Month: October 2007

Taking it To The Next Level

by digby

Speaking of fascists:

Today, Giuliani is a front-runner for the presidency of the United States. Since 9/11 the office he seeks has been radically remade. Led by Dick Cheney, the Bush administration has expanded White House powers to levels unseen since the Nixon years. Claiming an inherent authority to act outside the law, it has unilaterally set aside treaties, intercepted telephone calls between citizens without court warrants, detained individuals indefinitely without judicial review, ordered “enhanced interrogations,” or torture, prohibited by law, and claimed the ability to disregard more than 1,000 parts of legislation that it has deemed to improperly restrict its authority. To thwart oversight and checks on its power, all spheres of executive branch operations have been fortified by heightened secrecy.

This expansion has warped policy decisions, undermined the country’s authority abroad, and damaged the framework of laws, institutions, and processes that secure citizens against abuse by the state. It also prompts two of the most crucial, if as yet unasked, questions of the 2008 presidential race: Which contenders are most likely to relinquish some of these powers, or, at the very least, decline to fully use them? And, alternatively, which candidate is most likely to not only embrace the powers that Bush has claimed, but to seize more? The reply to the first question is complicated, but to the second it’s simple: Rudy Giuliani.

Many Giuliani watchers already understand that Rudy is a hothead and a grandstander, even a bit of a dictator at times. These qualities have dominated the story of his mayoralty that most people know. As that drama was unfolding, however, so was a quieter story, driven by Giuliani’s instinct and capacity for manipulating the levers of government. His methods, like those of the current White House, included appointments of yes-men, aggressive tests of legal limits, strategic lawbreaking, resistance to oversight, and obsessive secrecy. As was also the case with the White House, the events of 9/11 solidified the mindset underlying his worst tendencies. Embedded in his operating style is a belief that rules don’t apply to him, and a ruthless gift for exploiting the intrinsic weaknesses in the system of checks and balances. That’s why, of all the presidential candidates, Giuliani is most likely to take the expansions of the executive branch made by the Bush administration and push them further still. The blueprint can be found in the often-overlooked corners of his mayoralty.

I urge you to read the whole thing. The Bush legacy will be in very good hands if this lunatic wins the election. In fact, he may just take it to the next level:

What is most disturbing is the likelihood that a Giuliani administration would venture beyond the expansive claims of executive authority staked out by the Bush White House. For instance, though Bush has demanded that Congress fund the war in Iraq, he has never openly questioned Congress’s power of the purse. Giuliani, however, told a reporter that the president has the right to provide money for the troops to stay in Iraq even if Congress withdraws funding. Similarly, Bush has implied that critics of his Iraq policy are unpatriotic, but he has not declared that the government can silence their voices. This September, echoing the sentiments that he repeatedly attempted to enforce as mayor, Giuliani said that the “General Betray Us” ad paid for by the left-wing group MoveOn “passed a line that we should not allow American political organizations to pass.”

One might minimize the significance of these kinds of statements as the loose talk of a candidate trying to impress conservative primary voters—indeed, that is how the press has generally treated them. To believe that Giuliani is merely grandstanding, however, is to ignore his history. If he reaches the White House, he will almost certainly do what he did at City Hall: punish dissent, circumvent the law, conceal the workings of the government in secrecy, and use his litigator’s gifts to obstruct mechanisms of oversight and accountability.

This is the guy the unitary executive was designed for.

Update: His is judgment about people is infallible:

What has my big-girl panties in a twist today is Rudy’s regard for a man removed from his job as a priest over multiple allegations of sex abuse. After the church fired Monsignor Alan Placa, he went to work for Giuliani Partners. Where his new boss, the former prosecutor, shows him the kind of compassion he never had for turnstile jumpers: “I know the man,’’ Giuliani told reporters. “I know who he is, so I support him. We give some of the worst people in our society the benefit of the doubt. And of course I’m going to give it to one of my closest friends.’’ Of course; we are all law and order guys until the perp is a pal.

Giuliani Partners also boasted his criminal pal Bernie Kerik. He knows how to pick ’em.

.

