Month: June 2004

Credibility Gap

The Political Animal takes bloggers to task for being too hard on the liberal hawks and neocons who are now having second thought about the war. He says we should warmly embrace them to our side. Since I just wrote about this last night, I feel I should answer that complaint.

First of all, it would be a lot easier if they didn’t feel it was necessary to insult the millions of people who did make the right call while they are expressing their regrets. That indicates to me that they are not very likely to pay any heed to those voices in the future. But, that’s not the real problem.

In order to truly understand what went wrong with this war, you have to look at what was being said and what was being heard before we went into it. I’m not seeing a lot of that from the Mea Culpa singers. Peter Beinert (with whom I regrettably proved Kevin’s point by being deliberately snarky) was one of the few to actually examined his prejudices and preconceptions as a way of explaining why he came to the conclusions he did. As far as I know, he is the only one to do that. All the others are based upon misplaced trust in the administration and a shock that they could have been so dishonest/incompetent/incoherent. They have not grappled with the fact that they chose to ignore plenty of evidence prior to the invasion that should have tipped them off. I can think of a handful right off the top of my head, and I’m sure there are plenty more:

First and foremost was the fact that the primary forces agitating for the Iraq invasion had been agitating for it long before 9/11 and for entirely different reasons than those stated at the time. Indeed, those same forces had completely missed the threat of assymetrical terrorism as it grew up in the 90’s and essentially just piggy backed their pre-existing goals onto the terrorist threat after the attacks. This was evident even then — long before Richard Clarke started publicly talking about people’s hair on fire. There were people shouting into the wilderness about this absurd neocon notion of the Pax Americana and nobody was listening. There were those who noticed that belligerant unilateralism and the “preemption doctrine” which was supposedly in response to the attacks (“9/11 changed everything”) were, in fact, pillars of the neocon philosophy going back to the 70’s and had been heavily pushed since the end of the cold war. Someone might have asked if these beliefs were actually relevant or adequate to an entirely new threat paradigm.

Another obvious tip off was our abandonment of Afghanistan. There we had the heart of al Qaeda in our grasp and a democratic revolution and billions of dollars in reconstruction promised and yet once the war drums began pounding for Iraq, we dropped it all like a hot potato. A small, experimental version of the Iraq Democracy Project unfolded in real time, failed spectacularly and nobody noticed.

The fact that the US impeded the inspections process should have made people wonder about our true motives. Saddam let in the inspectors and they reported that he was being quite cooperative (by historical standards) and that they weren’t finding anything. Under those circumstances, the US refusing to give the locations of WMD to the inspectors to investigate should have set off some alarm bells.

Powell’s presentation to the UN was lame even before 99% of had been disproved. It was thin gruel to anyone who hadn’t already made up their mind that we were marching off to war, come what may. The whole thing was based upon his personal reputation and credibility. Big mistake and one that people should really think about going forward. This “trust us” business has been shown (as throughout history)to be a fools game.

The administration refused to discuss the potential costs of the war and publicly argued with the uniformed services about the necessary troop levels. This should have raised eyebrows. There were plenty of people who thought this was odd and questioned whether the administration knew what it was doing. The hawks didn’t take these opinions into account.

Most importantly, there were those like Wes Clark and others who warned that invading Iraq would exacerbate the terrorist threat and that we were making a grave mistake in not concentrating everything we had on al Qaeda. If the decision for war had been at all thoughtful on the hawk side there would have been a long and detailed debate about it because this wasn’t a hawk vs dove argument, it was a hawk vs hawk argument. That so many refused to listen even to their own kind on such a matter of huge importance to the security of the country is probably the biggest sin they committed.

