How full of s**t is the Israeli state?

Israel marks Holocaust Remembrance Day with siren, memorial services

Hundreds protest at Knesset over state neglect of Holocaust survivors

Bush, Iran & Selective Outrage

consortiumnews.com

By Robert Parry
April 2, 2007

One of the least endearing features of Washington’s political/media hierarchy is its propensity for selective outrage, like what is now coming from George W. Bush about the “inexcusable behavior” of the Iranian government in holding 15 British sailors whom Bush has labeled “hostages.”

This is the same President Bush who often mocks the very idea that international law should apply to him; he’s fond of the punch line: “International law? I better call my lawyer.” But Bush becomes a pious defender of international law when it suits his geopolitical interests.

The major U.S. news media predictably follows along, getting into an arms-crossed harrumph over foreigners trampling on the inviolate principles of international law, the same rules that should never constrain U.S. actions.

So, when British sailors were captured on March 23 after they may or may not have crossed over an ill-defined demarcation between Iraqi and Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, the assumption in the U.S. media was that Iran must be wrong. After all, Bush has listed Iran as a charter member of the “axis of evil”; its leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a notorious hothead; and everyone knows the Brits always play by the rules.

Of course, left outside this narrow frame of reference was the gross violation of international law – the bloody invasion of Iraq in 2003 – that put the Brits there in the first place.

Back then, international law was deemed little more than a nuisance getting in the way of what President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair wanted to do, i.e. conquer Iraq, install a compliant government, "privatize" its resources, and threaten other countries in the region to get in line.

Bush regarded the United Nations Charter and its ban on aggressive war as some goofy experiment in multilateralism. Blair actually knew better. Though he recognized that the Iraq invasion would violate this fundamental tenet of international law, Blair went along anyway.

From a longer-range historical context, there were other facts that would need forgetting if one wanted to get worked up into a moral frenzy. These include British colonial domination of both Iraq and Iran, and the CIA’s role in overthrowing Iran’s elected government in 1953 and reinstalling the brutal Shah of Iran on the Peacock Throne.

The combined interventions by the United Kingdom and the United States may have cost the lives of hundreds of thousands – possibly millions – of Iraqis and Iranians over the past century, but somehow Blair and Bush have positioned themselves as the innocent victims – at least as far as the Western press corps is concerned.

Iranian Detentions

So, in December and January, when Bush ordered raids against Iranian government offices inside Iraq and had five Iranian military officials detained indefinitely, there was barely a peep in the Western news media about violations of international law. Though the Iranians weren’t formally charged, their plight elicited little sympathy.

There were expectations that the Iranians might be released on March 21, the start of the Iranian new year. After that date passed, some observers believe Iran may have opted for a tit-for-tat response in seizing the 15 British sailors.

If that is the case, the Iranians apparently don’t understand the rules of the game: that President Bush has the unilateral right to do whatever he wants in the world and any reaction is unjustified, if not an invitation to an American military retaliation.

Escalating the war of words with Iran during a press conference at Camp David on March 31, Bush dismissed out of hand any possible “quid pro quos,” such as a swap of the two sets of detainees.

“The Iranians must give back the hostages,” Bush declared. “It’s inexcusable behavior.”

Regarding the captured British sailors, Blair and other U.K. officials have taken particular umbrage over videos released by Iran showing the sailors eating or being interviewed. This complaint references the principle of the Geneva Conventions against subjecting captured soldiers to public humiliation.

This same Geneva provision also was an issue – and another example of Western double standards – in the early days of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

In the southern Iraqi city of Nasiriya, five American soldiers were captured and their images were broadcast on Iraqi TV. Bush administration officials immediately denounced the brief televised interviews as a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

"It's illegal to do things to POWs that are humiliating to those prisoners," declared Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld’s charge was repeated over and over by U.S. television networks as the American people were agitated to a fever pitch. But American TV reporters stayed silent about the obvious inconsistency between the outrage over the footage of the American soldiers and the earlier U.S. broadcasts of Iraqi prisoners of war.