Not A Tough Call

by digby

Sometimes you have to wonder if certain Democratic leaders have taken some sort of medication that renders them incapable of taking a clear, principled stand on anything anymore. This FISA bill is not difficult, really it isn’t. It is incomprehensible that that our lawmakers cannot devise a process that ensures that the government issues warrants as the constitution requires, even through a secret court, before or after the fact, to eavesdrop on American citizens. It’s simply ridiculous to think that the executive branch must have the right to do it without any interference from anyone.

In any case, we know why this administration wants this power, and it has nothing to do with terrorism. It’s not as if it’s a secret. They have believed since the 1970’s when it was first instituted, that the FISA court was an encroachment on executive power and they were determined to get rid of it, no matter what. Former justice department official Jack Goldsmith quoted Cheney’s top aide David Addington saying:

We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court.

Cheney’s unitary executive theory has nothing to do with the War On Terror. His beliefs grew out of his experiences during the Ford administration, when Osama bin laden was playing tiddly winks in Saudi Arabia. Terrorism and modern communication technology are the excuses they’ve used. They are not the real reasons they want these powers and it should give any thinking lawmaker pause that they continue to relentlessly insist that they should have them.

Charlie Savage, author of the book Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy , described it this way in a recent Frontline documentary called Cheney’s Law:

It was the day after inauguration. It was the very first meeting of the White House Counsel’s office, the new White House legal team. … They gather in Alberto Gonzales’ office on the second floor of the West Wing to meet each other and get started.

Alberto Gonzales comes in; he greets them; there’s pleasantries. Then he gives them marching orders that he says that he’s conveying from the president to them, to the legal team: Don’t just do your jobs; do your jobs with a mandate.

And there’s a twofold mandate. The first is, move fast on getting judicial confirmations in the pipeline. We’re going to get conservative judicial-restraint-oriented judges confirmed, and we’re going to fill a lot of vacancies on the federal bench that have been held open the last couple of years because of partisan politics within the Congress. …

The second mandate, though, was something of a surprise. It was: The presidency has been weakened by this president’s predecessors; it’s time to protect and restore presidential power. You are to seek out every opportunity to expand presidential power as they arise in the next few years. … Alberto Gonzales used in that meeting the phrase, “You are to ensure that this president passes on this office to his successor in better shape than he found it.” …

But as months passed and time progressed, Cheney took increasingly public ownership of this idea, that this was his idea that had come from his experiences in the Ford administration and so forth. …

So all this secretive nonsense about warrantless surveillance being necessary to protect the nation from terrorists should logically be viewed with extreme skepticism. It’s not as if we aren’t aware of this other agenda. And yet the congress is apparently willing to rubber stamp this unconstitutional power grab and even give retroactive immunity to gigantic corporations which willingly went along in the past, despite the fact that their high priced legal talent had to know it was clearly illegal.

One might have expected even a Republican congress to at least be concerned about protecting its own prerogatives, but they proved to be completely supine in the face of Dick Cheney’s onslaught. Considering the authoritarian nature of the modern conservative movement, that was not entirely surprising. But we had high hopes for a Democratic congress. Surely they would not allow the dramatically unpopular Republican executive to continue to assert this radical doctrine. Sadly, we have been very disappointed in that. Apparently, a majority of Democrats are either cowed by the Bush administration or persuaded that the nation truly does want a dictatorial executive with few restraints. Either way, they are betraying the constitution just as surely as the Bush administration is.

Even more dispiriting is their eagerness to grant amnesty to the corporations that have been working hand in glove with the administration to help them break existing laws and assert this privilege, in at least one case before 9/11. There is no other way to see that than a craven sell-out to political contributors. (What’s that we keep hearing about the “culture of corruption?”)

So, what can we do? Obviously, we can support Chris Dodd’s Senate hold on the legislation, which for reasons about which we can only speculate, the senate leadership seems determined to thwart. Dodd has taken a principled stand on this for constitutional reasons. But he has also specifically and unequivocally said he will filibuster any bill that confers retroactive immunity for corporations because it rewards these companies for breaking the law and forecloses the one avenue by which we might someday be able to determine just exactly what this administration did during that period when nobody thought to stop them.

