Dead-ender presidency

From the Los Angeles Times

RONALD BROWNSTEIN

Bush digs in on stem cells, global warming and Iraq, but he only delays the inevitable.

Ronald Brownstein

April 25, 2007

GEORGE W. BUSH'S presidency is devolving into an extended holding action. On too many fronts, his top priority now appears to be delaying the inevitable.

Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former Defense secretary, once described the Iraqi resistance as a few "dead-enders" who refused to acknowledge that the world around them had changed. Increasingly that phrase applies as a self-portrait for the administration that Rumsfeld served. Forget "the decider." Bush has become the dead-ender.

Example A is the debate over embryonic stem cell research, in which Bush has grown increasingly isolated in his determination to block broad federal funding. Religious conservatives back his stance. But when the Senate this month approved legislation to loosen the funding restraints that Bush set in 2001, the bill drew support from 525 medical, business, academic and civic organizations.

Fully 63 senators voted for the bill — all but two Democrats in attendance and 17 Republicans, including conservatives such as Trent Lott and Orrin Hatch. Among the top Republican presidential contenders, only Mitt Romney stands with Bush; John McCain voted for the bill, and Rudy Giuliani indicated support. (Full disclosure: My wife works in McCain's Senate office.) Every major Democratic presidential candidate also supports broader funding. Bush may hold the line with a veto, but the odds are overwhelming that the next president will reverse his direction.

The same is true on global warming. Bush hasn't completely ignored the problem. He's increased federal research on such green technologies as clean coal and advanced biofuels. But he opposes the critical step that could move such ideas from the lab to the marketplace: mandatory requirements for industry to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming.

BUSH'S POSITION leaves him, like the polar bears threatened by receding Arctic ice, clinging to shrinking ground. In a recent Gallup Poll, four-fifths of adults supported mandatory greenhouse gas reductions. Even two-thirds of Republicans agreed.

Just as dramatic is the realignment in the boardroom. In January, leading companies, such as General Electric and Alcoa, joined with environmentalists to form the United States Climate Action Partnership, which is promoting mandatory greenhouse gas reductions. These businesses have recognized that such mandates "incentivize" green innovation; without them, companies that make the investments to reduce emissions can face a competitive disadvantage. ConocoPhillips recently became the first major U.S. oil company to sign on to the partnership.

Even the auto and utility industries, two of the biggest emission sources, are warming to mandatory carbon limits. Jeff Sterba, the incoming chairman of the Edison Electric Institute, the trade association of investor-owned utilities, says he supports "moving our country forward as quickly as possible" to compulsory carbon reductions.

On global warming, in other words, there are oil, auto and utility executives showing more urgency than Bush. That's like prisoners worrying that the warden is skimping on security.

The leading Democratic candidates all support mandatory greenhouse gas reductions. Some potential Republican nominees (particularly Romney) might join Bush in resisting these mandates. But given the coalition assembling behind them — and the recent Supreme Court decision virtually requiring the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases — the real question is not whether, but how quickly, the next president will act.

On Iraq, the path ahead is murkier, but a turn away from Bush's open-ended commitment also appears inevitable. For now, solid congressional Republican support is allowing Bush to resist Democratic proposals to unwind American involvement. But two trends are eroding Bush's stone wall.

One is the war's strain on the military. The Defense Department's announcement that it is extending tours for soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan from 12 to 15 months — the longest stints since World War II — underscored the practical difficulty of sustaining such a large troop commitment.

The second is persistent public discontent over the war. In surveys, about 60% of Americans call the war a mistake. If the public remains disillusioned as 2008 nears — a good bet — the demand will grow even among Republican candidates for a plan to responsibly lead the U.S. out of Iraq.

Bush could begin building a consensus that emphasizes regional diplomacy and sharper pressure on Iraqis to reform and reconcile, and that ties a fair test of his surge with a commitment to begin withdrawing if it doesn't yield more progress than it has so far. But Bush appears determined to leave the hard job of forging a new direction to his successor.

Bush isn't looking backward on all tests. He's trolling for deals with Democrats on two big 21st century challenges — immigration and controlling entitlement costs — though the overall tension between the White House and Congress makes achieving agreement on those issues difficult.

But on stem cells, global warming and Iraq, Bush seems intent on defending the decisions he's made already, even at the price of obstructing a new consensus attempting to form around him. If Bush continues to view standing alone as the highest form of principle, he will never escape the dead end into which he's steered his second term.

Accountability and the Renegade Executive

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Scott Horton

Normally, I begin my remarks by saying "Ladies and Gentlemen." But here I'm not sure that's quite the right salutation. On my way down from New York to Charlotte to Memphis to Oxford, Mississippi today, passing over the freshly verdant Appalachians and then down the valley of the Tennessee River to the Mississippi Delta, I read the first chapters of William Faulkner's novel, Sanctuary - it takes placed in a bucolic college down named Jefferson - a town which is remarkably like this one. And there towards the end of Chapter III, I ran across this scrap:

"The Virginia gentleman… told us at supper that night about how they had taught him to drink like a gentleman. Put a beetle in alcohol, and you have a scarab; put a Mississippian in alcohol, and you have a gentleman -"

So, as it's still too early in the evening to speak of "gentlemen" here in Mississippi, I'll just say "friends."

America today is in the grips of a scandal surrounding the machinery of justice, but it is a scandal being played out on more fronts than the mass media seems to realize. Indeed, in the end it turns on the concept of justice, not just about the bureaucracy that supposedly administers it.

Eight US attorneys were dismissed by Alberto Gonzales on prodding from Karl Rove. We now know the fateful decision was taken on December 7 (an ironic day, as FDR said, "a day that will live in infamy"). As Gonzales and his deputies Paul J. McNulty and William Moschella trotted out various and contradictory after-the-fact rationalizations for this decision, it has become increasingly clear that the dismissals were politically inspired. Indeed, in the testimony that he has submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee within the last two hours, Gonzales' chief of staff acknowledges as much.

The prosecutors selected for discharge come from "battleground states" which will be key to the 2008 presidential election: New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, Washington and Arkansas. This is no coincidence. Shortly after the 2006 Congressional election, Karl Rove, licking his wounds over a serious defeat, indicated in a speech to Republican lawyers that the public perception of scandal surrounding GOP law-makers was key to that loss. Rove promised he would do something about it. Within a few days, a move to cashier these prosecutors was underway. It is tied to a plan to use their offices to go after Democrats, whether a basis existed or not, and to pursue a voter suppression program focused on prospective Democrats. In other words, it's pure politics. Not high politics in the sense that Aristotle uses the term. But the crude gutter politics of the partisan hack. This sort of politics is not the exclusive province of one party. But over the last years, one party has exercised a monopoly on political power, and this appears to have led to a particularly virulent strain of political hackery.

Standing alone, this incident would be cause for grave concern. But it's just one aspect of a far broader crisis in which our country is enmeshed. The crisis has its start in the decision to introduce torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment - in contravention of 230 years of US military tradition, stretching back to George Washington's order after the battle of Trenton. Gonzales had a key role in this process as well, backed up by Cheney's chief-of-staff, David Addington and the now ever-present John Yoo. They tell us that they did this to insure that the president, as commander-in-chief, would have all the tools at his disposal that he might need to fight a war against terror. But if we strip the varnish off that, there are unmistakably unsavory elements underneath: one is a recognition that torture is a crime, and the second is a desire to enlist it into the president's arsenal notwithstanding what the law says.

A former president of the Argentine bar, with whom I spoke two years ago, told me that his experience with torture in Argentina's "Dirty War" under a military dictatorship had been very clear. The dictator wanted torture as a talisman. It would show that the military rulers were above the law - subject to none of the restraints that marked the rule-of-law state. No one was under the illusion that torture techniques would actually get any useful intelligence. On the other hand, it would instill fear, and that was useful. He spoke to me with some conviction: the legal profession must oppose the introduction of torture, he said. In the end you will learn this is not about interrogation practices, it is about dictatorship, about tyranny. The experience of Argentina and Chile backs him up. Is the experience of America different? America is not governed by a military junta, of course. Nor can the brutality of technique and number of victims of the "Dirty War" yet be compared with the dark underside of the war on terror. But it is striking that most of the abusive techniques used by the Argentine junta were adopted and introduced in what President Bush has called the "program." This includes waterboarding, which the Argentinians called el submarino, the cold cell (or hypothermia), long-time standing and sleep deprivation in excess of two days. Nevertheless, this is a question we all should ponder.

The Argentine lawyer's remarks reminded me immediately of what Gonzales wrote in a memorandum on January 25, 2002 - he speculated that the newly fashioned plans for the war on terror might lead future prosecutors to consider war crimes charges. Gonzales suggested that if Bush declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, it would be more difficult for a prosecutor to go after the authors of these new policies.

