Month: April 2009

Opening Day

by digby

He’s still got it.

Progress

by digby

I’ve been remiss in failing to acknowledge today’s great news in Vermont. This time they can’t say it was judicial activism or executive fiat that “gave” gay people the right to marry. The legislature did it. (I’m sure they will find some way to make it seem illegitimate anyway, but it’s going to be tough. It’s democracy in action.)

One of my favorite readers made a fine suggestion: reward Vermont by buying some Vermont products — maple syrup, teddy bears (those are actual Vermont Gay-Bride Teddy Bears,) cheese and, of course, Ben and Jerry’s. Mmmm. In these tough times, it’s a nice, practical way to say thank you.

Update: More progress. And if it’s signed, it will go to the US Congress. I wish I thought they were ready to let this happen, but I doubt it.

On the other hand … I recently watched a movie called Amazing Grace about the abolition movement in England. Banning slavery was very difficult, but they finally got it done, and in the end it was through a side door legislative maneuver. It can happen.

Changing The Facade Of The Complex

by dday

Brian Beutler has the scoop that the media is reporting inaccurately. I know, I’m as blown away as you.

In other words, by retooling the Pentagon, Obama and Gates plan to move a lot of money around, but they also plan to increase the overall defense budget. In the final year of the Bush administration (and excluding the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) the defense budget was $513 billion. In FY 2010, if Gates and Obama get their way, it will be $534 billion–$534 billion that will be spent much differently than last year’s outlays were.

But you’d never know that from the news coverage.

Here’s how Politico reports it:

“Now that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has rolled out major cuts to some of the Pentagon’s largest weapons systems, the decision to accept or reject those changes falls on Congress….

With all the advance speculation about Gates’ cuts, Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, has already put forward a few recommendations of his own….”

Republican members of Congress are characterizing the budget changes as cuts, too.

Allow me to interrupt the great love-fest between liberal foreign policy bloggers and Bob Gates by stating the obvious – isn’t the fact that the Pentagon budget is increasing, um, THE PROBLEM? And considering that the media-Congressional complex will characterize any effort to put an end to outdated Cold War-era weapons systems as a “defense cut”, in the most irresponsible way possible, why aren’t we limiting expenditures on a military budget that costs far more than any country’s on Earth, depriving us of the flexibility to pursue meaningful social investment? I think Ezra Klein has this right.

One problem with the conversation over cutting the budget is that the 20 percent of federal dollars that go towards the defense sector are considered sacrosanct. This is not a very wise move. Defense spending is second only to entitlement spending in total cost. And while it’s hard to make the case that seniors need less in the way of guaranteed pensions and that the poor need less in the way of health care coverage, it’s certainly arguable that America could get by with less in the way of defense spending. The following graph is ugly, but telling:

But though we know that Robert Gates’ proposed military cuts will increase the value we get for our military dollars, we don’t know if they will actually cut spending. Gates has announced his intention to end an array of wasteful programs, but we don’t know if he means to replace them with new programs. We should have more clarity in a few days, when the Pentagon sends its budget up to the Hill. If Gates is leveraging his credibility to actually make cuts to the military’s bloated budget, however, he’d deserve every encomium he’s been given.

Right now, I’m not sure he deserves too much for seemingly transferring that bloated budget from one set of contractors to another. For instance, the makers of the F-22 may not be happy today, but the makers of Predator drones, who will see a 127 percent increase in their spending, are giddy. While missile defense gets a cut that is intolerable to the likes of Joe Lieberman, we’re still putting $800 million in taxpayer money into a system that doesn’t actually work.

I agree with Noah Schachtman that this makes a certain amount of sense, as major weapons programs are useless in 21st-century combat missions, while warm bodies are at a premium. But I mostly see this as an effort to SAVE the military budget, not slash it. While it makes sense to focus on funding the services needed for the wars we actually fight, we still fight too many wars, and in the final analysis the total budget still swamps the rest of the world many times over, troops are still based in 130 countries, and the Pentagon still dwarfs the rest of the budget in terms of discretionary spending.

There is much to like in the proposal – in particular the hiring of civil servants and firing of contractors who perform procurement – and maybe down the road, with the big lift of shiny weaponry out of the way, we can get around to balancing the unsustainably large and inefficient size of our military. But really, let’s not go overboard with the “Obama and Gates go to China” talk, when together they increased the Pentagon budget.

