The Village Speaks

by digby

Stop Scapegoating

Obama Should Stand Against Prosecutions

By David S. Broder

Sunday, April 26, 20

If ever there were a time for President Obama to trust his instincts and stick to his guns, that time is now, when he is being pressured to change his mind about closing the books on the “torture” policies of the past. Obama, to his credit, has ended one of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States. He was right to do this. But he was just as right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government. And he was right when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices. But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more — the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are looking for individual scalps — or, at least, careers and reputations. Their argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators, there can be no accountability — and therefore no deterrent lesson for future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance. Obama has opposed even the blandest form of investigation, a so-called truth commission, and has shown himself willing to confront this kind of populist anger. When the grass roots were stirred by the desire for vengeance against the AIG officers who received contractual bonuses from government bailout funds, Obama bought time by questioning the tactic. Quickly the patently unconstitutional 90 percent tax the House wanted to slap on those bonuses was forgotten. The torture issue is much more serious, and Obama needs to take it on himself, as he started to do — not pass the buck to Attorney General Eric Holder, as he seemed to be suggesting in his later statements on the issue. Obama is being blamed by some for unleashing the furies with his decision to override the objections of past and current national intelligence officials and release four highly sensitive memos detailing the methods used on some “high-value” detainees. Again, he was right to do so, because these policies were carried out in the name of the American people, and it is only just that we the people confront what we did. Squeamishness is not justified in this case. But having vowed to end the practices, Obama should use all the influence of his office to stop the retroactive search for scapegoats. This is not another Sept. 11 situation, when nearly 3,000 Americans were killed. We had to investigate the flawed performances and gaps in the system and make the necessary repairs to reduce the chances of a deadly repetition. The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places — the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department — by the proper officials. One administration later, a different group of individuals occupying the same offices has — thankfully — made the opposite decision. Do they now go back and investigate or indict their predecessors? That way, inevitably, lies endless political warfare. It would set the precedent for turning all future policy disagreements into political or criminal vendettas. That way lies untold bitterness — and injustice. Suppose that Obama backs down and Holder or someone else starts hauling Bush administration lawyers and operatives into hearings and courtrooms. Suppose the investigators decide that the country does not want to see the former president and vice president in the dock. Then underlings pay the price while big shots go free. But at some point, if he is at all a man of honor, George W. Bush would feel bound to say: That was my policy. I was the president. If you want to indict anyone for it, indict me. Is that where we want to go? I don’t think so. Obama can prevent it by sticking to his guns.

Try to contain your shock. The village never changes:

The Breaking of the President
By David Broder

Washington Post, October 7, 1969.

If there are any smart literary agents around these days, one of them will copyright the title “The Breaking of the President” for the next big series of nonfiction best-sellers. It is becoming more obvious with every passing day that the men and the movement that broke Lyndon B. Johnson’s authority in 1968 are out to break Richard M. Nixon in 1969.

The likelihood is great that they will succeed again, for breaking a President is, like most feats, easier to accomplish the second time around. Once learned, the techniques can readily be applied as often as desired – even when the circumstances seem less than propitious. No matter that this President is pulling troops out of Vietnam, while the last one was sending them in; no matter that in 1969 the casualties and violence are declining, while in 1968 they were on the rise. Men have learned to break a President, and, like any discovery that imparts power to its possessors, the mere availability of this knowledge guarantees that it will be used.

The essentials of the technique are now so well understood that they can be applied with little waste motion. First, the breakers arrogate to themselves a position of moral superiority. For that reason, a war that is unpopular, expensive, and very probably unwise is labeled as immoral, indecent, and intolerable. Critics of the President who are indelicate enough to betray partisan motives are denounced (That for you, Fred Harris.) Members of the President’s own party who, for reasons perhaps unrelated to their own flagging political careers, catapult themselves into the front ranks of the of the opposition are greeted as heroes. (Hooray for Charley Goodell.)

The students who would fight in the war are readily mobilized against it. Their teachers, as is their custom, hasten to adopt the students’ views. (News item: The Harvard department of biochemistry and molecular biology last week called for immediate withdrawal from Vietnam.)

