baghdad would not complete it or provide security for the unfinished facility, Bowen said.
Only 52% of the project was finished. Of the $40 million the U.S. government paid, $31 million went to Parsons and $9 million to other contractors, the audit said.
Parsons said security was a major problem at the site. It said that three contractors subsequently hired to finish the work "experienced similar disruptive violence" and that the U.S. abandoned the project in 2007 "because it was too dangerous." The audit confirmed that the site manager for one of Parsons' subcontractors was fatally shot in his office in August 2005.
"Parsons argued that the U.S. government misrepresented that there would be a permissive, benign environment for Parsons to work," according to the report. "Parsons claimed that on an almost daily basis, its subcontractors faced security threats that either shut down work or curtailed performance."
But auditors said Parsons was aware of the security issues and that logs kept by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers showed the company cited violence as the reason for only seven days of delays.
U.S. officials found that Parsons "provided inadequate field oversight" of the project, according to the audit report.
Auditors also said U.S. government oversight of Parsons' contract was inadequate and hindered by high turnover. A contract the size of Parsons' for security and justice infrastructure might have 50 to 60 contracting officers overseeing it if it were taking place in the U.S. Only 10 to 12 officers oversaw it in Iraq.
A U.S. government audit says the engineering firm received $142 million for facilities in the country, including Khan Bani Saad, that were never completed.
By Jim Puzzanghera and Peter Spiegel
Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
July 29, 2008
WASHINGTON — A half-completed prison in Iraq that cost $40 million marked the biggest reconstruction failure identified to date by a U.S. government watchdog, which on Monday laid responsibility for the project with a Pasadena contractor.
The company, Parsons Corp., said the project was too dangerous to finish.
The Khan Bani Saad Correctional Facility, just north of Baghdad, was one of several projects cited in an audit of Parsons' security and justice-related contracts released by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. The audit found that Parsons, one of the largest construction contractors in the $50-billion U.S. effort to rebuild Iraq, received $142 million for prisons and other facilities that were never completed.
"It's the largest shortfall we've uncovered for a single project," Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, said of the Khan Bani Saad facility. His office has spent four years auditing efforts to rebuild the war-torn country.
The shortfall tops that of another Parsons project, the Baghdad Police College. Bowen's office estimated last year that the U.S. government would end up paying Parsons $62 million to construct and renovate the police facility, a project that was poorly managed and riddled with severe plumbing problems.
"At least the Baghdad Police College is open, operating and graduating police officers," Bowen said in an interview. "The Khan Bani Saad prison will apparently never house prisoners."
In a lengthy statement, Parsons said it did its best given the violence in Iraq. It noted that one of its subcontractors on the prison project was fatally shot while sitting in his office in Khan Bani Saad.
"The Khan Bani Saad corrections facility was a uniquely difficult assignment," the firm said. "The facility was located in a region plagued by violent sectarian warfare, particularly during the months that Parsons was on that project."
The 48-page audit highlighted the difficulties the Pentagon has encountered in trying to rebuild key facilities and infrastructure after the U.S.-led invasion to oust former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Parsons landed one of the largest rebuilding contracts -- $900 million -- focusing on security infrastructure.
The audit said the projects Parsons completed "resulted in material improvements in Iraqi security and justice infrastructure." But only 18 of the 53 construction projects were considered successful and completed. About two-thirds were terminated or canceled, accounting for $142 million of the $333 million Parsons has received from the U.S. for its work in Iraq.
"Far less was accomplished under this contract than was originally planned," the audit said.
Parsons received the contract to build the Khan Bani Saad prison in May 2004. The facility -- including one maximum-security building, three medium-security buildings and 15 other structures -- had a price tag of $73 million. But "continued schedule slips" and "massive cost overruns" led the U.S. government to cancel Parsons' contract in 2006.
Bowen said that the prison was left "grievously incomplete." When U.S. authorities attempted to turn it over to the Iraqi government, the deputy justice minister "refused to accept it," saying Baghdad would not complete it or provide security for the unfinished facility, Bowen said.
Only 52% of the project was finished. Of the $40 million the U.S. government paid, $31 million went to Parsons and $9 million to other contractors, the audit said.
Parsons said security was a major problem at the site. It said that three contractors subsequently hired to finish the work "experienced similar disruptive violence" and that the U.S. abandoned the project in 2007 "because it was too dangerous." The audit confirmed that the site manager for one of Parsons' subcontractors was fatally shot in his office in August 2005.
"Parsons argued that the U.S. government misrepresented that there would be a permissive, benign environment for Parsons to work," according to the report. "Parsons claimed that on an almost daily basis, its subcontractors faced security threats that either shut down work or curtailed performance."
But auditors said Parsons was aware of the security issues and that logs kept by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers showed the company cited violence as the reason for only seven days of delays.
U.S. officials found that Parsons "provided inadequate field oversight" of the project, according to the audit report.
Auditors also said U.S. government oversight of Parsons' contract was inadequate and hindered by high turnover. A contract the size of Parsons' for security and justice infrastructure might have 50 to 60 contracting officers overseeing it if it were taking place in the U.S. Only 10 to 12 officers oversaw it in Iraq.
Then Nation (July 30, 2008)
An Open Letter to Barack Obama
This article appeared in the August 18, 2008 edition of The Nation.
July 30, 2008
Dear Senator Obama,
We write to congratulate you on the tremendous achievements of your campaign for the presidency of the United States.
Your candidacy has inspired a wave of political enthusiasm like nothing seen in this country for decades. In your speeches, you have sketched out a vision of a better future--in which the United States sheds its warlike stance around the globe and focuses on diplomacy abroad and greater equality and freedom for its citizens at home--that has thrilled voters across the political spectrum. Hundreds of thousands of young people have entered the political process for the first time, African-American voters have rallied behind you, and many of those alienated from politics-as-usual have been re-engaged.
You stand today at the head of a movement that believes deeply in the change you have claimed as the mantle of your campaign. The millions who attend your rallies, donate to your campaign and visit your website are a powerful testament to this new movement's energy and passion.
This movement is vital for two reasons: First, it will help assure your victory against John McCain in November. The long night of greed and military adventurism under the Bush Administration, which a McCain administration would continue, cannot be brought to an end a day too soon. An enthusiastic corps of volunteers and organizers will ensure that voters turn out to close the book on the Bush era on election day. Second, having helped bring you the White House, the support of this movement will make possible the changes that have been the platform of your campaign. Only a grassroots base as broad and as energized as the one that is behind you can counteract the forces of money and established power that are a dead weight on those seeking real change in American politics.
We urge you, then, to listen to the voices of the people who can lift you to the presidency and beyond.
Since your historic victory in the primary, there have been troubling signs that you are moving away from the core commitments shared by many who have supported your campaign, toward a more cautious and centrist stance--including, most notably, your vote for the FISA legislation granting telecom companies immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping, which angered and dismayed so many of your supporters.
We recognize that compromise is necessary in any democracy. We understand that the pressures brought to bear on those seeking the highest office are intense. But retreating from the stands that have been the signature of your campaign will weaken the movement whose vigorous backing you need in order to win and then deliver the change you have promised.
Here are key positions you have embraced that we believe are essential to sustaining this movement:
§ Withdrawal from Iraq on a fixed timetable.
§ A response to the current economic crisis that reduces the gap between the rich and the rest of us through a more progressive financial and welfare system; public investment to create jobs and repair the country's collapsing infrastructure; fair trade policies; restoration of the freedom to organize unions; and meaningful government enforcement of labor laws and regulation of industry.
§ Universal healthcare.
§ An environmental policy that transforms the economy by shifting billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, creating millions of green jobs.
§ An end to the regime of torture, abuse of civil liberties and unchecked executive power that has flourished in the Bush era.
§ A commitment to the rights of women, including the right to choose abortion and improved access to abortion and reproductive health services.
§ A commitment to improving conditions in urban communities and ending racial inequality, including disparities in education through reform of the No Child Left Behind Act and other measures.
§ An immigration system that treats humanely those attempting to enter the country and provides a path to citizenship for those already here.
§ Reform of the drug laws that incarcerate hundreds of thousands who need help, not jail.
§ Reform of the political process that reduces the influence of money and corporate lobbyists and amplifies the voices of ordinary people.
These are the changes we can believe in. In other areas--such as the use of residual forces and mercenary troops in Iraq, the escalation of the US military presence in Afghanistan, the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the death penalty--your stated positions have consistently varied from the positions held by many of us, the "friends on the left" you addressed in recent remarks. If you win in November, we will work to support your stands when we agree with you and to challenge them when we don't. We look forward to an ongoing and constructive dialogue with you when you are elected President.
Stand firm on the principles you have so compellingly articulated, and you may succeed in bringing this country the change you've encouraged us to believe is possible.
This article appeared in the August 18, 2008 edition of The Nation.
July 30, 2008
Dear Senator Obama,
We write to congratulate you on the tremendous achievements of your campaign for the presidency of the United States.
Your candidacy has inspired a wave of political enthusiasm like nothing seen in this country for decades. In your speeches, you have sketched out a vision of a better future--in which the United States sheds its warlike stance around the globe and focuses on diplomacy abroad and greater equality and freedom for its citizens at home--that has thrilled voters across the political spectrum. Hundreds of thousands of young people have entered the political process for the first time, African-American voters have rallied behind you, and many of those alienated from politics-as-usual have been re-engaged.
You stand today at the head of a movement that believes deeply in the change you have claimed as the mantle of your campaign. The millions who attend your rallies, donate to your campaign and visit your website are a powerful testament to this new movement's energy and passion.
This movement is vital for two reasons: First, it will help assure your victory against John McCain in November. The long night of greed and military adventurism under the Bush Administration, which a McCain administration would continue, cannot be brought to an end a day too soon. An enthusiastic corps of volunteers and organizers will ensure that voters turn out to close the book on the Bush era on election day. Second, having helped bring you the White House, the support of this movement will make possible the changes that have been the platform of your campaign. Only a grassroots base as broad and as energized as the one that is behind you can counteract the forces of money and established power that are a dead weight on those seeking real change in American politics.
We urge you, then, to listen to the voices of the people who can lift you to the presidency and beyond.
Since your historic victory in the primary, there have been troubling signs that you are moving away from the core commitments shared by many who have supported your campaign, toward a more cautious and centrist stance--including, most notably, your vote for the FISA legislation granting telecom companies immunity from prosecution for illegal wiretapping, which angered and dismayed so many of your supporters.
We recognize that compromise is necessary in any democracy. We understand that the pressures brought to bear on those seeking the highest office are intense. But retreating from the stands that have been the signature of your campaign will weaken the movement whose vigorous backing you need in order to win and then deliver the change you have promised.
Here are key positions you have embraced that we believe are essential to sustaining this movement:
§ Withdrawal from Iraq on a fixed timetable.
§ A response to the current economic crisis that reduces the gap between the rich and the rest of us through a more progressive financial and welfare system; public investment to create jobs and repair the country's collapsing infrastructure; fair trade policies; restoration of the freedom to organize unions; and meaningful government enforcement of labor laws and regulation of industry.
§ Universal healthcare.
§ An environmental policy that transforms the economy by shifting billions of dollars from the consumption of fossil fuels to alternative energy sources, creating millions of green jobs.
§ An end to the regime of torture, abuse of civil liberties and unchecked executive power that has flourished in the Bush era.
§ A commitment to the rights of women, including the right to choose abortion and improved access to abortion and reproductive health services.
§ A commitment to improving conditions in urban communities and ending racial inequality, including disparities in education through reform of the No Child Left Behind Act and other measures.
§ An immigration system that treats humanely those attempting to enter the country and provides a path to citizenship for those already here.
§ Reform of the drug laws that incarcerate hundreds of thousands who need help, not jail.
§ Reform of the political process that reduces the influence of money and corporate lobbyists and amplifies the voices of ordinary people.
These are the changes we can believe in. In other areas--such as the use of residual forces and mercenary troops in Iraq, the escalation of the US military presence in Afghanistan, the resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the death penalty--your stated positions have consistently varied from the positions held by many of us, the "friends on the left" you addressed in recent remarks. If you win in November, we will work to support your stands when we agree with you and to challenge them when we don't. We look forward to an ongoing and constructive dialogue with you when you are elected President.
Stand firm on the principles you have so compellingly articulated, and you may succeed in bringing this country the change you've encouraged us to believe is possible.
The Nation (July 29, 2008)
Chipotle Hypocrisy
posted by Peter Rothberg on 07/29/2008 @ 12:48pm
In recent years, Taco Bell and Burger King have foolishly resisted efforts by activists to marginally raise the piece rate they pay tomato pickers only to eventually buckle under the pressure of well-deserved bad press. Chipotle Mexican Grill seems to have learned nothing from their lessons.
Although Chipotle, the expanding Colorado-based restaurant chain formerly owned by McDonald's, touts its fair treatment of animals and its locally-sourced organic avocados, its colorful, interactive website neglects any mention of the fair treatment of farm workers. While CEO Steve Ells boasts about his "Food With Integrity" brand, he has ignored countless letters and petitions from all over the country, asking for an extra penny per pound for his tomato pickers.
Migrant pickers typically work ten to twelve hour days, earning a piece-rate of about forty-five cents for each thirty-two pound bucket of tomatoes. Work is never guaranteed, there is no health care, and no overtime pay. The average annual income for a farm worker is $10,000.
Or take this snapshot of the average workday of a Florida tomato picker (with credit to the fine blog, The Pump Handle):
*4:30am: Wake-up. Prepare lunch in your trailer.
*5:00am: Walk to the parking lot or pick-up site to begin looking for work.
*6:30am: With luck, a contractor will choose you to work for him for the day. The job may be 10 to 100 miles away.
*7:30am: Arrive at the fields and begin weeding or waiting while the dew evaporates from the tomatoes. You are usually not paid for this time.
*9:00am: Begin picking tomatoes--filling buckets, hoisting them on your shoulder, running them 100 feet or more to the truck and throwing the bucket up into the truck. Work fast because you must pick 2 TONS of tomatoes in order to earn $50 today.
*Noon: Eat lunch as fast as you can, often with your hands soaked in pesticides. Return to work under the smoldering Florida sun.
*5:00pm: (sometimes later, depending on the season): Board bus to return to Immokalee.
Between 5:30 pm and 8:00 pm: Arrive in Immokalee and walk home.
(And the next day, get up and do it all again. Photos here:)
http://www.ciw-online.org/images/images.html
Surely a company that took over $1 billion in annual sales last year can afford a modest raise request. Instead, Ells has tried to side-step the issue by looking to purchase tomatoes from places other than Florida.
Galvanizing the grassroots organizing by and for the Florida tomato pickers is the same group that led the successful fights against Taco Bell and Burger King -- the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), founded in 1993 as a "community-based worker organization" with members from diverse backgrounds, in low-wage agricultural jobs throughout Florida.
On Friday afternoon, August 8th, the CIW along with hundreds of members of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) will be in Denver at Chipotle's corporate headquarters to demand that the restaurant chain work to ensure fairer wages and more humane working conditions for farmworkers. If you're in the Denver area, please join what should be a large and powerful action. if you're not, see what you can do to help the campaign, which has garnered the attention of Congress, with lawmakers earlier this year calling for the Government Accountabilty Office to launch an investigation into working conditions.