.

Exceptionally Exceptional

by digby

Joan Walsh notes the keening and rending of garments over Obama’s comment that the US has sometimes been arrogant. (They’re probably going to start burning Dixie Chicks CDs again, just out of nostalgia.) She writes:

All weekend long, Fox’s Sean Hannity and others were blaring “Obama Attacks America” and airing the truncated Obama quote. Karl Rove complained darkly: “There are ways to make the point he made without running down America.” Hosting for Limbaugh, an overwrought Mark Steyn claimed the U.S. is “hanging upside down in the bondage dungeon being flogged and humiliated by the rest of the planet” in the wake of Obama’s visit, according to Media Matters. On “Morning Joe,” Nicolle Wallace claimed “at his core he does not seem to believe in American exceptionalism, the way more Republicans define it” (although Obama actually said on the trip he believes in American exceptionalism).

Oh fergawdsake. American exceptionalism has always been a crock, but I never knew it actually meant America was perfect. Great. Let’s start calling our leaders living Gods and install the president’s new dog as the House delegate for the District of Columbia while we’re at it.

As far as I can tell, the only thing exceptional about America these days is our very special propensity to evade responsibility for anything we do. The president can’t even sweeten criticism of the loathed cheese-eaters with a little humility without being accused of being a traitor.

But not every country is so myopic. For instance, in Peru, they seem to think it’s important to look in the rear view mirror and yes, play the blame game, even if it’s politically complicated:

A special tribunal convicted former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori of murder and kidnapping on Tuesday and sentenced him to 25 years in prison, saying he authorized a government death squad during the Shining Path insurgency.

The 70-year-old former leader, who remains popular for rescuing Peru from the brink of economic and political collapse in the early 1990s, was convicted of what the court called “crimes against humanity,” including 25 murders by a military hit squad.

Presiding judge Cesar San Martin told a hushed courtroom there was no question Fujimori authorized the creation of the Colina unit, which the court said killed at least 50 people during its 15 months as the state crushed the fanatical Shining Path rebels.

Fujimori, who proclaimed his innocence in a roar when the 15-month trial began, apparently anticipated a guilty verdict.

He barely looked up as it was read, sitting alone taking notes during the three-hour proceedings at the Lima police base where he has been held and tried since being extradited from Chile in late 2007.

[…]

Although none of the trial’s 80 witnesses directly accused Fujimori of ordering killings, kidnappings or disappearances, the court said he bore responsibility by allowing the creation of an illegal killing apparatus.

The court said Fujimori’s disgraced intelligence chief and close collaborator, Vladimiro Montesinos, was directly in charge of the Colina unit.

And it noted that Fujimori freed jailed Colina members with a blanket 1995 amnesty for soldiers while state security agencies engaged in a “very complete and extensive” cover-up of the group’s deeds.

[…]

Despite being the first democratically elected former president to be tried for rights violations in his own country, Fujimori remains remarkably popular and his successors have maintained his market-friendly policies. Peru had Latin America’s strongest economic growth from 2002-2008, averaging 6.7 percent.

[…]

Human rights advocates called the verdict historic.

“After years of evading justice, Fujimori is finally being held to account for some of his crimes,” said Maria McFarland, senior Americas researcher at Human Rights Watch, who was in the courtroom.

“The Peruvian court has shown the world that even former heads of state cannot expect to get away with serious crimes,” she said in a statement issued by her organization.

In neighboring Chile, dictator Augusto Pinochet avoided trial for health reasons until his death at 91.

Peruvians generally agreed with Tuesday’s verdict.

A poll released Monday showed 64 percent believe he is guilty in the human rights case while 72 percent think he is guilty of corruption.

The survey of 462 Lima residents by Catholic University last month has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.6 percentage points, the same as the November poll on his popularity.

It’s interesting, no? The people all believe he committed these crimes yet he remains popular because of his economic policies. And the legal system operates independently of all of that, pursuing the case on the merits. How novel.

Of course Peruvians aren’t as “exceptional” as Americans so they can’t be expected to have the disrespect for the rule of law which allows our own war criminals to roam free. Indeed, our leaders apparently can’t even criticize the United States in any way. China is very “exceptional” that way too.

