Month: December 2007

Presidential Perks

by digby

I’ve written so much about torture these last few years that I almost feel sick every time I broach the subject. So sometimes I avoid it.(Perhaps that’s what the pro-torture sadists among us hope will happen.)

But it just keeps coming back. And this latest news that they destroyed the torture tapes brings it right back to the torturer in chief himself.

Kevin Drum draws upon some of the books that have been written these past couple of years to examine what we know about the torture of Abu Zubaydah. He quotes Spencer Ackerman’s review of James Risen’s “State of War:”

After the 2002 capture of Abu Zubaydah, a bin Laden deputy, failed to yield much information due to his drowsiness from medical treatment, Bush allegedly told Tenet, “Who authorized putting him on pain medication?

Kevin goes on to describe the details of Abu Zubaydah’s torture as related in Ron Susskind’s “One Percent Doctrine.” Kevin concludes:

So here’s what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical “confessions” under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.

The political press prides itself on the way it explores “character,” passing judgment on politicians through the lens of bourgeois Village sexual mores and social hierarchy. When it isn’t outright character assassination (usually informed by clever Republican PR) it’s almost always useless as a guide for adults to assess the fitness of candidates for office.

But there are times, when a candidates says something so revealing that the hair on the back of your neck stands up. This was one of those times:

While driving back from the speech later that day, Bush mentions Karla Faye Tucker, a double murderer who was executed in Texas last year. In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. ‘Did you meet with any of them?’ I ask.

Bush whips around and stares at me. ‘No, I didn’t meet with any of them,’ he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. ‘I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ ‘What was her answer?’ I wonder.

‘Please,’ Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, ‘don’t kill me.’

I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel, even for someone as militantly anticrime as Bush — because he immediately stops smirking.

‘It’s tough stuff,’ Bush says, suddenly somber, ‘but my job is to enforce the law.’

Why should anyone be surprised that that man would demand that a mentally ill prisoner with a broken leg be denied pain medication and tortured?

The idea that he didn’t know about these torture session is ludicrous. It was one of the perks.

Update: And I would suggest that there is ample evidence that the Republican candidates for president this time, in different ways, have all shown a similar penchant for a nasty, simple-minded meanness or outright sadism. But the press is ignoring that once again in favor of predigested GOP spin which explores in detail such character revelations as Clinton’s “brittleness” and Obama’s “aloofness” and Edwards’ “inauthenticity.” Never mind the people who say they want to start deporting massive numbers of people because they are all diseased criminals or those who want to “double Gitmo.” As far as the press is concerned, their biggest problem is figuring out which ones are the most Christian.

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Reality Check

by digby

For all of you sour pusses in the comment section below who think that writing isn’t a “real job” (thanks!) and that WGA members are all rich bastards, check this out:

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Support Writers, Support Unions

by digby

You’ve probably noticed the ad over on the left about the writer’s strike. If you click on it you will find that it leads you to a WGA and Firedoglake initiative to send letters to the producers of your favorite TV shows asking them to settle the strike. If you miss your shows, that’s one good way to weigh in — and support the WGA.

I write a lot about Republican corruption because they are just so much more deeply entrenched in the lobbyist culture. Being the party of big business and “free” markets, they are natural allies of corporate America. But that doesn’t mean that they are alone in perpetuating it, not by a long shot. Money is the mother’s milk of politics and all that rot.

Democratic candidates, for instance, have a financial advantage in Hollywood, for a variety of reasons. But with all that money comes a corporate agenda not substantially different than Big Pharma or Energy. They want the kind of regulation or deregulation that helps them. They want to be able to consolidate at will without any pesky interference from the tiresome do-gooders who insist that media has a special function in a democracy. They want to control content and payment for content. And they want to protect their tax breaks, of course.

So, while being in bed with Hollywood may be more glamorous than being in bed with Halliburton, it’s still prostitution.

Jane Hamsher writes:

The AMPTP has hired Democratic consultant Chris Lehane.

Lehane worked for SAG during the last strike, at which point he said:

“… we believe strongly in the need to preserve the strength of the union and this agreement does that. We both come from liberal, progressive backgrounds, and this union represents working people.”