As I wrote earlier, I think this invasion was mostly an emotional response to the attacks. And I would be remiss if I didn’t chide the prime mover behind the hysteria (aside from the admnistration, of course) which was the media. (Unbelievably, it was this hysteria that bush blamed for the flat economy a few months ago. Chutzpah, thy name is Junior)

9/11 was the story of a lifetime. It made overnight stars out of nobodies and gave huge amounts of face time to journalists. Indeed, it glamorized them in a way that hadn’t been seen since the days of Woodward and Bernstein. In the run up to the Iraq war, the Bush administration made the smartest decision they’ve made in their entire administration. The media were already primed for “9/11: The Invasion of Iraq” but as the administration made its case for war, they simultaneously began the process of training the reporters for their embedded assignments. They sent them to “camp” and brought them into their confidence and gave them a personal stake in the outcome of the war debate. (Read all about it, right here.) Imagine the disappointment if they’d had to turn in their khaki safari jackets and go back to reporting dull stories about medicare.

Many in the media itself admitted at the time that they were quite shocked at the numbers of people showing up to protest the war around the world. They didn’t even cover the story in the beginning. Yet, the polls consistently showed a large number of people even here in the US who were against the invasion and many more who wanted the administration to go much more slowly. This story was virtually ignored, and when it was covered, it was as if it was some sort of a sideshow.(Read this condescending piece of garbage, if you need a reminder — it’s about 3/4 of the way into the transcript.) From the moment the drums began in the summer of 2002 — certainly from the time that Cheney made his speech in late August — the war was treated as an inevitability by the media.

I realize how difficult it was to swim against that tide. It was exciting and difficult to resist, even for people like me. We were living history. But, at some point you had to step back and look at the magnitude of what we were contemplating — particularly the huge step away from our post war consensus against wars of aggression — and see that this thing was being rushed into production without adequate debate or planning. Saddam had been sitting there for a long, long time. There was no reason to believe that he couldn’t have sat there for a few more months until we exhausted all other options. The fact that Bush and Cheney refused to do that should have been the deal breaker.

It’s never easy to admit you were wrong. But, it is almost more important to realize why you were wrong than to admit it in the first place. If we could all wait to see how things turn out and then just say “whoops, sorry” and all would be well, then life would be pretty easy.

The fact is that the liberal hawks, especially, made the invasion palatable and acceptable to many people who trusted them. That is a heavy burden. I’m glad they’ve seen their error, but it doesn’t mean we’re on the same team, as Kevin seems to think. So far, I’ve seen little reason to believe they won’t do exactly the same thing again if their blood gets up and they decide the opposition consists of people they don’t wish to be associated with. I hope I’m wrong.

Waddo We Do Now???

Detainees May Be Moved Off Cuba Base

As attorneys for detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, began preparing the first of hundreds of expected lawsuits demanding that the government justify the detentions, senior administration officials acknowledged that they were unprepared for a rebuke in two landmark Supreme Court decisions that rejected the military’s treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism.

[…]

“They didn’t really have a specific plan for what to do, case-by-case, if we lost,” a senior defense official said on condition of anonymity. “The Justice Department didn’t have a plan. State didn’t have a plan. This wasn’t a unilateral mistake on DOD’s part. It’s astounding to me that these cases have been pending for so long and nobody came up with a contingency plan.”

Apparently, this was because they were convinced they were going to win.

An internal Justice Department memo reviewed Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times outlining communications plans in response to high court rulings on the issue listed two pages of talking points to be used “in case of win,” and a page of talking points to be used “in case of win if some sort of process is required” — a partial victory. Yet, there was no category for action in the event of a broad defeat in the memo, titled “Supreme Court Decision Communications Plan.”

Few lawyers inside or outside the government doubted that the high court would allow the government the right to detain combatants during wartime, as has been allowed in every major war for two centuries. That option was upheld.

But the memo wrongly predicted an outright win in the case Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld, involving Yaser Esam Hamdi, a Louisiana-born man of Saudi descent captured in Afghanistan.

“The DOD/DOJ position on the detention of Hamdi will be decided in our favor as a clear-cut POW case,” the memo said, although Hamdi was not held as a prisoner of war.

The memo predicted a 5-4 vote in favor of the government in Rasul vs. Bush and Al Odah vs. United States. Justices in that case, involving 16 Guantanamo detainees seized in Afghanistan and Pakistan, found in the reverse, voting 6-3 that military prisoners who are not U.S. citizens cannot be held without access to American courts.