Patriot

by digby

If you haven’t seen this yet, take a look. And then tell me this guy isn’t somebody we should keep a close eye on.

His ratings are through the roof.

Update: And here’s a good rundown of his audience.

Update II: Eric Boehlert gives Beck the full treatment. Must read.

Give Them A Bottle And Put Them To Bed

by digby

I’m actually beginning to have some respect for George W. Bush for having the intelligence and the class to keep his mouth shut. Compared to Dick Cheney and these insufferable whining wealthy bankers he’s a model of mature behavior, which is really saying something considering the spectacle he often made of himself as president.

Atrios says the rich assholes who run the world are a bunch of babies and it’s true. They are also really stupid. They sound like French aristocrats — and we know how that turned out.

This Sickness Is Still With Us

by dday

The reports and the disclosures on the torture the US government committed on multiple individuals “>continue to flow. After printing excerpts of the Red Cross torture report previously, Mark Danner has now published the entire report, every damning detail, along with a companion article about the contents therein. Scott Shane’s article in the New York Times highlights the participation of medical personnel:

Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a “gross breach of medical ethics,” a long-secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded.

Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said.

Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers’ intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said. But it found that the medical professionals’ role was primarily to support the interrogators, not to protect the prisoners, and that the professionals had “condoned and participated in ill treatment.”

At times, according to the detainees’ accounts, medical workers “gave instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods.”

The description of medical workers studiously monitoring the pulse or oxygen level of a suspect being tortured, or measuring the swelling in another’s leg as he is shackled to the ceiling and forced to stand, seems the very banality of evil.

This sickness, with the kangaroo courts and the cover-ups and the implication of more and more officials, will remain as a black cloud over the head of this government if it’s not dealt with properly. It is not enough to “look forward.” We tortured multiple prisoners with multiple banned techniques, all in the name of “fighting the war on terror,” in actuality making us less safe after their eventual disclosure and providing no intelligence value. As Danner notes, this has been going on for years, and in the absence of a ruling – and punishment – for those who ordered this, we will continue to have corrosive and distorting fights over the efficacy of this violation of American and international law.

It is because of the claim that torture protected the US that the many Americans who still nod their heads when they hear Dick Cheney’s claims about the necessity for “tough, mean, dirty, nasty” tactics in the war on terror respond to its revelation not by instantly condemning it but instead by asking further questions. For example: Was it necessary? And: Did it work? To these questions the last president and vice-president, who “kept the country safe” for “seven-plus years,” respond “yes,” and “yes.” And though as time passes the numbers of those insisting on asking those questions, and willing to accept those answers, no doubt falls, it remains significant, and would likely grow substantially after another successful attack.

This political fact partly explains why, when it comes to torture, we seem to be a society trapped in a familiar and never-ending drama. For though some of the details provided—and officially confirmed for the first time—in the ICRC report are new, and though the first-person accounts make chilling reading and have undoubted dramatic power, one can’t help observing that the broader discussion of torture is by now in its essential outlines nearly five years old, and has become, in its predictably reenacted outrage and defiant denials from various parties, something like a shadow play.

I agree with President Obama that torture hasn’t made us safer, but the continued failure to deal with what the Bush Administration has done CONTINUES to cripple our political influence around the world and our moral capability to lead. John Conyers released a report to little fanfare last week called “Reining in the Imperial Presidency” detailing all the lawlessness enacted, the politicization of justice, the assertion of extreme executive power, the assaults on individual liberty, the retribution against critics, the passing of secret law, all of it. And the committee offers 50 recommendations for how to reverse this challenge to Constitutional government. Right at the top are these two:

Congress should establish a Blue Ribbon Commission or similar panel to investigate the broad range of policies of the Bush Administration that were undertaken under claims of unreviewable war powers, including detention, enhanced interrogation, ghosting and black sites, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless domestic surveillance.

The Attorney General should appoint a Special Counsel, or expand the scope of the present investigation into CIA tape destruction, to determine whether there were criminal violations committed pursuant to Bush Administration policies that were undertaken under unreviewable war powers, including enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless domestic surveillance.