It's chilling to consider that this was written by a man destined to serve as the nation's chief law enforcement officer. But it explains, perhaps, why Bush gave Gonzales the nick name "Fredo" - the name of the younger, loyal, but mentally less adept son of the Godfather crime family, the Corleones.

It started with torture but it moved swiftly beyond this. For instance, to a decision to introduce a system of torture-by-proxy through extraordinary rendition. Gonzales also gave this program, which has its origins back in an anti-drug kingpin program launched by Clinton, the green light. And now more than thirty American public servants - CIA officers and military for the most part - stand under indictment in Italy and Germany with counts of assault, kidnapping and other felonies; these are all dedicated public servants performing an official program. The blame for what happened doesn't rest with them, or at least not entirely. It rests with the people who formed the policies that they implemented. Our reputation around the world is a tatters. And nations who want to cooperate with us in a war against terror, and whose support the United States badly needs, repeatedly find they can't do so. If they do, they will be collaborating with a nation that tortures, and they aren't prepared to sacrifice their values the way the Bush administration has sacrificed ours.

Recently a friend of mine who works with the Afghan Government shared with me some intelligence the Afghans had gathered from a young man apprehended in connection with an attack using an improvised explosive device. The man had fled as a refugee to Pakistan. There he was seized by the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (a close collaborator of the CIA) and told that unless he participated in a planned bombing attack on NATO forces in the Afghan south, the Pakistanis would turn him over to the Americans, he would be taken to Guantánamo and tortured there for years on end. He agreed to participate. Interestingly he was not the only young Afghan to be captured with an account like this. Is the account true? The Afghans are convinced it is, and US intelligence apparently has credited it as well. So there you have it: come full circle. The image of Gitmo used to recruit people to perform acts of terror against us.

Gonzales also gave the go-ahead for surveillance that violated FISA, a federal criminal statute. Indeed, Newsweek gave us a fascinating insider's account of how all this went down at Justice. Then Attorney General John Ashcroft was out in the hospital for a gallbladder operation. James Comey, his deputy, said "no," he couldn't possibly authorize this. Neither, apparently, would Jack Goldsmith, the man responsible for the Attorney General's legal opinions. Gonzales had to find alternative means to get this through. And in short order Ashcroft, Comey and Goldsmith were gone from Justice and Gonzales arrived with a new team of enablers. Gonzales gave evasive or false testimony about much of this during the confirmation process, which earned him a distinction that is, as far as I know, unprecedented for a US attorney general. He enjoys such a reputation for "truthiness" (as Stephen Colbert calls it, namely something which has the outward appearance of truth, but is, in fact, a lie) that he is not permitted to speak before the Judiciary Committee without being formally sworn in. And this last weekend, three senior Judiciary Committee Republicans - Specter, Graham and Hagel, were openly discussing Gonzales' truthiness problems on talk shows.

Where once our nation had the debate of Jeffersons, Madisons, Websters and Clays, now we have the Beltway punditry - the Fred Hiatts, Chris Matthews and Norah O'Donnells - a vacuous chattering class which is the Muzak of our political discourse. They tell us that all of these scandals - the cashiering of US attorneys, the surveillance, the introduction of torture and torture-by-proxy - this is all just politics. Don't get yourself worked up. In fact, pay no attention. Time to move on.

Don't believe them. This is about the country we live in and the country we will pass to posterity. It's about fidelity to the values on which this country was founded. It is about the rule of law and accountability. Our Founding Fathers had faith in mankind, but also a very real sense of man's corruptibility. "If men were angels," James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, then we should have no need of government. But men are no angels, and politicians may in fact be closer to what Kant called a race of devils. The genius of the tripartite system of checks and balances that Madison and the other Founding Fathers created was its use of the quest for power latent in so many of us (and especially in politicians) as a brake against itself.

But in the last six years this brake has been dismantled and removed. There has been a fundamental shift in the power structure - a sweeping reallocation of power from the Congress and Courts to the Executive. Much of this has occurred secretly, behind closed doors, as a sort of constitutional coup d'état.

It's telling that the current scandal began with a secret change in the Patriot Act. Unbeknownst to those who should have run the process, including Senator Specter, then the chair of the Judiciary Committee, a provision was slipped in at the last minute giving the Attorney General a direct power of appointment of US Attorneys, skirting the advice and consent of the Senate. This provision was smuggled into the bill by a young legislative assistant who was promptly appointed, at 34 years of age, as the US Attorney in Utah. He was a friend of Kyle P. Sampson, Gonzales' chief of staff and the man who stage-managed the removal of the eight US attorneys. Sampson, who is going to become a household name in the next few days, has a nickname, "Little Rove," both for his similarity to and friendship with Karl Rove. But the point here is that the Senate should have exercised a brake by looking into the entire process, and through legislative legerdemain that was stopped.

Bismarck famously said that with legislation, like with sausage, it was perhaps best not to know what went into it. But that reflects the Bismarckian democracy, which in the end, wasn't much democracy at all. As for our process, we have Madison's admonitions not to legislate in secret, a charge that Congress has rarely lived up to, but has miserably breached these last few years.

This week at colleges and law schools around the country, there is a special focus on what is underway at Guantánamo, or Gitmo as my Navy friends call it. Newspapers today are reporting on the first hearings held in the military commissions process. Last weekend, the New York Times informed us that in his first weeks in office Bob Gates, the man who replaced Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in December, put together a comprehensive plan to shut down the Gitmo detention centers and move the entire operation to the United States. This initiative was immediately supported by Condoleezza Rice. Gates and Rice argued that the name "Guantánamo" was now held in such disrepute around the world that no one would ever associate what transpired there with any notion of justice. Gates, it seems, thought that when Bush said he wanted to shut down Gitmo, he really meant it. But he quickly learned that it's dangerous to assume Bush means what he says, especially when he's talking about Gitmo and the war on terror. Alberto Gonzales and Dick Cheney stepped in very quickly to quash the Gates plan. Gonzales said that bringing the detainees to the US could have unpleasant legal consequences for the administration.

Indeed it would. It would greatly up the chances that the detainees would be able to challenge their treatment in a federal court, before real judges, who would apply real law - starting with the US Constitution and continuing on to the Geneva Conventions. And it would open the prospect that the American people would learn, perhaps in some detail, exactly what was done to those detainees. Rumsfeld called them the "worst of the worst" but we know thanks to a Seton Hall study that roughly 80% of them were picked up by Afghan and Pakistani bounty hunters, and, in the assessment of both FBI and CIA teams that initially screened them, had no business being there. Gates and Rice were correct when they offered that no one would associate these proceedings with justice. That's because they bear no resemblance to justice, as it has traditionally been dispensed in US courts. Nor do they bear much resemblance to the high and honorable standards that have been established under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Manual on Courts-Martial. These proceedings are loaded from the outset. Defendants are not permitted counsel of their choosing, and defense counsel have been subjected to a torrent of abuse and mistreatment. Evidentiary rules are weighted in favor of the admission of coerced testimony, including torture-induced testimony, secret evidence, and evidence which cannot be confronted or properly crossexamined. A fair-minded judge might still get to a just result, but the rules the Pentagon dictated, and the shameful provisions the Congress wrote, will make it perilously difficult to get there.

Dwight David Eisenhower, the last of our nation's great warrior presidents, said "Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and co-operation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace." He reflected the received wisdom of the nation that won World War II and then turned with swift justice to the work of the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals. Through this process, America demonstrated it had a powerful thirst for justice. It vindicated America's cause in the war. It exorcised the demon of fascism which had laid hold of the heart of Europe. And it produced a new world in which the vanquished foes, Germany, Italy and Japan, emerged as America's allies for the coming generations. Eisenhower's faith in the power of justice, pursued swiftly and with a firm sense of fairness, was borne out. Wielded effectively, justice is indeed among the most potent tools in our arsenal.

And this provides reason for us to ask: Why is this administration afraid of justice the way our fathers and their fathers understood it? Why do we wait five and a half years after 9/11 to witness the first sessions of the military commissions? And why do we then witness a confused tumult which embarrasses us in the eyes of the entire world, just as Gates suggested it would?

In the end the turn against traditions and values has been about the aggrandizement of power in the executive. It has been about arrogant avoidance of accountability. And it has been about that principle that lies most at the heart of the development of the Anglo-American legal tradition, namely that no man is above the law, not even the king or the man who would be king. As with so many things of recent times, it resonates of England in the seventeenth century, and reminds us of the famous words uttered by Thomas Fuller: "Be ye ever so high, still the law is above thee." But the mantra of the current administration is to frustrate all efforts to hold it to account, to grant itself immunity for its crimes, to strip courts of jurisdiction, including even the great writ. On each of these points, the conduct of the Bush presidency mirrors that of Charles I, the monarch whose conduct provoked Fuller's statement.