The Iraqi POWs had been paraded before U.S. cameras as "proof" that Iraqi resistance was crumbling – and no U.S. journalist working for a major news outlet raised any question about a Geneva violation. Some Iraqi POWs were shown forced at gunpoint to kneel with their hands behind their heads as they were patted down by U.S. soldiers. Other Iraqis were bound by plastic handcuffs and shown with bags over their heads.

Beyond the hypocrisy implicit in the double standards, CNN and other U.S. cable networks apparently saw no irony in the fact that they presented these scenes of kneeling and bound Iraqis over the title, “Operation: Iraqi Freedom.”

Guantanamo Bay

In protesting alleged Geneva violations by Iraq in March 2003, the U.S. news media also was silent about the fact that Bush had drawn worldwide condemnation for his decision to strip many POWs captured in Afghanistan of their Geneva Convention rights.

Bush ordered hundreds of these captives to be put in tiny outdoor cages at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The prisoners were shaved bald and forced to kneel with their eyes, ears and mouths covered to deprive them of their senses.

The shackled prisoners were filmed shuffling about in leg irons or being carried on stretchers to interrogation sessions. Their humiliation was broadcast widely.

In early 2002, U.S. allies, including some British officials, objected to the treatment of these prisoners and to Bush's unilateral assertion that they were "unlawful combatants" outside the protection of international law.

Legal experts noted that "unlawful combatant" was not even a category recognized by international law. The Geneva Conventions also required that detainees whose status was in any doubt must be accorded all enumerated rights until a "competent tribunal" was established to determine each individual prisoner's legal status.

Instead, Bush insisted that he had the sole right to declare which prisoners were POWs (with protections under the Geneva Conventions) and which ones were to be considered "unlawful combatants" (with no protections under the Geneva Conventions). Even Bush-designated POWs only received the Geneva rights that Bush saw fit to grant.

Human rights groups charged, too, that the U.S. treatment of some prisoners crossed the line into torture, which also is forbidden by international law. According to a variety of public accounts, prisoners have been subjected to water-boarding, a practice that simulates drowning, and to painful stress positions for long periods of time.

For its part, however, the Bush administration has denied engaging in torture and insists that all prisoners have been treated humanely.

Though these controversies about Bush’s disdain for international law are well known to the U.S. news media, the context disappeared again when press interest turned to the captured British sailors in late March 2007.

Suddenly, it was a new day with Bush and Blair fully committed to international law. Even a relatively minor Geneva transgression, such as filming captives eating, became a justification for unrestrained outrage.

Without any acknowledgement about their own abrogation of international law, the British and U.S. governments lifted these principles from the gutter, dusted them off and put them on a pedestal. The grand human rights defender, George W. Bush, lectured other countries about “inexcusable behavior” – and no prominent Western journalist called him to account for his contradictions.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. To comment to us by e-mail, click here.

US and Israel agree boycott plan

The US and Israel will not work with a new Palestinian unity government unless it recognises Israel, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said.

He spoke as US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice prepared for three-way talks with Mr Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr Olmert said he and US President Bush had agreed on their position on Friday.

Hamas, the largest group in the proposed Palestinian unity government, refuses to recognise Israel.

Mr Olmert said a Palestinian government that failed to accept conditions laid down by the quartet of the US, EU, Russia and UN "cannot receive recognition and there will not be co-operation with it".

"I spoke about this on Friday with the president of the United States, and I can tell you the Israeli and US positions are completely identical," Mr Olmert said in televised comments.

Power-sharing deal

The EU, US and Russia have maintained an economic boycott of the Palestinian government since Hamas won legislative elections in January last year.

If one waited for the perfect time to come to the Middle East then one would never get on the airplane Condoleezza Rice US secretary of state

After weeks of internal fighting, Hamas and the rival Fatah faction agreed last week to form a national unity government.

As a result, Ismail Haniya, of Hamas, resigned from his post as prime minister on Thursday and was asked by Mr Abbas, who heads Fatah, to form a new national unity government.

Ms Rice spent more than two hours in talks with Mr Abbas in the West Bank town of Ramallah on Sunday. She then held talks in Jerusalem with Mr Olmert.