Dodd should be able to count on his fellow senators, particularly the Democratic presidential candidates, to support him if it comes to that. This is bigger than politics as usual. But sadly, it is not clear they are going to. Joe Biden gave an unequivocal yes when he was asked. Obama and Clinton both hedged, using very unsatisfactory lawyerly language. It is extremely disappointing that they cannot clearly stand up for the constitution and against amnesty for political contributors on something this consequential.

This is not a difficult question for people of principle. The answer is either yes or no:

Will you support a filibuster of any bill that grants retroactive immunity to telecoms for enabling the Bush administration to spy illegally on Americans?

Call the Clinton and Obama offices/campaign and ask them:

* Clinton Presidential: (703) 469-2008

* Clinton Senate: (202) 224-4451

* Obama Presidential: (866) 675-2008

* Obama Senate: (202) 224-2854

And by the way, if either of them think these authoritarian, executive powers are a good thing — that they will be useful for their own purposes should they become president — then I certainly hope they aren’t depending on the same blind support from the base of the Democratic party that Cheney and Bush received from theirs. We aren’t subjects, we are citizens, and we don’t work that way.

Update: Obama decides to speak in clear, unambiguous English. How refreshing:

“To be clear: Barack will support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.”

Update II:

From Michael Bérubé in the comments:

you have to wonder if certain Democratic leaders have taken some sort of medication that renders them incapable of taking a clear, principled stand on anything anymore

Funny you should say that! It’s called Insulor®, and it was developed by Rahm Emanuel Laboratories in 2002. Taken regularly, it leads patients to believe that “complex” issues like civil liberties do not motivate voters, and in high doses, it can induce mass delusions, such as the belief that a “strong stand” on “terrorism” will be an electoral winner for Democrats and insulate them (hence the name) from attacks by Republicans.

Possible side effects include loss of privacy, civil liberties, constitutional amendments, elections, respect, hair, memory, and eyesight.

.

Hissy Politics

by digby

I have a new post up at The Big Con about the Ladies Pearl Clutching and Hankie Wringing Society, also known as the Republican party.

.

It Burns

by digby

I have got a massive headache and my eyes and nose are running like a sieve from all this smoke. It’s a bad time in southern California right now, even if you are lucky enough not to be in the line of one of these fires. The air, never wonderful, is really unpleasant and it’s hot and dry and hard to concentrate what with friends evacuated and possibly homeless, and disaster all around.

So maybe I’m not able to read with my usual comprehension right now, because I honestly had trouble interpreting the utter gibberish that Glenn Beck vomited today to try to excuse his reflexive hatred for Californians(which I will remind you, was this):

We all love America. We all love America. We just disagree on how we should function, what we should do, big government, small government. It doesn’t mean you hate America.

I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.

Via Media Matters, here’s Beck today, rambling in some strange pidgen English, dripping with incoherent saccharin insincerity, attempting to explain away his nasty little bon mot:

BECK: Let me get to your phone calls here in a second. I want to have a — I want to have a frank and open conversation with you here for a second. Apparently, I have upset a few liberal bloggers. Woe is me. And I need to be extraordinarily clear on one thing. Not with you. And I’ll explain in a second.

These people — they’re amazing. They’re incredible. They claim that I’m serious when I’m joking and try to cause trouble, and then they say I’m joking when I’m serious and try to cause trouble. There’s no way — if you disagree with any of these people — there’s no way that you can ever win. And here’s the interesting thing: Even if you agree with these people, there’s no way you can ever win.

I shouldn’t have to say this, especially in the United States of America, but for the benefit of the bloggers only, I will. The wildfires in California are a tragedy. I don’t want anyone to lose their home. I don’t care what their political stripes are. I don’t want a soul to lose their home, and anyone who doesn’t want to make me into an evil supervillain would understand that. You understand that. You’ve listened to me for years. In fact, you’ve got to look at the calendar every year and say, “Oh, jeez, there’s a wildfire. Glenn’s going to pop a blood vessel again.”