Americans have inherited a great legacy, one that embraces the worth and dignity of all human beings, the promise of equal justice for all before the law, a principle of limited, carefully divided and counter-posed governmental powers, with full accountability to a people in whom sovereignty rests. The answer to our current problems lies in our past, and in fidelity to the best that America has brought forth. But it requires citizens to be alert and to see what passes before them. And it requires us to take our heritage seriously.


Remarks delivered at the University of Mississippi School of Law, Oxford, MS, Mar. 28, 2007
Posted 1:22 AM by Scott Horton [link]

Corporate Muzzling Of Politics

The Commission on Presidential Debates effectively keeps any real politics out of the debates.
---
George Farah

March 22, 2007

George Farah is the author of No Debate: How the Republican and Democratic Parties Secretly Control the Presidential Debates and the founder of Open Debates (www.OpenDebates.org).

The major parties cannot police themselves. For a decade, the House Ethics Committee, comprised of Republicans and Democrats, has refused to punish blatant acts of corruption so that both parties can continue to rake in corporate contributions. Similarly, since its inception, the bipartisan Federal Election Commission has failed to enforce election laws because the appointed Commissioners rebuff efforts to investigate members of their own parties. And unbeknownst to the public, for the last 20 years, through a private corporation called the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Republican and Democratic parties have worked together to ruin our most sacred political forums in order to protect their candidates from genuine debate.

Despite its purported commitment to "providing the best possible information to viewers and listeners," the Commission on Presidential Debates exists to secretly award control of the presidential debates to the Democratic and Republican candidates.

The commission, which claims to "have no relationship with any political party or candidate," was actually created by the Republican and Democratic parties. In 1986, the two parties' national committees ratified an agreement "to take over the presidential debates." Fifteen months later, then-Republican Party chair Frank Fahrenkopf and then-Democratic Party chair Paul Kirk incorporated the commission, and they have co-chaired the organization ever since.

Every four years, negotiators for the major party nominees meet behind closed doors and jointly draft secret debate contracts called memoranda of understanding. These contracts dictate precisely how the debates will be structured—from who gets to participate, to who will ask the questions, to the temperature in the auditoriums. The commission merely implements and conceals the contracts, shielding the major party candidates from public criticism.

In 1996, for example, Republican nominee Bob Dole and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton spoiled the presidential debates before they started. During debate negotiations, Dole demanded the exclusion of Reform Party nominee Ross Perot, despite the fact that Perot had received $29 million in taxpayers' funds for his campaign and that over three-quarters of eligible voters wanted him included. Clinton, meanwhile, desired the smallest possible audience for the debates—what George Stephanopoulos called a "nonevent"—because he was comfortably leading in the polls.

Dole and Clinton struck a deal; Perot would be excluded, one debate would be canceled, and the remaining two debates would be deliberately scheduled opposite the World Series, producing the smallest audience in presidential debate history.

The American people never knew why a candidate they wanted to see was excluded, or why the debates were held on the same night as the World Series. Dole and Clinton were able to conceal their manipulation of the debates because of the complicity of the Commission on Presidential Debates.

Moreover, under the commission's tenure, debate formats have become stilted and unrevealing. The Republican and Democratic nominees handpick compliant moderators, artificially limit response times, require the screening of town-hall questions, and even prohibit themselves from talking to each other. The final product amounts to little more than a series of glorified bipartisan press conferences.

Walter Cronkite called the commission-sponsored debates an "unconscionable fraud" and accused the candidates of "sabotaging the electoral process."

To top it off, Anheuser-Busch, US Airways, and other corporations foot most of the bill for these candidate-controlled pseudo-debates through tax-deductible contributions to the commission. Debate sites have become corporate carnivals, with Anheuser-Busch girls in skimpy outfits passing out pamphlets denouncing beer taxes. The corporate connection is not surprising; Mr. Fahrenkopf is the nation's leading gambling lobbyist, and Mr. Kirk has lobbied on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

The presidential debates weren’t always controlled by the major parties and promoted by business interests. For three election cycles, the League of Women Voters nobly served as a nonpartisan debate sponsor that championed the public interest. In 1980, the league invited independent candidate John B. Anderson to participate in a presidential debate, even though President Jimmy Carter adamantly refused to debate him.

Four years later, when the Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale campaigns vetoed 68 proposed panelists in order to eliminate difficult questions, the league held a press conference and lambasted the candidates for "abusing the process." The ensuing public outcry persuaded the candidates to accept the league's selected panelists.

And in 1988, when the George Bush and Michael Dukakis campaigns drafted the first secret "memorandum of understanding" that dictated who would participate and under what conditions, the league declined to implement it. Instead, the league withdrew its sponsorship and issued a blistering press release, claiming that "the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter."

We need another nonpartisan debate sponsor—a Citizens’ Debate Commission—to retake control of the presidential debates and follow in the League’s footsteps. Just as an independent ethics prosecutor is needed to combat congressional corruption, and just as an apolitical regulatory agency is needed to enforce election laws, a genuinely nonpartisan debate sponsor is needed to ensure that our most important public forums serve the voters' interests.

Framing the Presidency

by AZIZ HUQ

[posted online on February 19, 2007]

What kind of executive branch did America's constitutional framers have in mind? It's a question with which federal courts are now busy wrestling. And the quality of liberty American citizens enjoy very much depends on their answers.

Today, President Bush's lawyers claim unlimited power to seize, indefinitely and without charges, individuals the Administration deems "enemy combatants." In two separate appellate court cases--one of which, Omar v. Harvey was argued earlier this month, the President's lawyers made the following, remarkable claim: When international entanglements are involved, signified in the Omar case by a United Nationals Security Council resolution, US officials can detain a US citizen, indefinitely. Last week, the DC Court of Appeals rightly--and squarely--rejected this legally specious claim. It remains to be seen whether the DC Court of Appeals will reject a similar claim in the case of Munaf v. Harvey.

(In Omar v. Harvey, a US citizen, Shawqi Omar, was arrested by US personnel at his home in Baghdad in October 2004. After Omar was arrested, he was taken to a US prison in Baghdad, interrogated and subjected to electric shocks. He remains in US custody, rotated through a series of prisons in Iraq. In Munaf v. Harvey, another US citizen, Mohammed Munaf, now a prisoner at Camp Cropper in Iraq, is claiming an unfair trial in connection with his death sentence imposed by an Iraqi court for his role in the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists, for whom he was acting as translator.)

The Framers had well-articulated trouble with the notion of freewheeling executive power. The Presidency they created, and the institution that is celebrated today, broke decisively from European traditions of monarchical absolutism. Indeed the English tradition of government, upon which ours is modeled, decisively rejected the King's claim to stand above the law; that was in 1688, almost a century before the Anmerican Revolution.

Today, along with all the other US presidents, we remember two great leaders: George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Both men understood and practiced the wisdom of executive restraint even in times of crisis. They understood that power flows from righteousness not from soldier's steel. The measure of a nation, as much as the measure of a man, is the ability to hold true under pressure to universal truths of decency and humility.

Executive authority strains most vigorously against its constitutional restraints in times of war and in matters of human liberty. Both Washington and Lincoln faced precisely these dilemmas, and resolved them without compromising America's dignity or reputation.

In the Revolutionary War, British forces acted with rank disregard for the well-being of their American prisoners, leaving literally hundreds to die under wretched conditions in prison ships off New York's harbors.

Yet General Washington would not descend to their level. "Treat them with humanity," said Washington in 1776, of British prisoned taken after the Battle of Trenton, "and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal ways of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren."

The Bush Administration's current effort to vanquish Al Qaeda and the menace of terrorism rests on America's capacity to maintain the good faith and trust of a globalized world. When our safety depends on Uzbekistan's willingness to secure loose nukes and Indonesia's alacrity in shutting down jihadist websites, international cooperation is at a premium. To act as though the international law of human rights has no application to American action, by contrast, is a surefire way to extinguish that cooperation.

The Civil War era provides equally important lessonsn for our own times. While Lincoln famously decided in April 1861 to suspend the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus, which is the Constitution's committed remedy for unlawful executive detention, he did not purport to stand above the law. To the contrary, Lincoln acted only in the face of imminent and undeniable disaster, with Confederate forces looming on Washington from Virginia, and an angry Baltimore mob attacking Union troop deployments.

Yet as soon as crisis receded, Lincoln returned to Congress to seek legislative approval for the unlawful detentions. Lincoln eloquently pleaded his own case, candidly revealing the causes and dimensions of the moment's need. And Congress duly authorized what, at the time, had been unlawful executive action.

The contrasts to today could not be more stark. The emergency powers the President claims have no expiration date. Unlike Lincoln, President Bush shows no readiness to be candid to Congress. Executive detention operations from Guantánamo to Italy to Iraq have fostered the contempt of the world community. Germany and Italy have issued warrants against CIA agents due to their involvement in the illicit kidnapping of terrorism suspects. Just this week, Argentina's president frankly told visiting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that the President's torture policies were wholly unacceptable.