I’m not enough of a court watcher to decipher why they thought this when virtually everything I read in the last month indicated that the court was very likely to rule against the administration. (I do wonder what, if anything, this all has to do with Ted “Nasty, Brutish and Short” Olsen’s somewhat unexpected departure.)

Faith based justice sure isn’t what it used to be, is it?

Bush Urges All Autocrats to Yield Now to Democracy

Or Else.

The Mea Culpa Singers

If I might just add to Tim’s great post at the road to surfdom as well as DeLong’s here and Atrios’s ongoing frustration with the sorry warhawks’ excuses, I have to agree that this sad complaint that nobody could have known the Bushies would screw up Iraq this badly is total bullshit.

I am no psychic and I have no special insight that others don’t have. Yet somehow, I was able to see that the Bush administration was very likely to screw this up badly and so were millions of other people. (For one thing, at the time we were going into Iraq the abdication of our responsibilities in Afghanistan was already well under way.)

Back in my pre-blogging days, on the night the Senate passed the Iraq resolution Atrios published this:

Digby says, in Matthew Yglesias’s comments, in response to Yglesias saying “But if I don’t get what I want and it does come to war, you won’t see me out on the streets rallying for a Hussein victory either”:

I don’t think the pro-Saddam rally will be well attended.

But, there will be prayer vigils and sleepless nights on the part of those of us who hope that this incompetent administration doesn’t fuck it up so much that all hell breaks loose in the region, including the real possibility of nuclear war and many american and arab casualties. And we’ll be wishing fervently that terrorism on US soil doesn’t become something we’ll have to learn to live with because we just can’t seem to kill all the people who hate our guts and multiply exponentially with every aggressive action that we take. And we’ll sure hope that we can get some cooperation from the unstable regimes that finance them without having to invade and depose their leaders, too.

And, if everything works out, let’s keep our fingers crossed that we can turn the mideast into a democratic paradise quickly because judging from our experience in Afghanistan, our President meant it when he said he “wasn’t into nation building.” We really don’t need to fight this war again.

And I know that a lot of us will probably get together around the dinner table and water coolers to talk about the enormous sums of money remaking the mideast is costing and will continue to cost for years to come, while we worry about whether we’ll have jobs or health care or a chance of a comfortable retirement.

So, rather than attending pro-Saddam rallies, people who are against this war being waged by someone in whom they have no faith will be instead gathering together to fervently pray that his adventure goes perfectly every step of the way.

Those prayers were far from answered. In fact, I would say that my fears were downright prescient, including the ongoing and completely unresolved threat of terrorists and Islamic states with nuclear capability.

It wasn’t just me. Look at these poll results from that same week:

The public overwhelmingly wants to get the United Nations’ weapons inspectors back into Iraq and allied support before taking any military action. Americans also want a congressional vote before acting – and think members of Congress should be asking more questions about the implications of war with Iraq.

Americans are concerned about the wider implications of war with Iraq. They believe such a war will result in a long and costly military involvement; they believe it will lead to a wider war in the Middle East with other Arab nations and Israel; and that it could further undermine the U.S. economy.

Americans are also cool to the doctrine of pre-emption. They believe countries should not be able to attack each other unless attacked first – and less than half of Americans think the U.S., in particular, has the right to make pre-emptive strikes against nations it thinks may attack in the future.

This was just a year after 9/11. The public was far from convinced that Bush was doing the right thing. The press and the punditocrisy, on the other hand, just kept pushing and pushing and creating this sense of inevitablility about the war — much of it promoted by these hawks, both liberal and neocon, who insisted that we had no choice but to invade Iraq at the earliest possible time.

There really is no excuse but war fever. People chose to support that war, not because there was good evidence backing up the need for urgency. Indeed, there was plenty of evidence that we should be very cautious before we opened a front in the WOT right in the middle of the muslim holy land. But, the blood was pumping — people wanted a fight and the media wanted a show.

It’s really that simple. There was never any truly compelling reason to take on Saddam at just that moment and it didn’t take a genius (I’m certainly not one) to predict that Bush would make a hash out of it. I am tired of reading these mea culpas that are filled with invective toward those of us who were correct in our assessment of the motives and the competence of the administration. We weren’t a bunch of starry eyed hippies sitting around singing kumbaya — there was ample evidence and analysis that they simply chose to ignore.