If you’ve listened to me for years, you know wildfires are deeply personal to me. Wildfires make blood shoot out of my eyes. But for the bloggers, it doesn’t matter what I really think. It doesn’t — they’re not trying to convince you I’m a bad guy. You know. You know who I am. What they’re trying to do is convince people who don’t watch the TV show, who don’t listen to the show. They’re trying to convince them that I’m an evil supervillain.

Because those people can be convinced. So let me just — let me tell you, so you know, so you can tell those who want to make me into an evil supervillain.

Who do you have to be to think that it’s a good thing that anybody’s house burns down? Who do you have to be?

Let me put — let me put this into perspective. I’m a dad of four kids. Put yourself into the situation that you go to sleep at night or, you know, it’s nighttime, but you ain’t going to sleep because you’re the dad, you’re the mom, and you see over the hill behind your house, you see a strange, red glow. You know what that glow is caused from. You’ve spent all day telling your kids, “Don’t worry, kids. Don’t worry. It’s not coming here.” You imagine how freaked out your kids are. Then imagine going to bed and your wife — what she would say to me and I would be saying it to her, “Honey, just get some sleep. Just get some sleep. It’s all going to be OK.”

But you –neither of you sleep because you know the red, that glow, is starting to creep back over the hill. So at some point, you have to have the conversation, “Honey, what do we grab? What do we take? Do we take that book? Do we take that memento? Do we take those pictures? How about the computer? What can we shove into the trunk of our car? Our whole life might be gone.”

Put yourself into the shoes of the firefighters, who do this every single year. These guys are heroes. So, please, who do you have to be? What kind of monster wants that to happen? When you listen to this program — I hate to break it to, you know, those who don’t listen to the show, but if they ever would listen to the show, let me give you a little piece of advice: You have to engage what I like to call “your brain.” You actually have to think. I might be making a joke. I might be serious.

We joke a lot about, you know, the Hollywood crowd living in Southern California. For example, I believe I have advocated Hollywood building giant air conditioners so they can fix the global-warming problem. I’m pretty sure I was joking then.

But you wouldn’t know that if you hadn’t engaged your brain. So let me be serious for a minute. Let me extraordinarily clear. I clearly do not want anyone’s house to be burned down. Now, some people may want to interpret what they think I mean, but that’s what I mean. Some people want me to have said that I’m seriously happy about people losing their homes or that I somehow or another believe that they deserve to have their house burn down. What kind of KKK-Nazi combination do you have to [inaudible] to actually believe that?

Unfortunately — and that’s weird because that word sometimes is important in a sentence — unfortunately, some people want to think the worst. But thinking the worst doesn’t make it real. Thinking the worst doesn’t change an illusion into reality.

I just can’t believe that I live in a country where I have to explain that.

I can’t believe I live in a country where anyone who talks like that is paid big bucks to be on the radio and TV.

That bucket of rhetorical mush is nearly indecipherable, although I’m sure the tone was one of whining, whimpering victimization and anyone who tuned in would think that poor Beck had been wrongly accused of saying that he wanted people’s houses to burn down.

He was victim of liberal bloggers who completely twisted his words. The truth is that he merely pointed out that a lot of people who hate America were losing their houses to fire, which, according to his producer, (because he used the words “unfortunatly for them”) means he actually thinks it’s sad that people who hate America are now homeless. That’s completely believable. Or maybe he was joking. Or “blood was shooting out of his eyes” because of wildfires and he was distracted, who knows?

Whatever it was, he couldn’t possibly have been expressing a knee-jerk, sophomoric wingnut shadenfreude that southern Californians, some of whom he has decided “hate America,” were losing their houses in a fire. No way. Those of us who took his little “joke” that way were failing to “engage our brains” because we haven’t been listening to him for years and don’t know that he’s got a serious issue with fires.

The stupid… it really burns this time.

.

Don’t Make Trouble

by digby

If one political party is a complete failure at governance, but their rivals are total, all-encompassing failures at politics, which do you suppose will win the favor of the citizens?

It looks like we are about to find out.

I just saw Rahm Emmanuel on Hardball saying that because some people in the industrial midwest have economic insecurity nobody in the country cares more about the war. Neither apparently, do they care about the fact that the Democrats look like a bunch of bumbling fools every single day as the Republicans punk them over and over again with savvy political tactics. Good to know.