Before those meetings, Ms Rice said it was an important time to advance the vision of a Palestinian state.

Mr Olmert's comments will add to doubts about whether the US will engage with a new Palestinian unity government.

Many observers wonder whether the two embattled leaders, Mr Olmert and Mr Abbas, are strong enough to take the difficult steps towards peace, says the BBC's Bethany Bell in Jerusalem.

Moderation urged

Speaking after talks with Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, Ms Rice said now was "an important time to talk about how we advance the vision of two states living side-by-side in peace and in freedom".

But she and Ms Livni both stressed that any new Palestinian coalition government must recognise Israel, renounce violence and accept past peace agreements.

Ms Rice arrived in Israel after a brief visit to the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, where she reviewed a new security plan intended to reduce violence in the city.

She said the US would "await the formation of a [Palestinian] government before making any decisions about it".

"If one waited for the perfect time to come to the Middle East then one would never get on the airplane," she added.

Hamas' refusal to recognise Israel has led to a crippling ban on Western financial aid since the party came to power.

Meanwhile, factional fighting between Fatah and Hamas has claimed more than 90 Palestinian lives since December.

Mr Haniya now has five weeks to get a new cabinet accepted by the Hamas-dominated parliament.

But if Hamas maintains its position regarding Israel, there is concern that any talks brokered by Washington will be futile, correspondents say.

'Wash Post': McCain Uses Tactics, Seeks Cash He Once Denounced

McCain Taps Cash He Sought To Limit
Onetime Reformer Calls on Big Donors

By John Solomon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, February 11, 2007; A01

Just about a year and a half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try to curtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9 million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws with voter ads ahead of the midterm elections.

As McCain launches his own presidential campaign, however, he is counting on Perenchio, the founder of the Univision Spanish-language media empire, to raise millions of dollars as co-chairman of the Arizona Republican's national finance committee.

In his early efforts to secure the support of the Republican establishment he has frequently bucked, McCain has embraced some of the same political-money figures, forces and tactics he pilloried during a 15-year crusade to reduce the influence of big donors, fundraisers and lobbyists in elections. That includes enlisting the support of Washington lobbyists as well as key players in the fundraising machine that helped President Bush defeat McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries.

After enduring his own brush with scandal in the early 1990s, when he and four Senate colleagues pressured regulators on behalf of Charles Keating, chairman of a failed savings and loan association, while collecting donations and favors from him, McCain became a leader in the effort to eliminate "soft money" in elections -- large donations from corporations, labor unions and wealthy individuals. In 2002, McCain joined forces with Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) to finally push through legislation ending soft money and placing strict limits on donations.

But now the contrast between McCain the presidential candidate and McCain the reformer can be jarring. McCain's campaign says that he is still studying whether to forgo the public financing and spending limits he has long supported, but that he will not be handicapped by restrictions his competitors will not face in 2008.

McCain the reformer worked unsuccessfully through Congress and the courts to try to stop nonprofit political groups known as 527s from using unlimited donations to run political ads and fund other activities aimed at influencing voters in the run-up to elections. He reintroduced legislation last week to end 527 donations, but there appears to be little appetite in Congress to pass it.

McCain the candidate now expects Republicans to use the same big-money 527 groups in the 2008 elections to beat Democrats, if the groups remain legal. "The senator believes that both parties should be subjected to an even playing field. If Democratic organizations are allowed to take advantage of 527s, Republican organizations will, too," said Mark Salter, a senior McCain adviser. The senator declined to be interviewed.

McCain the reformer relentlessly argued that six- and seven-figure "soft money" checks that corporations, wealthy individuals and unions were giving to political parties to influence elections were corrupting American politics. "The voices of average Americans have been drowned out by the deafening racket of campaign cash," he warned just a few years ago.

McCain the candidate has enlisted some of the same GOP fundraising giants who created and flourished in the soft-money system, including Bush's fundraising "Pioneers" and "Rangers," who earned their designations by raising at least $100,000 or $200,000 for his campaigns.