I guess “liberal” and “progressive” have become synonymous with “union busting asshole.” Over at United Hollywood, they point out why this is such a big load of bullshit:

This firm has built a reputation and a substantial income largely from Democratic, progressive political causes. A short list of their past employers includes Al Gore, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Michael Moore/Miramax (for Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko), and my personal favorite, the Screen Actors Guild. Founding partner Chris Lehane is currently a consultant for the Californians for Fair Election Reform, a major Democratic group, among other things. My DC lobbyist friends tell me that for emergency “crisis management,” firms like Fabiani & Lehane charge as much as $100,000 dollars a month. But the AMPTP is also paying Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican-leaning PR guru. He could easily cost another $100,000 a month. My concern is this: no one hires crisis management firms at such huge expense if they’re planning on making a fair deal. A fair deal doesn’t require hundreds of thousands of dollars of spin to sell. A fair deal is its own good PR.

No matter what happens with Lehane, the AMPTP has gotten their money’s worth out of him. He’s a “Democratic Consultant” who just sold them his party affiliation so they can say well, we’re working with the Democrats too so as not to be written off as corporate Republican creeps. But nobody drops this kind of money when they’re getting ready to settle, and indeed the AMPTP has never produced the second half of the “offer” with regard to streaming video content that they promised on Tuesday…

“Democrat” Jim Cramer was on Hardball a couple of months back talking about the (short lived, as it turned out) UAW strike of General Motors. Here is what he said:

MATTHEWS: Well, you know, Charles Wilson, head of GM once said, what‘s good for GM is good for America. How can you say that, Jim, if you‘re taking the jobs out of America?JIM CRAMER, HOST, “MAD MONEY”: Well, I got to tell you something. First of all, you have got this issue all framed wrong, Chris. This is about breaking the union. You break the union, you save the company. Do you know that, in 1992, Caterpillar broke the union, same union? Caterpillar‘s stock was at $5. Now it‘s at $76. You know, the same month that they broke the union, GM‘s stock an was at $34. Where is today? Thirty-four. If GM wants to be a competitive company in the world marketplace, like Caterpillar is, the number-one maker of earth-moving equipment in the world, it‘s got to break the union.

You can see the YouTube here. He said it as if he were talking about the sun coming up tomorrow. It was completely obvious to him.Now lest anyone think this back-handed anti-union behavior is confined to Clinton associates like Lehane and Mark Penn, Obama and Oprah are appearing at a non-union venue (apparently blessed by the locals) and Oprah herself runs a non-union shop:

“‘Oprah isn’t shutting down,’ commented (Chicago Film Office director Rich) Moskal. Neither are the Jerry Springer, Judge Mathis and the new Steve Wilcos show.” The reason these shows are not shutting down is either because they employ non-union writers, or have no need for writers. Is this fact something the Chicago film community should be celebrating? While there certainly is a place for non-union production in town, without the skill level fostered by union crews Hollywood would not be taking even a casual interest in the other things the city has to offer (such as interesting locations and cooperative film offices). The result would be that Chicago’s image as a film town would evaporate, and with it the infrasctructure and economic support that allows non-union projects to thrive. In the case of Oprah, she belongs to three different craft unions herself (as a performer), yet refuses to allow union representation of any sort inside the doors of her studio, instead paying substandard wages and benefits to non-union crews. It is a travesty that Oprah feels no responsibility to those who helped her create her billions in profit, but that’s the way things are and it’s part of the reason union representation is so vital in this industry.

Democratic politicians have been playing both sides of this issue for a long time now and the unions have been equally ineffectual in protecting their own interests. Perhaps it’s the best we could have hoped for in a conservative era. But that era is coming to a close and one of the most important things we do as progressives is to get working people to feel some solidarity with their fellows again, whether it’s writers or auto workers or janitors.

The Jim Cramers of the world scream at the top of their lungs that the only way to raise stock prices is to screw American workers. But there are others, like this fellow, who disagree and he shows that other nations who have maintained a strong union movement have fared just as well economically as the US and that we will need more unionization, not less, if we want to thrive in this global economy. I believe him.

Democrats have to start drawing some bright lines on this issue. Unions are fundamental.

Update:

Update II:

Negotiations between striking Hollywood writers and studios collapsed Friday, the culmination of a day in which the sides traded barbs and accusations.