Next, a New England election (the New Hampshire primary is best but the Massachusetts Sixth Congressional District election will do as well) surprisingly shows that peace is popular at the polls. The President’s party sees defeat staring it in the face unless it repudiates him, and the Harris poll promptly comes along to confirm his waning grip on public trust. The Chief Executive, clearly panicky, resorts to false bravado and says he will never be moved by these protests and demonstrations, thus confirming the belief that he is too stubborn to repent and must be broken.

And then, dear friends, Sen. Fulbright and the Foreign Relations Committee move in to finish off the job.

All this is no fiction: it worked before and it is working again. Vietnam is proving to be what Henry Kissinger once said he suspected it might be — one of those tragic, cursed messes that destroys any President who touches it.

That being the case, any President interested in saving his own skin would be well-advised to resign his responsibility for Vietnam and publicly transfer the assignment of ending the war to Congress or the Vietnam Moratorium Committee or anyone else who would like to volunteer for the job.

But he cannot. And that is the point the protesters seem to overlook. Assume that they and the President are both right when they assert the time has come to end this war. Assume that the protesters know better than the President how to do so — despite the conspicuous absence of specific alternatives to the President’s policies in their current manifestos.

There is still a vital distinction, granting all this, to be made between the constitutionally protected _expression of dissent, aimed at changing national policy, and mass movements aimed at breaking the President by destroying his capacity to lead the nation or to represent it at the bargaining table.

The point is quite simple. Given the impatience in this country to be out of that miserable war, there is no great trick in using the Vietnam issue to break another President, you have broken the one man who can negotiate the peace.

Hanoi will not sit down for secret talks with the Foreign Relations Committee. Nor can the Vietnam Moratorium’s sponsors order home a single GI or talk turkey to Gen. Thieu about reshaping his government. Only the President can do that.

There is also the matter of time. It is one thing to break a President at the end of his term, as was done last year. It is quite another thing to break him at the beginning, as is being attempted now.

The orators who remind us that Mr. Nixon has been in office for nine months should remind themselves that he will remain there for 39 more months — unless, of course, they are willing to put their convictions to the test by moving to impeach him.

Is that not, really, the proper course? Rather than destroying his capacity to lead while leaving him in office, rather than leaving the nation with a broken President at its head for three years, would not their cause and the country be better served by resort to the constitutional method for removing a President?

And what a wonderful chapter it would make for Volume 2 of “The Breaking of the President” series.

If Border had been around during the American Revolution he would have sided with the British. He positively loves being a subject.

Update: Speaking of scapegoats, one of the things that the left can be proud of is that even though The Dean has loathed us DFH’s both then and now, he and his ilk will go down in history as war crimes apologists for four decades and running while we will be on the side of decency and morality. Somebody has to be willing to fight for principle over partisanship even if these tired enablers will sell out their own mothers to avoid upsetting the power structure.

h/t to bill

Boxer on Impeaching Bybee: “I’m Very Open To That.”

by dday

At a press avail following her speech at the California Democratic Party convention, I asked Sen. Boxer about the Resolutions Committee passing support for a Congressional inquiry into the actions of torture judge Jay Bybee and the imposition of all possible penalties including impeachment. She said “I’m very open to that…. there is an ongoing investigation at the Justice Department into his work (at the Office of Professional Responsibility -ed), and we’ll see how that goes. But I’m very open to that. And I’ll remind everyone that I didn’t vote for him when his nomination came up. I was one of 19 to do so.”

Needless to say, the support from Sen. Boxer will be a great help in the Resolutions Committee later today, when the committee prioritizes the top ten resolutions to send to the floor of the convention tomorrow. More on that meeting, which starts at 1:30PM PT, soon.

.

Good News

by digby

Darcy Burner’s going to Washington after all and she’s doing something really great. I’ll let Howie tell you about it:

Far more than most of the candidates the netroots has gotten behind, Darcy Burner, who ran in 2006 and 2008 against Dave Reichert in WA-08 west of Seattle, became integrated into the online community. A few days ago I covered the entry on the 2010 candidate into that race, Suzan DelBene, an old colleague of Darcy’s from Microsoft.