CIW's website is filled with details on the demonstration, sample letters to Steve Ells, and other ways that you can do something for some of the poorest and hardest working people in America, including urging Chipotle customers to print out this letter:
http://www.ciw-online.org/images/Chipotle%20Manager%20Letter.pdf
and hand it to the manager at your local Chipotle restaurant. The CIW has gone up against Goliath before and won. With dedication and solidarity, this fight can also be won.
posted by Peter Rothberg on 07/29/2008 @ 12:48pm
In recent years, Taco Bell and Burger King have foolishly resisted efforts by activists to marginally raise the piece rate they pay tomato pickers only to eventually buckle under the pressure of well-deserved bad press. Chipotle Mexican Grill seems to have learned nothing from their lessons.
Although Chipotle, the expanding Colorado-based restaurant chain formerly owned by McDonald's, touts its fair treatment of animals and its locally-sourced organic avocados, its colorful, interactive website neglects any mention of the fair treatment of farm workers. While CEO Steve Ells boasts about his "Food With Integrity" brand, he has ignored countless letters and petitions from all over the country, asking for an extra penny per pound for his tomato pickers.
Migrant pickers typically work ten to twelve hour days, earning a piece-rate of about forty-five cents for each thirty-two pound bucket of tomatoes. Work is never guaranteed, there is no health care, and no overtime pay. The average annual income for a farm worker is $10,000.
Or take this snapshot of the average workday of a Florida tomato picker (with credit to the fine blog, The Pump Handle):
*4:30am: Wake-up. Prepare lunch in your trailer.
*5:00am: Walk to the parking lot or pick-up site to begin looking for work.
*6:30am: With luck, a contractor will choose you to work for him for the day. The job may be 10 to 100 miles away.
*7:30am: Arrive at the fields and begin weeding or waiting while the dew evaporates from the tomatoes. You are usually not paid for this time.
*9:00am: Begin picking tomatoes--filling buckets, hoisting them on your shoulder, running them 100 feet or more to the truck and throwing the bucket up into the truck. Work fast because you must pick 2 TONS of tomatoes in order to earn $50 today.
*Noon: Eat lunch as fast as you can, often with your hands soaked in pesticides. Return to work under the smoldering Florida sun.
*5:00pm: (sometimes later, depending on the season): Board bus to return to Immokalee.
Between 5:30 pm and 8:00 pm: Arrive in Immokalee and walk home.
(And the next day, get up and do it all again. Photos here:)
http://www.ciw-online.org/images/images.html
Surely a company that took over $1 billion in annual sales last year can afford a modest raise request. Instead, Ells has tried to side-step the issue by looking to purchase tomatoes from places other than Florida.
Galvanizing the grassroots organizing by and for the Florida tomato pickers is the same group that led the successful fights against Taco Bell and Burger King -- the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), founded in 1993 as a "community-based worker organization" with members from diverse backgrounds, in low-wage agricultural jobs throughout Florida.
On Friday afternoon, August 8th, the CIW along with hundreds of members of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) will be in Denver at Chipotle's corporate headquarters to demand that the restaurant chain work to ensure fairer wages and more humane working conditions for farmworkers. If you're in the Denver area, please join what should be a large and powerful action. if you're not, see what you can do to help the campaign, which has garnered the attention of Congress, with lawmakers earlier this year calling for the Government Accountabilty Office to launch an investigation into working conditions.
CIW's website is filled with details on the demonstration, sample letters to Steve Ells, and other ways that you can do something for some of the poorest and hardest working people in America, including urging Chipotle customers to print out this letter:
http://www.ciw-online.org/images/Chipotle%20Manager%20Letter.pdf
and hand it to the manager at your local Chipotle restaurant. The CIW has gone up against Goliath before and won. With dedication and solidarity, this fight can also be won.
Thinkprogress.org (July 29, 2008)
War Architect Richard Perle Looking To Enter Oil Business In Iraq
In March 2003, weeks after the invasion of Iraq, war architect Richard Perle resigned from his position on the Defense Policy Board in an attempt to “defuse a controversy over charges he stood to profit from the war in Iraq.”
But that hasn’t stopped Perle from continuing to seek profit from the war. Citing documents and people close to the negotiations, the Wall Street Journal reports today that Perle “has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan. One of the oil tracts, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, “is estimated to hold 150 million or more barrels of oil, would potentially be operated by Houston-based Endeavour International”:
Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents. […]
Mr. Perle has attended events promoting the interests of Kazakhstan, an oil-rich nation whose ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is involved in a long-running U.S. investigation of 1990s-era oil-company bribery. Mr. Perle has publicly lauded President Nazarbayev as “visionary and wise,” according to a publication distributed by the Kazakh embassy in Washington.
Perle also “has explored obtaining an oil concession in Kazakhstan in tandem with a northern Iraq deal,” the Journal adds. Perle denied the reports, stating, “I am not involved in any consortium…nor am I ‘framing plans for a consortium.’” But a spokesman for Qubat Talabani, the Kurdish government’s delegate in the U.S. who deals with “investment information,” “confirmed that the envoy had been approached by Mr. Perle.”
Perle’s shady business dealings related to the war are long-standing. The New Yorker’s Sy Hersh reported in 2003 on Perle’s role as a managing partner on the defense firm Trireme Partners LLP, whose “business potential depended on a war in Iraq taking place.” In response, Perle said Hersh was a “terrorist.”
The New York Times revealed recently that the Bush administration “played an integral part” in negotiating no-bid contracts for Western oil companies in Iraq. Despite its devastating security, human, and financial costs on the United States, the Iraq war continues to pay off for the architects and their friends.
In March 2003, weeks after the invasion of Iraq, war architect Richard Perle resigned from his position on the Defense Policy Board in an attempt to “defuse a controversy over charges he stood to profit from the war in Iraq.”
But that hasn’t stopped Perle from continuing to seek profit from the war. Citing documents and people close to the negotiations, the Wall Street Journal reports today that Perle “has been exploring going into the oil business in Iraq and Kazakhstan. One of the oil tracts, near the Kurdish city of Erbil, “is estimated to hold 150 million or more barrels of oil, would potentially be operated by Houston-based Endeavour International”:
Mr. Perle, one of a group of security experts who began pushing the case for toppling Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein about a decade ago, has been discussing a possible deal with officials of northern Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government, including its Washington envoy, according to these people and the documents. […]
Mr. Perle has attended events promoting the interests of Kazakhstan, an oil-rich nation whose ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, is involved in a long-running U.S. investigation of 1990s-era oil-company bribery. Mr. Perle has publicly lauded President Nazarbayev as “visionary and wise,” according to a publication distributed by the Kazakh embassy in Washington.
Perle also “has explored obtaining an oil concession in Kazakhstan in tandem with a northern Iraq deal,” the Journal adds. Perle denied the reports, stating, “I am not involved in any consortium…nor am I ‘framing plans for a consortium.’” But a spokesman for Qubat Talabani, the Kurdish government’s delegate in the U.S. who deals with “investment information,” “confirmed that the envoy had been approached by Mr. Perle.”
Perle’s shady business dealings related to the war are long-standing. The New Yorker’s Sy Hersh reported in 2003 on Perle’s role as a managing partner on the defense firm Trireme Partners LLP, whose “business potential depended on a war in Iraq taking place.” In response, Perle said Hersh was a “terrorist.”
The New York Times revealed recently that the Bush administration “played an integral part” in negotiating no-bid contracts for Western oil companies in Iraq. Despite its devastating security, human, and financial costs on the United States, the Iraq war continues to pay off for the architects and their friends.
N.Y. Times (July 30, 2008)
July 30, 2008
Editorial
Low-Road Express
Well, that certainly didn’t take long. On July 3, news reports said Senator John McCain, worried that he might lose the election before it truly started, opened his doors to disciples of Karl Rove from the 2004 campaign and the Bush White House. Less than a month later, the results are on full display. The candidate who started out talking about high-minded, civil debate has wholeheartedly adopted Mr. Rove’s low-minded and uncivil playbook.
In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to “lose” in Iraq), and issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr. Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers).
Mr. McCain used to pride himself on being above this ugly brand of politics, which killed his own 2000 presidential bid. But he clearly tossed his inhibitions aside earlier this month when he put day-to-day management of his campaign in the hands of one acolyte of Mr. Rove and gave top positions to two others. The résumés of the new team’s members included stints in Mr. Bush’s White House and in his 2004 re-election campaign, one of the most negative and divisive in memory.
Almost immediately, the McCain campaign was using Mr. Rove’s well-honed tactics, starting with an attempt to widen this nation’s damaging ideological divide by painting Mr. Obama as a far-left kook. On July 18, Mr. McCain even suggested that Mr. Obama is a socialist to the left of the Senate’s only avowed socialist: Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Mr. Obama’s politics are hardly far-left, and anyone who has spent time in a socialist country knows how ridiculous that label is for any member of Congress. It would be bad enough if Mr. McCain honestly believed what he said, but we find that hard to imagine.
Mr. Obama has distorted Mr. McCain’s record at times, but Mr. McCain’s false charges have been more frequent: that Mr. Obama opposes “innovation” on energy policy; that he voted 94 times for “higher taxes”; and that Mr. Obama is personally responsible for rising gasoline prices.
And Mr. McCain has not stopped there. Taking a page straight from Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove, Mr. McCain has been trying to distract voters from his support for an unending war in Iraq by portraying Mr. Obama as unpatriotic and weak. This line of attack reached a crescendo last week when Mr. McCain fumed and fussed and went to places with European-sounding names while Mr. Obama traveled abroad.
Mr. McCain repeatedly said Mr. Obama “would rather lose a war to win a political campaign” and that he “does not understand” what is at stake in Iraq. He also accused Mr. Obama of canceling a visit to wounded American troops in a German military hospital because news cameras were not allowed. That’s a false account of what occurred — and Mr. McCain ignored Mr. Obama’s unheralded visit to a combat hospital in Baghdad.
Like Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain confuses opposition to an unnecessary war with a lack of spine and an unwillingness to use force when the nation is truly in danger. Obviously, Mr. Obama is untested as a commander in chief and his trip was intended to reassure voters. But Mr. McCain is as untested in this area as Mr. Obama, and it is hard to imagine a worse role model than the one Mr. McCain seems to be adopting: President Bush.
Many voters are wondering whether a McCain presidency would be an extension of Mr. Bush’s two disastrous terms. If the way Mr. McCain is running his campaign these days is an indication, Americans don’t have to wait until next January for the answer to that one.
Editorial
Low-Road Express
Well, that certainly didn’t take long. On July 3, news reports said Senator John McCain, worried that he might lose the election before it truly started, opened his doors to disciples of Karl Rove from the 2004 campaign and the Bush White House. Less than a month later, the results are on full display. The candidate who started out talking about high-minded, civil debate has wholeheartedly adopted Mr. Rove’s low-minded and uncivil playbook.
In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has been waving the flag of fear (Senator Barack Obama wants to “lose” in Iraq), and issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Mr. Obama is a socialist) and false (the presumptive Democratic nominee turned his back on wounded soldiers).
Mr. McCain used to pride himself on being above this ugly brand of politics, which killed his own 2000 presidential bid. But he clearly tossed his inhibitions aside earlier this month when he put day-to-day management of his campaign in the hands of one acolyte of Mr. Rove and gave top positions to two others. The résumés of the new team’s members included stints in Mr. Bush’s White House and in his 2004 re-election campaign, one of the most negative and divisive in memory.
Almost immediately, the McCain campaign was using Mr. Rove’s well-honed tactics, starting with an attempt to widen this nation’s damaging ideological divide by painting Mr. Obama as a far-left kook. On July 18, Mr. McCain even suggested that Mr. Obama is a socialist to the left of the Senate’s only avowed socialist: Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Mr. Obama’s politics are hardly far-left, and anyone who has spent time in a socialist country knows how ridiculous that label is for any member of Congress. It would be bad enough if Mr. McCain honestly believed what he said, but we find that hard to imagine.
Mr. Obama has distorted Mr. McCain’s record at times, but Mr. McCain’s false charges have been more frequent: that Mr. Obama opposes “innovation” on energy policy; that he voted 94 times for “higher taxes”; and that Mr. Obama is personally responsible for rising gasoline prices.
And Mr. McCain has not stopped there. Taking a page straight from Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove, Mr. McCain has been trying to distract voters from his support for an unending war in Iraq by portraying Mr. Obama as unpatriotic and weak. This line of attack reached a crescendo last week when Mr. McCain fumed and fussed and went to places with European-sounding names while Mr. Obama traveled abroad.
Mr. McCain repeatedly said Mr. Obama “would rather lose a war to win a political campaign” and that he “does not understand” what is at stake in Iraq. He also accused Mr. Obama of canceling a visit to wounded American troops in a German military hospital because news cameras were not allowed. That’s a false account of what occurred — and Mr. McCain ignored Mr. Obama’s unheralded visit to a combat hospital in Baghdad.
Like Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain confuses opposition to an unnecessary war with a lack of spine and an unwillingness to use force when the nation is truly in danger. Obviously, Mr. Obama is untested as a commander in chief and his trip was intended to reassure voters. But Mr. McCain is as untested in this area as Mr. Obama, and it is hard to imagine a worse role model than the one Mr. McCain seems to be adopting: President Bush.
Many voters are wondering whether a McCain presidency would be an extension of Mr. Bush’s two disastrous terms. If the way Mr. McCain is running his campaign these days is an indication, Americans don’t have to wait until next January for the answer to that one.
Gary Kamiya - Salon.com (July 29, 2008)
Waving the flag on Iraq -- now in rerun!
McCain's attack on Obama as a defeatist is right out of the Karl Rove playbook. But here's why it won't work
By Gary Kamiya
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/07/29/mccain/
McCain's attack on Obama as a defeatist is right out of the Karl Rove playbook. But here's why it won't work
By Gary Kamiya
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2008/07/29/mccain/
Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com (July 30, 2008)
Those privacy-hating Chinese Communist tyrants
GOP Senators protest China's surveillance of foreigner's email and telephone communications. And they do it with a straight face
By Glenn Greenwald
Full article:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/30/china/
GOP Senators protest China's surveillance of foreigner's email and telephone communications. And they do it with a straight face
By Glenn Greenwald
Full article:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/07/30/china/
Salon.com (July 30, 2008)
Strained by war, U.S. Army promotes unqualified soldiers
A Salon investigation reveals that a shortage of skilled sergeants has led to dubious promotions for inexperienced soldiers -- even jeopardizing some operations in Iraq
By Bill Sasser
Full article:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/30/sergeants/
A Salon investigation reveals that a shortage of skilled sergeants has led to dubious promotions for inexperienced soldiers -- even jeopardizing some operations in Iraq
By Bill Sasser
Full article:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/30/sergeants/
Robert Scheer - Truthdig.com (July 29, 2008)
Sucking Up to the Bankers: A Bipartisan Lovefest
Posted on Jul 29, 2008
By Robert Scheer
This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them. Yet both of our leading presidential candidates are scrambling to enlist not only the big-dollar contributions but, more frighteningly, the “expertise” of the very folks who advocated the financial industry deregulations at the heart of this meltdown.