In fact, it was the the neocons and the liberal hawks who decided that democracy is a matter of faith rather than reason and believed that if they just wanted it hard enough it would magically happen. The naive kumbaya chorus wasn’t on our side. It was the AEI and New Republic “Up With Democracy” singers who were the fools.

What Gaul:

U.S. President George W. Bush has repeated a call for the European Union to admit Turkey, despite criticism by France’s President Jacques Chirac that he was meddling in EU affairs. Bush said Tuesday that Turkey belongs in the EU and that Europe is ‘not the exclusive club of a single religion’ in what amounted to a rebuff to the French leader.

[…]

He said that Turkish EU membership would be a “crucial advance” in relations between the Muslim world and the West because Turkey was part of both.

The main message in the U.S. President’s speech was a bid to mend relations between Muslims and Americans that were left tattered by the Iraq war.

“We must strengthen the ties and trust and good will between ourselves and the peoples of the Middle East,” he said.

Bush held up Turkey as an example of a Muslim democracy.

“Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion, and it would expose the ‘clash of civilizations’ as a passing myth of history,” Bush said.

Somebody needs to get Bush’s people some time off because they obviously can’t take the stress. Publicly lecturing Europe about religious pluralism is about as obnoxious as an American president can get. And to use Europe as his whipping boy to mend fences with muslims (a totally incomprehensible strategy) is to basically say, “those Europeans make much better targets than we do, Osama. They hate yer muslim guts. Have at it.”

Who the hell do these people think they are? It’s not that we have no right to politely advocate for Turkey being admitted into the EU if we choose. It’s that we don’t do it by publicly insulting the EU for our own purposes. Where did these people learn their manners, Attica?

Chirac was, unsurprisingly, pissed:

“If President Bush really said that in the way that I read, then not only did he go too far, but he went into territory that isn’t his,” Chirac said of a remark Bush made over the weekend.

“It is is not his purpose and his goal to give any advice to the EU, and in this area it was a bit as if I were to tell Americans how they should handle their relationship with Mexico.

Oh, we won’t mind. That’s what we call the new “go fuck yourself” diplomacy. You’ll feel better, too.

Action, Reaction

Yglesias finds another dead fish wrapped in The Weakly Standard today. Apparently, we liberals had better get control of those violent thugs over at Move-On because the conservatives just can’t be responsible for what might happen if somebody “not so nice” came into power and felt like he had to teach us a lesson. (Matt takes them down quite handily.)

But, the article is also interesting for another reason. Here’s the passage that Matt highlights:

You can file the of Mussolini’s rise under “H” for Hegel, the idea that extreme movements always beget extreme counter forces. It was the far left, by relentlessly chipping away at the foundations of Italian life, that gave birth and power to the far right–as it did a decade on when Hitler rode nearly the same path under similar circumstances.

This is what seems most pertinent today, as “activist” groups like Moveon.org and demagogues like Michael Moore and angry men like Al Gore and George Soros rail so irrationally against both the president (comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini in a variety of contexts) and the structures of daily American life, including the legally adjudicated Supreme Court decision that ultimately decided the 43rd presidency in advance of a tedious recount that would’ve yielded the same outcome.

… Either this November or in four years, George W. Bush is going to be turned out of office; even the judge agrees with that. Someday, though, a populace provoked by the left’s constant fire-breathing may look for a dragon slayer who won’t go quite so easily.

Once again, we see the right’s blindness to its own actions over the last 15 years. I don’t disagree with their analysis of what contributed to the rise of fascism. The left was extreme and led to a counter response in equally radical terms. Ye olde pendulum swing.

They are perfectly right that the same exact thing may very well be happening here. But, apparently it doesn’t occur to these believers in civil discourse that their eliminationist right wing rhetoric of the last decade and a half — and a president who literally tells us to go fuck ourselves — is what has spawned this reaction from the left. (Not that I agree that Moore or Move-On say anything close to even a normal day’s Limbaugh/Savage blather, but in the interest of making my point I will stipulate that the left is mighty riled up.) They believe they’ve just been sitting around being polite and restrained and out of the blue the left has come out swinging.