It’s not just about ending these practices. By refusing to investigate them, and even actively invoking claims like the “state secrets privilege” to shield any possibility of a reckoning, the Administration implicates itself. Because they must use the same extreme claims of executive power, in some cases more so, to facilitate the cover-up. As Danner says:

There is a sense in which our society is finally posing that “what should we do” question. That it is doing so only now, after the fact, is a tragedy for the country—and becomes even more damaging as the debate is carried on largely by means of politically driven assertions and leaks. For even as the practice of torture by Americans has withered and died, its potency as a political issue has grown. The issue could not be more important, for it cuts to the basic question of who we are as Americans, and whether our laws and ideals truly guide us in our actions or serve, instead, as a kind of national decoration to be discarded in times of danger. The only way to confront the political power of the issue, and prevent the reappearance of the practice itself, is to take a hard look at the true “empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years,” and speak out, clearly and credibly, about what that story really tells.

In failing to wrestle with this, or letting Spain do it for us, we lose ourselves.

.

A Strange Country

by tristero

Let me set the scene for you. You’re sitting in a large McDonald’s, blithely poisoning yourself and your family – not to mention the environment – with beef from cows raised in their own fecal matter. As you tuck into that Big Mac and the industrially-manufactured aromas wafting around you boggle your senses, you suddenly recall something you read in the Times this morning::

…31 percent of respondents said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, the lowest in the 25 years the question has been asked in New York Times/CBS News polls.

You look around at the others feeding and you think, “Just about 1 out of every 3 people I am looking at thinks the party that made torture an American value, that bogged our soldiers down in bloody, pointless quagmires, that ignored warnings about bin Laden, that partied on when New Orleans flooded, that deliberately tried to set back American science for generations — just about 1 out every 3 people I’m seeing right now is so crazy they actually think that Republicans rock. And that’s the lowest support they’ve ever had.“

People, Greil Marcus wrote a book entitled The Old, Weird America but let’s not forget that the one we’re living in is plenty strange, too.

Nothing Left

by digby

It’s nice to see somebody else asking the same question I ask nearly every day when I see some GOP has-been pontificating on my TV: why are we listening to these people?

Turn on CNN and chances are you won’t have to wait long to see the face of Stephen Hayes, who distinguished himself earlier this decade for his insistence, long after it was clear that the opposite was true, that “there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to plot against Americans.” He also penned a fawning biography of Dick Cheney.

Or pick up the Washington Post, the same paper that gave Mr. Gerson his post-Bush home, and you’ll find a regular op-ed column from William Kristol, the tireless Iraq war champion whose offerings, worse than being wrong, are usually unreadable; Or there’s Ron Christie, a little-known Bush and Cheney aide who has somehow become one of the cable networks’ go-to guys for the conservative viewpoint – which he unfailingly expresses with the language his old bosses favored when they were in power.

All of these people, of course, are entitled to their views. But, besides outdated and discredited bluster, they add nothing to the current discussion.

Thank you.

He says there are many other more intelligent conservatives they could ask to appear, but I’m not persuaded these people actually exist. Certainly, there are very few who were not championing Bush as the second coming of Winston Churchill just a few short years ago. (He names the new NY Times columnist Ross Douthat, but I suspect once everyone gets a chance to know young Ross, they’ll realize that he’s just a bundle of “issues” masquerading as conservative iconoclasm.)

The problem is that conservatism has shot its wad and there’s nothing left. It’s not a matter of individuals; it’s a matter of philosophy. No matter who they trot out to mouth their tired old saws and boring mantras, nobody wants to hear it.

All they’ve got is the right wing id — the ranting Limbaughs and Becks, the racists, the gun nuts, the paranoid black helicopter crowd — and a few lonely social conservatives who haven’t figured out they were just fools for a bunch of sophisticated neocons and wealthy crooks. You can’t put lipstick on that rabid pit bull.

h/t to bill

Who Knew?

by digby

They all did:

Today Seton Hall Law delivered a report establishing that military officials at the highest levels were aware of the abusive interrogation techniques employed at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay (GTMO), and misled Congress during testimony. In addition, FBI personnel reported that the information obtained from inhumane interrogations was unreliable.

Professor Mark Denbeaux, Director of the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research, commented on the findings: “Who knew about the torture at GTMO? Turns out they all did. It’s not news that the interrogators were torturing and abusing detainees. We’ve got FBI reports attesting to this. But now we’ve discovered that the highest levels knew about the torture and abuse, and covered it up.