Republican candidate John McCain even appointed as his campaign co-chairman Phil Gramm, who went from being chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, where he sponsored disastrous legislation that empowered the banking bandits, to becoming one of them at UBS Warburg. Gramm was forced to resign from McCain’s campaign only after he went public with his contempt for the financial concerns of ordinary Americans, calling them “whiners” and perpetrators of a “mental recession.”
But Gramm and the Republicans couldn’t have done it without the support of leading Democrats. The most egregious of Gramm’s legislative favors to the financiers took the form of legislation named in part after him—the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law only after then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin prevailed upon President Clinton to sign the bill. The bill’s immediate major effect was to legitimize the long-sought merger between Citibank and insurance giant Travelers. Rubin’s critical support for the bill was rewarded with an appointment, within days of its passage, to a top job at Citibank (later Citigroup) paying more than $15 million a year.
That is the same Rubin with whom Democratic candidate Barack Obama met, along with other influential advisers, on Tuesday to figure out what to do about the sorry state of our economy. But what in the world did he expect to learn from Rubin? And why did he appoint Rubin’s protégé, Jason Furman, who ran the Rubin-funded Hamilton Project, to be the Obama campaign’s economic director? Hopefully, during their encounter Tuesday, Rubin offered himself as a contrite model of everything that the candidate of change needs to change.
After all, Goldman Sachs, where Rubin spent 25 years of his business career before entering the Clinton administration, has been one of the prime corporate villains in the financial shenanigans that led to the subprime mortgage scandal. As co-chairman of the firm, surely he had knowledge of the financial hanky-panky that would prove so disastrous down the road. Indeed, as Treasury secretary, he favored an extension of the deregulation that enabled this explosion of banking avarice. Not surprisingly, the current Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, also previously headed Goldman.
When Rubin assumed a top position at Citibank after his stint at the Treasury, he was not above influencing his former employees in the government. In one notorious instance during the fall of 2001, when Enron was going down the tubes Rubin telephoned a Treasury undersecretary and asked him to consider intervening with credit-rating agencies to hold off downgrading Enron’s ratings. When the story was leaked, some media accounts noted the possibility of a conflict of interest because Enron owed Citibank $750 million, which it could not pay if bankrupt.
Despite his skills and his vaunted position as Citibank’s chairman, Rubin was not spared the disastrous consequences of Citibank’s own wild financial manipulations, which, if anything, exceeded those of Enron. Tens of billions in bad mortgage and credit card debt placed the bank at the forefront of the current economic crisis, and so it is weird that Obama would now turn to Rubin for advice.
It’s even weirder that the presumptive Democratic nominee would pick Rubin’s man Furman as his campaign economic director at a time when cleaning up the mess left by the bankers is the highest priority. Furman hardly distinguished himself four years ago in that role in John Kerry’s failed presidential campaign, with its muffled economic message that could not be blamed on the candidate’s stiff style alone.
The bigger problem is that folks such as Rubin and Furman, perhaps best known as an economist for his bold but woefully misguided defense of the Wal-Mart business model, clearly do not feel the pain of the voters who are losing their homes.
But then again, why should Rubin, or Gramm on the Republican side, be expected to care when he has made so many millions off the suffering of those voters? Not good at a time when we need a presidential candidate who sticks it to the bankers instead of sucking up to them.
Posted on Jul 29, 2008
By Robert Scheer
This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them. Yet both of our leading presidential candidates are scrambling to enlist not only the big-dollar contributions but, more frighteningly, the “expertise” of the very folks who advocated the financial industry deregulations at the heart of this meltdown.
Republican candidate John McCain even appointed as his campaign co-chairman Phil Gramm, who went from being chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, where he sponsored disastrous legislation that empowered the banking bandits, to becoming one of them at UBS Warburg. Gramm was forced to resign from McCain’s campaign only after he went public with his contempt for the financial concerns of ordinary Americans, calling them “whiners” and perpetrators of a “mental recession.”
But Gramm and the Republicans couldn’t have done it without the support of leading Democrats. The most egregious of Gramm’s legislative favors to the financiers took the form of legislation named in part after him—the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which became law only after then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin prevailed upon President Clinton to sign the bill. The bill’s immediate major effect was to legitimize the long-sought merger between Citibank and insurance giant Travelers. Rubin’s critical support for the bill was rewarded with an appointment, within days of its passage, to a top job at Citibank (later Citigroup) paying more than $15 million a year.
That is the same Rubin with whom Democratic candidate Barack Obama met, along with other influential advisers, on Tuesday to figure out what to do about the sorry state of our economy. But what in the world did he expect to learn from Rubin? And why did he appoint Rubin’s protégé, Jason Furman, who ran the Rubin-funded Hamilton Project, to be the Obama campaign’s economic director? Hopefully, during their encounter Tuesday, Rubin offered himself as a contrite model of everything that the candidate of change needs to change.
After all, Goldman Sachs, where Rubin spent 25 years of his business career before entering the Clinton administration, has been one of the prime corporate villains in the financial shenanigans that led to the subprime mortgage scandal. As co-chairman of the firm, surely he had knowledge of the financial hanky-panky that would prove so disastrous down the road. Indeed, as Treasury secretary, he favored an extension of the deregulation that enabled this explosion of banking avarice. Not surprisingly, the current Treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, also previously headed Goldman.
When Rubin assumed a top position at Citibank after his stint at the Treasury, he was not above influencing his former employees in the government. In one notorious instance during the fall of 2001, when Enron was going down the tubes Rubin telephoned a Treasury undersecretary and asked him to consider intervening with credit-rating agencies to hold off downgrading Enron’s ratings. When the story was leaked, some media accounts noted the possibility of a conflict of interest because Enron owed Citibank $750 million, which it could not pay if bankrupt.
Despite his skills and his vaunted position as Citibank’s chairman, Rubin was not spared the disastrous consequences of Citibank’s own wild financial manipulations, which, if anything, exceeded those of Enron. Tens of billions in bad mortgage and credit card debt placed the bank at the forefront of the current economic crisis, and so it is weird that Obama would now turn to Rubin for advice.
It’s even weirder that the presumptive Democratic nominee would pick Rubin’s man Furman as his campaign economic director at a time when cleaning up the mess left by the bankers is the highest priority. Furman hardly distinguished himself four years ago in that role in John Kerry’s failed presidential campaign, with its muffled economic message that could not be blamed on the candidate’s stiff style alone.
The bigger problem is that folks such as Rubin and Furman, perhaps best known as an economist for his bold but woefully misguided defense of the Wal-Mart business model, clearly do not feel the pain of the voters who are losing their homes.
But then again, why should Rubin, or Gramm on the Republican side, be expected to care when he has made so many millions off the suffering of those voters? Not good at a time when we need a presidential candidate who sticks it to the bankers instead of sucking up to them.
Marie Cocco - Washington Post (July 28, 2008)
A Parting Gift to the Religious Right
Posted on Jul 28, 2008
By Marie Cocco
From the people who brought you the Terri Schiavo spectacle, the stem-cell research stalemate and the atrocious waste of tax money on abstinence-only sex education that has been shown not to work, comes a sequel: a proposal to redefine abortion to include some of the most common forms of birth control, and to potentially penalize with funding cuts hundreds of thousands of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who expect their employees to give women full reproductive care.
This parting gift to the religious right comes in a proposed rule by the Health and Human Services Department, which says it is merely revising existing federal rules that allow health care personnel to opt out of performing an abortion if they have a moral or religious objection to the procedure. From that minimalist and unobjectionable clause, a monster grows.
The draft regulation would redefine abortion to include “any of the various procedures—including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action—that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”
The right wing has failed to win approval of a “human life” amendment to the Constitution that would declare that life begins at conception. It has failed to get even conservative-leaning courts to go along with the most extreme elements of its anti-abortion agenda. It failed to block approval of the RU-486 pill that produces a medical abortion. It failed to block government approval of emergency contraception—the “morning after” pill long promoted by the medical profession—which is taken whether or not a woman even knows she is pregnant. Seven years ago, when the first Bush administration budget included language that would drop a requirement that federal workers’ health insurance plans offer contraception if the plan includes coverage of prescription drugs, a bipartisan storm extinguished the idea.
And so, having failed to keep American women from having access to basic birth control, the right is trying to use the guise of an existing “conscience” requirement to achieve what it cannot accomplish through an open political process. You could, if you were taken to an emergency room after being raped, be told by a worker invoking the conscience clause that you cannot have a drug to prevent a possible pregnancy.
“Women would be totally subject to the luck of the draw when they went to get reproductive health care,” says Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Administration officials say they cannot comment in detail on the proposal because it is a draft. They insist it is being promoted merely because the agency has an obligation to enforce the existing conscience rules. Yet the document reveals its own origins: In recent years, as religious conservatives have tried to get pharmacies to allow employees to refuse to dispense birth control pills to women, states have responded with laws that require the prescriptions to be filled. Six states have laws ensuring that pharmacies will fill birth control prescriptions and 27 have laws guaranteeing equity in insurance prescription coverage for contraception, according to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Fourteen states currently have laws guaranteeing rape victims access to emergency contraception.
The draft rule, in fact, singles out New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts for actions they took to ensure that women, especially rape victims, would have access to birth control.
It estimates that about 504,000 recipients of federal funds—including any hospital or doctor who participates in Medicare and Medicaid—would have to allow its staff to exercise its individual birth-control conscience. It defines a health care “entity” to include health maintenance organizations and other insurance plans—language indicating that federal employees who receive insurance through the government also could be affected.
Clinton and other senators have written to Secretary Michael O. Leavitt in an effort to stop the proposal; so have scores of public health and women’s groups. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has called the proposed redefinition of abortion “inconsistent with all established medical authorities” and “an affront to health professionals and American women.”
The religious right has only six months left in President Bush’s term to continue its war on science and its war on women. The latest sneak attack has been exposed. Congress has a duty to beat it back.
Posted on Jul 28, 2008
By Marie Cocco
From the people who brought you the Terri Schiavo spectacle, the stem-cell research stalemate and the atrocious waste of tax money on abstinence-only sex education that has been shown not to work, comes a sequel: a proposal to redefine abortion to include some of the most common forms of birth control, and to potentially penalize with funding cuts hundreds of thousands of doctors, hospitals and other health care providers who expect their employees to give women full reproductive care.
This parting gift to the religious right comes in a proposed rule by the Health and Human Services Department, which says it is merely revising existing federal rules that allow health care personnel to opt out of performing an abortion if they have a moral or religious objection to the procedure. From that minimalist and unobjectionable clause, a monster grows.
The draft regulation would redefine abortion to include “any of the various procedures—including the prescription, dispensing and administration of any drug or the performance of any procedure or any other action—that results in the termination of the life of a human being in utero between conception and natural birth, whether before or after implantation.”
The right wing has failed to win approval of a “human life” amendment to the Constitution that would declare that life begins at conception. It has failed to get even conservative-leaning courts to go along with the most extreme elements of its anti-abortion agenda. It failed to block approval of the RU-486 pill that produces a medical abortion. It failed to block government approval of emergency contraception—the “morning after” pill long promoted by the medical profession—which is taken whether or not a woman even knows she is pregnant. Seven years ago, when the first Bush administration budget included language that would drop a requirement that federal workers’ health insurance plans offer contraception if the plan includes coverage of prescription drugs, a bipartisan storm extinguished the idea.
And so, having failed to keep American women from having access to basic birth control, the right is trying to use the guise of an existing “conscience” requirement to achieve what it cannot accomplish through an open political process. You could, if you were taken to an emergency room after being raped, be told by a worker invoking the conscience clause that you cannot have a drug to prevent a possible pregnancy.
“Women would be totally subject to the luck of the draw when they went to get reproductive health care,” says Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Administration officials say they cannot comment in detail on the proposal because it is a draft. They insist it is being promoted merely because the agency has an obligation to enforce the existing conscience rules. Yet the document reveals its own origins: In recent years, as religious conservatives have tried to get pharmacies to allow employees to refuse to dispense birth control pills to women, states have responded with laws that require the prescriptions to be filled. Six states have laws ensuring that pharmacies will fill birth control prescriptions and 27 have laws guaranteeing equity in insurance prescription coverage for contraception, according to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. Fourteen states currently have laws guaranteeing rape victims access to emergency contraception.
The draft rule, in fact, singles out New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts for actions they took to ensure that women, especially rape victims, would have access to birth control.
It estimates that about 504,000 recipients of federal funds—including any hospital or doctor who participates in Medicare and Medicaid—would have to allow its staff to exercise its individual birth-control conscience. It defines a health care “entity” to include health maintenance organizations and other insurance plans—language indicating that federal employees who receive insurance through the government also could be affected.
Clinton and other senators have written to Secretary Michael O. Leavitt in an effort to stop the proposal; so have scores of public health and women’s groups. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has called the proposed redefinition of abortion “inconsistent with all established medical authorities” and “an affront to health professionals and American women.”
The religious right has only six months left in President Bush’s term to continue its war on science and its war on women. The latest sneak attack has been exposed. Congress has a duty to beat it back.
Eugene Robinson - Washington Post (July 28, 2008)
Bush’s Legacy of Torture
Posted on Jul 28, 2008
By Eugene Robinson
I still find it hard to believe that George W. Bush, to his eternal shame and our nation’s great discredit, made torture a matter of hair-splitting, legalistic debate at the highest levels of the United States government. But that’s precisely what he did.
Three previously classified administration memos obtained last week by the American Civil Liberties Union add to our understanding of this disgraceful episode. The documents are attempts to justify the unjustifiable—the use of brutal interrogation methods that international agreements define as torture—and keep those who ordered and carried out this dirty business from being prosecuted and jailed.
The memos don’t call it torture, of course. Heavily redacted before being surrendered to the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the documents refer euphemistically to “enhanced techniques” of interrogation. Changing the name doesn’t change the act, however. One memo, written in 2004, specifically makes clear the administration’s view that “the waterboard” is an acceptable way to extract information.
Waterboarding, a technique of simulated drowning, is considered torture virtually everywhere on earth except in the Bush administration’s archive of self-exculpatory memos, directives and opinions.
The most stunning of the memos—written in August 2002 by Jay Bybee, who was head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel—makes the incredible claim that unless a torturer has the “specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering,” no violation of U.S. laws against torture has occurred. Bybee, since appointed to the federal bench, wrote that the torturer needed only the “honest belief” that he was not actually committing torture in order to avoid legal jeopardy. Oh, and Bybee added that it wasn’t even necessary for that belief to be “reasonable.”
The memo notes that U.S. torture statutes outlaw the infliction of severe mental pain, as well as physical pain. It acknowledges that “the threat of imminent death” is one of the specific acts that can constitute torture. Somehow, though, the administration pretends not to understand that strapping a prisoner down and pouring water into his nose until he can’t breathe constitutes a death threat—regardless of whether the interrogator intended to stop before the prisoner actually drowned.
Perhaps that question was dealt with in the nine-tenths of the memo that was redacted before the administration handed it over to the ACLU. The memo never would have been released at all if the government hadn’t been ordered to do so by a federal judge.
The whole thing would be laughable if it were not such a rank abomination. No government obeying the law needs a paper trail to absolve its interrogators of committing torture. Conversely, a government that produces such a paper trail has something monstrous to hide.