When the nation's leading law enforcement official becomes persona non grata around the world, we have cause for concern. Thomas Jefferson said it best in the Declaration of Independence: The fledgling nation, Jefferson noted, had to maintain the "decent respect for the opinions of mankind.

Above all, it is the President, in his respect for the due process of law and the inherent dignity of citizens and non-citizens alike, who must maintain this respect. Today more than other any calendar date is a chance to reflect on whether in the Bush Administration, this trust continues to be fulfilled.

Israel on the Potomac: power under pressure

Norman Birnbaum

25 - 1 - 2007

The crisis of the neo-conservative foreign-policy agenda in the United States is having complex repercussions on pro-Israeli organisations and voices in Washington. In the context of recent political controversies, Norman Birnbaum assesses the nature and extent of their influence.

The discussion of Jews in United States politics and society, too often attended by polemical and polarising rhetoric on all sides, can only benefit from calm inquiry with a strong, independent factual basis. If this is true in the context of domestic policy, it is equally so where the United States-Israel relationship is concerned. This essay seeks to present the realities of Jewish and pro-Israeli political activity in Washington, and to look at how they are being affected by evolving political and strategic arguments in the second term of the George W Bush presidency.

The arguments begin, as so often, with numbers. How many Jews live in the United States? Not even the demographers agree - perhaps not surprising, given the doubts surrounding questions of identity, intermarriage, and affiliation. A useful working figure is 6 million, or about 2% of the US population (now over 300 million), with especially large concentrations in the urban areas of Los Angeles and New York above all.

Most American Jews are descended from the eastern European Jewish emigrants of the late 19th and early 20th century. About 150,000 came in the 1930s from Austria, Germany and western Europe, followed after the war by another 150,000 holocaust survivors. There is also a post-1989 Russian Jewish population, and a large number of Israelis.

As a whole, Jews in the US are economically and culturally successful: well educated, prominent in business and finance, the arts, education, science and politics. The Jewish electorate is overwhelmingly Democrat: 80% voted for the Democratic Party in the congressional elections of November 2006, eleven out of 100 senators are Jewish, and the party draws at least a third of its funding from Jewish donors.

Notwithstanding their own prosperity, Jews generally favour the American welfare state - and (a vocal minority of the Orthodox excepted) consider that modernity demands a rather liberal reading of the Old Testament in matters of sexuality. In foreign policy, Jews have generally been multilateralist: their great modern hero was Franklin D Roosevelt. Many American Jews, moreover, share with their fellow-citizens the view that a negotiated solution to the conflict with the Palestinians ("land for peace") is desirable.

	Norman Birnbaum is university professor emeritus at Georgetown University Law Center. He was one of the founding editors of New Left Review, was on the editorial board of Partisan Review, and is on the board of The Nation. He is active in the US Democratic party and has close ties to western Europe. Among his books is After Progress: American Social Reform And European Socialism In The Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2001) Also by Norman Birnbaum in openDemocracy: "Remember Solidarity: Poland's journey to democracy" (26 August 2005) "Election and empire" (17 October 2006) "One week after the storm" (15 November 2006)

A political bond

There is a contrast here with the most audible and influential voice of American Jewry, the network of individuals and organisations often referred to as the "Israel lobby" - the grouping led jointly by the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations. Their work - coordinated with, inter alia, the Israel government, its embassy in Washington and the political parties of the Israel right - takes a very different approach to that of most American Jews, above all in foreign policy.

The lobby supports American unilateralism, disparages the large parts of world opinion critical of the Israel occupation of Palestine, and endorses Israel's most repressive measures against the Palestinians; and many of the lobbyists, having successfully agitated for war on Iraq, are now mobilising for an equally hard line against Iran.

Its tactics have (until recently) been remarkably successful in neutralising the considerable criticism of Israel, and of the American alignment with Israel, voiced by many in the American churches, among the leadership of some black organisations, and by anti-imperial Democrats in Congress. Its rhetorical weapons include insisting on a direct connection between Arab and Muslim opposition to Israel's occupation and European anti-Semitism. The argument is that those who voice sympathy for that opposition are objectively anti-Semitic, whatever they may believe or say. If the critics are Jewish, the explanation is simple: they suffer from self-abnegation if not self-hatred.

After the six-day war of 1967 war, the Israel lobby was able to count on the support of the media, the marginalisation of Israel's critics, and overwhelming support in Congress. A politician who incurs the anger of the Israel lobby is taking a risk. One example of many is from the 2004 presidential campaign, when Howard Dean called for American "even-handedness" in the middle east - and then retreated, in haste and under fire.

A problem here is that American Jewry has allowed itself to be represented by persons who in manner and personality resemble not the Nobel prizewinners, writers and thinkers of whom it has every reason to be proud, but an earlier generation's formidable gangsters, who are not above descending to vulgar ethnocentrism for the sake of defending Israel.

This can be manifest in the tension between the claim of full rights in the (majority-Christian) United States by virtue of the universal principles of citizenship, and the insistence that nothing be done to alter the Jewish character of Israel. It is also apparent in the acceptance of an alliance with fundamentalist Protestants, whose Biblical literalism translates into uncritical support for Israel. Such contradictions can only be explained by a visceral identification with Israel.

For most American Jews, however, the ties to Israel are symbolic. They are not ready to abandon their promised land (the American suburbs) to settle in Israel. What does generate support for Israel is the combination of ancestral memories both of European anti-Semitism and American variety (once very widespread), along with awareness and imagery of the Nazi genocide of the 1940s.

Moreover, Israel in the American Jewish psyche is not the present corrupt, conflicted and poorly-led country, but a half-heroic, half-victimised and entirely mythic nation. Despite the integration of American Jewry in the larger society, many American Jews live in a hermetic world in which other Jews reinforce their beliefs. It is not only the active minority of committed Zionists whose instinctive reaction to the situation in the middle east is that Israel can do no wrong: otherwise critical and reflective American Jews think the same way.

They could not do so in such serene fashion were their non-Jewish fellow citizens more sceptical of Israel's claims. Such scepticism is made rare by the combination of guilt over the holocaust, a commendable reluctance to appear anti-Semitic, the systematic pro-Israel bias of the media, and (more recently) an identification of the US campaign against Islamist radicalism with Israel's conflict with the Palestinians.

More profoundly, the US's Calvinist traditions, which influence America's political as well as overall culture, nurture sympathy for Israel. If the US is the new Israel, all the more reason to support the old one. The geopolitical advantages of a military alliance (albeit ambiguous), and Israel's capacity to function as a preferred client, help to consolidate this potent mix.

The current president - a fundamentalist Christian attached to Biblical literalism, and a unilateralist in his conception of American power - is in this context a representative figure. His refusal even to pretend that the US feels any moral obligation to the Palestinians, his dismissal of the legitimacy of their elected representatives, his encouragement of the most brutal and reckless of Israel's policies - all are familiar, and any criticism by more rational imperial managers leaves him unperturbed.

In any case, Bush can for the most part count on the Democrats. In the new Democrat-controlled Congress, enough party stalwarts are sceptical of negotiating with Iran and Syria, and opposed to serious pressure on Israel to abandon its unilateralism with respect to the Palestinians, to prevent serious movement in the middle east.

A sign of retreat

That said, the Israel lobby is these days not entirely triumphant. Some influential Republicans are in open dissent from Bush's unilateralism; they include prominent figures like the former national-security advisor Brent Scowcroft, Richard Haass of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and senior senators such as Richard Lugar and John Warner.

In September 2006, Haass defied the Israel lobby by inviting Iran's president to the CFR. Elie Wiesel attempted to organise a resignation of Jewish members of the council and was rebuffed. The moment was significant: one doesn't become president of the CFR, as official an unofficial body as there is, by solitary displays of iconoclasm - Haass, an admirable figure, must surely have coordinated his decision with a number of very senior persons.

A current, intriguing judicial prosecution offers further signals. A former mid-level official of the defence department, Lawrence Franklin, has pleaded guilty to misappropriating classified information on middle-east policy and giving it to two officers of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee; the latter, also under indictment, have been dismissed by Aipac. One of them, Steven Rosen, is known as an aggressive proponent of an American attack on Iran.

The Aipac officials, who have said they were carrying out the policies of their organisation, may be mindful of the fate of the civilian naval-intelligence official Jonathan Pollard. He spied for Israel, was sentenced to life imprisonment, and was left to his fate by most of the American Jewish organisations.

