So I happen to see Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Greenfield studying the Schwarzenegger phenomenon since he made the penetrating observation today that Republicans and Democrats really should try to get along. They both marvelled at the tremendous response Schwarzenegger gets when he’s in public. Wolf commented that when he was in Las Vegas recently for a sporting event, Schwarzenegger turned up with Maria and “he was greeted like a rock star!”
Uhm no. He was greeted like a fucking movie star, which is what he is. The man was one of the highest grossing box office attractions in the world for a couple of decades and yet Blitzer and Greenfield seem to think the fact that the public gets excited in his presence has something to do with his politics. In fact, they think he’s a “star” because of his great skill at reaching across the aisle.
BLITZER: I saw him at the NBA All-Star Game in Las Vegas. He showed up with Maria Shriver. And I got to tell you, he was a rock star there. He was widely applauded. You have just come back. You have spent some time in California.
Is that the general reception he gets when he travels around the state?
GREENFIELD: Yes, it is, particularly after he was declared politically dead in 2005.
Right. Nobody wildly applauded him in public before 2005.
I have been remiss in failing to highlight this series of interviews with lawyers and others who are involved with Guantanamo and other issues pertaining to the military commissions over at The Talking Dog. He’s talked to a variety of people who offer great insight into the miscarriage of justice and moral blight that is our system of military detentions in the Great GWOT. I recently read them all again as a piece and the big picture that emerges is just horrifying (scroll to the bottom of this post to see them all.)
Most recently he interviewed David Rose, the first journalist to pull the curtain back on Guantanamo in his early articles in Vanity Fair (from which I quoted liberally when they came out) and author of Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights.
The Talking Dog: Have you had a chance to return to Guantanamo since he publication of your book, Guantanamo: The War on Human Rights?
David Rose: I tried to go to Guantanamo last June (of 2006). I was all set to cover the first military commission trials, when the news broke of the suicides of three detainees. The Pentagon suddenly revoked my clearance. Then, as I was in Washington, I managed to get a new clearance, faxed to my hotel, and we arranged transport by a circuitous route on civilian aircraft via Miami and Kingston, Jamaica, but ultimately, the Defense Department refused to let me in at that time, and I have not been back.
The Talking Dog: Do you have a comment on why, to this day, American detention policy, whether at Guantanamo, Bagram, Kandahar, Iraq, or elsewhere, including the ghost prisons and rendition program, remain a much bigger issue in Europe and outside of the United States than they do inside of the United States?
David Rose: In all fairness, it has become a far bigger issue in the United States since I wrote the book. Of course, John Kerry did not mention this at all when he ran for President– not one mention of Guantanamo. Large numbers of Americans think it is just perfectly fine to hold people this way. They don’t see the broader issues– that Guantanamo and America’s treatment of detainees is virtually a recruiting sergeant for terrorists, and that the policy is misguided ethically and counterproductive in achieving the supposed goals of fighting terrorism.
It makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it?
Rose is the guy who first profiled the man who was brought in to toughen up Guantanamo, the psychopathic artillery officer named Geoffrey Miller who they subsequently sent over to “Gitmo-ize” Abu Ghraib. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, and praised as an “innovator” when he retired.
Some of you have noticed that I’m having a problem with the links to individual posts. The blogger “BlogItemNumber” is repeating for some inexplicable reason and it makes all links go to the top of the page instead of the individual post. I checked it against my old template and nothing has changed.
I’m getting no response from the Googleboys or the blogger help group yet but I remain hopeful that someone out there will have a clue. In the meantime, I’d be grateful to those of you who are kind enough to link to our posts, if you’d lop off that repeated number when you do the link.
Oy…
thanks — digby
Update: Fixed by the Mighty Atrios, Lord of all things blogger.
Lindsay Beyerstein of the great blog Majikthise has an article in Salon about why she turned down the gig of blogging for the Edwards campaign before Amanda and Shakes were hired and then “scalped” by the extreme right. Great streetsmarts on display and an excellent analysis of the role independent bloggers can/do/should have in political campaigns.
I’m going to be gravely disappointed if Scorcese doesn’t finally win. And I’m looking forward to seeing Etheridge sing her great song and (hopefully) seeing “An Inconvenient Truth” get even more exposure to the world. It’s not hyperbole to say it may be the most important movie ever made.
Every Oscar night I think about the time years ago that I went to a party that was attended by Satcheen Littlefeather, the woman Brando designated to receive his oscar and give a speech about Native American rights. My ditsy sis-in-law was introduced to her and said, “Oh right, you’re the woman who accepted the award for Marlo Thomas!”
The opening was great. Everyone present who was nominated got a moment to be applauded by their peers. Very nice.
Happy Oscars.
Update:
Congratulations to President Gore! Congratulations Melissa Etheridge!!
US Vice-President Dick Cheney has raised the possibility of military action to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
He has endorsed Republican senator John McCain’s proposition that the only thing worse than a military confrontation with Iran would be a nuclear-armed Iran.