It is not difficult to avoid violating federal laws and international agreements that prohibit torture. Just don’t torture people, period. The idea that there exists some acceptable middle ground—a kind of “torture lite”—is a hideous affront to this nation’s honor and values. This, perhaps above all, is how George Bush should be remembered: as the president who embraced torture.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, as he left office, Bush issued some sort of pardon clearing those who authorized or carried out “enhanced techniques” of interrogations from any jeopardy under U.S. law. International law is something else entirely, however, and I imagine that some of those involved in this sordid interlude might want to be careful in choosing their vacation spots. I’d avoid The Hague, for example.
Barack Obama has stood consistently against torture. John McCain, who was tortured himself as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has denounced torture as well—and, although he voted against restraining the CIA with the same no-exceptions policy that now applies to military interrogators, he has been forthright in saying that waterboarding is torture, and thus illegal. On Inauguration Day, whoever wins, this awful interlude will end.
The clear and urgent duty of the next president will be to investigate the Bush administration’s torture policy and give Americans a full accounting of what was done in our name. It’s astounding that we need some kind of truth commission in the United States of America, but we do. Only when we learn the full story of what happened will we be able to confidently promise, to ourselves and to a world that looks to this country for moral leadership: Never again.
Posted on Jul 28, 2008
By Eugene Robinson
I still find it hard to believe that George W. Bush, to his eternal shame and our nation’s great discredit, made torture a matter of hair-splitting, legalistic debate at the highest levels of the United States government. But that’s precisely what he did.
Three previously classified administration memos obtained last week by the American Civil Liberties Union add to our understanding of this disgraceful episode. The documents are attempts to justify the unjustifiable—the use of brutal interrogation methods that international agreements define as torture—and keep those who ordered and carried out this dirty business from being prosecuted and jailed.
The memos don’t call it torture, of course. Heavily redacted before being surrendered to the ACLU under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the documents refer euphemistically to “enhanced techniques” of interrogation. Changing the name doesn’t change the act, however. One memo, written in 2004, specifically makes clear the administration’s view that “the waterboard” is an acceptable way to extract information.
Waterboarding, a technique of simulated drowning, is considered torture virtually everywhere on earth except in the Bush administration’s archive of self-exculpatory memos, directives and opinions.
The most stunning of the memos—written in August 2002 by Jay Bybee, who was head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel—makes the incredible claim that unless a torturer has the “specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering,” no violation of U.S. laws against torture has occurred. Bybee, since appointed to the federal bench, wrote that the torturer needed only the “honest belief” that he was not actually committing torture in order to avoid legal jeopardy. Oh, and Bybee added that it wasn’t even necessary for that belief to be “reasonable.”
The memo notes that U.S. torture statutes outlaw the infliction of severe mental pain, as well as physical pain. It acknowledges that “the threat of imminent death” is one of the specific acts that can constitute torture. Somehow, though, the administration pretends not to understand that strapping a prisoner down and pouring water into his nose until he can’t breathe constitutes a death threat—regardless of whether the interrogator intended to stop before the prisoner actually drowned.
Perhaps that question was dealt with in the nine-tenths of the memo that was redacted before the administration handed it over to the ACLU. The memo never would have been released at all if the government hadn’t been ordered to do so by a federal judge.
The whole thing would be laughable if it were not such a rank abomination. No government obeying the law needs a paper trail to absolve its interrogators of committing torture. Conversely, a government that produces such a paper trail has something monstrous to hide.
It is not difficult to avoid violating federal laws and international agreements that prohibit torture. Just don’t torture people, period. The idea that there exists some acceptable middle ground—a kind of “torture lite”—is a hideous affront to this nation’s honor and values. This, perhaps above all, is how George Bush should be remembered: as the president who embraced torture.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, as he left office, Bush issued some sort of pardon clearing those who authorized or carried out “enhanced techniques” of interrogations from any jeopardy under U.S. law. International law is something else entirely, however, and I imagine that some of those involved in this sordid interlude might want to be careful in choosing their vacation spots. I’d avoid The Hague, for example.
Barack Obama has stood consistently against torture. John McCain, who was tortured himself as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has denounced torture as well—and, although he voted against restraining the CIA with the same no-exceptions policy that now applies to military interrogators, he has been forthright in saying that waterboarding is torture, and thus illegal. On Inauguration Day, whoever wins, this awful interlude will end.
The clear and urgent duty of the next president will be to investigate the Bush administration’s torture policy and give Americans a full accounting of what was done in our name. It’s astounding that we need some kind of truth commission in the United States of America, but we do. Only when we learn the full story of what happened will we be able to confidently promise, to ourselves and to a world that looks to this country for moral leadership: Never again.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Katrina vanden Heuvel - The Nation (July 27, 2008)
Americans, Government, and the American Dream
posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 07/27/2008 @ 10:24pm
According to a new Time/Rockefeller Foundation poll, 85% of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track.
And it is.
Our economy is cratering, homes and jobs are being lost, pensions ravaged, and opportunities dimmed. Conservative free market assumptions and shibboleths are being exposed, questioned, and recognized for their bankruptcy.
That's why Americans once again seek a government that does more to support our everyday lives: 82% support public-works projects to create jobs; 84% want new measures to improve energy inefficiency and support clean energy alternatives; 77% want the government to provide health insurance to those who can't afford it; and 83% want the national minimum wage increased to keep up with the cost of living. More than 2 out of 3 American favor government funded childcare to make it easier for people to work.
Recent numbers from The Center for American Progress Action Fund reveal the depth of the economic pain people are currently confronting: in June, housing foreclosures were up 50% compared to the same month last year; gas prices are up 33% from this time last year; there were 438,000 jobs lost in the first 6 months of the year; food prices rose 4% in 2007, the fastest rise in 17 years; heating oil costs are expected to be up 60% from last year; and real hourly and weekly wages are declining. It's no wonder that the Time/Rockefeller poll shows that 52% of Americans believe the American Dream is no longer attainable "if they work hard and play by the rules." Nearly 80% feel "the social contract has been broken and should be rewritten to reflect current [economic] realities." (Including 90% of Generation Y – those between ages 18-29 – which might partially explain their record-setting turnout in the Democratic primaries.)
I've argued in recent years that Americans want to be governed from the center – but it's a new center – one that deals with the issues that are at the center of their lives. People want policies that support affordable childcare and healthcare (the poll also revealed that 25% of Americans haven't gone to a doctor in the past year because of costs, and 23% haven't filled a prescription for the same reason); quality public education, a living wage, and retirement security; environmental protection; saving our homes and helping to keep our families together.
A wildly deregulated, reckless free market that has socialized losses while pocketing the profits for the already wealthy has made the time ripe to lay out a new idea, a new story for a more just America. This is a moment progressives need to seize. As Bill Moyers wrote in a Nation cover story, "Here in the first decade of the twenty-first century the story that becomes America's dominant narrative will shape our collective imagination and hence our politics. In the searching of our souls demanded by this challenge… kindred spirits across the nation must confront the most fundamental progressive failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility – the gift we have received and the legacy we must bequeath."
If there is to be an upside to our downsized politics of excluded alternatives that characterizes the past 8 years, it will be in our hard work and success in ensuring that we never again return to an era of feckless, uninspired and uninspiring government.
posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 07/27/2008 @ 10:24pm
According to a new Time/Rockefeller Foundation poll, 85% of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track.
And it is.
Our economy is cratering, homes and jobs are being lost, pensions ravaged, and opportunities dimmed. Conservative free market assumptions and shibboleths are being exposed, questioned, and recognized for their bankruptcy.
That's why Americans once again seek a government that does more to support our everyday lives: 82% support public-works projects to create jobs; 84% want new measures to improve energy inefficiency and support clean energy alternatives; 77% want the government to provide health insurance to those who can't afford it; and 83% want the national minimum wage increased to keep up with the cost of living. More than 2 out of 3 American favor government funded childcare to make it easier for people to work.
Recent numbers from The Center for American Progress Action Fund reveal the depth of the economic pain people are currently confronting: in June, housing foreclosures were up 50% compared to the same month last year; gas prices are up 33% from this time last year; there were 438,000 jobs lost in the first 6 months of the year; food prices rose 4% in 2007, the fastest rise in 17 years; heating oil costs are expected to be up 60% from last year; and real hourly and weekly wages are declining. It's no wonder that the Time/Rockefeller poll shows that 52% of Americans believe the American Dream is no longer attainable "if they work hard and play by the rules." Nearly 80% feel "the social contract has been broken and should be rewritten to reflect current [economic] realities." (Including 90% of Generation Y – those between ages 18-29 – which might partially explain their record-setting turnout in the Democratic primaries.)
I've argued in recent years that Americans want to be governed from the center – but it's a new center – one that deals with the issues that are at the center of their lives. People want policies that support affordable childcare and healthcare (the poll also revealed that 25% of Americans haven't gone to a doctor in the past year because of costs, and 23% haven't filled a prescription for the same reason); quality public education, a living wage, and retirement security; environmental protection; saving our homes and helping to keep our families together.
A wildly deregulated, reckless free market that has socialized losses while pocketing the profits for the already wealthy has made the time ripe to lay out a new idea, a new story for a more just America. This is a moment progressives need to seize. As Bill Moyers wrote in a Nation cover story, "Here in the first decade of the twenty-first century the story that becomes America's dominant narrative will shape our collective imagination and hence our politics. In the searching of our souls demanded by this challenge… kindred spirits across the nation must confront the most fundamental progressive failure of the current era: the failure to embrace a moral vision of America based on the transcendent faith that human beings are more than the sum of their material appetites, our country is more than an economic machine, and freedom is not license but responsibility – the gift we have received and the legacy we must bequeath."
If there is to be an upside to our downsized politics of excluded alternatives that characterizes the past 8 years, it will be in our hard work and success in ensuring that we never again return to an era of feckless, uninspired and uninspiring government.
Associated Press (July 28, 2008)
DOJ: Former aide broke law in hiring scandal
By LARA JAKES JORDAN – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new Justice Department report concludes that politics illegally influenced the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges, and largely lays the blame on top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Monday's report singles out the department's former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't Republican or conservative loyalists.
"Goodling improperly subjected candidates for certain career positions to the same politically based evaluation she used on candidates for political positions," the report concludes.
In one instance, Justice investigators found, Goodling objected to hiring an assistant prosecutor in Washington because "judging from his resume, he appeared to be a liberal Democrat."
In another, she rejected an experienced terror prosecutor to work on counterterror issues at a Justice Department headquarters office "because of his wife's political affiliations," the report found.
Goodling's attorney, John Dowd, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, and other attempts to reach Goodling were unsuccessful.
The federal government makes a distinction between so-called "career" appointees and "political" appointees, and the long-accepted custom has been that career workers are not hired on the basis of political affiliation or allegiance.
The 140-page report does not indicate whether Goodling or former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson could face any charges. None of those involved in the discriminatory hiring still work at Justice, meaning they will avoid any department penalties.
However, Justice investigators said that Goodling, at least, may lose her license to practice law as a result of the findings.
Gonzales was largely unaware of the hiring decisions by two of his most trusted aides. The report said his aides' decisions weeded out Democrats and that Goodling also rejected at least one lesbian job applicant.
The report marks the culmination of a yearlong investigation by Justice's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility into whether Republican politics were driving hiring polices at the nation's premier law enforcement agency whose appointees are expected to be selected on a nonpartisan basis.
The investigation is one of several that examine accusations of White House political meddling within the Justice Department. Those accusations were initially driven by the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in late 2006 and culminated with Gonzales' resignation under fire as attorney general last September.
The man who replaced Gonzales, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, said he is "of course disturbed" by the findings.
"I have said many times, both to members of the public and to department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career department employees," Mukasey said in a statement shortly after the report was released Monday morning. "And I have acted, and will continue to act, to ensure that my words are translated into reality so that the conduct described in this report does not occur again at the department."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said the report indicates that the effort to politicize federal law enforcement was not just the actions of a few "bad apples," but administration policy.
"The report reveals decisions to reject qualified, experienced applicants to work on counterterrorism issues in favor of a less experienced attorney on the basis of political ideology," Leahy said in a statement.
He called it "a clear indication of the untoward political influence of the Bush administration on traditionally nonpolitical appointments."
By LARA JAKES JORDAN – 1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new Justice Department report concludes that politics illegally influenced the hiring of career prosecutors and immigration judges, and largely lays the blame on top aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Monday's report singles out the department's former White House liaison, Monica Goodling, for violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't Republican or conservative loyalists.
"Goodling improperly subjected candidates for certain career positions to the same politically based evaluation she used on candidates for political positions," the report concludes.
In one instance, Justice investigators found, Goodling objected to hiring an assistant prosecutor in Washington because "judging from his resume, he appeared to be a liberal Democrat."
In another, she rejected an experienced terror prosecutor to work on counterterror issues at a Justice Department headquarters office "because of his wife's political affiliations," the report found.
Goodling's attorney, John Dowd, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday, and other attempts to reach Goodling were unsuccessful.
The federal government makes a distinction between so-called "career" appointees and "political" appointees, and the long-accepted custom has been that career workers are not hired on the basis of political affiliation or allegiance.
The 140-page report does not indicate whether Goodling or former Gonzales chief of staff Kyle Sampson could face any charges. None of those involved in the discriminatory hiring still work at Justice, meaning they will avoid any department penalties.
However, Justice investigators said that Goodling, at least, may lose her license to practice law as a result of the findings.
Gonzales was largely unaware of the hiring decisions by two of his most trusted aides. The report said his aides' decisions weeded out Democrats and that Goodling also rejected at least one lesbian job applicant.
The report marks the culmination of a yearlong investigation by Justice's Office of Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility into whether Republican politics were driving hiring polices at the nation's premier law enforcement agency whose appointees are expected to be selected on a nonpartisan basis.
The investigation is one of several that examine accusations of White House political meddling within the Justice Department. Those accusations were initially driven by the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in late 2006 and culminated with Gonzales' resignation under fire as attorney general last September.
The man who replaced Gonzales, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, said he is "of course disturbed" by the findings.
"I have said many times, both to members of the public and to department employees, it is neither permissible nor acceptable to consider political affiliations in the hiring of career department employees," Mukasey said in a statement shortly after the report was released Monday morning. "And I have acted, and will continue to act, to ensure that my words are translated into reality so that the conduct described in this report does not occur again at the department."
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said the report indicates that the effort to politicize federal law enforcement was not just the actions of a few "bad apples," but administration policy.
"The report reveals decisions to reject qualified, experienced applicants to work on counterterrorism issues in favor of a less experienced attorney on the basis of political ideology," Leahy said in a statement.
He called it "a clear indication of the untoward political influence of the Bush administration on traditionally nonpolitical appointments."
Salon.com (July 28, 2008)
Why we never need to build another polluting power plant
Coal? Natural gas? Nuke? We can wipe them all off the drawing board by using current energy more efficiently. Are you listening, Washington?
By Joseph Romm
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/28/energy_efficiency/
Coal? Natural gas? Nuke? We can wipe them all off the drawing board by using current energy more efficiently. Are you listening, Washington?