None of this prevented Aipac from persuading an extraordinary number of senior officials, congressmen and senators to appear at its annual meeting in Washington. Indeed, it has used the indictment to mobilise its supporters, arguing that it is proof of "anti-Semitism" in the government itself. Aipac has been unable to explain why its close friend, President Bush, has not intervened to terminate the prosecution. The answer is clear enough: the sheer effrontery of the Israel lobby and its placemen has provoked a reaction in the permanent government.

The indications that the capacity of the Israel lobby to set the limits of US policy appears now to be somewhat reduced may pass unnoticed by the American public. By contrast, Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid has been widely discussed; the Israel lobby's contribution to the discussion has been an extensive campaign of denigration, alleging Carter's bias and incompetence (which has not stopped the book appearing on the best-seller lists).

Rabbi Henry Siegman, writing in The Nation, said: "Carter has been vilified for saying things about the occupation that appear regularly in almost all major Israeli newspapers." The book also provoked resignations from Carter's institutional colleagues, as well as criticism (in the midst of the mid-term election campaign) from Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean; Democratic politicians sought to emphasise that Carter did not speak for the Democrats.

Two episodes

A segment of the educated public (including many liberal and secularised Jews) is clearly not prepared to accept the Israel lobby's rules as to what may or may not be said about the middle east. A great deal of credit is due to the universities for maintaining a free space for discussion despite a great deal of pressure. Columbia University, for example, defended Edward Said, the late Palestinian scholar, from many attacks. The pressure continues; so does the opposition to it.

Two recent episodes are instructive.

The first involves the distinguished historian of Europe, Tony Judt, who (in an article in the New York Review of Books, 23 October 2003) described the idea of a Jewish state as anachronistic, and said that Israel's refusal to give the Palestinians a viable state would in the long run oblige both peoples to live together in a bi-national polity.

Judt, accused of calling for Israel's destruction, was undeterred. When an international group of younger New Yorkers invited him to speak in 2006 at the Polish consulate in New York, the Anti-Defamation League (which had just issued a report very critical of Poland) contacted the consulate, and the event was subsequently cancelled. The head of the ADL, Abraham Foxman, declared that the decision was entirely that of the Poles.

In a grotesque sequel, Judt himself withdrew from a speaking engagement at Manhattan College when a rabbi (also a member of the state legislature) threatened to convene a demonstration of holocaust survivors. Judt's own New York University has, like Columbia, been steadfast in upholding its faculty's rights to speak.

The second episode involves two more academics: the prominent Harvard professor, Stephen Walt, and his University of Chicago colleague, John Mearsheimer. Their London Review of Books article (23 March of 2006) entitled "The Israel Lobby" - written for the editors of the Atlantic Monthly, who decided against publishing it - provoked a firestorm of criticism.

The Israel lobby seemed to sense (correctly) that Mearsheimer and Walt are dangerous adversaries. They are not Jewish (some of the arguments about Judt - once a young Zionist - resembles one of those New York Jewish family quarrels which from time to time bring more heat than light to Manhattan); they are respected academic figures; and they have no sharply etched political profiles.

The scholars argue that the present alignment with Israel is not in the US's national interest, and that its continuation can be explained only by the Israel lobby's success in blocking serious debate about it. The response by Israel's supporters - where serious criticism has been drowned by calumny, distortion and self-righteousness - does not disprove their assertion. A number of Harvard graduates even announced that they will no longer contribute to their alma mater. Yet the overall response has been interesting: the prestigious publishing house, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux has asked Mearsheimer and Walt to write a book on the issue.

The Judt affair and the Mearsheimer-Walt paper have engendered two statements by rather different groups. Mark Lilla and Richard Sennett organised a set of scholars and writers to protest the ADL's intervention in Tony Judt's invitation (New York Review of Books, 16 November 2006). The letter treated the leader of the ADL as a public-spirited citizen devoted in principle to freedom of expression; its authors and signatories took no account of the ADL's having settled out of court a civil action brought against it in 1993 for (amongst other things) having collaborated with Israel and then-apartheid South Africa in spying on people in the US.

Another statement, which appeared on the website of the cultural-political journal Archipelago, had a somewhat broader range of signatories, including some very senior retired officials of the US foreign-policy apparatus. It is rather less solicitous of the ADL's bona fides (see Michael Massing, "The Storm over The Israel Lobby," New York Review of Books, 8 June 2006; and John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's lengthy document, "Setting The Record Straight: A Response To Critics of 'The Israel Lobby'.")

Tony Judt's articles and the pieces by Mearsheimer and Walt, and Michael Massing, are certainly evidence for a widening of the scope of discussion in the academy and at the apex of the US's culturally stratified society. They are part of a counter-offensive of reason which in the end unites critics of the American empire and the more intelligent and honest imperial managers, against the Israel lobby and its unilateralist allies.

A time to rethink

Still, much of the body politic remains immobilised, constrained by the Israel lobby to narrow and ritualised responses to problems that cannot be solved (or even described) by its rhetoric. The catastrophe in Iraq may provide three groups with an incentive to rethink.

The first is the Jewish community itself. The Israel lobby speaks for organisations which amount to no more than half, at the most, of the American Jewish population. Its leaders exploit the community's fears and its solidarity with Israel - but ignore the willingness of many in the community to explore alternatives to policies which (in Gaza, the West Bank and most recently in Lebanon) have produced serial disasters.

The largest single Jewish group in the US is the Union for Reform Judaism, with nearly 1.5 million members. It is open to the arguments of the advocates of changed policies in Israel itself, sceptical of the Israel lobby's alliance with the Christian fundamentalists, and could serve as a bridge between the Jews who make their Jewish identification central to their lives and those more integrated with the secular pluralism of American life.

A Jewish identification by no means entails a blind endorsement of Israel: indeed, it has often led Jewish leaders to severe criticism of Israel's policies. Some of the groups closest to the critics of Likud in Israel itself are now discussing the formation of a bloc that would, in American politics, actively oppose the present alliance of the Israel lobby with those in Israel who are opposed to a critical reappraisal of the occupation.

The second group is the Democratic Party. It cannot hope to develop an alternative American foreign policy while retaining its present financial and intellectual dependence on the Israel lobby. Many factions inside the party are restive at the relationship - from the black and progressive congressional caucuses to human-rights advocates and liberal Christians.

The third group consists of those custodians of American tradition amongst the imperial managers who look back to Franklin D Roosevelt for inspiration, and to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr for ideas on the limits of American power. They see no reason for the US to incur the permanent enmity of the Arab and Muslim peoples by encouraging Israel's illusions of omnipotence. They consider that a policy which would do justice to American ideals and interests would demand far more even-handedness in the middle east.

In an interdependent world, the United States cannot and does not act alone. A European contribution to change in its policy is possible; but for that to happen, the Europeans would have to think of themselves as the equals of the US in their right to participate in shaping the middle east. That would be good for Europe, good for the United States, good for Israelis and Palestinians - and good for American Jews.

Norman Birnbaum

Hysteria at Herzliya

by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted Jan 30, 2007

When Congress finally decides on just the right language for its "non-binding resolution" deploring Bush's leadership in this war, it might consider a resolution to keep us out of the next one.

For America is on a collision course with an Iran of 70 million, and the folks who stampeded us into Iraq are firing pistols in the air again.

At the annual Herzliya Conference, U.S. presidential aspirants, neoconservatives and Israeli hawks were all invoking the Holocaust and warning of the annihilation of the Jews.

Israel's "Bibi" Netanyahu, who compares Iran's Ahmadinejad to Hitler, said: "The world that didn't stop the Holocaust last time can stop it this time. ... Who will lead the effort against genocide if not us? The world will not stand up on behalf of the Jews if the Jews do not stand up on behalf of the world."

Said former Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz: "Iran is the heart of the problem in the Middle East. It is the most urgent threat facing the world, and needs to be dealt with before it's too late." After meeting with the Department of State's Nicholas Burns, Mofaz called 2007 "a year of decision."

Richard Perle assured the conference that Bush will attack Iran rather than see it acquire nuclear weapons capabilities. Newt Gingrich also brought his soothing touch to the proceedings: "(C)itizens who do not wake up every morning and think about possible catastrophic civilian casualties are deluding themselves.

"Three nuclear weapons are a second holocaust. ... I'll repeat it. Three nuclear weapons are a second holocaust. ... Our enemies are fully as determined as Nazi Germany and more determined than the Soviets. Our enemies will kill us the first chance they get.

"If we knew that tomorrow morning we would lose Haifa, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, what would we do to stop it? If we knew that we would tomorrow lose Boston, San Francisco or Atlanta, what would we do?"

Mitt Romney agreed. Ahmadinejad's Iran is more dangerous than Khrushchev's Soviet Union, which put missiles in Cuba. For the Soviets "were never suicidal. Soviet commitment to national survival was never in question. That assumption cannot be made to an irrational regime (Iran) that celebrates martyrdom."