In an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian, Mr Cheney said: “I would guess that John McCain and I are pretty close to agreement.”
The visiting Vice-President said that he had no doubt Iran was striving to enrich uranium to the point where they could make nuclear weapons.
He accused Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of espousing an “apocalyptic philosophy” and making “threatening noises about Israel and the US and others”.
He also said Iran was a sponsor of terrorism, especially through Hezbollah. However, the US did not believe Iran possessed any nuclear weapons as yet.
“You get various estimates of where the point of no return is,” Mr Cheney said, identifying nuclear terrorism as the greatest threat to the world.
“Is it when they possess weapons or does it come sooner, when they have mastered the technology but perhaps not yet produced fissile material for weapons?”
Mr Cheney also condemned Kevin Rudd’s plan to withdraw all Australian combat troops from Iraq. Although he did not mention the Opposition Leader by name, Mr Cheney said the withdrawal of Australian troops “would clearly be a disappointment from our standpoint”.
He encouraged further Australian involvement: “The more allies we have and the more committed they are to the effort, the quicker we can anticipate success.”
[…]
Earlier, in an address in Sydney to the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, Mr Cheney had emphasised the importance of the challenge of defeating Islamist terror, underlining the long-term nature of the struggle for the US and its allies.
“We have never had a fight like this, and it’s not a fight we can win using the strategies from other wars,” he said.
[…]
“The world’s better off now that (Saddam Hussein) is dead and there’s a democratically elected Government in his place in Baghdad,” he said.
“The Iraqi people are well on the road to establishing a viable democracy.
“In the long term when we look back on this period of time that will be a remarkable achievement. We’re not there yet. We’ve still got a lot to do.”
In Dick Cheney’s upside-down world, the fearsome GWOT is akin to the “War of the Worlds” and we have to be prepared to blow up the planet rather than submit to the aliens. And Iraq is a huge success.
Arthur Silber puts this in perspective, here and here.
Meanwhile, Cheney is running all over the world prattling on like Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened To Baby Jane”, Bush is robotically grunting some nonsense about “pertecktin’ the troops” and pundits are trying to make us believe that this is some sort of extremely clever ruse that will end with Iran metaphorically falling to the ground and crying uncle. As if “extremely clever” and Dick ‘n George can ever be mentioned seriously in the same breath.
Not that I advocate operqating like this because it smacks of fascism and makes me sick, but if you want to see how an extremely effective right wing advocacy group works, this is how its done:
‘Terrorist’ Remark Puts Outdoorsman’s Career in Jeopardy
Zumbo’s Criticism of Hunters Who Use Assault Rifles Brings Unforgiving Response From U.S. Gun Culture
SEATTLE — Modern hunters rarely become more famous than Jim Zumbo. A mustachioed, barrel-chested outdoors entrepreneur who lives in a log cabin near Yellowstone National Park, he has spent much of his life writing for prominent outdoors magazines, delivering lectures across the country and starring in cable TV shows about big-game hunting in the West.
Zumbo’s fame, however, has turned to black-bordered infamy within America’s gun culture — and his multimedia success has come undone. It all happened in the past week, after he publicly criticized the use of military-style assault rifles by hunters, especially those gunning for prairie dogs.
“Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity,” Zumbo wrote in his blog on the Outdoor Life Web site. The Feb. 16 posting has since been taken down. “As hunters, we don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them. . . . I’ll go so far as to call them ‘terrorist’ rifles.”
The reaction — from tens of thousands of owners of assault rifles across the country, from media and manufacturers rooted in the gun business, and from the National Rifle Association — has been swift, severe and unforgiving. Despite a profuse public apology and a vow to go hunting soon with an assault weapon, Zumbo’s career appears to be over.
His top-rated weekly TV program on the Outdoor Channel, his longtime career with Outdoor Life magazine and his corporate ties to the biggest names in gunmaking, including Remington Arms Co., have been terminated or are on the ropes.
The NRA on Thursday pointed to the collapse of Zumbo’s career as an example of what can happen to anyone, including a “fellow gun owner,” who challenges the right of Americans to own or hunt with assault-style firearms.
In announcing that it was suspending its professional ties with Zumbo, the NRA — a well-financed gun lobby that for decades has fought attempts to regulate assault weapons — noted that the new Congress should pay careful attention to the outdoors writer’s fate.
“Our folks fully understand that their rights are at stake,” the NRA statement said. It warned that the “grassroots” passion that brought down Zumbo shows that millions of people would “resist with an immense singular political will any attempts to create a new ban on semi-automatic firearms.”
Kevin says the message is that there’s no point in apologizing in America today. But I have never seen any liberal advocacy group completely destroy one of their own’s livlihood over one remark with which they disagree, apology or not. I’m not saying some wouldn’t want to, or haven’t tried even, but they just don’t have the clout with their followers or that kind of killer instinct. The NRA is the most effective lobbying group in American history because of its savvy political lobbying and its take no prisoners attitude. They are totalitarian gun nuts who have completely cowed the political system of this country. If that doesn’t keep you awake night, nothing will.