By Joseph Romm
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/28/energy_efficiency/
Andrewsullivan.com (July 26, 2008)
Patients await dental care at the Remote Area Medical (RAM), clinic July 26, 2008 in Wise, Virginia. The free clinic, which lasts 2 1/2 days, is the largest of its kind in the nation, and organizers expected to treat more than 2,500 people over the weekend, mostly providing dental and vision services. Residents of the 'coal counties' of Appalachia are some of the most impoverished in the nation, and most are either underinsured or have no health insurance at all. For many, the RAM clinic is the only medical care they may receive each year. Healthcare for the nation's disadvantaged has become one of the main issues in this year's presidential race. Photo by John Moore/Getty.
Frank Rich - N.Y. Times (July 27, 2008)
July 27, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
How Obama Became Acting President
By FRANK RICH
IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.
He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.
The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”
Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.
Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.
On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”
Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.
But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.
The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” — much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (“A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.
“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.
Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.
Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.
The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.
When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.
Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.
The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.
Op-Ed Columnist
How Obama Became Acting President
By FRANK RICH
IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.
He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.
The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”
Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.
Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.
On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”
Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.
But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.
The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” — much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (“A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.
“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.
Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.
Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.
The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.
When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.
Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.
The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.
Paul Krugman - N.Y. Times (July 28, 2008)
July 28, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Another Temporary Fix
By PAUL KRUGMAN
So the big housing bill has passed Congress. That’s good news: Fannie and Freddie had to be rescued, and the bill’s other main provision — a special loan program to head off foreclosures — will help some hard-pressed families. It’s much better to have this bill than not.
But I hope nobody thinks that Congress has done all, or even a large fraction, of what needs to be done.
This bill is the latest in a series of temporary fixes to the financial system — attempts to hold the thing together with bungee cords and masking tape — that have, at least so far, succeeded in staving off complete collapse. But those fixes have done nothing to resolve the system’s underlying flaws. In fact, they set the stage for even bigger future disasters — unless they’re followed up with fundamental reforms.
Before I get to that, let’s be clear about one thing: Even if this bill succeeds in its aims, heading off a severe credit contraction and helping some homeowners avoid foreclosure, it won’t change the fact that this decade’s double bubble, in housing prices and loose lending, has been a disaster for millions of Americans.
After all, the new bill will, at best, make a modest dent in the rate of foreclosures. And it does nothing at all for those who aren’t in danger of losing their houses but are seeing much if not all of their net worth wiped out — a particularly bitter blow to Americans who are nearing retirement, or thought they were until they discovered that they couldn’t afford to stop working.
It’s too late to avoid that pain. But we can try to ensure that we don’t face more and bigger crises in the future.
The back story to the current crisis is the way traditional banks — banks with federally insured deposits, which are limited in the risks they’re allowed to take and the amount of leverage they can take on — have been pushed aside by unregulated financial players. We were assured by the likes of Alan Greenspan that this was no problem: the market would enforce disciplined risk-taking, and anyway, taxpayer funds weren’t on the line.
And then reality struck.
Far from being disciplined in their risk-taking, lenders went wild. Concerns about the ability of borrowers to repay were waved aside; so were questions about whether soaring house prices made sense.
Lenders ignored the warning signs because they were part of a system built around the principle of heads I win, tails someone else loses. Mortgage originators didn’t worry about the solvency of borrowers, because they quickly sold off the loans they made, generally to investors who had no idea what they were buying. Throughout the financial industry, executives received huge bonuses when they seemed to be earning big profits, but didn’t have to give the money back when those profits turned into even bigger losses.
And as for that business about taxpayers’ money not being at risk? Never mind. Over the past year the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury have put hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, propping up financial institutions deemed too big or too strategic to fail. (I’m not blaming them — I don’t think they had any alternative.)
Meanwhile, those traditional, regulated banks played a minor role in the lending frenzy, except to the extent that they had unregulated, “off balance sheet” subsidiaries. The case of IndyMac — which failed because it specialized in risky Alt-A loans while regulators looked the other way — is the exception that proves the rule.
The moral of this story seems clear — and it’s what Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has been saying for some time: financial regulation needs to be extended to cover a much wider range of institutions. Basically, the financial framework created in the 1930s, which brought generations of relative stability, needs to be updated to 21st-century conditions.
The desperate rescue efforts of the past year make expanded regulation even more urgent. If the government is going to stand behind financial institutions, those institutions had better be carefully regulated — because otherwise the game of heads I win, tails you lose will be played more furiously than ever, at taxpayers’ expense.
Of course, proponents of expanded regulation, no matter how compelling their arguments, will have to contend with very well-financed opposition from the financial industry. And as Upton Sinclair pointed out, it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary — or, we might add, his campaign war chest — depends on his not understanding it.
But let’s hope that the sheer scale of this financial crisis has concentrated enough minds to make reform possible. Otherwise, the next crisis will be even bigger.
Op-Ed Columnist
Another Temporary Fix
By PAUL KRUGMAN
So the big housing bill has passed Congress. That’s good news: Fannie and Freddie had to be rescued, and the bill’s other main provision — a special loan program to head off foreclosures — will help some hard-pressed families. It’s much better to have this bill than not.
But I hope nobody thinks that Congress has done all, or even a large fraction, of what needs to be done.
This bill is the latest in a series of temporary fixes to the financial system — attempts to hold the thing together with bungee cords and masking tape — that have, at least so far, succeeded in staving off complete collapse. But those fixes have done nothing to resolve the system’s underlying flaws. In fact, they set the stage for even bigger future disasters — unless they’re followed up with fundamental reforms.
Before I get to that, let’s be clear about one thing: Even if this bill succeeds in its aims, heading off a severe credit contraction and helping some homeowners avoid foreclosure, it won’t change the fact that this decade’s double bubble, in housing prices and loose lending, has been a disaster for millions of Americans.
After all, the new bill will, at best, make a modest dent in the rate of foreclosures. And it does nothing at all for those who aren’t in danger of losing their houses but are seeing much if not all of their net worth wiped out — a particularly bitter blow to Americans who are nearing retirement, or thought they were until they discovered that they couldn’t afford to stop working.
It’s too late to avoid that pain. But we can try to ensure that we don’t face more and bigger crises in the future.
The back story to the current crisis is the way traditional banks — banks with federally insured deposits, which are limited in the risks they’re allowed to take and the amount of leverage they can take on — have been pushed aside by unregulated financial players. We were assured by the likes of Alan Greenspan that this was no problem: the market would enforce disciplined risk-taking, and anyway, taxpayer funds weren’t on the line.
And then reality struck.
Far from being disciplined in their risk-taking, lenders went wild. Concerns about the ability of borrowers to repay were waved aside; so were questions about whether soaring house prices made sense.
Lenders ignored the warning signs because they were part of a system built around the principle of heads I win, tails someone else loses. Mortgage originators didn’t worry about the solvency of borrowers, because they quickly sold off the loans they made, generally to investors who had no idea what they were buying. Throughout the financial industry, executives received huge bonuses when they seemed to be earning big profits, but didn’t have to give the money back when those profits turned into even bigger losses.
And as for that business about taxpayers’ money not being at risk? Never mind. Over the past year the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury have put hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the line, propping up financial institutions deemed too big or too strategic to fail. (I’m not blaming them — I don’t think they had any alternative.)
Meanwhile, those traditional, regulated banks played a minor role in the lending frenzy, except to the extent that they had unregulated, “off balance sheet” subsidiaries. The case of IndyMac — which failed because it specialized in risky Alt-A loans while regulators looked the other way — is the exception that proves the rule.
The moral of this story seems clear — and it’s what Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has been saying for some time: financial regulation needs to be extended to cover a much wider range of institutions. Basically, the financial framework created in the 1930s, which brought generations of relative stability, needs to be updated to 21st-century conditions.
The desperate rescue efforts of the past year make expanded regulation even more urgent. If the government is going to stand behind financial institutions, those institutions had better be carefully regulated — because otherwise the game of heads I win, tails you lose will be played more furiously than ever, at taxpayers’ expense.
Of course, proponents of expanded regulation, no matter how compelling their arguments, will have to contend with very well-financed opposition from the financial industry. And as Upton Sinclair pointed out, it’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary — or, we might add, his campaign war chest — depends on his not understanding it.
But let’s hope that the sheer scale of this financial crisis has concentrated enough minds to make reform possible. Otherwise, the next crisis will be even bigger.
Associated Press (July 28, 2008)
Suicide hot line got calls from 22,000 veterans
By KATHARINE EUPHRAT, Associated Press Writer Mon Jul 28, 6:21 AM ET
More than 22,000 veterans have sought help from a special suicide hot line in its first year, and 1,221 suicides have been averted, the government says.
According to a recent RAND Corp. study, roughly one in five soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan displays symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, putting them at a higher risk for suicide. Researchers at Portland State University found that male veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide than men who are not veterans.
This month, a former Army medic, Joseph Dwyer, who was shown in a Military Times photograph running through a battle zone carrying an Iraqi boy, died of an accidental overdose after struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder for almost five years.
Janet Kemp, national suicide prevention coordinator for the Veterans Affairs Department, said the hot line is in place to help prevent deaths such as Dwyer's. "We just want them to know there's other options and people do care about them, and we can help them make a difference in their lives," she said in an interview.
The VA teamed up with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to launch the hot line last July after years of criticism that the VA wasn't doing enough to help wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In April, two veterans groups sued the VA, citing long delays for processing applications and other problems in treatment for veterans at risk for suicide. The department has spent $2.9 million on the hot line thus far.
The hot line receives up to 250 calls per day — double the average number calling when it began. Kemp said callers are divided evenly between veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars. Richard McKeon, public health adviser for SAMHSA, said 10 to 20 of the 1,575 calls received each week have to be rerouted to high-volume backup call centers throughout the country.
The VA estimates that every year 6,500 veterans take their own lives. The mental health director for the VA, Ira Katz, said in an e-mail last December that of the 18 veterans who commit suicide each day, four to five of them are under VA care, and 12,000 veterans under VA care are attempting suicide each year.
This month, the hot line began an advertising campaign in Washington area subway stations and buses featuring the slogan, "It takes the courage and strength of a warrior to ask for help."
The veterans hot line, which is linked to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, received 55,000 callers in its first year, including both veterans and people who are concerned about them, according to figures being released Monday. One-third of the 40 specially trained counselors are veterans themselves.
"We try to get them (callers) to talk about their situation and what they remember and see if they can identify exactly what their issues are. I think there's a comfort in knowing that they can get some help from people who do understand what combat stress is like," Kemp said.
From the call center, counselors instantly can check a veteran's medical records and then connect the caller to local VA suicide prevention coordinators for follow-up, monitoring and care at local VA medical centers. Kemp said that since the hot line started, 106 veterans have been steered to free medical care from the VA.
Kemp said the hot line was put in place specifically for those veterans who don't get enough help until it's too late. "They have indicated to us that they are in extreme danger, either they have guns in their hand or they're standing on a bridge, or they've already swallowed pills," she said. Kemp said 1,221 veterans who were in such situations were rescued during the hot line's first year.
The VA is preparing for the eventual return of a large number of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. This could put added stress on the mental health screening program for returning veterans, which could lead to a rise in undiagnosed mental health issues. The VA recently got enough money to double its suicide prevention staff and is planning to hire 212 more people soon.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 800-273-TALK (8255); veterans should press "1" after being connected.
___
On the Net:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
By KATHARINE EUPHRAT, Associated Press Writer Mon Jul 28, 6:21 AM ET
More than 22,000 veterans have sought help from a special suicide hot line in its first year, and 1,221 suicides have been averted, the government says.
According to a recent RAND Corp. study, roughly one in five soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan displays symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, putting them at a higher risk for suicide. Researchers at Portland State University found that male veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide than men who are not veterans.
This month, a former Army medic, Joseph Dwyer, who was shown in a Military Times photograph running through a battle zone carrying an Iraqi boy, died of an accidental overdose after struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder for almost five years.
Janet Kemp, national suicide prevention coordinator for the Veterans Affairs Department, said the hot line is in place to help prevent deaths such as Dwyer's. "We just want them to know there's other options and people do care about them, and we can help them make a difference in their lives," she said in an interview.
The VA teamed up with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to launch the hot line last July after years of criticism that the VA wasn't doing enough to help wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. In April, two veterans groups sued the VA, citing long delays for processing applications and other problems in treatment for veterans at risk for suicide. The department has spent $2.9 million on the hot line thus far.
The hot line receives up to 250 calls per day — double the average number calling when it began. Kemp said callers are divided evenly between veterans from the Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam wars. Richard McKeon, public health adviser for SAMHSA, said 10 to 20 of the 1,575 calls received each week have to be rerouted to high-volume backup call centers throughout the country.
The VA estimates that every year 6,500 veterans take their own lives. The mental health director for the VA, Ira Katz, said in an e-mail last December that of the 18 veterans who commit suicide each day, four to five of them are under VA care, and 12,000 veterans under VA care are attempting suicide each year.
This month, the hot line began an advertising campaign in Washington area subway stations and buses featuring the slogan, "It takes the courage and strength of a warrior to ask for help."
The veterans hot line, which is linked to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, received 55,000 callers in its first year, including both veterans and people who are concerned about them, according to figures being released Monday. One-third of the 40 specially trained counselors are veterans themselves.
"We try to get them (callers) to talk about their situation and what they remember and see if they can identify exactly what their issues are. I think there's a comfort in knowing that they can get some help from people who do understand what combat stress is like," Kemp said.
From the call center, counselors instantly can check a veteran's medical records and then connect the caller to local VA suicide prevention coordinators for follow-up, monitoring and care at local VA medical centers. Kemp said that since the hot line started, 106 veterans have been steered to free medical care from the VA.
Kemp said the hot line was put in place specifically for those veterans who don't get enough help until it's too late. "They have indicated to us that they are in extreme danger, either they have guns in their hand or they're standing on a bridge, or they've already swallowed pills," she said. Kemp said 1,221 veterans who were in such situations were rescued during the hot line's first year.
The VA is preparing for the eventual return of a large number of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. This could put added stress on the mental health screening program for returning veterans, which could lead to a rise in undiagnosed mental health issues. The VA recently got enough money to double its suicide prevention staff and is planning to hire 212 more people soon.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is available 24 hours a day by calling 800-273-TALK (8255); veterans should press "1" after being connected.
___
On the Net:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
Associated Press (July 28, 2008)
Report: Empty prison in Iraq a $40M 'failure'
By BRIAN MURPHY and PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press WritersMon Jul 28, 6:26 AM ET
In the flatlands north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to the American overseers who replaced Saddam Hussein.
"It's a bit of a monument in the desert right now because it's not going to be used as a prison," said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office plans to release a report Monday detailing the litany of problems at the vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad.
The pages also add another narrative to the wider probes into the billions lost so far on scrubbed or substandard projects in Iraq and one of the main contractors accused of failing to deliver, the Parsons construction group of Pasadena, Calif.
"This is $40 million invested in a project with very little return," Bowen told The Associated Press in Washington. "A couple of buildings are useful. Other than that, it's a failure."
In the pecking order of corruption in Iraq, the dead-end prison project at Khan Bani Saad is nowhere near the biggest or most tangled.