It reminds me of the very successful 2002 campaign in which it was decided that the “smart” thing to do was vote for the war so we could get back to the kitchen table issues that people really care about. It works so well because voters are always very interested in the minute details of health care plans and find rousing demagogic speeches about the flag, God and mortal threats terribly dull and disengaging. And their most faithful supporters just love it when their political leaders are forced to kneel at the feet of their rivals over and over again and beg for forgiveness for something their rivals do every day. It makes them feel so proud.

Rahm said that what they care about is that the Democratic leadership raised the minimum wage, got help for veterans health care, help for college tuition, and might get some watered down version of S-CHIP and an energy policy (that the president will no doubt take credit for if they ever pass.)

Paul Krugman was on and mentioned that since the batshit crazy Republicans are angling for war in Iran, the Democrats figure they might just squeak back with their narrow majority as long as they stay as quiet and polite as possible. Keep your fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, Matthews, Charlie Cook, and Chuck Todd all agreed that the Republicans have been winning the rhetorical war on the issue of Iraq and national security since the fall, based on this poll:

“Which comes closer to your view? In the long run, the U.S. will be safer from terrorism if it confronts the countries and groups that promote terrorism in the Middle East. OR, In the long run, the U.S. will be safer from terrorism if it stays out of other countries’ affairs in the Middle East.”

Confronts — Stays Out — Unsure

47%…………….45%………..8%

link fixed
.

War Of The Worlds

by digby

Fareed Zakaria is very, very shrill:

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.” For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?

When the relatively moderate Mohammed Khatami was elected president in Iran, American conservatives pointed out that he was just a figurehead. Real power, they said (correctly), especially control of the military and police, was wielded by the unelected “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now that Ahmadinejad is president, they claim his finger is on the button. (Oh wait, Iran doesn’t have a nuclear button yet and won’t for at least three to eight years, according to the CIA, by which point Ahmadinejad may not be president anymore. But these are just facts.)

In a speech last week, Rudy Giuliani said that while the Soviet Union and China could be deterred during the cold war, Iran can’t be. The Soviet and Chinese regimes had a “residual rationality,” he explained. Hmm. Stalin and Mao—who casually ordered the deaths of millions of their own people, fomented insurgencies and revolutions, and starved whole regions that opposed them—were rational folk. But not Ahmadinejad, who has done what that compares? One of the bizarre twists of the current Iran hysteria is that conservatives have become surprisingly charitable about two of history’s greatest mass murderers.

Doesn’t Zakaria realize that today’s enemies are the strongest, most evil threats the world has ever known? Stalin and Mao were a couple of girlymen compared to Ahmadinejad. And Hitler was nothing but a big baby compared to bin Laden. That’s why we need the gargantuan, turgid, throbbing rhetoric of giants like Rudy Giuliani to save us from these monsters. Doesn’t he understand that they are coming to kill us all in our beds any minute and we will have to run for our lives unless the Republicans protect us?

I actually find it rather amusing to read this. Those of us who’ve been following the scribblings of the panting, heaving 101st keyboarders from the beginning are all too familiar with these over-heated rants. (Their excited comparisons between the US and “terrorism” to the battle of Thermopolae after they saw the cartoon movie “300” were particularly enjoyable.) But even I have found it slightly disconcerting that these sophomoric ramblings found their way onto the campaign trail. Until now, this stuff was confined to the bowels of the rightwing blogosphere and the radical back pages of Commentary and The Weekly Standard.

I guess this is a reverse example of Dave Neiwert’s thesis about how they push their most extremist rhetoric from the bottom up into the mainstream. In this case the most elite, intellectual right wing thinkers hold the most extremist views and have succeeded in pouring their deeply neurotic desire for a “war of the worlds” into the polloi. Or perhaps the rightwing intelligensia and the fundamentalists are just equally screwed up people who have a neurotic psychological need to create a heroic myth about their own lives.

Either way, it’s disturbing. These people have access to the most powerful weapons the world has ever known and they have wokred themselves into a full-fledged delusion. I suppose in a way it’s good that it’s finally penetrated at least some members of the Village. The question is whether it’s too late.