The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers announced that the round of talks that started Tuesday had broken down, stalling efforts to end the five-week strike that has sidelined many prime-time and late-night TV shows.

The alliance said it was “puzzled and disheartened” by the Writers Guild of America’s ongoing negotiating strategy “that seems designed to delay or derail talks rather than facilitate an end to this strike.”

Jesus. You can sure tell they’ve brought in the political flacks. Picture Karen Hughes saying that.

Update II: The article above regarding Oprah Winfrey’s alleged non-union production company is unsubstantiated. We know that she employs at least one part time union member. It’s possible that she employs many more. The allegations that she provides “substandard pay and benefits” is also unsubstantiated.

She is not a WGA signatory and is not recognizing the WGA strike.

More Here

From The Wrong About Everything File

by digby

I know that I’m just a dirty hippie partisan whore who has no clue about anything, but it does seem my ill-informed intuition may have been correct when I wrote the other day that the neocons would be out in force doing what they always do. And it appears that the mainstream media may be listening.

From Ilan Goldenberg at Democracy Arsenal

In recent days conservative like [Ilan]Berman, Norman Podhoretz, Danielle Pletka and Jon Bolton, have been trying to cast doubt on the conclusions of the intelligence community. Now the Washington Post is picking up on it and lending the arguments more credibility. When reading these arguments it’s worthwhile to remember a few basic facts that should absolutely discredit this entire crowd.

First, none of these people have access to the actual intelligence. They are sitting at think tanks outside of the intelligence community and simply haven’t seen the data. This was a report that shows the basic consensus of the nation’s 16 intelligence and it was produced on the Bush Administration’s watch and ultimately approved by the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, who is a Bush Administration appointee.

Second, and this is even more important. This conservative and neo-conservative crowd has a long history of disregarding and manipulating intelligence when it doesn’t fall conveniently into their world view. The Team B exercises in the late 1970s found that Soviet intentions and capabilities were much more dangerous than previously estimated by the intelligence community. It became part of the justification for a major military buildup against the Soviets. The Rumsfeld Commission in the 1990s was specifically set up to dispute the Intelligence Community’s conclusions that the ballistic missile defense threat from developing countries to the American mainland was not an immediate danger. It became the basis for greater investment in a National Missile Defense. The Office of Special Plans that was set up in the Pentagon in the run up to the Iraq War, was specifically charged with trying to find connections between Al Qaeda and Iraq. It was used to support arguments for War.

In all of these cases conservatives played with and disregarded intelligence to help make their cases for a particular policy. And in all of these cases the conservatives were wrong.

This is where the Serious Villagers never being held accountable for being wrong becomes a problem. I realize that it’s impolite and impolitic to publicly excoriate intellectuals and policy experts who make huge mistakes like the Iraq war. I would imagine it makes relationships in the workplace and social circles quite unpleasant. But unless some standard is created and enforced, people will take advantage of the fact that nobody is ever held liable and will just keep doing this stuff for their own ends.

And their friends in the Village media will nearly always go along because according to their he said/she said construct, they have no obligation to ever sort out truth from lies. Each issue or policy question exists in its own vacuum. Therefore, credibility is irrelevant.

In this case it’s patently obvious to anyone who’s given even a perfunctory look at this, that the bloodthirsty neoconservatives have a track record over 30 years of exaggerating threats. It’s what they do. Iraq was the first big time shooting war they actually achieved — and look what happened. The intelligence services are far from perfect, and their assessments are hardly holy writ, but the neocons are completely and wholly lacking in credibility and honesty. They should never be taken seriously by anyone again.

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Wonder Working BS

by digby

I wrote about Mitt’s JFK speech dilemma the other day:

Kennedy successfully tempered a long standing anti-catholic bias held by a rather large number in this country by appealing to the fundamental American belief in a separation of church and state and by reassuring them that he would make decisions based on what his conscience tells him is in the national interest “and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates.” Romney will be trying to temper an anti-Mormon bias among a sub-set of the Religious Right by assuring them (through coded conservative Christian language) that he is just as biased against other religions and non-believers as they are and will definitely bow to outside pressures or dictates — from them.