Bowen estimated up to 20 percent "waste" — or more than $4 billion — from the $21 billion spent so far in the U.S.-bankrolled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. It's just one piece of a recovery effort that swelled beyond $112 billion in U.S., Iraqi and international contributions.
But the empty prison compound — in the shadows of more than two dozen watchtowers now dotted by birds' nests — is an open sore for both American watchdogs and local Iraqi politicians who had counted on the prison as an economic boost.
The head of the municipal council in Khan Bani Saad, Sayyed Rasoul al-Husseini, called it "a big monster that's swallowed money and hopes" — including those for more than 1,200 new jobs.
He sometimes drives out to the site, near groves of date palms and a former Saddam-era military training camp about 12 miles northeast of Baghdad and just over the border in the tense Diyala Province.
Al-Husseini says he walks the perimeter and wonders what can be salvaged. A housing development is not possible, he said. Many concrete walls lack proper iron reinforcements and "can collapse at anytime," he said. Birds and small animals have found homes in the towers and crannies.
"But some of the cell blocks are good," he suggested. "So maybe it can become a factory. I don't know. It's depressing."
The idea for the modern-style prison began with the Coalition Provisional Authority running Iraq after Saddam's fall.
On behalf of the authority, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $40 million contract in March 2004 to global construction and engineering firm Parsons to design and build an 1,800-inmate lockup to include educational and vocational facilities. Work was set to begin May 2004 and finish November 2005.
Nothing went right from the start, the report says.
The Sunni insurgency was catching fire. The U.S. was under pressure to improve prison conditions following the abuses exposed at Abu Ghraib.
Washington's focus shifted quickly from rebuilding to just holding its ground. The prison project got started six months late and continued to fall behind — until Parsons asked to push the completion date to late 2008, the report said.
The U.S. government pulled the plug in June 2006, citing "continued schedule slips and ... massive cost overruns." But they hadn't abandoned the hope of finishing the project — awarding three more contracts to other companies in a doomed effort.
The waste was made more egregious by the fact that Diyala badly needs more prisons to handle a growing inmate population. Bowen's team was told that about 600 inmates are crowded into an existing Diyala prison designed for 250 inmates and that the overcrowding and health conditions are so grave that several inmates have died, the report says.
The problem at Khan Bani Saad is only one example of the millions of dollars auditors found were wasted on construction projects by Parsons, which left Iraq two years ago.
In a companion report also being released Monday, Bowen said the prison was part of a $900 million Parsons contract to build border posts, courts, police training centers and fire stations. It was one of 12 contracts awarded in 2004 in hopes of restoring Iraq's infrastructure.
Of 53 construction projects in the massive Parson contract, only 18 were completed.
As of this spring, Parsons had been paid $333 million. More than $142 million of that — or almost 43 percent — was for projects that were terminated or canceled.
While the failure to complete some of the work was "understandable given the complex nature and unstable security environment in Iraq, millions of dollars" were likely wasted, the report said.
Bowen said only about 10 U.S. contracting officers and specialists were working on the $900 million contract, whereas 50 or 60 would be assigned to a comparable undertaking in the United States.
In a last wasteful act at Khan Bani Saad, the U.S. government allowed $1.2 million worth of construction supplies to be left unguarded at Khan Bani Saad after work was suspended in June 2007 — fencing, gravel, piping and other items. Most of it is now missing.
U.S. officials turned over control of the semifinished prison to Iraq's Justice Ministry nearly a year ago. The ministry promptly replied it had no plans to "complete, occupy or provide security" for the facility, the report said.
In the end, Parsons got $31 million and the other contractors got $9 million.
Some parts of the facility are usable, but construction in other parts is so substandard that demolition is the only option, the report said. Inspectors found cracking and crumbling concrete slabs, columns not strong enough to support the structure and incorrect use of reinforcement bars meant to strengthen the concrete.
"Khan Bani Saad is a microcosm of the shortfalls in the reconstruction program," said Bowen.
And the choice of Parsons — in retrospect — was part of a far bigger web of alleged shortcomings by the conglomerate in Iraq.
"This is the worst performing contractor that we have identified" among the seven firms so far studied in Congress-mandated reviews of Iraqi projects, said Bowen.
It was not possible to get advance comment from Parsons. Under the rules for the release of the audit, reporters were not allowed to reveal its details until Monday.
But the report said Parsons had argued that the U.S. government misrepresented the security conditions. Parsons said that its subcontractors faced threats that either shut down or slowed work almost daily. In August 2005, the site manager for one of Parsons' subcontractors was shot to death in his office.
Diyala remains one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. In the past week, U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up sweeps against insurgents in one of their last footholds near Baghdad.
But officials of the Army Corps of Engineers — one of the agencies that oversaw the prison construction — countered that Parsons understood conditions in Iraq at the time. They also said Parsons rarely reported security threats, and only recorded seven days when it cited delays due to violence.
Bowen said his agency has done 120 audits on Iraqi projects. "And they tell an episodic story of waste," he said.
___
Jelinek contributed to this report from Washington.
___
On the Net:
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reports:
Prison project http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/assessments/PA-08-138.pdf
Audit of Parsons Delaware, Inc. http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/08-019.pdf
By BRIAN MURPHY and PAULINE JELINEK, Associated Press WritersMon Jul 28, 6:26 AM ET
In the flatlands north of Baghdad sits a prison with no prisoners. It holds something else: a chronicle of U.S. government waste, misguided planning and construction shortcuts costing $40 million and stretching back to the American overseers who replaced Saddam Hussein.
"It's a bit of a monument in the desert right now because it's not going to be used as a prison," said Stuart Bowen, the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, whose office plans to release a report Monday detailing the litany of problems at the vacant detention center in Khan Bani Saad.
The pages also add another narrative to the wider probes into the billions lost so far on scrubbed or substandard projects in Iraq and one of the main contractors accused of failing to deliver, the Parsons construction group of Pasadena, Calif.
"This is $40 million invested in a project with very little return," Bowen told The Associated Press in Washington. "A couple of buildings are useful. Other than that, it's a failure."
In the pecking order of corruption in Iraq, the dead-end prison project at Khan Bani Saad is nowhere near the biggest or most tangled.
Bowen estimated up to 20 percent "waste" — or more than $4 billion — from the $21 billion spent so far in the U.S.-bankrolled Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund. It's just one piece of a recovery effort that swelled beyond $112 billion in U.S., Iraqi and international contributions.
But the empty prison compound — in the shadows of more than two dozen watchtowers now dotted by birds' nests — is an open sore for both American watchdogs and local Iraqi politicians who had counted on the prison as an economic boost.
The head of the municipal council in Khan Bani Saad, Sayyed Rasoul al-Husseini, called it "a big monster that's swallowed money and hopes" — including those for more than 1,200 new jobs.
He sometimes drives out to the site, near groves of date palms and a former Saddam-era military training camp about 12 miles northeast of Baghdad and just over the border in the tense Diyala Province.
Al-Husseini says he walks the perimeter and wonders what can be salvaged. A housing development is not possible, he said. Many concrete walls lack proper iron reinforcements and "can collapse at anytime," he said. Birds and small animals have found homes in the towers and crannies.
"But some of the cell blocks are good," he suggested. "So maybe it can become a factory. I don't know. It's depressing."
The idea for the modern-style prison began with the Coalition Provisional Authority running Iraq after Saddam's fall.
On behalf of the authority, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers awarded a $40 million contract in March 2004 to global construction and engineering firm Parsons to design and build an 1,800-inmate lockup to include educational and vocational facilities. Work was set to begin May 2004 and finish November 2005.
Nothing went right from the start, the report says.
The Sunni insurgency was catching fire. The U.S. was under pressure to improve prison conditions following the abuses exposed at Abu Ghraib.
Washington's focus shifted quickly from rebuilding to just holding its ground. The prison project got started six months late and continued to fall behind — until Parsons asked to push the completion date to late 2008, the report said.
The U.S. government pulled the plug in June 2006, citing "continued schedule slips and ... massive cost overruns." But they hadn't abandoned the hope of finishing the project — awarding three more contracts to other companies in a doomed effort.
The waste was made more egregious by the fact that Diyala badly needs more prisons to handle a growing inmate population. Bowen's team was told that about 600 inmates are crowded into an existing Diyala prison designed for 250 inmates and that the overcrowding and health conditions are so grave that several inmates have died, the report says.
The problem at Khan Bani Saad is only one example of the millions of dollars auditors found were wasted on construction projects by Parsons, which left Iraq two years ago.
In a companion report also being released Monday, Bowen said the prison was part of a $900 million Parsons contract to build border posts, courts, police training centers and fire stations. It was one of 12 contracts awarded in 2004 in hopes of restoring Iraq's infrastructure.
Of 53 construction projects in the massive Parson contract, only 18 were completed.
As of this spring, Parsons had been paid $333 million. More than $142 million of that — or almost 43 percent — was for projects that were terminated or canceled.
While the failure to complete some of the work was "understandable given the complex nature and unstable security environment in Iraq, millions of dollars" were likely wasted, the report said.
Bowen said only about 10 U.S. contracting officers and specialists were working on the $900 million contract, whereas 50 or 60 would be assigned to a comparable undertaking in the United States.
In a last wasteful act at Khan Bani Saad, the U.S. government allowed $1.2 million worth of construction supplies to be left unguarded at Khan Bani Saad after work was suspended in June 2007 — fencing, gravel, piping and other items. Most of it is now missing.
U.S. officials turned over control of the semifinished prison to Iraq's Justice Ministry nearly a year ago. The ministry promptly replied it had no plans to "complete, occupy or provide security" for the facility, the report said.
In the end, Parsons got $31 million and the other contractors got $9 million.
Some parts of the facility are usable, but construction in other parts is so substandard that demolition is the only option, the report said. Inspectors found cracking and crumbling concrete slabs, columns not strong enough to support the structure and incorrect use of reinforcement bars meant to strengthen the concrete.
"Khan Bani Saad is a microcosm of the shortfalls in the reconstruction program," said Bowen.
And the choice of Parsons — in retrospect — was part of a far bigger web of alleged shortcomings by the conglomerate in Iraq.
"This is the worst performing contractor that we have identified" among the seven firms so far studied in Congress-mandated reviews of Iraqi projects, said Bowen.
It was not possible to get advance comment from Parsons. Under the rules for the release of the audit, reporters were not allowed to reveal its details until Monday.
But the report said Parsons had argued that the U.S. government misrepresented the security conditions. Parsons said that its subcontractors faced threats that either shut down or slowed work almost daily. In August 2005, the site manager for one of Parsons' subcontractors was shot to death in his office.
Diyala remains one of the most dangerous places in Iraq. In the past week, U.S. and Iraqi forces have stepped up sweeps against insurgents in one of their last footholds near Baghdad.
But officials of the Army Corps of Engineers — one of the agencies that oversaw the prison construction — countered that Parsons understood conditions in Iraq at the time. They also said Parsons rarely reported security threats, and only recorded seven days when it cited delays due to violence.
Bowen said his agency has done 120 audits on Iraqi projects. "And they tell an episodic story of waste," he said.
___
Jelinek contributed to this report from Washington.
___
On the Net:
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction reports:
Prison project http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/assessments/PA-08-138.pdf
Audit of Parsons Delaware, Inc. http://www.sigir.mil/reports/pdf/audits/08-019.pdf
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Katrina vanden Heuvel - The Nation (July 22, 2008)
Rethinking Afghanistan
posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 07/22/2008 @ 4:57pm
If elected, Senator Barack Obama has the possibility of reengaging with a world that seeks an America which isn't defined by Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo – but by the democratic ideals to which we aspire. His election, allied with smart and humane policies, could help restore this country's global reputation – and turn a page on the reckless and destructive policies of mad men.
Obama has shown how capable he is of good judgment. His original opposition to the war and his still-firm commitment to an expeditious withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq – a war which long ago lost any strategic purpose – are both good measures of that judgment. (His position on keeping residual forces and mercenary troops in Iraq is one The Nation disagrees with.)
So it is troubling that as he shows sound thinking on Iraq, Obama also continues to talk about escalating the US military presence in Afghanistan. (This holds true not just for Senator Obama, but for most Democrats in Washington, who argue mantra-like that we need to leave Iraq in order to free additional troops to serve in Afghanistan.) Shouldn't serious thought be given to how Senator Obama's necessary agenda for healthcare and progressive economic reform might be sacrificed to yet another trillion-dollar war without end?
That's why I would urge Senator Obama to read three documents and think long and hard about the dangers to his agenda – both domestically and internationally – of extricating the US from one disastrous war and heading into another. I believe there are alternatives which need to be explored at this critical juncture before such a commitment is made, and some of those ideas are found in these documents.
A statement from the international relief and development organization Oxfam America urges both Senators Obama and McCain to expand the debate regarding Afghanistan beyond a discussion of troop levels, examining the importance of targeted development, sustainable aid, and the danger of increasing civilian casualties: "Alleviating poverty and protecting civilians from violence are essential components of a strategy to bring peace and stability to the country. Unless the next American president… builds on the existing commitments to help lift the Afghan people out of extreme poverty and protect civilians, it will be impossible for the country to achieve lasting peace…."
In a Financial Times article, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser and a supporter of Senator Obama, warns the US of the trap of another Soviet-style occupation in Afghan – and he should know, given that he's the guy who set it. "It is important for US policy in general and for Obama more specifically to recognize that simply putting more troops into Afghanistan is not the entire solution," he said. "We are running the risk of repeating the mistake the Soviet Union made . . . Our strategy is getting in deeper and deeper."
Finally, an editorial in the Guardian writes of, "… the temptation…. to throw more military forces at the problem in a replication of the Iraq ‘surge'…. For many, it is becoming clear that it cannot be won, framed in military terms." The editors go on to argue for targeted micro-financing used towards sustainable rural development.
There is no easy answer here, but certainly we need to think beyond the almost reflexive response of troop escalation in order to find sane and humane alternatives. When Senator Obama met with President Hamid Karzai, the talks focused on Al-Qaeda, no discussion of sustainable development, no discussion of poverty, or how record opium production is fueling the warlords. Military escalation will increase civilian casualties and further tarnish the nation's reputation internationally. It's time to do some tough thinking before we are bogged down in another occupation and we continue to bleed more lives and resources.
posted by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 07/22/2008 @ 4:57pm
If elected, Senator Barack Obama has the possibility of reengaging with a world that seeks an America which isn't defined by Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo – but by the democratic ideals to which we aspire. His election, allied with smart and humane policies, could help restore this country's global reputation – and turn a page on the reckless and destructive policies of mad men.
Obama has shown how capable he is of good judgment. His original opposition to the war and his still-firm commitment to an expeditious withdrawal of US combat forces from Iraq – a war which long ago lost any strategic purpose – are both good measures of that judgment. (His position on keeping residual forces and mercenary troops in Iraq is one The Nation disagrees with.)
So it is troubling that as he shows sound thinking on Iraq, Obama also continues to talk about escalating the US military presence in Afghanistan. (This holds true not just for Senator Obama, but for most Democrats in Washington, who argue mantra-like that we need to leave Iraq in order to free additional troops to serve in Afghanistan.) Shouldn't serious thought be given to how Senator Obama's necessary agenda for healthcare and progressive economic reform might be sacrificed to yet another trillion-dollar war without end?