This after we moved the party way to the center, gave them a successful moderate republican president for two terms who they then impeached and after they completely disregarded the disputed election returns and governed as if they had a mandate. I mean, I know we Democrats are the mommy party and all, but push mommy far enough and she becomes a screaming bitch on wheels. What did they expect?

Republicans seem to have a very serious problem seeing themselves as they appear to others. Perhaps this might give a clue to how we reached the point where liberals are fighting back with everything we have.

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

Newt Gingrich’s 1996 GOPAC memo

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that “language matters.” In the video “We are a Majority,” Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: “I wish I could speak like Newt.”

That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

[…]

Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

abuse of power

anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs

betray

bizarre

bosses

bureaucracy

cheat

coercion

“compassion” is not enough

collapse(ing)

consequences

corrupt

corruption

criminal rights

crisis

cynicism

decay

deeper

destroy

destructive

devour

disgrace

endanger

excuses

failure (fail)

greed

hypocrisy

ideological

impose

incompetent

insecure

insensitive

intolerant

liberal

lie

limit(s)

machine

mandate(s)

obsolete

pathetic

patronage

permissive attitude

pessimistic

punish (poor …)

radical

red tape

self-serving

selfish

sensationalists

shallow

shame

sick

spend(ing)

stagnation

status quo

steal

taxes

they/them

threaten

traitors

unionized

urgent (cy)

waste

welfare

Duck. The pendulum’s about to hit you in the face, assholes.

It’s Ring, you Moron

I hate to be pedantic, but this “let freedom reign” thing bugs the hell out of me.

The common phrase is “let freedom ring” not “let freedom reign.”

A Google search turns up 2,090 references to “let freedom reign” one of the top links coming from a white supremacy web site called “Panzerfaust Records” that features a bunch of racist lyrics. “My Country Tis of Thee” is not amongst them, as you might imagine.

On the other hand, “let freedom ring” turns up 72,700 references, number one being Sean Hannity’s dull as dishwater anti-liberal screed. (You’d think he’d be pissed that he lost the opportunity for such a nice cross-promotion.)

Of course, aside from the song lyric that every American schoolchild learns when he or she is about six years old, (“….from eh-everee-eey mountainside… le-et freedom ring,”) we have one of the most moving speeches ever made by anyone, anywhere, which is Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech:

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.” And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

Now that would have been worth evoking in the moment that Iraq was allegedly given back its sovereignty. Instead, our illiterate president, or an illiterate member of his staff, evoked a phrase that sort of sounds like that one, but isn’t. Just like everything else with this godforsaken war, they screwed it up — even down to the note Junior wrote for posterity.

You Aren’t My Friend

Apparently, some of Rush’s callers weren’t all that happy about Big Time’s new “if it feels good, go fuck yourself” philosophy. They think it might not be the best message to send to their kids.

Rush tried to explain it but wasn’t quite coherent because the drugs do tend to make you hallucinate. In his case, he had a vision that the Democrats were actually Republicans. It’s very interesting:

RUSH: …Look, I just want to say. I’m going to repeat what I said at the beginning of the program when I talked about this because I think there’s a bit of a double standard here when people are expressing outrage about this. Don’t misunderstand. I am not for the word becoming part of the common, everyday vernacular, but it still is. You cannot turn on television today without hearing the word. You cannot go to the movies without hearing the word — unless you go to a kids’ movie, a G movie — and it is what it is and we can sit here and lament it and wring our hands all we want.

What we can do is have our own private conduct of standards and abide by them with our friends and people that we deal with and refuse to fall prey and join those in the gutter who are using the word in a guttural sense. I don’t think Cheney was using it in a guttural sense.