Darcy isn’t thinking about elective office now and when I called her a few weeks ago I got her in her car as she was driving across the country from Washington to Washington, DC, to start work at a new job heading up the American Progressive Caucus Policy Foundation. And it’s that job, heading up a non-profit foundation under the auspices of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is why we asked her to come back and talk with us at Firedoglake today (11am, PT). A little background before we meet in the comments section for a chat. First off, the mission of the new foundation is to connect progressives inside and outside of Congress. Specifically, she’ll be focusing on building connections in both directions between the progressive movement and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

She was looking for a way to make a difference on the things she cares about and has been fighting for, and this seemed like a great opportunity to do so. “I’m passionate,” she told me yesterday, “about small-d democracy, and decided I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to work on making it easier for the millions of people in the progressive grassroots to be more connected to the people they send to Congress to work for them.” If she succeeds it could revolutionize representative democracy. And if I’ve met anyone with the brains, maturity, energy, strength and intuition to get something like this off the ground, it’s Darcy.

She’s taking questions over at Firedoglake as we speak. Go say hello.

Round One Complete

by dday

Here in Sacramento, the very, VERY good news is that the resolution to impeach Jay Bybee from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals passed the Resolutions Committee with only small changes to the language. Any impeachment process must begin with a Congressional inquiry that gets remanded to the House Judiciary Committee. That’s exactly the language we got, a resolution supporting a Congressional inquiry into Bybee and the other lawyers who justified torture. To everyone that signed petitions, you helped make this happen. We’re not done yet, however. In order to get to the floor, the resolution must get ranked among the top ten at a “prioritizing” meeting today. Many more than ten resolutions passed in committee, so it will be a fight to get the Bybee resolution on the floor. I will be testifying in the committee today and lobbying for passage, armed with the thousands of signatures and personal testimonials gathered over the past week.

This could be as consequential as anything done in this convention, despite it happening off the floor and relatively outside of scrutiny. A resolution of support from the full CDP would be powerful. I’ll keep you updated.

…Maybe some of Jay Bybee’s anonymous friends will show up to speak on his behalf.

.

Why I Oppose Same-Sex Marriage

I’ve changed my mind about same-sex marriage. For reasons Maggie Gallagher makes crystal clear, it is wrong, even terribly dangerous. It simply must be opposed:

I believe that marriage matters because children need a mother and a father…

I am proud of the “Gathering Storm” ad precisely because it lets the American people know the truth: Gay marriage has consequences…

Get it? Gay marriage has consequences. I had no idea, I mean, I just assumed that two people who love each other should have the opportunity for society to ritually affirm their love and also provide them with equal access to legal rights, regardless of the genders involved. And surely there’s nothing bad that could come from that. But Gallagher’s letter persuasively argues that if gay people are allowed to marry, then consequences follow. To be specific, she can only mean that straight people will have to give up their children. Furthermore, ONLY gays will be allowed to raise children.

That’s not good, people.

I love my daughter and I want to raise her. I don’t want to be forced to hand her over to my dear friends Anne and Saskia [names changed] simply because I made the mistake of marrying someone who has different private parts than I do. But obviously, if gay marriage becomes the law of the land, then, as Gallagher points out, I will have no choice.

Or maybe not. I could get a divorce, marry my childhood friend Roger – he was kind of cute, I recall – while my wife could marry the single mother upstairs. Then , at least, we’d all be able to raise our children together even should Maggie Gallagher’s worst nightmares come true.

Nobody Said This Was Going To be Pretty

by digby

The Washington Post has obtained a full copy of the July 2002 JPRA (military) memo, mentioned in this week’s Armed Services report, which stated that the military believed that using SERE torture techniques was illegal and unreliable. (This was before the Bybee memo. )

Keith Olbermann opened his show tonight with this news and breathlessly said this:

The Post also observes “the committee report, the attachment, echoes JPRA warnings issued in late 2001,” meaning the Pentagon was looking into torture before anybody like Zubaydah had even been captured, or long before ordinary interrogation methods had failed. Time now to bring in our own Jonathan Alter, senior editor of Newsweek magazine. Jon, it’s some evening.