That's why I would urge Senator Obama to read three documents and think long and hard about the dangers to his agenda – both domestically and internationally – of extricating the US from one disastrous war and heading into another. I believe there are alternatives which need to be explored at this critical juncture before such a commitment is made, and some of those ideas are found in these documents.
A statement from the international relief and development organization Oxfam America urges both Senators Obama and McCain to expand the debate regarding Afghanistan beyond a discussion of troop levels, examining the importance of targeted development, sustainable aid, and the danger of increasing civilian casualties: "Alleviating poverty and protecting civilians from violence are essential components of a strategy to bring peace and stability to the country. Unless the next American president… builds on the existing commitments to help lift the Afghan people out of extreme poverty and protect civilians, it will be impossible for the country to achieve lasting peace…."
In a Financial Times article, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former US national security adviser and a supporter of Senator Obama, warns the US of the trap of another Soviet-style occupation in Afghan – and he should know, given that he's the guy who set it. "It is important for US policy in general and for Obama more specifically to recognize that simply putting more troops into Afghanistan is not the entire solution," he said. "We are running the risk of repeating the mistake the Soviet Union made . . . Our strategy is getting in deeper and deeper."
Finally, an editorial in the Guardian writes of, "… the temptation…. to throw more military forces at the problem in a replication of the Iraq ‘surge'…. For many, it is becoming clear that it cannot be won, framed in military terms." The editors go on to argue for targeted micro-financing used towards sustainable rural development.
There is no easy answer here, but certainly we need to think beyond the almost reflexive response of troop escalation in order to find sane and humane alternatives. When Senator Obama met with President Hamid Karzai, the talks focused on Al-Qaeda, no discussion of sustainable development, no discussion of poverty, or how record opium production is fueling the warlords. Military escalation will increase civilian casualties and further tarnish the nation's reputation internationally. It's time to do some tough thinking before we are bogged down in another occupation and we continue to bleed more lives and resources.
Jacob Heilbrunn - Huffingtonpost.com (July 24, 2008)
Bush Bans State Department Officials From Obama Rally
Posted July 24, 2008 | 08:45 AM (EST)
In a flagrant political act, the State Department has barred its employees from attending Sen. Barack Obama's speech in Berlin tonight. Under the pretense that he is maintaining political neutrality, the Washington Post reported today, State Department Undersecretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy has interpreted the Foreign Affairs Manual in the most restrictive way, claiming that he is ensuring that foreign service officials will remain untainted by a "partisan political act." (Spouse and family members, however, have generously been excluded from this ruling.) The U.S. embassy, which is headed by ambassador Robert Timken, a businessman and crony of George W. Bush's from Ohio, who is widely reviled in Germany for his ignorance of foreign affairs, has instructed officials not to attend the rally. The American Foreign Service Association has complained about the edict but there's not enough time to dispute it. Funny that.
The truth is that there would probably be few better opportunities for embassy officials to get a feel for the views of the Germans by mixing with them during the rally. Of course, the sentiments expressed by Germans, who worship Obama as much as they loathe George W. Bush, might not be ones that the administration is eager to hear.
Indeed, the administration has a long and tawdry record of trying to browbeat government agencies into submission, whether it's the CIA or the Centers for Disease Control. The State Department is perhaps highest on the list of conservatives and neocons who see it as the center of disloyalty and treachery. But this latest action represents a new low. If it's going to these lengths, the Bush administration must be really worried about Sen. John McCain's prospects.
Posted July 24, 2008 | 08:45 AM (EST)
In a flagrant political act, the State Department has barred its employees from attending Sen. Barack Obama's speech in Berlin tonight. Under the pretense that he is maintaining political neutrality, the Washington Post reported today, State Department Undersecretary for Management Patrick F. Kennedy has interpreted the Foreign Affairs Manual in the most restrictive way, claiming that he is ensuring that foreign service officials will remain untainted by a "partisan political act." (Spouse and family members, however, have generously been excluded from this ruling.) The U.S. embassy, which is headed by ambassador Robert Timken, a businessman and crony of George W. Bush's from Ohio, who is widely reviled in Germany for his ignorance of foreign affairs, has instructed officials not to attend the rally. The American Foreign Service Association has complained about the edict but there's not enough time to dispute it. Funny that.
The truth is that there would probably be few better opportunities for embassy officials to get a feel for the views of the Germans by mixing with them during the rally. Of course, the sentiments expressed by Germans, who worship Obama as much as they loathe George W. Bush, might not be ones that the administration is eager to hear.
Indeed, the administration has a long and tawdry record of trying to browbeat government agencies into submission, whether it's the CIA or the Centers for Disease Control. The State Department is perhaps highest on the list of conservatives and neocons who see it as the center of disloyalty and treachery. But this latest action represents a new low. If it's going to these lengths, the Bush administration must be really worried about Sen. John McCain's prospects.
Joe Conason - Truthdig.com (July 23, 2008)
Washington’s Overrated ‘Old Hands’
Posted on Jul 23, 2008
By Joe Conason
Barack Obama knows which countries border Iraq; he understands the difference between Shiite and Sunni; and he is probably aware that Czechoslovakia no longer exists—but as John McCain complains, the young senator has “no military experience whatsoever.” Indeed, like both of the last two presidents, Sen. Obama possesses scant credentials in national security and foreign policy.
Why, then, does he appear increasingly plausible as the next president? Assurance, grace and mastery of the facts have helped to lift his stature, as did his daring decision to venture abroad, directly challenging his older opponent’s perceived strength. But granting his talent and initiative,
Following the 9/11 attacks, conventional commentary constantly informed Americans that we were lucky to be led at that perilous time by the old Republican hands in the Bush White House. Not George W. Bush himself, of course, whose résumé featured an abbreviated stint in the Texas Air National Guard and perhaps a few visits to Tijuana. We were supposed to thank providence for the wisdom and skill of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, along with a phalanx of deputies, assistants and subalterns. They had won the Gulf War of 1991, and their presence in Washington dated back to the Nixon era. They would know what to do.
Nearly every decision those highly qualified individuals made, from the day they took over in 2001, has been wrong, starting with the dismissal of the al-Qaida threat and moving on to the invasion of Iraq; the diplomatic standoffs with Iran, North Korea and Syria; the sidelining of the Mideast peace process; and the unilateral impulse that has damaged American alliances around the world.
Rarely during the past seven years did Sen. McCain, whose own foreign policy skills and knowledge have begun to seem seriously overrated, speak up in dissent from the failed Bush policies. His most significant contribution to the national debate—namely, his insistence that the U.S. commit more troops to Iraq—is overshadowed by his much more consequential mistake of supporting the invasion on false pretenses. More than once he has displayed the same stubborn ignorance about Iraq, Iran and the Gulf region that led to this strategic disaster. They underestimated the division between Shiite and Sunni, the influence of Iran on the new leaders of Iraq and the resistance of the Iraqi people to any prolonged American occupation.
That persistent ineptitude has brought the supporters of the war to an ironic comeuppance, as the Iraqi government and people demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops on precisely the same timetable suggested by Sen. Obama. The bombshell remarks uttered by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his aides over the past several days should not be completely surprising to anyone who has paid attention to Iraqi public opinion or to the botched status-of-forces negotiations between the United States and Iraq.
As Juan Cole has pointed out, the Bush administration repeatedly irritated the Iraqis with their insistence that a new agreement ratifying the American occupation must continue to exempt private contractors and U.S. troops from prosecution under Iraqi law, and permit U.S. commanders to operate without consulting the Iraqi government, and arrest and imprison Iraqi terror suspects indefinitely. Those perceived outrages against Iraq’s sovereignty were underlined by an American operation in the prime minister’s hometown that evidently killed one of his cousins.
The net result of the status negotiations is no result, which has made the Iraqi government highly susceptible to pressure from its own people and from its friends in Tehran for an end to the occupation. Attempts by the Bush White House and the McCain campaign to suggest that the Iraqis didn’t mean what they had plainly said only provided a darkly comical coda.
But then the Iraq war has always been a saga of incompetence and ideology, compounded by deception and self-deception. Against that lethal mixture, the experience of the old hands seems to have provided no protection, for them or for the rest of us.
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.
Posted on Jul 23, 2008
By Joe Conason
Barack Obama knows which countries border Iraq; he understands the difference between Shiite and Sunni; and he is probably aware that Czechoslovakia no longer exists—but as John McCain complains, the young senator has “no military experience whatsoever.” Indeed, like both of the last two presidents, Sen. Obama possesses scant credentials in national security and foreign policy.
Why, then, does he appear increasingly plausible as the next president? Assurance, grace and mastery of the facts have helped to lift his stature, as did his daring decision to venture abroad, directly challenging his older opponent’s perceived strength. But granting his talent and initiative,
Following the 9/11 attacks, conventional commentary constantly informed Americans that we were lucky to be led at that perilous time by the old Republican hands in the Bush White House. Not George W. Bush himself, of course, whose résumé featured an abbreviated stint in the Texas Air National Guard and perhaps a few visits to Tijuana. We were supposed to thank providence for the wisdom and skill of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, along with a phalanx of deputies, assistants and subalterns. They had won the Gulf War of 1991, and their presence in Washington dated back to the Nixon era. They would know what to do.
Nearly every decision those highly qualified individuals made, from the day they took over in 2001, has been wrong, starting with the dismissal of the al-Qaida threat and moving on to the invasion of Iraq; the diplomatic standoffs with Iran, North Korea and Syria; the sidelining of the Mideast peace process; and the unilateral impulse that has damaged American alliances around the world.
Rarely during the past seven years did Sen. McCain, whose own foreign policy skills and knowledge have begun to seem seriously overrated, speak up in dissent from the failed Bush policies. His most significant contribution to the national debate—namely, his insistence that the U.S. commit more troops to Iraq—is overshadowed by his much more consequential mistake of supporting the invasion on false pretenses. More than once he has displayed the same stubborn ignorance about Iraq, Iran and the Gulf region that led to this strategic disaster. They underestimated the division between Shiite and Sunni, the influence of Iran on the new leaders of Iraq and the resistance of the Iraqi people to any prolonged American occupation.
That persistent ineptitude has brought the supporters of the war to an ironic comeuppance, as the Iraqi government and people demand the withdrawal of U.S. troops on precisely the same timetable suggested by Sen. Obama. The bombshell remarks uttered by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his aides over the past several days should not be completely surprising to anyone who has paid attention to Iraqi public opinion or to the botched status-of-forces negotiations between the United States and Iraq.
As Juan Cole has pointed out, the Bush administration repeatedly irritated the Iraqis with their insistence that a new agreement ratifying the American occupation must continue to exempt private contractors and U.S. troops from prosecution under Iraqi law, and permit U.S. commanders to operate without consulting the Iraqi government, and arrest and imprison Iraqi terror suspects indefinitely. Those perceived outrages against Iraq’s sovereignty were underlined by an American operation in the prime minister’s hometown that evidently killed one of his cousins.
The net result of the status negotiations is no result, which has made the Iraqi government highly susceptible to pressure from its own people and from its friends in Tehran for an end to the occupation. Attempts by the Bush White House and the McCain campaign to suggest that the Iraqis didn’t mean what they had plainly said only provided a darkly comical coda.
But then the Iraq war has always been a saga of incompetence and ideology, compounded by deception and self-deception. Against that lethal mixture, the experience of the old hands seems to have provided no protection, for them or for the rest of us.
Joe Conason writes for the New York Observer.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Salon.com (July 23, 2008)
Exposing Bush's historic abuse of power
Salon has uncovered new evidence of post-9/11 spying on Americans. Obtained documents point to a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate
By Tim Shorrock
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/23/new_churchcomm/
Salon has uncovered new evidence of post-9/11 spying on Americans. Obtained documents point to a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate
By Tim Shorrock
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/07/23/new_churchcomm/
Juan Cole - Salon.com (July 23, 2008)
Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan
He hit the right notes during his swing through Iraq, but his plans for that other war could mean trouble.
By Juan Cole
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/23/obama/
He hit the right notes during his swing through Iraq, but his plans for that other war could mean trouble.
By Juan Cole
Full article here:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/23/obama/
Thinkprogress.org (July 23, 2008)
According to IRS data, “the richest 1% of Americans in 2006 garnered the highest share of the nation’s adjusted gross income for two decades” and “possibly the highest since 1929.” Meanwhile, “the average tax rate of the wealthiest 1% fell to its lowest level in at least 18 years.” (Wall Street Journal 7/23/08)
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Scott Horton - Harpers.org (July 21, 2008)
The Misdirection
Last week the House Judiciary Committee conducted two further hearings into the formulation of Bush Administration torture policy. In the second, John Ashcroft was questioned and some significant progress was made. Ashcroft acknowledged that the White House had effectively co-opted the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and that its opinions were no longer being issued at arm’s length. While reiterating some absurd fantasies about torture (starting with the indefensible proposition that waterboarding has always been fine), he stated that it was “not hard” to rescind the original torture memorandum because it was a shoddy product.
Ashcroft failed to present a comprehensive account of the origins of the torture memo but, as Salon’s Mark Benjamin quickly noted, he did undermine the narrative that Michael Mukasey, John Yoo and others have used to support the OLC memos—namely that they were a good-faith effort to answer legal questions. In fact, as we are likely to learn in greater detail soon, many of the torture techniques encompassed in the Bush Administration’s “Program” were in active use before the first OLC memo was sought. These memos were not prepared to dispense advice because the green light was already lit. Rather, they were made to order after the fact, to furnish a “golden shield” against criminal prosecution. As Jane Mayer recently demonstrated, the “Torture Team” members were focused on their criminal culpability almost from the outset.
However, the hearings have been undermined by a careful campaign that merits some examination.
Professional magicians and confidence artists share a few professional techniques, and one of them is known as “the misdirection.” At a key moment when a stunt is being pulled off, the artist will arrange a diversion to insure that the viewing public’s attention is focused elsewhere. The trick can then be pulled off with minimal risk of discovery. Watching Republican witnesses and committee members perform in Congressional committees in the past few weeks, it pays to be conscious of this practice. In an effort to avert attention from White House practices—especially its torture and surveillance policies–Bush Administration friends and emissaries on the Hill focus on carefully prepared and coordinated diversions. Their objective is plain enough: run out the clock, confuse the audience which is trying to follow a complex series of facts and figure out what this is all about, and help keep the public in the dark about what went on.
The questions that the Congressional investigators want answered are fairly simple. Who is responsible for torture policy? What caused it to begin? Exactly how was it pushed through over strong opposition from career professionals in the uniformed services, in the intelligence community, and among lawyers in government service? Were the authors of these policies aware that what they were doing would be viewed in the United States and around the world as criminal conduct? These are deadly serious issues which have done immense damage to America’s reputation around the world and which make it increasingly difficult for America’s allies to work with us. But for the misdirection artists, these questions will be obscured or turned into buffoonery.