.

Glen Beck Is Going To Hell

by digby

Here’s some rightwing gibberish that will make your hair stand on end:

When I say on the air, and I’ve said it a lot lately, that we need to come together and we need to get back into the center, we’re being pushed on to the edges — I want you to understand, that is not on policies. I don’t mean that we come in the center on policies. We come to the center on principles. We come back to the center of the melting pot, that we’re all one America, that just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean you hate America, and I love America. We all love America. We just disagree on how we should function, what we should do, big government, small government. It doesn’t mean you hate America. I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.

I just heard that Republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter is now calling for the National Guard to be involved in helping out his constituents suffering from the fires. I wonder if he agrees with Beck on this? Or Ken Starr, who has an endowed chair at Pepperdine University which was evacuated yesterday.

I’m as partisan as they come and I really don’t like Republican politics, but I can honestly say that it has never once entered my head to say that people in Oklahoma or Mississippi who lost their homes from tornadoes or whatever, hate America. It just doesn’t compute that anyone human actually looks at the world this way — especially as he’s blathering some incoherent gibberish about how we need to all be “one America.” It’s sick.

Why does CNN continue to employ this hateful creep? Is there no limit?

Serious Consequences

by digby

I have long noted the similarities between the modern conservative movement and their former hated enemies, the Commies. Indeed, their Leninist approach to Ronald Reagan is nearly a direct knock-off and guys like Norquist and Weyrich have been known to draw explicit parallels between themselves and Mao and Stalin.

But you rarely see them come right out and proclaim their admiration for the communists — and admit that they are emulating their techniques, as we see in Cheney’s shoe pounding speech this week-end:

As time passed, the terrorists believed they’d exposed a certain weakness and lack of confidence in the West, particularly in America. Dr. Bernard Lewis explained the terrorists’ reasoning this way: “During the Cold War,” Dr. Lewis wrote, “two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire. If you said or did anything against the Americans, not only would there be no punishment; there might even be some possibility of reward, as the usual anxious procession of diplomats and politicians, journalists and scholars and miscellaneous others came with their usual pleading inquiries: ‘What have we done to offend you? What can we do to put it right?'”

I agree with Greg Djerejian who responded:

It’s really an appallingly strange time in our country. We have a singularly powerful Vice-President (compared to any of his predecessors)–openly quite enamored by the tactics employed by the Soviet Union–our former arch-foe whose human rights standards we derided. Indeed, we fought a decades-long Cold War so that Western style constitutional freedoms would trump Soviet authoritarianism. But yes, from this Sovietophile posture, use of torture and black-sites and detention without habeas corpus protections makes all the sense in the world, doesn’t it? Because we have a Vice-President all but openly emulating and cheer-leading the tactics of the KGB, not in the wilds of Wyoming, but to a soi disant sophisticated audience in Washington DC.

It’s almost as if the reason they hated” the totalitarians was because they could get away with doing what these guys could only fantasize about. It wasn’t hatred at all, actually. It was ency.

But this is no longer an academic exercise, is it? Aside from the torture and black sites and detention without habeas (as if that’s not enough) they’ve also been busily laying the legal groundwork for an authoritarian regime at home. It only awaits the next “crisis” for them to fully implement.

And judging by the hysterical reaction of the media and political elites the last time, I can only assume that they will succeed in persuading the country that all these things are necessary.(Recall that Sally Quinn spent the first few years after 9/11 giving terror-porn speeches all over Washington about how to prepare for the next attack, including whether your Shih Tzu can wear a gas mask.) The Nazis, (another former enemy no doubt richly admired for their efficient ways of dealing with internal dissent) never did an illegal thing according the German law. They just changed the laws. That’s how the smart folks do things. Precedents, judges, new laws — it all adds up to a new police state just waiting for the moment it’s required.

Meanwhile, Cheney and the rest of his lunatic cohorts are sending clear, unambiguous signals that they are planning to attack Iran. Indeed, as Kevin Hayden pointed out yesterday, there is a coordinated product roll-out happening right before our eyes. First of all we have that Dick Cheney speech in which, as Greg Djerejian also points out, he repeatedly uses a phrase he and Bush used in the run-up to the Iraq war: “serious consequences.