Looks like that was pretty much what he did. He leaned more heavily on universal loathing of the despised minority of atheists and agnostics than even I predicted, but he did come through with some good code words meant to temper the fact that he couldn’t say outright that although he hated the same people the good moralist Christian Right hates, he felt their pain.

“Gain the world” (Mark 8:36), “author of liberty” (Junior Second: Inaugural) and “freedom’s early light” which, while it is in that mash up of God Save the King called “My Country ’tis of Thee” is also a favorite phrase of the religious right. I’m surprised he didn’t trot out “wonder working power” and Dred Scott.

He doffed his metaphorical hat to other rightwing nutjobs like Bill O’Reilly as well, by proclaiming that there is a “secular religion” out there trying to outlaw Santa Claus and sugar plums out of pure atheistic meanness. Once again we heathens are trying to take this country down.

Kevin Drum says it well:

Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom….Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.

….Whether it was the cause of abolition, or civil rights, or the right to life itself, no movement of conscience can succeed in America that cannot speak to the convictions of religious people.

….Our greatness would not long endure without judges who respect the foundation of faith upon which our constitution rests.

I can’t tell you how much this pisses me off. I’m well aware that this is par for the course among Republican politicians these days, and Romney is doing nothing more than engaging in what’s become routine conservative disparagement of those of us who aren’t religious. But the cowardice and pandering here is just phenomenal. Not only does Romney not have the guts to toss in even a single passing phrase about the nonreligious, as JFK did, he went out of his way to insist that “freedom requires religion,” that no movement of conscience is possible without religion, and that judges had better respect our “foundation of faith” lest our country’s entire greatness disappear. And that was just the warmup.

And Joan Walsh:

Romney blasted “the new religion of secularism,” referring to those who continue to argue for strict separation of church and state, which apparently, like certain of the Geneva Conventions under the Bush administration, is becoming “quaint.” I sometimes find the anti-God stridency of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens grating. Listening to Romney’s speech I realized what a necessary corrective it is to corrosive political pandering. Calling secularism “religion” is a cheap shot worthy of Bill O’Reilly, not a major presidential candidate. I can’t help hoping Romney’s speech fails to soothe religious conservatives, because the sooner the Republican Party faces up to the destructive cost of its electoral dependence on religious extremists, the better off our country will be.

Bravo.

Even theVillage Sunday School teacher and society hostess was appalled:

SALLY QUINN: I have to say that I’m really stunned because I think it was an obliteration of the idea of the separation of church and state. He eliminated anybody who was a doubter, an atheist, an agnostic, a seeker. It’s like, if you believe in God or Christ, if not, you’re not.

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814

Update: On Hardball today, Tweety fell in love with handsome Mitt, saying it was the best speech of the campaign and Pat Buchanan, needless to say, is doing back flips for it’s political savviness in going after the “militant secularists.” The only person on the show who had any reservation is the truly religious, decent human being, David Kuo who rightly pointed out that this whole discussion stokes division among all Americans and that it was wrong for him not to include non-believers among the American family. The other two acted as if he’d just spoken in Swahili. Matthews sort of drunkenly replied that when Mitt mentioned the Creator he was including atheists.

Update II: Here are some very interesting takes on Mitt’s speech at BeliefNet.

Steve Waldman:

About three percent of the population are atheists or agnostics, according to a study by the Pew Religious Forum. Another 7.5% are “secularists” who have no religious affiliation and few or no religious beliefs or practices.

That means there are four or five times as many non-believers as there are Mormons.

I can’t quite remember a candidate declaring his distaste for a particular demographic group quite this way. Non-believers and secularists may not be a big voting bloc in the Republican primaries, but 10.5% is roughly 22 million people.

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Who’s Your Daddy?

by digby

I have a new post up over at CAF about Randism, “The Shock Doctrine” and aristocrats. (And, while it certainly lends itself to it, it has nothing to do with that truly sick joke….)

And be sure to check out this one by Rick Perlstein, ripping to shreds this latest example of the tired old wingnut warhorse about liberals being the real elites. Please. It’s getting silly now.

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Catch 9/11

by digby

Yesterday the Supreme Court heard a case which boils down to the question of whether denying habeas corpus really is fine and dandy as long as the government provides something just as good. For those who missed it yesterday, here’s a story in the Washington Post that shows what “just as good” means in practice:

Just months after U.S. Army troops whisked a German man from Pakistan to the militaryprison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002, his American captors concluded that he was not a terrorist.