On Tuesday, Rumsfeld’s former number three in the Pentagon, Doug Feith, made his long-awaited appearance on Capitol Hill. Feith is the man who brought you the war in Iraq and the Office of Special Plans that generated alternate-reality intelligence analyses designed to make it possible. He was Paul Wolfowitz’s boy, but he had remarkably few friends in the Pentagon, and indeed, one of his powerful detractors, former CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks, hung on him the moniker that gets used at almost every mention of his name: “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” Feith previously stood up the Judiciary Committee, stating that he would not attend its hearing because he didn’t like one of the other witnesses (a hitherto unknown justification). At length, Feith had to be subpoenaed to appear. But before Feith could get off a word, his designated defenders were busy at work attempting to put a stick in the wheel.
“Objection!” trumpeted designated-harasser Steven King of Iowa. What exactly did this alert parliamentarian find so objectionable? It was the chair’s claim of unanimous consent to recess the meeting to allow members to vote. After some colloquy, it appeared that Rep. King really didn’t have an objection. He was trying to slow things down and disrupt the hearings, and he and his colleagues succeeded in just that, repeatedly. His back-up, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, peppered the chair with “points of parliamentary inquiry”–which never actually raised any parliamentary inquiry, but brought the proceedings to a stop and allowed him to make a speech.
The carefully laid-down cover fire clearly was designed to benefit Feith, a weak witness with a curious and highly selective memory.
Then Feith blasted forth his own accusations, targeting fellow witness Philippe Sands. In his recent book The Torture Team, the British barrister and law professor reconstructed the team of lawyers who played a key role in introducing the Bush Administration’s torture policies. Feith plays a key role in the book, much of it drawn from an extensive interview that Sands conducted with him, but other aspects based on the accounts of those who worked with Feith, such as General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the period in question. Even before the hearing commenced, the neocon-aligned New York Sun lambasted Sands using language curiously similar to the written statement that Feith himself submitted to the Judiciary Committee a few hours later. The Sun wrote that is Feith “is alleged in a new book… by Phillipe [sic] Sands, to have essentially invented the legal argument that the legal protections of Common Article III [sic] of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners of America.” But the morning of the hearing, Feith took a number of direct swipes at Sands, saying that his book showed “astonishing carelessness or recklessness,” a “weave of inaccuracies and distortions,” and “sloppy research, misquotations and unsubstantiated allegations.”
When pressed to identify the “misquotations,” “inaccuracies” and “distortions,” Feith suddenly became quiet and vague. He insisted that Sands had portrayed him as the “author of the decision to deny Common Article 3 protections.” However, Sands actually says nothing of the kind. In Sands’s book, Feith is an important player, because of his position as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, but the key legal policy determinations are made by a group which called itself the “War Council” and which had at its center David Addington, Jim Haynes, and John Yoo.
Still, Feith clearly played a focal role in the process. During the May 11, 2004 Senate Abu Ghraib hearing, Feith’s colleague Stephen Cambone testified that “overall policy for the handling of detainees rests with [Doug Feith], by directive.”
Moreover, the key policy issue that played out in the Pentagon during this period was simple: should the Guantánamo detainees have the benefit of Common Article 3 (or any other rules of international law establishing minimum rights)? That is to say, could they be tortured or subjected to other highly coercive interrogation techniques? The full inside story of the battle has yet to be told. But we do know that the career military lawyers, the JAG corps, and a handful of political appointees such as Navy general counsel Alberto Mora and assistant secretary for detainee affairs Matt Waxman argued for good-faith application for Common Article 3, while Jim Haynes, David Addington, and John Yoo took the contrary position.
In his testimony before Congress, Feith said he was “receptive to the idea that Common Article 3 should be used.” This is very curious, because no documents have appeared showing that Feith advocated that Guantánamo detainees be given Common Article 3 rights, and none of the other players in this process records Feith as supporting Common Article 3’s application. Since he was the responsible officer for policy, and this was ultimately a policy decision, Feith’s comments look suspiciously like a hearing-room conversion.
But Feith targets Sands’s book and says he was misquoted. I re-examined the book and took it a further step. Sands and Vanity Fair, which published the first excerpts of the book, state that the Feith interview was in fact recorded. I asked Sands for a transcript of the interview with Feith, which he agreed to provide to provide to me simultaneously with his delivery of a copy to the Judiciary Committee. I then tested the book text against the interview. Distressing as it may be to Feith, the book faithfully and accurately reproduces what Feith said in the interview.
The closest thing that Feith finds to a mistake is really more in the nature of a pedantic quibble: he made a distinction between Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, he says, and was “receptive” to the idea of Geneva protections for the Taliban detainees. But when he was pressed by Sands on whether Guantánamo detainees should have Common Article 3 rights, here’s what Feith says:
The point is that the Al Qaeda people were not entitled to have the Convention applied at all, period. Obvious. I don’t see a lawyer that could make an argument of the contrary.
Based on this, Sands—who is writing a book focused on the treatment of an Al Qaeda detainee, Mohammed Al Qatahni—records Feith as opposing Common Article 3’s application. That is the obvious and inevitable import of Feith’s statement. Moreover, turning from what Feith said in the hearing room to what he did as Donald Rumsfeld’s senior deputy, we find that, as a matter of policy, he signed off on a host of techniques that contravened Common Article 3. This includes not simply the techniques like waterboarding, long-time standing, hypothermia, and sleep deprivation which belong to the core repertory of the “Program,” but even lesser practices which became common fare at Guantánamo: the use of military dogs to induce fear, forced grooming, forced nudity and hooding, the use of sound-and-light techniques.
Feith indeed faded into imbecility when these techniques were discussed, offering up the most quoted one-liner of the day: “removal of clothing is different than naked.” When pressed, however, Feith was unable to explain how “naked” meant something other than “being without clothes.” No doubt a clarification would have entailed the disclosure of the most highly classified national security information that the Bush Administration holds, namely, that the emperor has no clothes. But Feith was clear that many of these techniques could be used, indeed, he considered them to be “humane.”
This is but one chapter in the misdirection played out through the course of the hearing. It was quickly followed by Issa, King and Feith performing a trio with variations on the subject of whether Al Qaeda terrorists were entitled to Prisoner of War (POW) protections.
Was someone arguing that they were entitled to POW protections? Actually, no. As Sands noted, the entire issue of POW protections arose only because of the Administration’s own rhetoric—its fixation with putting the conflict with Al Qaeda on war footing. Princeton professor Deborah Pearlstein put it well when she called the entire question a red herring. Torture is forbidden whether the prisoners are POWs or not; this is a classic case of a distinction without a difference. But it made for a perfect misdirection.
Last week the House Judiciary Committee conducted two further hearings into the formulation of Bush Administration torture policy. In the second, John Ashcroft was questioned and some significant progress was made. Ashcroft acknowledged that the White House had effectively co-opted the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), and that its opinions were no longer being issued at arm’s length. While reiterating some absurd fantasies about torture (starting with the indefensible proposition that waterboarding has always been fine), he stated that it was “not hard” to rescind the original torture memorandum because it was a shoddy product.
Ashcroft failed to present a comprehensive account of the origins of the torture memo but, as Salon’s Mark Benjamin quickly noted, he did undermine the narrative that Michael Mukasey, John Yoo and others have used to support the OLC memos—namely that they were a good-faith effort to answer legal questions. In fact, as we are likely to learn in greater detail soon, many of the torture techniques encompassed in the Bush Administration’s “Program” were in active use before the first OLC memo was sought. These memos were not prepared to dispense advice because the green light was already lit. Rather, they were made to order after the fact, to furnish a “golden shield” against criminal prosecution. As Jane Mayer recently demonstrated, the “Torture Team” members were focused on their criminal culpability almost from the outset.
However, the hearings have been undermined by a careful campaign that merits some examination.
Professional magicians and confidence artists share a few professional techniques, and one of them is known as “the misdirection.” At a key moment when a stunt is being pulled off, the artist will arrange a diversion to insure that the viewing public’s attention is focused elsewhere. The trick can then be pulled off with minimal risk of discovery. Watching Republican witnesses and committee members perform in Congressional committees in the past few weeks, it pays to be conscious of this practice. In an effort to avert attention from White House practices—especially its torture and surveillance policies–Bush Administration friends and emissaries on the Hill focus on carefully prepared and coordinated diversions. Their objective is plain enough: run out the clock, confuse the audience which is trying to follow a complex series of facts and figure out what this is all about, and help keep the public in the dark about what went on.
The questions that the Congressional investigators want answered are fairly simple. Who is responsible for torture policy? What caused it to begin? Exactly how was it pushed through over strong opposition from career professionals in the uniformed services, in the intelligence community, and among lawyers in government service? Were the authors of these policies aware that what they were doing would be viewed in the United States and around the world as criminal conduct? These are deadly serious issues which have done immense damage to America’s reputation around the world and which make it increasingly difficult for America’s allies to work with us. But for the misdirection artists, these questions will be obscured or turned into buffoonery.
On Tuesday, Rumsfeld’s former number three in the Pentagon, Doug Feith, made his long-awaited appearance on Capitol Hill. Feith is the man who brought you the war in Iraq and the Office of Special Plans that generated alternate-reality intelligence analyses designed to make it possible. He was Paul Wolfowitz’s boy, but he had remarkably few friends in the Pentagon, and indeed, one of his powerful detractors, former CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks, hung on him the moniker that gets used at almost every mention of his name: “the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth.” Feith previously stood up the Judiciary Committee, stating that he would not attend its hearing because he didn’t like one of the other witnesses (a hitherto unknown justification). At length, Feith had to be subpoenaed to appear. But before Feith could get off a word, his designated defenders were busy at work attempting to put a stick in the wheel.
“Objection!” trumpeted designated-harasser Steven King of Iowa. What exactly did this alert parliamentarian find so objectionable? It was the chair’s claim of unanimous consent to recess the meeting to allow members to vote. After some colloquy, it appeared that Rep. King really didn’t have an objection. He was trying to slow things down and disrupt the hearings, and he and his colleagues succeeded in just that, repeatedly. His back-up, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, peppered the chair with “points of parliamentary inquiry”–which never actually raised any parliamentary inquiry, but brought the proceedings to a stop and allowed him to make a speech.
The carefully laid-down cover fire clearly was designed to benefit Feith, a weak witness with a curious and highly selective memory.
Then Feith blasted forth his own accusations, targeting fellow witness Philippe Sands. In his recent book The Torture Team, the British barrister and law professor reconstructed the team of lawyers who played a key role in introducing the Bush Administration’s torture policies. Feith plays a key role in the book, much of it drawn from an extensive interview that Sands conducted with him, but other aspects based on the accounts of those who worked with Feith, such as General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the period in question. Even before the hearing commenced, the neocon-aligned New York Sun lambasted Sands using language curiously similar to the written statement that Feith himself submitted to the Judiciary Committee a few hours later. The Sun wrote that is Feith “is alleged in a new book… by Phillipe [sic] Sands, to have essentially invented the legal argument that the legal protections of Common Article III [sic] of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to Al Qaeda or Taliban prisoners of America.” But the morning of the hearing, Feith took a number of direct swipes at Sands, saying that his book showed “astonishing carelessness or recklessness,” a “weave of inaccuracies and distortions,” and “sloppy research, misquotations and unsubstantiated allegations.”
When pressed to identify the “misquotations,” “inaccuracies” and “distortions,” Feith suddenly became quiet and vague. He insisted that Sands had portrayed him as the “author of the decision to deny Common Article 3 protections.” However, Sands actually says nothing of the kind. In Sands’s book, Feith is an important player, because of his position as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, but the key legal policy determinations are made by a group which called itself the “War Council” and which had at its center David Addington, Jim Haynes, and John Yoo.
Still, Feith clearly played a focal role in the process. During the May 11, 2004 Senate Abu Ghraib hearing, Feith’s colleague Stephen Cambone testified that “overall policy for the handling of detainees rests with [Doug Feith], by directive.”
Moreover, the key policy issue that played out in the Pentagon during this period was simple: should the Guantánamo detainees have the benefit of Common Article 3 (or any other rules of international law establishing minimum rights)? That is to say, could they be tortured or subjected to other highly coercive interrogation techniques? The full inside story of the battle has yet to be told. But we do know that the career military lawyers, the JAG corps, and a handful of political appointees such as Navy general counsel Alberto Mora and assistant secretary for detainee affairs Matt Waxman argued for good-faith application for Common Article 3, while Jim Haynes, David Addington, and John Yoo took the contrary position.
In his testimony before Congress, Feith said he was “receptive to the idea that Common Article 3 should be used.” This is very curious, because no documents have appeared showing that Feith advocated that Guantánamo detainees be given Common Article 3 rights, and none of the other players in this process records Feith as supporting Common Article 3’s application. Since he was the responsible officer for policy, and this was ultimately a policy decision, Feith’s comments look suspiciously like a hearing-room conversion.
But Feith targets Sands’s book and says he was misquoted. I re-examined the book and took it a further step. Sands and Vanity Fair, which published the first excerpts of the book, state that the Feith interview was in fact recorded. I asked Sands for a transcript of the interview with Feith, which he agreed to provide to provide to me simultaneously with his delivery of a copy to the Judiciary Committee. I then tested the book text against the interview. Distressing as it may be to Feith, the book faithfully and accurately reproduces what Feith said in the interview.
The closest thing that Feith finds to a mistake is really more in the nature of a pedantic quibble: he made a distinction between Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, he says, and was “receptive” to the idea of Geneva protections for the Taliban detainees. But when he was pressed by Sands on whether Guantánamo detainees should have Common Article 3 rights, here’s what Feith says:
The point is that the Al Qaeda people were not entitled to have the Convention applied at all, period. Obvious. I don’t see a lawyer that could make an argument of the contrary.
Based on this, Sands—who is writing a book focused on the treatment of an Al Qaeda detainee, Mohammed Al Qatahni—records Feith as opposing Common Article 3’s application. That is the obvious and inevitable import of Feith’s statement. Moreover, turning from what Feith said in the hearing room to what he did as Donald Rumsfeld’s senior deputy, we find that, as a matter of policy, he signed off on a host of techniques that contravened Common Article 3. This includes not simply the techniques like waterboarding, long-time standing, hypothermia, and sleep deprivation which belong to the core repertory of the “Program,” but even lesser practices which became common fare at Guantánamo: the use of military dogs to induce fear, forced grooming, forced nudity and hooding, the use of sound-and-light techniques.
Feith indeed faded into imbecility when these techniques were discussed, offering up the most quoted one-liner of the day: “removal of clothing is different than naked.” When pressed, however, Feith was unable to explain how “naked” meant something other than “being without clothes.” No doubt a clarification would have entailed the disclosure of the most highly classified national security information that the Bush Administration holds, namely, that the emperor has no clothes. But Feith was clear that many of these techniques could be used, indeed, he considered them to be “humane.”
This is but one chapter in the misdirection played out through the course of the hearing. It was quickly followed by Issa, King and Feith performing a trio with variations on the subject of whether Al Qaeda terrorists were entitled to Prisoner of War (POW) protections.
Was someone arguing that they were entitled to POW protections? Actually, no. As Sands noted, the entire issue of POW protections arose only because of the Administration’s own rhetoric—its fixation with putting the conflict with Al Qaeda on war footing. Princeton professor Deborah Pearlstein put it well when she called the entire question a red herring. Torture is forbidden whether the prisoners are POWs or not; this is a classic case of a distinction without a difference. But it made for a perfect misdirection.
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