Using the exact language Seymour Hersh described in his recent article, Cheney lays the groundwork for an attack based upon the alleged fact that Iran is arming the Iraqi insurgency:

General Petraeus has noted, Iran’s Quds Force is trying to set up a “Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests and to fight a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.” At the same time, Iran is “responsible for providing the weapons, the training, the funding and, in some cases, the direction for operations that have indeed killed U.S. soldiers.”

…Iran’s real agenda appears to include promoting violence against the coalition. Fearful of a strong, independent, Arab Shia community emerging in Iraq, one that seeks religious guidance not in Qom, Iran, but from traditional sources of Shia authority in Najaf and Karbala, the Iranian regime also aims to keep Iraq in a state of weakness that prevents Baghdad from presenting a threat to Tehran.

Perhaps the greatest strategic threat that Iraq’s Shiites face today in — is — in consolidating their rightful role in Iraq’s new democracy is the subversive activities of the Iranian regime.

And Bill Kristol follows up with very similar language, only adding that we are already win-win-winners!

KRISTOL: We’re winning in Iraq…It looks like the Iranian government is going for the full hard line on their nuclear program. And I think we are going to have to be serious about dealing with both their intervention in Iraq — which is now the only real threat, I think, incidentally, to relative success in Iraq — and their nuclear program.

WALLACE: When you say getting serious, I think a lot of our viewers are going to say, Kristol thinks there’s going to be a war.

WILLIAMS: Yes.

KRISTOL: I think there could be a use of force. September 6th, 2007, when Israel used force against Syria to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons with North Korean aid, is going to go down in history, I think, as the date where we got a glimpse of the kind of future we’re dealing with…I think the short-term question is does Petraeus think he needs a little help across the border to secure our successes in Iraq.

And if so, I think the president will give it to him. We can’t let them just build IEDs and train Iraqis with impunity across the border.

And then there was this from certifiable lunatic, Michael Ledeen. We’ve already won, but risk losing again if we don’t well… you know:

…Gen. Petraeus told Congress last month that it would not be possible to win in Iraq if our mission were restricted to that country.

Not a day goes by without one of our commanders shouting to the four winds that the Iranians are operating all over Iraq, and that virtually all the suicide terrorists are foreigners, sent in from Syria. We have done great damage to their forces on the battlefield, but they can always escalate, and we still have no policy to direct against the terror masters in Damascus and Tehran.

Cheney and his boyz aren’t exactly being subtle about all this. It isn’t just sabre rattling in the hope that Iran — or China and Russia — come to their senses and do what we want them to do, as some Democrats seem to think. Dick Cheney doesn’t believe in such things. He says right in his speech that he considers dialog and engagement to be weakness. He believes that actions are the only thing that matters. He’s not hiding anything.

The question now is whether he and his buddies will be able to get Bush to pull the trigger. I would guess he will. The more unpopular they are, the less they have to lose and the more they can appeal to Junior’s newfound fascination with his place in history. After all, trying to take over the world has made many a failed leader’s historical reputation. Unfortunately, Junior probably doesn’t realize that it rarely turns out to be a good one.

.

Chuckles

by digby

.

Turkey

by tristero

There is a very serious crisis underway which is 3 days short, give or take, from turning into another Bush/Iraq catastrophe. To make a long story short, the PKK in Iraq have been attacking Turkish soldiers. This is in response to attacks from Turkish soldiers who in turn were attacked by the PKK and this infinite loop has been going on since who knows when. It’s almost as if Turkey and the PKK looked at the the Israel/Palestine situation and said to themselves, “Wow! That, too could be us.”

Recently, Turkey issued a statement authorizing military force which was then authorized by their Parliament. We were assured by the NY Times, but without attribution to any expert, that Turkey would never have any intention of actually invading. So, as if on cue, the PKK attacked again and killed at least 12 Turkish soldiers. Eight more are missing. The government and the Turkish people are absolutely furious and Turkish military movements have been spotted on the border.