Alter and Keith went on for quite a bit, turning over whether or not the Pentagon kept this a secret and wondering why they were talking about this before it could conceivably have become necessary. Alter said, “the bottom line is that the Pentagon , even John McCain has said, knew that torture doesn’t work! People give you the wrong answers so as to stop the pain.” He went on to disagree with Olberman’s theory that they must have wanted false confessions since they obviously knew that the information wasn’t reliable and scoffed, “oh, they were just insistent that the theory that they saw on, you know, shows like 24, worked and could help their cause.”

Olbermann then again brought up the fact that all this took place very early and that they were using the word “torture” almost immediately after the attacks. He was agitated because this indicated that they were contemplating it before terrorists were even in custody.

Alter replied:

Yeah clearly an awful lot of people were moving toward that. Remember at the time, the greatest crime in America history had not been solved. We hadn’t gotten to the bottom of 9/11 on who attacked us. So there was a fair amount of desperation to try to get more information. It’s important, historically, to look at the context of this story.

But what happened afterward, even though this was clearly torture, anybody in the military knew it was torture, there was an effort in these OLC memos to try to dress it up as something else, call it enhanced interrogation techiniques, or whatever they want to gild the lily, although it wasn’t a lily. To try to say that black was white and white was black. And for several years they seemed to get away with it until it started to unravel on them.

And what’s so fascinating is that Dick Cheney stands almost alone. You don’t see former president Bush out there pursuing this. You don’t see Condi Rice or Domn Rumsfeld or others. It’s the former vice president who is becoming a forlorn and I think soon to be further disgraced figure. But this is his bid for resurrection.

Yes, Dick Cheney is forlorn and all alone. Many of the people who advocated taking the gloves off are leaving him out there hanging today. And one of them is Jonathan Alter.

See, he forgot to mention — and Keith apparently didn’t know — that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 this torture talk didn’t come out of nowhere or even from the dark recesses of Cheney’s evil mind. Jonathan Alter himself was one of the people who brought it up almost instantly:

Time To Think About Torture

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
November 5, 2001

In this autumn of anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to … torture. OK, not cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, [my emphasis — ed] but something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history. Right now, four key hijacking suspects aren’t talking at all.

COULDN’T WE AT LEAST subject them to psychological torture, like tapes of dying rabbits or high-decibel rap? (The military has done that in Panama and elsewhere.) How about truth serum, administered with a mandatory IV? Or deportation to Saudi Arabia, land of beheadings? (As the frustrated FBI has been threatening.) Some people still argue that we needn’t rethink any of our old assumptions about law enforcement, but they’re hopelessly “Sept. 10”—living in a country that no longer exists.

One sign of how much things have changed is the reaction to the antiterrorism bill, which cleared the Senate last week by a vote of 98-1. While the ACLU felt obliged to quibble with a provision or two, the opposition was tepid, even from staunch civil libertarians. That great quote from the late Chief Justice Robert Jackson—”The Constitution is not a suicide pact”—is getting a good workout lately. “This was incomparably more sober and sensible than what some of our revered presidents did,” says Floyd Abrams, the First Amendment lawyer, referring to the severe restrictions on liberty imposed during the Civil War and World War I.

Fortunately, the new law stops short of threatening basic rights like free speech, which is essential in wartime to hold the government accountable. The bill makes it easier to wiretap (under the old rules, you had to get a warrant for each individual phone, an anachronism in a cellular age), easier to detain immigrants who won’t talk and easier to follow money through the international laundering process. A welcome “sunset” provision means the expansion of surveillance will expire after four years. That’s an important precedent, though odds are these changes will end up being permanent. It’s a new world.