“USA considers Murat Kurnaz’s innocence to be proven,” a German intelligence officer wrote that year in a memo to his colleagues. “He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks.”

But the 19-year-old student was not freed. Instead, over the next four years, two U.S. military tribunals that were responsible for determining whether Guantanamo Bay detainees were enemy fighters declared him a dangerous al-Qaeda ally who should remain in prison.

The disparity between the tribunal’s judgments and the intelligence community’s consensus view that Kurnaz is innocent is detailed in newly released military and court documents that track his fate. His attorneys, who sued the Pentagon to gain access to the documents, say that they reflect policies that result in mistreatment of the hundreds of foreigners who have been locked up for years at the controversial prison.

The Supreme Court intends to weigh the legitimacy of the military tribunals at a hearing this morning. Lawyers for Kurnaz and other detainees plan to argue that the panels violate the U.S. Constitution and international law. They say that the proceedings have not provided Guantanamo Bay detainees with a fair and impartial hearing.

Lawyers for the Bush administration will argue that the tribunals have afforded suspected enemies all the rights to which they are entitled. The administration maintains that detainees need not know all of the evidence against them. The tribunals were established in 2004 after the Supreme Court ruled that such panels are needed when holding prisoners indefinitely, and Congress endorsed them in 2005.

[…]

German and American intelligence officers interviewed Kurnaz in September 2002, records show. They jointly concluded that nothing was linking the man from Bremen to terrorist cells or enemy fighters and that he should be freed. In a memo dated May 19, 2003, the commanding general of the Criminal Investigation Task Force, a Pentagon intelligence unit that interrogates detainees and collects evidence about them, wrote that “CITF is not aware of evidence that Kurnaz was or is a member of al-Qaeda. CITF is not aware of any evidence that Kurnaz may have aided or abetted, or conspired to commit acts of terrorism.”

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2004 that Guantanamo Bay prisoners could not be held indefinitely without fact-finding by an objective tribunal, the Pentagon hastily assembled panels of field-grade officers to serve as Combatant Status Review Tribunals. Since they began, the panels have overwhelmingly supported continued detention of those at Guantanamo Bay, ruling that 534 detainees were “enemy combatants,” while only 38 were not.

In September 2004, one such panel cited intelligence on a suicide bombing by someone Kurnaz allegedly knew — an account later found to be incorrect — in concluding that Kurnaz was “properly classified as an enemy combatant” and was a member of al-Qaeda.

In a previously classified passage of her ruling, Green said the panel ignored “conflicting exculpatory evidence in at least three separate documents,” thereby raising questions about its impartiality. The only solid information in Kurnaz’s file showed that the CIA, U.S. military intelligence and German intelligence found nothing linking him to terrorist groups, she said.

[…]

“However the record in Kurnaz is interpreted, it definitively establishes that the detainee was not provided with a fair opportunity to contest the material allegations against him,” Green wrote. Until recently, much of her denunciation was classified, by a court security office relying on Pentagon and Justice Department officials for advice on what to conceal from the public.

In January 2006, another military review panel decided once again that Kurnaz was still “a danger” and should remain at Guantanamo Bay. Internal Defense Department e-mails show that this administrative review board, roughly comparable to a parole board, did not look at the material that Kurnaz’s lawyer had submitted to make its decision.

After a public uproar in Germany over the German government’s role in Kurnaz’s continuing imprisonment, Merkel pressed Bush at a private meeting that January to release him. In July 2006, an unusual second review board convened.

[…]

Not until August 2006, nearly five years after his imprisonment began, was Kurnaz flown home, goggled, masked and bound, as he had been when he was flown to Guantanamo Bay. As U.S. military officials led him out of Ramstein Air Base, and as he was about to take his first steps onto German soil, the Americans offered to leave plastic wrist cuffs on their former prisoner. German federal police declined.

That makes my blood run cold. This man was released because Germany’s prime minister made a personal plea to the President, which many supporters of the current policies will tout as evidence that the Guantanamo system works. That sounds a lot more like a petition of a King from a neighboring monarch than the rule of law.