Ehud Olmert, mired in scandal, his popularity in the tank after the Lebanon fiasco, was as hawkish as Bibi: "The Jewish people, with the scars of the Holocaust fresh on its body, cannot afford to let itself face the threat of annihilation once again. ... We will stand up against nuclear threats and even prevent them."

Came then U.S. peace candidate John Edwards. Keeping Iran from nuclear weapons "is the greatest challenge of our generation. ... To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table. ... Let me reiterate -- all options."

Wrote the Financial Times' Philip Stephens of Herzliya, "I gave up counting the times I heard the words 'existential threat' to describe Iran's nuclear program capability."

A few weeks back, according to UPI's Arnaud De Borchgrave, Netanyahu declared that Israel "must immediately launch an intense, international public relations front first and foremost on the United States -- the goal being to encourage President Bush to live up to specific pledges he would not allow Iran to arm itself with nuclear weapons. We must make clear to the (U.S.) government, the Congress and the American public that a nuclear Iran is a threat to the U.S. and the entire world, not only Israel."

Israel's war is to be sold as America's war.

The project is underway. According to Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor of the Guardian, Israeli media are reporting that the assignment to convince the world of the need for tough action on Iran has been given to Meir Dagan, head of Mossad.

Listening to the war talk, Gen. Wesley Clark exploded to Arianna Huffington: "You just have to read what's in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided, but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office-seekers."

The former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe was ordered out of ranks and dressed down by Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. But Matt Yglesias of American Prospect, himself Jewish, says Clark spoke truth: "(I)t's true that major Jewish organizations are pushing this country into war with Iran."

Yet is the hysteria at Herzliya justified? Consider:

Not once since its 1979 revolution has Iran started a war. In any war with America, or Israel with its hundreds of nuclear weapons, Iran would not be annihilating anyone. Iran would be risking annihilation.

Not only has Iran no nukes, the Guardian reported yesterday, "Iran's efforts to produce highly enriched uranium ... are in chaos." That centrifuge facility at Natanz is "archaic, prone to breakdown and lacks the materials for industrial-scale production."

There is no need for war. Yet, Israelis, neocons and their agents of influence are trying to whip us into one. Senators who are seeking absolution for having voted to take us into Iraq ought to be confronted and asked just what they are doing to keep us out of a war in Iran.

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Copyright © 2007 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

Quote of the Day

"[M]ore than half the country (58 percent) say they wish the Bush presidency were simply over, a sentiment that is almost unanimous among Democrats (86 percent), and is shared by a clear majority (59 percent) of independents and even one in five (21 percent) Republicans. Half (49 percent) of all registered voters would rather see a Democrat elected president in 2008, compared to just 28 percent who’d prefer the GOP to remain in the White House." -- Brian Braiker, Newsweek, Jan 27, 2007.

Robert D. Novak: McCain TV performance dings candidacy

Related

The myth of McCain
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Jan 27, 2006

By ROBERT D. NOVAK

WASHINGTON – Democratic strategists who had feared Sen. John McCain as the potentially unbeatable Republican candidate for President in 2008 were surprised and delighted by his dour appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” last Sunday.

One Democratic leader referred to McCain’s performance, in suggesting President Bush’s additional 21,000 troops may be inadequate, as “comatose.” A Republican adviser to McCain said it was one of the worst performances ever on “Meet the Press.” The senator’s defender said he could not be expected to be cheerful about a plan to send additional U.S. troops in harm’s way.

A footnote: Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is picking up support for President among House Republicans, headed by former Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Whither Rahm?

Sources close to Sen. Barack Obama are sure that Rep. Rahm Emanuel will not support his fellow Illinois Democrat for the Presidential nomination but will back Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

If so, Emanuel would be the only prominent Democratic officeholder in Illinois not for Obama. As a senior White House aide, Emanuel was one of President Bill Clinton’s favorites. Emanuel has been close to both of the Clintons.

Emanuel refuses to talk about his 2008 Presidential choice. He says he was deeply engaged in politics for two years as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and in his new role, as House Democratic Caucus chairman, he is committed to legislation.

Undermining Hillary

Jerome Corsi, co-author of the 2004 campaign book “Unfit for Command” attacking Sen. John Kerry’s war record, joined up Tuesday with the organization intended to similarly undermine Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2008 campaign.

TheVanguard.org is intended to be a right-wing version of the leftist MoveOn.Org. It was founded by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, including Gil Amelio, former CEO of Apple and National Semiconductor.

Coming on board Feb. 16 as TheVanguard’s full-time editorial and creative director will be Richard Poe, who has served as editor-in-chief of FrontPage Magazine. He has been described as the conservative movement’s leading expert on MoveOn.Org’s strategy in bringing together disparate elements with a common viewpoint.

Bush on Abortion

President Bush extended his stay at Camp David last weekend to arrive back at the White House Monday afternoon, missing the annual anti-abortion March for Life that morning in Washington to mark the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision.

Bush was at the White House on Jan. 22, 2001, for the first March of his Presidency but sent a written statement rather than attend in person. For the next five years, he was out of town for the event: Charleston, W.Va. (2002), St. Louis (2003), Roswell, N.M. (2004), Camp David (2005) and Manhattan, Kan. (2006). His routine is to address the event by phone.

A footnote: Only two of the many Republican Presidential hopefuls attended this year’s March for Life: Rep. Duncan Hunter of California and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas. On Sunday, Brownback visited the Holiday Inn on Capitol Hill, mingling with marchers from Iowa (the first state in the Presidential nomination process).

Dollars for Rudy

Texas Republican contributors are being solicited to spend $30,000 for dinner with former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani at the Houstonian Hotel in Houston Feb. 1 to finance his “presidential exploratory committee.” The “private” dinner will follow a 6:30 to 8 p.m. cocktail reception, costing $2,100 a person and $4,200 for couples.

The best-known host of Giuliani’s Houston event is billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens Jr., chairman of the private equity firm BP Capital Management. Also on Giuliani’s Texas fund-raising team are Tom Hicks, whose company owns the Texas Rangers baseball team; oil industry executive Jim Lee; and lawyer Patrick C. Oxford.

A footnote: A Giuliani fund-raiser will be held Jan. 29 in Pacific Palisades, Calif., at the home of Bill Simon, the 2002 Republican candidate for governor of California, costing $2,300 a person and $4,600 per couple.

Robert D. Novak is a syndicated columnist and a commentator for the FOX network.

The Bush Presidency Is Over

Worse To Come

Pierre Tristam/Candide’s Notebooks, January 25, 2007

Toward the end of Travels With Charley Steinbeck makes this observation: “My own journey started long before I left, and was over before I returned. I know exactly where and when it was over. Near Abingdon, in the dog-leg of Virginia , at four o’clock of a windy afternoon, without warning or good-by or kiss my foot, my journey went away and left me stranded far from home. I tried to call it back, to catch it up—a foolish and hopeless matter, because it was definitely and permanently over and finished.” Anyone who’s taken a long journey knows what Steinbeck is talking about. It isn’t always the end point of a journey that determines its end, nor is it ever the person who takes the journey who determines it. The same can be said of presidencies. Some of them begin long before inauguration day. Bill Clinton’s began sometime in late summer, about the time when Maureen Dowd noticed that the elder Bush just wasn’t interested anymore. “This,” she wrote in a Sept. 6, 1992 dispatch co-written with Thomas Friedman, “may be the first Administration in history that is scrambling for its first-100-days plan in its last 60 days before facing the voters.” Johnson’s presidency ended in February 1968, Jimmy Carter’s on April 24, 1980, when eight servicemen were killed in the Iranian desert as an attempt to rescue the 52 American hostages held in Teheran disintegrated in a sand storm, and Reagan’s ended in Reykjavik in 1987, when he was about to sign away the American nuclear weapons arsenal in an abolitionist deal with Gorbachev. His aides stepped in and ensured that he’d be nothing more than the acting president for the remainder of his scandal-ridden term.

The second Bush’s administration unfortunately began early, too, on that turbid Election Night in 2000 when Fox News set the tone of the unmaking of Gore’s legitimate win and the Supreme Court sealed the fix thirty-six days later. But if W.’s presidency started more than two months too soon, it ended two years early. Bush’s Abingdon was his January 10 speech, the so-called “surge” speech. It became evident then why he couldn’t make up his mind before Christmas about what to say, let alone how to say it. He had nothing to say: His administration was in disarray, his policies bankrupt, his integrity a nightly punch-line. Even his beloved speech-writer was gone, loyal no more. Not long from now when the stories begin to creep out about these final days of the Bush junta we’ll be told that the White House was a menagerie of chaos and backbiting, of uncontrolled tempers and lusted-after booze. We’ll discovered to what extent the nation’s business was unmoored and the nation’s executive off his rockers, his wife or maybe his dog, or an obscure corporate friend, his last remaining link with reality. His advisers either inflated his bubble or betrayed him, or both, if the advisers in question are Condoleezza Rice and Karen Hughes, the two who had his trust and could have made a difference. The January 10 speech proved that neither they nor Bush were interested in recasting the last two years of the presidency into a workable surge of its own, the way even Clinton managed to do despite the Lewinsky affair (and the Clinton presidency, as we’ll also discover, has yet to end).