At least six of McCain's first eight national finance co-chairmen have given or raised large donations for political parties or 527 groups, campaign and IRS records show. In all, the finance co-chairs have given at least $13.5 million in soft money and 527 donations since the 1998 election.

They include former Bush moneymen such as lobbyist Thomas G. Loeffler and financier Donald Bren, whose personal and corporate donations total in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each in recent elections.

In key states, McCain has enlisted the likes of New York financier Henry Kravis, one of the GOP's largest donors over the past two decades, and Texas energy executive Robert A. Mosbacher, the architect of the Republicans' "Team 100" fundraising machine that helped make soft money a staple of politics by raising $20 million in large donations to help Bush's father win the presidency in 1988.

The big moneymen gravitating to McCain are politically pragmatic. They may not always agree with him, but they say they admire the Arizona senator for his work on campaign finance reform, his Vietnam War record, his support of Bush on Iraq and his recent campaigning for GOP candidates.

"He did things for our country that very few people I know would have had the courage to do," said Brian Ballard, a Florida lobbyist and longtime fundraiser for former Florida governor Jeb Bush who signed on this month to raise money for McCain.

Ballard said most of the big-money players he knows are not fazed by McCain's attacks on the political-money and lobbying systems, calling it more of an issue for consultants who make their living off big donations.

"I myself don't mind him calling out lobbyists when they've done something bad," Ballard said.

Lobbyists have been a favorite target of McCain the reformer, who proposed legislation requiring so-called grass-roots groups that organize average citizens into lobbying forces to disclose their financial backers.

But McCain the candidate switched positions and last month voted against that disclosure requirement after influential GOP groups such as Focus on the Family and National Right to Life strongly opposed the idea. McCain also hired as his campaign manager one of the grass-roots-lobbying industry's key consultants, Bush strategist Terry Nelson.

"When the senator heard from legitimate public-interest organizations in January of last year that a provision in the legislation would unfairly penalize them for Jack Abramoff's behavior, he agreed and withdrew his support for the provision at that time," Salter explained, referring to the lobbyist in prison for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy.

In December, Sen. Trent Lott (Miss.), a darling of GOP conservatives and lobbyists, acted as a surrogate for McCain at a fundraising meeting with a group of lobbyists at a Capitol Hill hotel. McCain's political action committee has collected donations -- capped at $5,000 -- from several big-name lobbyists, including Loeffler and fellow Bush fundraiser Wayne Berman, whose blue-chip clients frequently have issues pending before Congress and the White House.

"Both Wayne Berman and Tom Loeffler are longtime supporters of the Republican Party, President Bush and Senator McCain," Salter said. "Senator McCain is pleased to have their support."

Ed Rogers, one of Washington's most influential GOP lobbyists and strategists, said the embrace of McCain is not surprising. "Lobbyists are the ultimate pragmatists, and they deal with the world as is," said Rogers, who last year gave $5,000 to McCain's political action committee, though he says he has not yet endorsed a candidate.

Perenchio, now a member of McCain's finance committee, funneled more than $1.4 million in soft money to Republican causes in the 1998, 2000 and 2002 election campaigns, often in amounts McCain used to criticize. For one GOP fundraising dinner in the spring of 2001, for example, he donated $250,000. Perenchio has also been a major donor to the 527 groups formed to exploit a loophole in the legislation sponsored by McCain and Feingold.

Taking their name from a little-known provision of the IRS tax code, the groups began raising large donations -- some in the millions of dollars -- and running ads and funding other activities designed to influence the 2004 presidential election. Federal election regulators have refused to rein in the groups and their donations in the past two elections.

Perenchio gave $4 million to a pro-Republican 527 group called Progress for America, which helped Bush in the 2004 campaign. In the 2006 congressional races, Perenchio gave $5 million more to the same group.

In the summer of 2005, McCain's allies in the reform movement went to court seeking to force the Federal Election Commission to regulate the 527 groups and make them abide by the same donation limits as other political committees.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, McCain and Feingold specifically cited Progress for America as an example of what was wrong with 527 groups. The court filing cited one of the group's pro-Bush commercials -- which starred a 16-year-old whose mother was killed in the Sept. 11 attacks -- to illustrate the impact large donations had on the election. Perenchio was not mentioned.