“Abu Ghraib was the flashpoint and provoked the FBI to formally hand its reports to the DOD, which in turn forced the DOD to respond with what became known as the Schmidt Report. Schmidt’s investigation was essentially a whitewash, but, ironically, the abuse was so pervasive that his team turned up still more incidents. To conceal the problems documented by both the FBI and the military, the DOD published an incomplete, sanitized report, culminating in Schmidt testifying before Congress that there was no torture or abuse at GTMO.

“Five generals were either complicit in the abusive interrogation techniques or were central figures in their cover-up. They concealed these practices from Congress, to which they are ultimately accountable. They undermined our democracy, and undercut America’s claim to the moral high ground in the fight against terror.”

Just in case anyone is still unaware of what it is they covered up and the government is continuing to cover up:

FBI personnel stationed at GTMO submitted a series of unsolicited reports describing at least 118 improper interrogation techniques: physical harm to the genitals–to a degree punishable by life imprisonment as sexual assault under military law; forced viewings of homosexual pornography; denial of food and water; disorientation techniques such as sleep deprivation; and religious abuse such as forced “satanic baptisms.”

[..]

In December 2004, General Bantz J. Craddock, then U.S Southern Command leader, commissioned Generals Furlowe and Schmidt to investigate an FBI report and publish a report in response.

Independent of the FBI findings, the Schmidt investigation uncovered 79 additional incidents of improper interrogation techniques which included 15 allegations of sexual abuse.

Once submitted to Congress, however, the Schmidt Report asserted that there is “no evidence” that “torture or inhumane treatment occurred at Guantánamo.” General Schmidt then reiterated these misleading findings to Congress.

Back in the day, I used to write a lot about the obsession the US authorities seemed to have with sexual abuse. I theorized it came in some part from a sort of primitive notion of what “arabs really feared” based upon a discredited book called “The Arab Mind” — which Bush administration loons passed around the Pentagon. It wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the Generals who were aware of the torture were also those who subscribed to the “we need to scare the hell out of the wogs” shock ‘n awe theory of warfare.

In any case, the war crimes are piling up. And the oft-repeated trope that “the United States doesn’t torture” rings more hollow every day.

Update: And here’s nightmare Part II

The Justice Department improperly withheld important psychiatric records of a government witness who was used in a “significant” number of Guantanamo cases, a federal judge has concluded.

The government censored parts of the records, but enough has been made public that it’s clear that the witness, a fellow detainee, was being treated weekly for a serious psychological problem and was questioned about whether he had any suicidal thoughts. The witness provided information in the government’s case for detaining Aymen Saeed Batarfi, a Yemeni doctor who the government announced last week it would no longer seek to detain.

In a little-noticed ruling last week, Judge Emmet Sullivan found that the witness’s testimony in other cases could be challenged as unreliable.

During a hearing last week, Sullivan castigated the government for not turning over the medical records and ordered department lawyers to explain why he shouldn’t cite them for contempt of court.

“To hide relevant and exculpatory evidence from counsel and from the court under any circumstances, particularly here where there is no other means to discover this information and where the stakes are so very high . . . is fundamentally unjust, outrageous and will not be tolerated,” Sullivan said, according to a transcript of the hearing.

“How can this court have any confidence whatsoever in the United States government to comply with its obligations and to be truthful to the court?”

He also criticized the government for deciding at the last minute to drop the case against Batarfi, who’s been held at Guantanamo for seven years, and questioned its motives for doing so. He suggested that the government’s announced plans to seek a country that would take Batarfi were really just a scheme to continue to detain him without due process.

[…]

“I’m not going to continue to tolerate indefinite delay on the part of the United States government,” Sullivan said. “I mean this Guantanamo issue is a travesty . . . a horror story . . . and I’m not going to buy into an extended indefinite delay of this man’s stay at Guantanamo.”

It’s unclear what information the witness, who wasn’t named, provided against Batarfi or the other detainees. Separately, the Justice Department decided last week to release Batarfi, signaling that it no longer had sufficient evidence that he was an enemy combatant although he was held for seven years.

Seven … years. Horror story indeed.

h/t to bb