The State of the Union confirmed the drift announced on January 10. The proposal on energy—cutting gasoline consumption by 20 percent from projected consumption in 2017—is a non-binding promise that rests on undeveloped technologies. Improving fuel efficiency is a great idea, if only it weren’t two decades too late, if it wasn’t so timid (one mile per gallon in improved efficiency per year, for just a few years), if Bush hadn’t been so opposed to the idea in the last six years. His desperation was clearest in his appeals for bi-partisanship, a notion no other president in the twentieth century worked so hard to demolish after making it the centerpiece of his inaugural in 2001. But we knew even then that he was a liar of magnificent proportions. He was the man who’d spent the electoral campaign selling the public on his massive tax cuts while promising to save entitlement programs and pay down the national debt. It wasn’t his fault that the public bought the lie whole, though, let’s always remember, the majority of the public never did.

Resigning would be too statesmanlike an act for a man who likes to rule by edicts, and to whom power is its own reward. So we’ll spend the next two years sustaining his chaotic clock-running, watching the flashpoints of disasters he lit up spread their fires from Iraq to Afghanistan to Iran to North Korea, watching the promises he made about New Orleans sink in a flood of indifference and government incompetence, watch the machinery of government, corrupted by his years of nepotism and contempt, become its self-fulfilling prophecy of shoddiness and mistrust. The damage done by the Bush junta in the last six years may yet be outdone by the damage of the next two, because at least in the last six there was the hint that some of the criminals involved in the mugging believed in what they were doing, Bush among them. The faith-based business, remember. Now the worst part of the end of the Bush presidency, the most palpable part of that end, as we saw it on January 10 and again in the State of the Union , is that Bush himself, like his father in 1992, no longer believes. He’s given up. He quit. As he has always quit. What’s left is the old shell, the reconstructed drunk without a goal, the resentful loser. And there’s nothing more dangerous when he remains, all ridicule aside, the “decider” and worse: the commander-in-chief.

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New law could leave Chirac open to charges

· New law gives protection for sitting presidents only
· MPs can impeach if future leader breaches their duty

Angelique Chrisafis in Paris
Wednesday January 17, 2007
The Guardian

The French parliament yesterday began debating a bill on presidential immunity from prosecution, which could allow Jacques Chirac to face possible questioning over corruption scandals when he steps down.

Mr Chirac's 12 years as president have been dogged by a number of scandals dating back to his time as mayor of Paris between 1977 and 1995, including claims of illegal party funding and kickbacks which have resulted in convictions for some of his associates. He has always denied any wrongdoing or knowledge of corruption. But he has never been questioned by judges because he went straight from mayoralty to presidency in 1995.

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When a judge sought to interrogate Mr Chirac during his first term as president, France's highest court was forced to rule on his status, deciding that the president had blanket immunity while in office. The ruling effectively suspended investigation into Mr Chirac's conduct but was not enshrined into law.

During his 2002 re-election campaign, Mr Chirac promised to clarify the status of serving presidents. The resulting bill, drawn up by an independent commission, has been gathering dust for years and is now being rushed through before the presidential election this spring. It offers no protection for Mr Chirac should investigating judges decide to reopen their cases when his mandate ends. However, it would ensure full immunity for serving presidents, sparing future heads of state the messy wrangling Mr Chirac was subjected to. The bill would also give parliament power to impeach the president in the event of a "breach of duty".

Mr Chirac has not said whether he will seek a third term in the two-round election this April and May, although it is thought unlikely. There is no indication whether judges want to revive inquiries focusing on him. Any prosecution for corruption or fraud would have to be brought within a month of him leaving office.

Dozens of people have gone on trial over party funding scandals which revolved around Paris city hall. Last year businessmen and friends of Mr Chirac were found guilty of corruption for a housing scam used to fund his former Rally for the Republic party while he was mayor.

Earlier, Mr Chirac's former cabinet director Michel Roussin was convicted in a kickback scandal involving contracts to repair Paris schools. In 2004, the former prime minister Alain Juppé, considered the president's closest ally, was convicted for his role in the misuse of city funds.

Patrick Devedjian, an adviser to the presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, said last month that it was unlikely Mr Chirac would be pursued by judges: "First because he is innocent, and also because it is not in the country's interest."

Last year, when one of Mr Chirac's former chief legal advisers was appointed public prosecutor of Paris, opposition politicians complained the president was trying to avoid investigation when he steps down.

Judges are said to have been keen to question Mr Chirac over an illegal party funding scandal involving fictitious jobs, which claimed the scalp of his protégé, Mr Juppé. In 2004, the former prime minister was given a 14-month suspended sentence and barred from politics for a year for his part in a scheme to put workers for Mr Chirac's neo-Gaullist RPR on the town hall's payroll in the 1980s.

During yesterday's parliamentary debate, the justice minister Pascal Clement said the new bill allowing a president immunity from prosecution during office "clarified a point of law and so put an end to a sterile political polemic".

The Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal welcomed the proposed changes as "a first step towards modernising our institutions".

Soldiers and Imperial Presidents

January 3, 2007

By Charles Sullivan

The vast majority of those who serve in the United States military probably do so with the best of intentions and with honor. The belief that they are defending their country from foreign attackers and doing their patriotic duty as citizens is persistently reinforced. Military service is one of America's sacred cows; it is something that is rarely questioned and is surrounded by an invisible aura of nobility. No one, especially those who serve, wants to think of their time in the military as anything less than honorable and worthy of glorification.

But the trouble with sacred cows is that they tend to preclude critical examination and often escape the scrutiny of rational thinking and moral judgments. The premise of honorary military service thus goes virtually unchallenged, and often becomes the essence of dogma. But it seems to me that anyone contemplating a military career, especially since it may require killing other human beings and broad scale environmental destruction, should do so with open eyes and clear senses. They need to know who they are serving and whose interests they are protecting.

There is no escaping the fact that the U.S. is an imperialist nation conceived in genocide and racism that has continued through the ages, and worsened with the rise of modern technology and weaponry. With the advent of smart bombs came stupid and immoral leaders. Our litany of crimes against earth and humanity are concealed under layers of moral language, but the actual deeds belie the intent behind what is being done in our name. Ignorance, however, does not absolve anyone from culpability.

Anyone considering military service should deliberate upon the promises proffered by recruiters with extreme skepticism. Recruiters are trained to exalt war as the highest expression of patriotism and love of country; when, in fact, it is often the most debasing expression of our humanity that makes a shallow mockery of real service to god and country. The war resister and the conscientious objector may be the true patriot.

I will make no effort to conceal my contempt for military recruiters who prey upon unsuspecting and inexperienced youth, especially the poor and economically disadvantaged. No parent should expose their children to these predators. Recruiters are the moral equivalent of ambulance chasers, and they should be accorded no more respect than them, or the corporate con men who sell us goods that are detrimental to our health. These people are not concerned about the welfare of our children or the country; they are the representatives of imperialism, empire, and Plutocracy; and they are in search of cannon fodder.

Marketing militarism and war to society at large is no different than selling potato chips laced with trans-fats or carcinogenic chemicals, without regard to public health and its attendant social costs. It is all about managing public perception and providing widening profit margins to the corporations that are running the government. To hell with the public welfare and moral pronouncements, the plantation owner demands blood sacrifices as a show of loyalty and gratitude.

Thus it is not surprising that military sacrament is couched in the language of service to country, patriotism, and other noble causes that are as divorced from reality as the President is removed from sanity. The hypocrisy of righteous language contrasted to the actual deed is readily apparent to anyone who knows history. It is propaganda in the purest and most lethal form.

No doubt, the millions of men and women working in the armed forces today do so in the belief that they are heroically serving their country, as well as the cause of freedom and democracy. But in fact, they are serving the ruling clique, the illuminati, and a few thousand wealthy investors, which represent less than 0.02% of the population. There must be no confusion that the financial interests of Halliburton, Bechtel, and the Bush dynasty are not the interests of America's citizens, especially those in the armed forces.

There is nothing noble or moral about invading defenseless sovereign nations and killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent human beings. There is no morally justifiable way of making occupation and the outright theft of natural capital, such as oil, respectable or gallant. Genocide and theft are crimes against humanity, regardless how the corporate advertisers and public relations firms couch them; and the military is complicit in the commission of those crimes, whether they are ignorant of their role in them or not.