Actually, the world hasn’t changed as much as we have. The Israelis have been wrestling for years with the morality of torture. Until 1999 an interrogation technique called “shaking” was legal. It entailed holding a smelly bag over a suspect’s head in a dark room, then applying scary psychological torment. (To avoid lessening the potential impact on terrorists, I won’t specify exactly what kind.) Even now, Israeli law leaves a little room for “moderate physical pressure” in what are called “ticking time bomb” cases, where extracting information is essential to saving hundreds of lives. The decision of when to apply it is left in the hands of law-enforcement officials.

[…]

Short of physical torture, there’s always sodium pentothal (“truth serum”). The FBI is eager to try it, and deserves the chance. Unfortunately, truth serum, first used on spies in World War II, makes suspects gabby but not necessarily truthful. The same goes for even the harshest torture. When the subject breaks, he often lies. Prisoners “have only one objective—to end the pain,” says retired Col. Kenneth Allard, who was trained in interrogation. “It’s a huge limitation.”

Some torture clearly works. Jordan broke the most notorious terrorist of the 1980s, Abu Nidal, by threatening his family. Philippine police reportedly helped crack the 1993 World Trade Center bombings (plus a plot to crash 11 U.S. airliners and kill the pope) by convincing a suspect that they were about to turn him over to the Israelis. Then there’s painful Islamic justice, which has the added benefit of greater acceptance among Muslims.

We can’t legalize physical torture; it’s contrary to American values. But even as we continue to speak out against human-rights abuses around the world, we need to keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation. And we’ll have to think about transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies, even if that’s hypocritical. Nobody said this was going to be pretty.

Clearly, the Pentagon wasn’t alone in advocating torture from the moment 9/11 happened. It was being advocated in the pages of major newsmagazines by so-called liberal columnists who are now commenting on what “Cheney did” as if they weren’t even in the country at the time. The New York Times even commented on the commentary. Alter very vaguely alludes to this as being part of the early days after 9/11 when we allegedly didn’t know who perpetrated the act (as if that’s some kind of excuse for the braindead cretinism in that column.) It’s complete nonsense. Even laypeople knew it was Al Qaeda from the first day, much less by two weeks later. It’s just that some people completely lost their heads, among them major members of the media.

If you continue to wonder why the villagers are so reluctant to hold anyone responsible for this disgusting breach of American values, I think this clears it up, don’t you? They are themselves responsible and they know it. You cannot tell me that people like Alter and Dershowitz and Thomas “suck on this” Friedman using the pages of the country’s major newpapers to advocate barbarity didn’t give the Bush administration cause to believe they were justified.

Alter not mentioning this column on TV tonight was truly cowardly, especially in light of Keith’s obvious incredulity that people were talking about torture almost immediately. (Somebody should tell Olbermann that he needs to stop assuming that all of his “liberal” friends in the media can be trusted on this issue, an issue about which he seems to care a lot.) There were more than a few who thought taking off the gloves was just ducky during those days of rage — which might be ok for the average citizen sitting at the end of the bar railing at bin Laden. But these were opinion leaders, people paid big money to deliver well considered opinions in a time of crisis. And they are responsible for creating an environment in which turning into barbaric brutes beacme the norm among the ruling class. No wonder Cheney looks so forlorn now that he’s the only one out there defending this horror. At the time he was making these decisions he was the most popular man in Washington.

In case you were wondering, the prisoners to whom Alter referred in his piece turned out to be completely innocent. But I’m sure if the government had just taken his advice and had them “shaken” they would have gotten them to confess to something after their brains were permanently damaged.

Things That Are Driving Me Crazy

by digby

I know this is obvious and I’m sure that it’s been asked many times. But can someone explain to me how these wingnut freaks can live with the dissonance in their heads when they say in one breath that the Bush administration was absolutely right to employ torture, secret prisons and indefinite detention and in the next breath scream like banshees that Obama is the second coming of Hitler and Stalin, the two most infamous purveyors of torture, secret prisons and indefinite detention of the 20th century? The only way they can explain this is if they believe that Hitler’s worst crime was raising taxes and Stalin was a good guy except for the onerous regulations on business. (And now that I think about it, that’s exactly what they do believe.)