Enter Condoleeza Rice who begged PM Erdogan for “a few days” before invading. What Rice hopes to accomplish is unclear other than to briefly postpone an “unlikely” invasion that even before this attack looked to me as all too inevitable. There’s a lot of spinning going on right now, with conflicting emphases, so below is some detail from the link above. Hopefully, this will help you sort out what’s going on.

Why is this important? Because a Turkish invasion of Iraq will hellishly complicate a hellishly tragic situation. Based on Dick Cheney et al’s long history of sober, intelligent foreign policy initiatives – namely none – it is quite likely that if Ahmadinejad so much as breathes after the Turks invade (assuming they will), the Bush administration will declare a casus belli with Iran, and people will be distracted from whatever happens on the Turkish border as Operation Exterminate All The Brutes kicks off against Tehran.

Even if you don’t accept that last prediction, this is a terribly serious situation:

Turkey continued to bolster its forces at the border Monday, including land and air units. But in advance of his departure for a two-day trip to London, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had delayed a decision about retaliation after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice intervened…

“We do not believe unilateral cross-border operations are the best way to address this issue,” [a U.S. spokesman] said, describing Rice’s call to Erdogan. “In our view, there are better ways to deal with this issue.”

McCormack said Rice had called Erdogan and Massoud Barzani, leader of the Iraqi regional Kurdish government…

The Turkish military retaliated inside Turkey for the ambush, killing as many as 34 Kurdish militants, the military said Monday, a higher number than had been reported. But the ambush still drew strong public outrage here, and its brazenness could effectively force the government to make good on its warning to send forces into northern Iraq.

The confrontation over PKK activities in northern Iraq has brought Turkish-American relations to their lowest point in years. Turkey says the United States, a NATO ally that has military control over northern Iraq, should do more to help fight the Kurdish group, which has killed nearly 40 Turkish soldiers in recent weeks in cross-border raids. Erdogan said he expected the United States to take “swift steps” against the militants…

“We don’t want to go into northern Iraq – it’s a mess,” said Suat Kiniklioglu, a lawmaker from Erdogan’s party who is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. “We are a country negotiating with the European Union.”

Kiniklioglu added: “I think we’ve passed the threshold. It looks like for two days or three days there will be a holding off and a waiting period. Unless the U.S. comes up with something magic in the next few days, which is highly unlikely, we’ll probably go in.”

Iraqi officials offered a mixed response. “We are looking for peace, not war, and to solve problems peacefully,” said President Jalal Talabani. But Talabani, who is himself a Kurd, added tartly, “We will not hand any Kurdish man to Turkey, even a Kurdish cat.”

Emphasis added. There have been reports of a ceasefire from the PKK. But Turks are, well, you can guess, and the duplication of the message implies this is a well-coordinated response:

Talibani’s office said Monday that the PKK was on the verge of announcing a cease-fire after he called on it to lay down its arms and leave Iraq. That view that brought a skeptical response from Erdogan.

“These assessments of Talabani do not personally satisfy me,” he said. “It is beautiful to say such words. The expressions are beautiful. But we would like to see what its outcome is going to be.”

—

Turkish officials said statements would no longer help. “Statements on terror will not satisfy us,” Cemil Cicek, a government spokesman, said in a televised news conference. “In terms of statements, there has been nothing left unspoken. We expected and will expect firm steps from our counterparts. At this point, there is no importance of anything said by anyone.”

Recently, Juan Cole wrote:

First the Turkish parliament voted to allow military incursions into Iraq in hot pursuit of Kurdish terrorists who killed people in Turkey. Now the Iraqi parliament is crafting a resolution denouncing the Turkish parliament. All these mutual condemnations remind me eerily of 1914.

Then again, Professor Cole has always been an optimist.

It’s conceivable that some kind of of DMZ might be imposed by American troops. If so, there is little chance of it holding for very long without a massacre. And if American as well as Iraqi and Turkish casualties start to mount, Bush and theThe Man Called Petraeus will need all their experience and talent to avert sheer horror.

And that’s why Professor Cole is an optimist.

—

PS I should add that if anyone has more detailed knowledge of this conflict, either historically or about what is going on now, it would be great if you could leave comments, links, etc here. Thanks.