Consider, for example, the role the military has traditionally played in carrying out the plans of one imperial president after another. We have troops permanently stationed in 135 nations protecting America's corporate interests from democracy. Stifling democracy is quite different from nurturing it. Either most of our presidents are pathological liars or they do not know the difference between nurturing and destroying. America's record of imperialism speaks for itself; and it is something that, when critically examined, is not easily mistaken for anything other than what it is.

Similarly, the bogus war on terror is a contradiction in terms, as historian Howard Zinn has so aptly pointed out. War is terrorism. Terrorism begets terrorism, and nothing but terrorism. War does not, and cannot ever lead to peace.

Aided by the CIA and death squads trained at the School of the America's at Fort Benning, Georgia, the U.S. has crushed one fledgling democracy after another and replaced them with brutally oppressive right wing dictatorships friendly to American corporations and financial investors. Let us recall that Saddam Hussein was our man in Iraq until he converted from the dollar to the euro. From Iran to Chile there are hundreds, if not thousands, of cases that could be cited. For a more detailed analysis of these incursions, I refer readers to William Blum's provocative book, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions since World War Two.

Let us assume that the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq is a fairly typical example of imperial policies that have been in vogue for well over a century. Like previous military actions, the invasion of Iraq was based upon a litany of lies set forth by the president and his cabinet, and carried forth in the corporate media. Iraq did not pose a threat to America or to the interests of the American people, and both the President and the commercial media knew it. Their intent was to deceive and to garner support for unconscionable acts of aggression and terror that are not in the people's interest.

Thus our armed forces are in Iraq under false pretenses that have nothing to do with spreading democracy or liberating oppressed people from tyranny. They are there for reasons that are as nefarious as they are treasonous. More than anyone, the men and women in the armed forces need to know why they are in Iraq and what is expected of them by the commander in chief.

The Plutocratic interests in Iraq may be summarized as the use of technologically advanced military forces and high tech weaponry that provide incalculable wealth to a privileged few. In this context, soldiers are nothing more than a means to and end; a Machiavellian way of socializing costs and privatizing profits-the ultimate in corporate welfare. Well over $50 billion in profits have been hauled out of Iraq by 150 U.S. corporations, including the privatization of lucrative Iraqi oil. The profits and the death toll continue to rise simultaneously.

To date, some 700,000 Iraqi people have died in the war and occupation, and the violence is rapidly escalating. Most of the dead are civilians, many of them women and children. Over 3,000 American soldiers have died on the basis of lies and thousands more are permanently maimed and traumatized-all to enhance the bottom line of America's wealthiest and most privileged elite.

It is not well publicized in the western mainstream media that fourteen permanent military bases are under construction in Iraq. The occupation is growing deep tap roots that are drawing the life, and the oil, out of the region, and consuming it in a firestorm of self-perpetuating violence.

President Bush and his kind, always eager to exploit a photo opportunity, frequently pay homage to the troops stationed around the world and in return garner their respect and admiration, neither of which is deserved. Placing soldiers in peril when there is no threat to America or to national security is an expression of utter contempt for them; it is a treasonous offense worthy of the most severe punishment short of execution.

Aside from photo ops, Bush and his wealthy brethren do not associate with enlisted men, whose petty lives transpire far below the lofty socio-economic status the elite were born into. Enlisted men and women are permitted to wipe the cow dung from the president's cowboy boots, but they are not allowed to wear them or travel in the same social circles as their owner.

The parasites that are running the country produce nothing, and have no more loyalty to the American people or to the Constitution than Frito-Lay or Halliburton. Their only allegiance is to accruing ever more wealth and power to themselves by all possible means, including war. You see, America is also an occupied country.

Neither the Iraqi nor American people's interest is served by the military industrial complex. War is never in the interest of those who are fooled into fighting them. War benefits those who instigate them and reap their financial reward from the safety of posh offices and marbled halls. War is the century's old tradition of peasants doing the bidding of kings and queens. That is whose interest is being served by our soldiers.

The truth is that soldiering is a particularly virulent manifestation of America's unending class war; the continued exploitation of the working class by the ruling elite-the rich preying upon the poor. Now the President and his accomplices in Congress intend to send even more soldiers to Iraq, further escalating the violence, and acting contrary to public sentiment. The lives of these men and women mean nothing to the emperor and his minions. They are only so much excrement to be wiped from their boots; the sacrificial lambs of empire crawling beneath their ignoble gaze.

Despite my severe criticism, it is not my intention to disparage either soldiers or military service. However, these men and women are being duped and exploited, and someone has to tell them what they are killing and dying for. It will remain for each individual to weigh the evidence and decide whether it is right or wrong, courageous or foolish.


Sources:

The Bush Agenda: Invading the World One Economy at a Time, Regan Books, 2006

Information Clearinghouse, www.informationclearinghouse.info

Killing Hope, William Blum, Common Courage Press, 1995

McCain's Character

John LeBoutillier
Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Ronald Kessler's excellent piece on Senator John McCain's erratic and explosive temper is 100% dead on target. As someone who has known McCain for 32 years, I can unequivocally state that he should be nowhere near the Oval Office.

His behavior through the years tells us all we need to know: he is a spoiled brat-turned adult who demeans people who dare to disagree with him; he has an explosive temper that can erupt on a nanosecond's notice; he might tell you something one day and then deny it the next; he is a political chameleon who is enabled by the so-called Main Stream Media; and his former POW status has allowed him to get away with things - i.e. the Keating Five Scandal - that others would have gone to jail for.

In sum, McCain is a disaster waiting to happen.

In 1990-1991 I had the great privilege to meet and ultimately befriend retired Air Force Colonel Ted Guy. Ted had been a POW in Vietnam for over six years - after being shot down and captured in Laos and driven on the Ho Chi Minh Trail to Hanoi.

Ted became famous as the war ended as he tried to bring changes against several of his fellow U.S. POWs who he thought had cooperated with the North Vietnamese while in captivity; after coming home in 1973 his superiors decided not to press charges. But Ted was forever branded a "real hard ass" because of this incident.

For a while Ted was the Senior Ranking Officer (SRO) in - I believe - The Plantation (a POW camp on the outskirts of Hanoi) in which John McCain was also being held.

The SRO kept the chain of military order among the POWs; they took orders from him and kept discipline that way.

When I got to know Ted Guy, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on POWs was being organized; McCain was named a member. Ted Guy's thoughts about McCain? "John was a good troop in camp."

Ted Guy - since repatriation in 1973 - had discounted any chance that living U.S. POWs were left behind in Vietnam after the January 27, 1973 Paris Peace Agreements.

In fact, by his own admission, Ted often became gruff with MIA family members who asked him if their loved one might have been left behind in captivity. "I told them there was no chance and they needed to get a life."

This was the same message many of the former POWs were delivering to relatives of the thousands of men who did not come home in Operation Homecoming: "Forget it ... we are the only living men ... give it up and move on with your lives." Of course, that was easy for them to say: they had come home!

The U.S. Government never officially briefed the returning POWs about the egregious violations of the Paris Peace Accords - by both Hanoi and Washington DC.

Washington refused to pay the $4.25 billion President Nixon secretly promised in a February 1, 1973 letter to Premier Pham Van Dong - and kept hidden from the Congress for three years; Hanoi failed to release the other group of 600 U.S. POWs they were holding as an insurance policy against these funds.

If the truth had been told to our returning heros, they would probably have led the charge for the return of their comrades; but they were not told. Instead they were sent out to America's heartland as the war heros we so desperately needed - McCain and Ted Guy included.

Except that Ted Guy read all the new revelations that began surfacing in the 1980's; by 1991 he had seen enough. "I was lied to," he told me. "I am now certain we knowingly left men behind in captivity."

Ted also got a fellow former POW, Terry Uyeyama, to join our little ‘group' as we went around DC trying to get the U.S. Government to reverse policy and negotiate for the living men still being held in Vietnam and Laos.

Then McCain entered the picture.

As the Senate Committee heated up - and more and more new information surfaced showing that indeed we did leave men behind held against their will in Vietnam and Laos - McCain began a long and vicious campaign to discredit and shoot down any new information or anyone advocating that the truth about our POWs be made public. Thus emerged for many to see the mean and ugly side of John McCain.

Ted Guy, his old Senior Ranking Officer and friend and admirer, soon changed his mind about McCain and questioned the truthfulness and emotional stability of his former POW veteran.

Sadly, Ted Guy died of leukemia 7 years ago. A healthy Ted Guy today could have and would have stood up and told the truth about John McCain - and had the former-POW status to take McCain on.

McCain these days goes unchecked. Ron Kessler has opened the topic of McCain's dangerous temper to further public scrutiny.

In sum, John McCain is not the man for the presidency. Yes, he would beat Hillary one on one. And we can't have her either.

But before everyone rushes to sign up for McCain's campaign, let's take a break and learn more about McCain the man and his character.

Once you get to know this man, you will agree: he must be defeated by a real Reagan conservative for the GOP nomination.