The point to me is this. The Democrats have wanted it two ways, both ways for the longest time. They want to be perceived by the vast majority of people as decent and calm and refined, and they’re the ones who have all the compassion and care. They’re out there every day, Senator Leahy among them, accusing Vice President Cheney of corruption, of actually getting Halliburton a gig in Iraq for his own personal gain. They are claiming that he and Bush started this war — when it wasn’necessary — for their own personal gain, that they are in cahoots with all of this prison abuse, doing it personally because that’s a kind of people they are. They are saying some of the most…

What is being said about Bush and Cheney by people like Senator Leahy from committees, on television, is far worse than Cheney using the F-word back to Leahy, because these people are into character and personal assassination.These people are trying to destroy George W. Bush, his reputation and his life, just as they are trying to do Vice President Cheney’s.

(Creepy, isn’t it? One of the most unpleasant characteristics of the modern Republican bully is his overarching sense of victimization. Combined with this very, very sick projection problem, you can see why he needs the little blue babies.)

Now, all you children out there listen up. This is how the grown-up Republicans behave:

Yet when Cheney shows up at the Senate, here’s Pat Leahy who wants to be all buddy-buddy and put his arm around him and get in the photo-op and act like they’re good buds, and Cheney — and this has been going on for far too long — and Cheney finally said F-you. You aren’t my friend.

What he was saying: You’re not my friend; I don’t want you in my company, and I’m not going to smile when I’m around you, because you don’t deserve my friendship. You haven’t earned my friendship. You are my enemy, and I’m not going to come here and put on a show, phony baloney show, that says like you and that we are convivial and that we are colleagues and all we do is disagree in the daytime but at night we go out and have a beer. F-you. I don’t want to have a beer with you. I don’t want to be anywhere near you. I don’t like you. You do not deserve my friendship, and don’t act like we’re friends here. Point made.

Amen. Hubba hubba. Home run, exclamation point. It’s about time this started happening because the Democrats are getting away with this two-faced behavior of theirs for way, way, way too many years.

That’s what they mean when they say they are “changing the tone,” kids. If Democrats say something bad about Republicans, they are bad. If Republicans something bad about Democrats, they are telling the truth. If Democrats have disagreements with you but still try to be friendly, they are being two-faced. You should tell them to go fuck themselves. That’s what grown-ups call “civility.” And you will feel so much better after you do it, too.

If that doesn’t work and you still feel bad, try one of these little blue babies. Uncle Rush and Uncle Dick are what we call “Republican role models.” We believe that if it feels good, do it. That’s what being a grown-up Republican is all about.

Thanks to kevin for the Catch.

More Cuttin’ ‘n Runnin’

Tristero links to Rhandi Rhodes saying that it is unconscionable that Bremer would cut ‘n run while a US marine was still being held by the evul terrists. The troops must be awfully pleased to see their Preznit now behaving as if he no longer has anything to do with what’s going on in Iraq. Some support for our boys, eh? Sneak outta town in the dead of night and leave them there to face the music.

Let freedom rain. Or is it, let freedom rein? Let freedom wring? I forget. Condi?

Michael Kinsley’s Editorial Page Is In Da House

It’s Called Democracy

What gives the government the right to arrest you and imprison you indefinitely without offering a reason or opportunity to appeal? The answer, in the United States, is: Nothing gives the government that right. It is hard to see what is left of American freedom if the government has the authority to make anyone on its soil — citizen or noncitizen — disappear and then rule that no one can do anything about it.

Or so we once thought. But the Bush administration — whose convoluted memos on defining torture now rank with Bill Clinton’s definition of sex — says Congress gave it exactly this power. And when was that? Soon after Sept. 11, 2001, Congress passed a two-line resolution authorizing the use of military force against “nations, organizations or persons” engaged in terrorism. We would like to hear from any member who intended by this vote to repeal the Bill of Rights.

[…]

President Bush and his administration say: Look, there’s a war on. And anyway, the United States is not some Latin American dictatorship of the 1970s; we can trust our government not to abuse the extraordinary power it claims. But this administration’s record of incompetence and callousness does not inspire us to lightly kiss away our constitutional protections.

[…]

The whole point of the substantive freedoms and due process guarantees in the Bill of Rights is that freedom should not rest on any government’s claims of benevolence. Now that the Guantanamo detainees have been given the right to a hearing, Americans will learn a bit more about what has happened there. As with the abuses at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison, it’s likely that the more they learn, the less they’ll like it.

Read the whole thing. It sizzles.