Another thing that’s making me scream incoherently at the television to the point where my cat is hiding in the closet: how can the party that brought the government to a screeching halt just ten years ago over alleged misconduct in the presidential pants now threaten to bring the government to a screeching halt again if anyone investigates potential war crimes? It’s quite clear that the only “rule of law” these people care about is one that says you can’t lie about your sex life. Maybe if the Department of Justice could find a smoking blow job in the OLC we might get to the bottom of all this.

And finally, it’s driving me around the bend that the wingnuts are trying to derail the nominations of Dawn Johnsen and Kathleen Sebelius because of their positions on abortion. These are the same wingnuts who turned completely hysterical when Democrats opposed John Ashcroft as Attorney General because he was on record being against the right to abortion, even though it is the law of the land. Only in wingnut bizarroworld are people disqualified from office for believing in upholding the laws while those who are on record opposing them are qualified to the highest law enforcement office in the land.

Clearly, the reality based community still has its work cut out for it. Don’t throw away the tequila and Xanax just yet.

Go Al

by digby

When a flat earth Republican moron tried to refute Gore’s assertion today that the scientific consensus supports global warming by pointing to the handful of scientific oddballs the Republicans dredged up to testify that it doesn’t exist, Al blandly replied:

“There are people who still believe that the moon landing was staged on a movie lot in Arizona.”

One of the greatest achievements in modern politics is the PoMo “he said/she said” competing narratives perfected by the right, particularly when it comes to science. It comes from their big business owners after the consumer revolution, which learned early on to use this method in litigation. Now it’s metastasized throughout the body politic.

Good for Gore for dismissing this nonsense.

So Soon?

by digby

I’m sure Republicans will now shun him for being a quitter:

GOP candidate Jim Tedisco, who trailed by 401 votes as of yesterday’s vote count, has called Murphy to concede, according to Murphy spokesman Ryan Rudominer. (The latest vote count puts Murphy ahead by 399 votes.)

Murphy takes over in the seat from its previous Democratic occupant, Kirsten Gillibrand, whose appointment to the United States Senate set up the special election for this marginal district.

The election was on March 31, three and a half weeks ago, but it took this long to get a winner because it was so close and involved a lengthy process of counting and litigation of absentee ballots. Still not all of the ballots have been reported in, but it became very clear over the last few days that there was really no way Tedisco could have pulled it off.

Tedisco has released a statement, saying among other things:

“This was a close campaign every step of the way. Ultimately, it became clear that the numbers were not going our way and that the time had come to step aside and ensure that the next Congressman be seated as quickly as possible. In the interest of the citizens of the 20th Congressional district and our nation, I wish Scott the very best as he works with our new President and Congress to address the tremendous challenges facing our country.”

If Ginsberg and the boys weren’t sop busy keeping the Senate short one vote by any means necessary, I’m sure they woulod have found a way to prolong this too. Just for the practice.

You know what to do — pledge a dollar-a-day to tell Norm Loserman that it’s time to be as big a man as Jim Tedisco and call it a day.

Your Daily Tasering

by digby

Here’s a story about a teen-age bicyclist who was tasered five times for failing to respond to a police officer’s order to “get off the road.” It is written by a lawyer who specializes in bicyclist rights and he asks the fundamental question: do you have a right to not comply with a police officer? It’s at the heart of the taser question because nine times out of ten, people are not being tasered because they are threatening the cop or anyone else; they are tasered because they fail to comply with a police officer’s order. So, the question is, do the police have a right to shoot someone with electricity simply because he or she is arguing with them or refuses to promptly obey their order?

If police used these things sparingly and had to answer to board of inquiry whenever they are used, it would be one thing. But they are using them pretty much in any situation and often when they already have someone in custody. And while it’s true that as a practical matter one is well advised to cooperate with police, I find it difficult to see how we are a free people, with rights guaranteed by the constitution, if the government is allowed to shoot citizens with electricity solely because they fail to do what agents of the government tell them to do.