"The deployment of section 527 groups as the new vehicle for using soft money to conduct political activities to influence federal elections is simply the latest chapter in a long history of efforts to evade and violate the federal campaign finance laws," the McCain court filing stated. "Sadly, it is another chapter in the FEC's failure to enforce the campaign finance laws."

Perenchio declined to be interviewed. Salter said Perenchio's support of McCain "pre-dates the existence of 527s. Perenchio served on Senator McCain's fundraising committee in 2000, and the senator is pleased to have his continued support."

That support has come in a number of ways. Tax records show that Perenchio's Chartwell Foundation donated $100,000 on March 1, 2002, to the Reform Institute, a nonprofit foundation of which McCain was co-chairman and which was advocating the end of big political donations.

At the time, McCain was chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the broadcast industry, and Univision had numerous issues pending before the government. Cablevision, another broadcaster, also donated $200,000 to the McCain foundation around the same time the senator took action in Congress favorable to that company.

McCain's allies in the campaign finance reform movement seem resigned to the fact that he will not abide by many of the principles he advocated for a decade as a reformer, including public financing and its associated spending and fundraising limits.

"Certainly we are disappointed that he has decided not to take the lead in fixing the presidential-financing system he is competing in," said Mary Boyle of Common Cause, the ethics watchdog that cheered McCain's reform efforts for years. "But it is understandable he is opting out.

"It is apparent to us that to run a competitive presidential campaign inside a system that is still broken, that is what he has to do," she said.

Oh, the irony! State Department: New PA gov't must meet international demands

World public and state opinion polls show the U.S. government does not meet international standards.
---

State Deptartment: New PA gov't must meet international demands

Nancy 'Oops, I did it again!' Pelosi and a special exemption to the Minimum Wage Bill

By James Risser

james.risser@gmail.com

Fri Jan 12, 2007

Madam Speaker Pelosi has once again hypocritically exempted one of her precious pets from her legislation. As previously mentioned, in HR1 the lobbying reform bill she allowed an exemption for AIPAC and the Aspen group. The very next day, in HR2, she provided an exemption to the Minimum Wage Bill to two companies based in her district, doing business in America Samoa.

If the main function of this site is to pursue electoral victories of Democrats, then, it ought to be a great concern to this community to see that the Democrats currently leading the Party do not turn their backs on the principles that led to their becoming the majority in 2006. The phrase 'culture of corruption' was coined by Ms Pelosi, and several Democrats ran on that premise and won. People do not want corruption and special-interests setting the agenda, and one hoped that those days died when that ridiculous excuse for a Speaker was sent packing.

It appears that Ms Pelosi either did not believe those words when she said them, or, her newly-derived power has changed her definition of 'corruption'.

Madam Pelosi is losing any legitimacy as a leader of a Democratic Party that won in November promising to halt the 'culture of corruption' in Congress. Her hypocrisy has not gone unnoticed by the enemy party:

I am shocked," said Rep. Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican and his party's chief deputy whip, noting that Mrs. Pelosi campaigned heavily on promises of honest government. "Now we find out that she is exempting hometown companies from minimum wage. This is exactly the hypocrisy and double talk that we have come to expect from the Democrats.

The article continues to explain the exemption:

The bill also extends for the first time the federal minimum wage to the U.S. territory of the Northern Mariana Islands. However, it exempts American Samoa, another Pacific island territory that would become the only U.S. territory not subject to federal minimum-wage laws.

One of the biggest opponents of the federal minimum wage in Samoa is StarKist Tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans, or nearly 75 percent of the island's work force. StarKist's parent company, Del Monte Corp., has headquarters in San Francisco, which is represented by Mrs. Pelosi. The other plant belongs to California-based Chicken of the Sea.

"There's something fishy going on here," said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry, North Carolina Republican.

Yes there is indeed something 'fishy' about Ms Pelosi's first 100 hours. And the fact that the enemy party has been given ammunition to say: 'This is exactly the hypocrisy and double talk that we have come to expect from the Democrats' is not what this Party needs.