We don’t know what the Supremes will decide on this. Judging from the questions, the Chief Justice doesn’t think there’s any reason to rush out a verdict — hey, what’s six years of your life? They got three squares a day and a few forced enemas and torture sessions never hurt anyone. Innocent, schminocent.

I’ve always thought that the primary problem here is that the hardliners have created a Catch 22 they believe they can’t get out of. In their post 9/11 hysteria (and the desire to violently shove people around to prove they could do it) they snatched up a bunch of random Muslims in 2002 and 2003, beat and tortured them, imprisoned them in a far off country for years on end and denied them any hope of ever being freed.

They now know that while many of these people weren’t terrorists before, the treatment they received at our hands created an understandable seething hatred for the United States. The only solution they can think of is to just keep them locked up forever, like monsters they created in some scientific experiments gone wrong.

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Sticks and Stones

by digby

So, according to Dick Cheney, Democratic congressmen are all a bunch of pussy-whipped losers because they let that little bitch Nancy order them around:

I’m also somewhat surprised — I look at the House — there are members of the House I worked closely with over the years when I was Secretary of Defense who would ordinarily have been staunch advocates for this kind of legislation, who no longer are staunch advocates — and I’m referring to my friend, Jack Murtha — I think of all of them as friends of mine — but Jack and other senior leaders who now all march to the tune of Nancy Pelosi, to an extent I had not seen, frankly, with any previous Speaker. And I’m surprised by that. I think of John Dingell and the energy business. This is a hot item right now. But I don’t see John Dingell driving that train. It looks to me like Nancy Pelosi is driving that train. And that is — well, it’s surprising when I think of the — I’m trying to think how to say all of this in a gentlemanly fashion — but the Congress I served in, that wouldn’t have happened. We would not have had a Speaker who, from my perspective, is that far out of the sort of mainstream — she is a San Francisco Democrat, certainly entitled to her views, but able to dictate policy as effectively as she apparently does to the rest of the caucus. Q Well, did any of those guys lose their spine? Is that what you’re saying? THE VICE PRESIDENT: I was being very diplomatic in the way I phrased it. (Laughter.) They’re not carrying the big stick I would have expected with the Democrats in the majority.

Hahahaha. That’s funny stuff.

Hate to tell you Dick, but if that’s what you think “carrying a big stick” is, then it explains a lot.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall with those Politico boys, laughing and chortling at Dick Cheney’s hilarious bon mots. One can only imagine what a fun time was had by all, at least until Junior ran in the room and started snapping his towel at the pool boy.

(I wonder if any of them tinkled in the White House.)

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Casus Belli Flops

by digby

Josh Marshall quoted a post from last September on an insider national security blog called “The Swoop” today in which they posited that the administration was changing its focus from WMD to Iranian influence in Iraq as a justification for the war they insisted must be waged. Josh notes:

Just one blog post, definitely. But the key point is right there: word was out that the NIE deliver the goods for the Iranian bomb enthusiasts, that the “WMD argument” for war would not “gain traction from the IC (i.e., Intelligence Community).”

What it all comes down to is what the president says he didn’t know about until the beginning of December was already being chatted about on insider national security blogs back in September. Does anybody still believe he hasn’t known this for months?

No. And it isn’t just one blog post. I am hardly an insider, but I was certainly saying this back at the beginning of October based upon this article by Sy Hersh in the New Yorker:

In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

I noticed at the time that there was a rather alarming rhetorical conformity on this issue coming from the Iran hawks:

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.

It seemed obvious to me that the Iran obsessives were working hard to build a case that even if Iran didn’t have the bomb, it had declared war on the US by killing our soldiers in Iraq and we had to start bombing them post-haste anyway. Kyl-Lieberman was clearly designed to further that goal, no matter what Clinton and others say about it now.

Their problem seems to be that The Man Called Petraeus’s surge has resulted in a decline in violence and urgency about Iraq — and they couldn’t hold back the NIE any longer. (It would have leaked before long with all this warmongering going on.) They finally had to admit that they couldn’t get this defective casus bellis off the assembly line.

They knew. A whole bunch of them knew, even that nutcase Ledeen.

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We Don’t Need No Human Rights Round Here

by digby

It appears that the Guantanamo case the Supremes are hearing today has the usual suspects showing themselves to be predictably phony and obtuse about a case they can’t really defend on the merits, either as justices or as human beings:

A lawyer for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay underwent a barrage of questions Wednesday from Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia, with the attorney portraying the case as a fundamental test of the U.S. system of justice.