Although the Democrats have been silent about this recent pair of exemptions as they were about the first set of exemptions, the fishiness is not lost on the enemy party who openly mocked Ms Pelosi's exemption during the stem-cell research debate:

During the House debate yesterday on stem-cell research, Mr. McHenry raised a parliamentary inquiry as to whether an amendment could be offered that would exempt American Samoa from stem-cell research, "just as it was for the minimum-wage bill."

A clearly perturbed Rep. Barney Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat who was presiding, cut off Mr. McHenry and shouted, "No, it would not be."

"So, the chair is saying I may not offer an amendment exempting American Samoa?" Mr. McHenry pressed.

"The gentleman is making a speech and will sustain," Mr. Frank shouted as he slammed his large wooden gavel against the rostrum.

Further embarrassment was heaped onto the exemption and is now part of the Congressional Record in a floor-speech titled, The Democratic Agenda:

The only territory, the only location in the jurisdiction of the United States of America exempted from Federal minimum wage law would be American Samoans.

This loophole pleases the tuna corporations that employ thousands of Samoans in canneries at a rate of $3.26 an hour. It is an industry-specific rate that is set by the U.S. Department of Labor.

But the tuna industry has lobbied Congress for years arguing that imposing the Federal minimum wage on Samoa would cripple the economy by driving the canneries to poor countries that don't require a minimum wage.

Then one of the biggest opponents, though, of the U.S. minimum wage there is StarKist tuna, which owns one of the two packing plants that together employ more than 5,000 Samoans. Yet StarKist is about 75 percent of that, about 3,750 employees perhaps at StarKist. Chicken of the Sea would be the other 1,250 employees, totaling the 5,000. Chicken of the Sea is also California based.

But what is interesting, and I think what inspired the gentleman's inquiry this afternoon, was that StarKist's parent company, this company that has now an exemption from minimum wage law, their parent company is Del Monte Corporation, Del Monte Corporation, headquartered in San Francisco, which is the hometown, of course, of our new Speaker.

Now, a spokeswoman for the Speaker said yesterday that the Speaker had not been lobbied in any way by StarKist or Del Monte. That is interesting. I don't know that I could say that about any single company in my district, small company, large company. Trade associations represent multiple interests that might come into that. I am lobbied by individuals, I am lobbied by trade associations, I am lobbied by individual companies over and over again, hundreds and thousands of voices coming into my office.

I welcome them all, but I could not take an oath that there is a single company in my district that has not lobbied me in any way, or, let me expand that, even if that were true, there is no way I could take the oath that not a single company has lobbied any of my staff. There are decisions made by my staff that I take responsibility for. That reflects upon me.

So one could impute from this statement that the Speaker has not been lobbied in any way by StarKist or Del Monte. One can impute to that that also includes the Speaker's staff. I couldn't make that statement about a single company in my district, but this large company, larger than any company in my district, and domiciled in and headquartered in San Francisco, has had no contact with the Speaker's office or staff over any period of time, over, not just within the last week, but over the last 2 years, 4 years, 6 years or more? I think that deserves a little bit of scrutiny.

The time has come for Democrats to stop this sort of nonsense from harming their chances at maintaining their majority. You can rest assured that if this behavior continues, the elections in 2008 will be about what the Democrats didn't do and how they lied to their supporters by not changing the 'culture of corruption' but, it will be claimed, they merely switched from one set of lobbyists and special-interests to another. Democrats were not born in the shit-filled swamp of the enemy party, and we should stop acting as they do when they have power.

Stop the bullshit, Madam Speaker; Democrats are better than that!

Poll

Do you agree with Speaker Pelosi's exemptions to HR1 and HR2?

	Yes
11%	13 votes
	No
88%	103 votes

| 116 votes | Vote | Results

Tags: Nancy Pelosi (all tags)

View Comments | 218 comments

Crocodile tears

Crocodile tears by Steve Bell

The Dems on Iraq: More Bark Than Bite

Wednesday, Jan. 10, 2007

By Massimo Calabresi/Washington

Before they took control of the House and the Senate, Democrats had a lot to say about George W. Bush's use of Presidential power and what they claimed was Republican complicity in eroding both civil liberties and the authority of Congress. When the GOP pushed through a bill granting Bush the ability to suspend the ancient right of habeus corpus for terror suspects, the man who would become the Democratic Senate majority leader after the election, Harry Reid, said, "The framers of our Constitution understood the need for checks and balances, but this bill discards them." Across the country Democratic candidates for both chambers of Congress painted their opponents as rubber stamps for Bush's failed policy in Iraq. And the day before the Nov. 7 vote that would vindicate his chairmanship of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, New York's Charles Schumer said voters were flooding to Democrats in part because they had decided that the country needed "some checks and balances in this government."

Now that they're in charge, Democrats are still talking the talk. This week, they are hammering away at Bush ahead of his Iraq speech while planning a resolution opposing his proposed troop increase in the war. Today incoming Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy held hearings on what he says are executive branch infringements on Americans' privacy. And on Thursday Leahy will have attorney general Alberto Gonzales appear before his panel for a wide-ranging oversight hearing, which the committee's spokesperson says will dig into the civil liberties issues Democrats raised in the campaign.

But when it comes to actually taking any action to check Bush's war powers, there's not much bark to the Democrats' bite. Which raises the question: will Democrats use their new power to rein in what they say is an overreaching president? Or will they choose to continue what proved to be a successful political strategy when they were in the minority: criticizing the administration for unpopular policies while avoiding taking action themselves that could prove equally unpopular?

On Iraq, Hill Democrats have chosen the latter course. Sen. Edward Kennedy yesterday introduced a bill to block funding for deploying additional troops to Iraq. But Reid and the Democratic leadership prefer a non-binding, "sense-of-the-Senate" resolution opposing the troop increase that is designed to embarrass Bush by peeling off dissenting Republicans, without actually taking any action to block the move. Kennedy's proposal, leadership aides say, is a stalking horse designed in part to placate the base by attacking Bush while leaving Democrats who support the leadership's alternative safe from accusations they don't back the troops.

And if war opponents are likely to be disappointed by the Democratic response to Bush's proposed troop increase, those who believe he is eroding American civil liberties will be even more downcast in coming weeks. Yesterday at a press briefing in the Senate Hart office building, American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero said that while Democrats had not been willing to obstruct Bush's war on terror initiatives before the November elections, he hoped the Democratic rout might have changed the political calculation. "We hope that the Democrats have found their spines again," he said.

Leahy, the incoming Judiciary chairman, is doing his part. In addition to the hearings, he and the ranking minority leader, Arlen Specter, have introduced a bill that would roll back Bush's habeus-overriding powers. Leahy, Wisconsin's Russ Feingold, and New Hampshire conservative John Sununu today will introduce a bill that would require executive branch agencies regularly to report on data mining efforts. On the record, Harry Reid's office is nominally supportive of these efforts. "The new Congress will review all aspects of the war on terror to see what improvements are needed," says Reid spokesman, Jim Manley.

But privately top Democratic Senators, aides and advisers say the political calculation has not changed since before the election. While Bush and his policies are unpopular in the extreme, Americans still support a strong hand at the White House when it comes to national security matters. From the Democrats' perspective, that means plenty of willingness to criticize Bush on all fronts when it comes to his handling of national security and even the use of his war powers — but, at least for now, no overt efforts to curtail them.

"You're going to see many more hearings," Schumer said yesterday when I asked him if there was increased willingness of Democrats to confront Bush's war powers. North Dakota's Byron Dorgan, the Democrats' third ranking member of the Senate and an outspoken administration critic, said he thought it was "a little early" to roll back Bush's expansion of executive power in the previous Congress. A Democratic judiciary staffer supportive of a rollback said, "We understand the political reality." And leadership aides say bluntly that short of new revelations that turn public opinion against expanded executive authority, the Democrats are going to avoid directly confronting the President.