The court plunged into the controversy over the military prison facility, where 305 prisoners are detained indefinitely in the Bush administration’s war on terror.

Many of the prisoners “have been held … for six years,” attorney Seth Waxman told the justices.

Under the current system, “they have no prospect” of being able to challenge their detention in any meaningful way, said Waxman, arguing on the detainees’ behalf.

Roberts and Scalia questioned whether the detainees are entitled to hearings in civilian courts.

“Show me one case” down through the centuries where circumstances similar to those at Guantanamo Bay entitled an alien to challenge his detention in civilian courts, said Scalia.

Roberts challenged Waxman’s argument that the duration of detention is important.

Right. If the US government is clever enough to abrogate treaties and deny fundamental human rights offshore, then certain members of the Supreme Court have no problem with it. (Actually they probably have no problem with it if they do it right in the nation’s capitol.) And why should John Roberts care that potentially innocent people are being held in a prison camp with no ability to protest the charges for more than six years? How can the length of time possibly be relevant to anything that matters?

Well, except for the human beings who are reduced to this:

Guantánamo Prisoner Cuts His Throat With Fingernail

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba, Dec. 4 — A prisoner at the detention camp here cut his throat with his own fingernail last month, causing a substantial loss of blood, but was never at risk of death, military officials said Tuesday.

“He did in fact use a sharpened fingernail,” Cmdr. Andrew Haynes, the deputy commander of the guard force here, told reporters on a tour of the camp.

Commander Haynes said there had been four to six occurrences in the last two months in which detainees harmed themselves, a rate that he said was consistent with recent experience. Those instances show that a potentially deadly struggle between detainees and their jailers continues, largely out of public view. One detainee committed suicide in May, after three other suicides the previous June, and there have also been numerous suicide attempts.

Advocates for detainees describe such acts as signs of desperation born of indefinite detention and hopelessness. But camp administrators call them a tactic to draw publicity and provoke criticism of the government.

That’s not a new rationalization, but it makes me feel sick to my stomach every time I read this official explanation as to why these people repeatedly try to kill themselves in Guantanamo. Apparently there really are people in this world who accept such drivel over the obvious explanation.

At least they aren’t torturing them, right?

In interviews with reporters Tuesday, officials said nine detainees remained on hunger strikes and were being force-fed daily. The detainee engaged in the longest of the hunger strikes, the officials said, has been force-fed for 816 days.

In case anyone doesn’t know what that means:

New details have emerged of how the growing number of prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay are being tied down and force-fed through tubes pushed down their nasal passages into their stomachs to keep them alive.

They routinely experience bleeding and nausea, according to a sworn statement by the camp’s chief doctor, seen by The Observer.

‘Experience teaches us’ that such symptoms must be expected ‘whenever nasogastric tubes are used,’ says the affidavit of Captain John S Edmondson, commander of Guantánamo’s hospital. The procedure – now standard practice at Guantánamo – ‘requires that a foreign body be inserted into the body and, ideally, remain in it.’ But staff always use a lubricant, and ‘a nasogastric tube is never inserted and moved up and down. It is inserted down into the stomach slowly and directly, and it would be impossible to insert the wrong end of the tube.’ Medical personnel do not insert nasogastric tubes in a manner ‘intentionally designed to inflict pain.’

It is painful, Edmonson admits. Although ‘non-narcotic pain relievers such as ibuprofen are usually sufficient, sometimes stronger drugs,’ including opiates such as morphine, have had to be administered.

Thick, 4.8mm diameter tubes tried previously to allow quicker feeding, so permitting guards to keep prisoners in their cells for more hours each day, have been abandoned, the affidavit says. The new 3mm tubes are ‘soft and flexible’.

True, these people could give up their hunger strikes for the much more effective protest of committing suicide with their own sharpened fingernail to make the US Government look bad, but apparently they choose not to. It’s not John Roberts and Antonin Scalia’s fault that these people won’t submit to their indefinite imprisonment with high spirits and elan.

I think Kafka thought he was writing a parable when he wrote The Trial.

H/T to BB

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