Critics think this approach is short-sighted, arguing Democrats could get away with criticizing the President without curtailing him when they were in the minority, but risk looking hypocritical now that they're in charge on the Hill. The ACLU points to its own polling that it says shows Americans support pushing back against the President and cites three races to back the numbers up. In Montana and Ohio, Senate challengers opposed to the popular Patriot Act fended off harsh attacks from Republicans on their position, and in a key Connecticut House race the anti-executive authority position helped seal victory for the Democratic challenger. Still, "that doesn't guarantee that the Democrats have found their backbone," says ACLU Washington representative, Caroline Fredrickson.

Politically, however, it's hard to argue with a winning strategy. The ACLU's three races fly in the face of Harry Reid's victorious approach throughout the 109th Congress: hammer the President in every public forum on Iraq and executive overreach, but never, ever get on the wrong side of tough national security policies. Echoing the dominant centrist approach, California's Dianne Feinstein, who sits on both the intelligence and judiciary committees, told me yesterday she thinks, "it is right to give the government reasonable leeway to protect Americans," while "having hearings and oversight is also helpful in clearing the air."

In the end, that means little legislative push back in the war powers battle. Privately, leadership aides say there is no reason for Reid to get ahead of habeus cases working their way through the courts that could save Democrats the political pain of an open battle with Bush. Even Leahy's office holds out little hope of rolling back Bush's wiretapping program. And Reid's non-binding resolution on Iraq will do nothing to slow the reported imminent deployment of more troops to Baghdad. By the time the Administration's request for emergency funds for the war comes through next month, opponents of the surge will be in the position of having to vote against money for troops already in a war zone. And even the most outspoken critics of the Bush White House know that's a losing proposition.

Time to admit failure?

The following article is a rather hypocritical assessment as to why "the peace process failed" because it apportions blame on the Palestinians -- "each side tried to improve its positions" and thus causing the staged process to fail. Of course, the real reason is that Israel could get away without having to negotiate for anything, and just impose its "solutions". Rubinstein conveniently forgets what Dov Weisglass stated: negotiations would be put in formaldehyde. So, it is not an issue of apportioning blame, for Israelis it should be clear what the implications are of avoiding negotiations at all costs.

And then Rubinstein states: "The violent struggle between Fatah and Hamas is not good for Israel." What nonsense is this? One can see Halutz, Olmert and the rest of the motley gang gloating at the prospect of a Palestinian civil war. Israel has a hand in it: putting the occupied territories under siege and giving a green light for the delivery of weapons to Fatah...
---

Time to admit failure
By Danny Rubinstein

Abstract:


It may already be too late for Israelis and Palestinians to be able to reach an agreement using the present format. The methods attempted by the sides thus far, and which for a moment seemed as if they were about to succeed, have failed. The peace process that began with the shake-up created by the first intifada almost 20 years ago has apparently reached the end of the road.

Many Palestinians, and many Israelis as well, estimate that the present period is among the worst in the history of the conflict in this land. The violent struggle between Fatah and Hamas is not good for Israel. Palestinian spokesmen reject out of hand any attempt to describe their situation as a civil war. Some say it is "a war of organizations," which is a more accurate description. Whatever the case, after the extensive coverage of the meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), two weeks ago, one of the Palestinian journalists declared that it is now clear to him that on one subject there is no difference of opinion among the rival Palestinian groups: They all agree that the State of Israel does not want peace.

In hindsight, we can point to one of the reasons for the painful failure of the peace process. The method of working toward an arrangement in stages, without a decision being made a priori on the final goal, did not work. The problem was not in the stages, but in where they were meant to be heading. Therefore, in every stage of the diplomatic process, each side tried to improve its positions, in anticipation of both the next stage and the final goal that suited it.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said a few days ago that his movement is not blocking any diplomatic path - for the simple reason that such a path does not even exist at present. He is right. In order for such a path to exist, there has to be much more than concern on the Israeli side for the Palestinian "fabric of life" (the catchphrase of the Israeli defense establishment for the easing of restrictions) and promises to dismantle settlement outposts. We have to agree on the end of the process, in which a Palestinian state will be established within amended borders of the 1967 cease-fire lines, with its capital in East Jerusalem. Without that there will be nothing.