[UPDATE: Digby discusses the same article below that I do here. I apologize for the inadvertent duplication (I was finishing up my post and didn’t realize Digby had already discussed it), but I hope our combined interest will serve to pique your curiousity about the comlete article, one of Hersh’s greatest, and a deeply important read.]
Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker has a concise article explaining only a fraction of the fiendishly complex twists and turns of the political situation in the Middle East right now. As you read it – and you’ll have to read it several times even to begin to understand the vertigo-inducing complexities – perhaps, like me, you will shudder to remember that the US is led by a “gentleman’s C+” and a demented flake who shot his friend in the face, neither of which have had a lick of genuine experience in the Middle East, not to mention a glimmer of understanding as to how the world works. These are the people who deliberately are sending your children, your friends, and your neighbors to mutilation and death in a faraway desert for no sensible purpose whatsoever.
I’ve excerpted some quotes from the article. But really, it bears reading in full. The situation makes the study of string theory seem like beginner’s Sudoku :
“The Administration is trying to make a case that Iran is more dangerous and more provocative than the Sunni insurgents to American interests in Iraq, when—if you look at the actual casualty numbers—the punishment inflicted on America by the Sunnis is greater by an order of magnitude,” Leverett said. “This is all part of the campaign of provocative steps to increase the pressure on Iran. The idea is that at some point the Iranians will respond and then the Administration will have an open door to strike at them…
…the Pentagon is continuing intensive planning for a possible bombing attack on Iran, a process that began last year, at the direction of the President. In recent months, the former intelligence official told me, a special planning group has been established in the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, charged with creating a contingency bombing plan for Iran that can be implemented, upon orders from the President, within twenty-four hours…
..the former senior intelligence official said that the current contingency plans allow for an attack order this spring. He added, however, that senior officers on the Joint Chiefs were counting on the White House’s not being “foolish enough to do this in the face of Iraq, and the problems it would give the Republicans in 2008…
…In the past year, the Saudis, the Israelis, and the Bush Administration have developed a series of informal understandings about their new strategic direction. At least four main elements were involved, the U.S government consultant told me. First, Israel would be assured that its security was paramount and that Washington and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states shared its concern about Iran
Second, the Saudis would urge Hamas, the Islamist Palestinian party that has received support from Iran, to curtail its anti-Israeli aggression and to begin serious talks about sharing leadership with Fatah, the more secular Palestinian group. (In February, the Saudis brokered a deal at Mecca between the two factions. However, Israel and the U.S. have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms.)
The third component was that the Bush Administration would work directly with Sunni nations to counteract Shiite ascendance in the region.
Fourth, the Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashir Assad, of Syria…
During a conversation with me, the former Saudi diplomat accused Nasrallah of attempting “to hijack the state,” but he also objected to the Lebanese and Saudi sponsorship of Sunni jihadists in Lebanon. “Salafis are sick and hateful, and I’m very much against the idea of flirting with them,” he said. “They hate the Shiites, but they hate Americans more. If you try to outsmart them, they will outsmart us. It will be ugly…”
In an interview in Beirut, a senior official in the Siniora government acknowledged that there were Sunni jihadists operating inside Lebanon. “We have a liberal attitude that allows Al Qaeda types to have a presence here,” he said. He related this to concerns that Iran or Syria might decide to turn Lebanon into a “theatre of conflict…”
The Bush Administration has portrayed its support of the Siniora government as an example of the President’s belief in democracy, and his desire to prevent other powers from interfering in Lebanon…
The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, a earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became know as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)
After you watch a presidential admnistration for a while you begin to see shifts in policy or different phases of the old ones by the way the officials all speak. In the case of the Bush administration, it’s remarkably easy because they robotically and fanatically follow talking points. They are, as we’ve seen many times, more concerned with marketing than subtance and place a very high premium on properly “rolling out their product.”
So, when president Bush used the phrase “protect our troops” followed by everyone from Gates to Rice, my antennae were way up; it was obvious that it was a potential cassus belli for an attack on Iran. January 11, 2007:
SEC. RICE: Well, I think General Pace has spoken to what we think the necessity is and what it is we intend to do. We’ve made very clear to the Iranian government and the Syrian government, for that matter, that we don’t expect them to continually engage in behavior that is destabilizing to the Iraqi government but also that endangers our troops, and that we will do what is necessary for force protection.
But we leave to those who deal with issues of force protection how these raids are going to be taken out (sic). I think you’ve got an indication of that in what has been happening, which is the networks are identified, they are identified through good intelligence, they are then acted upon. It is without regard to whoever is in them, whatever the nationality. And we’re going to protect our troops.
Then in her appearance before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month:
“Obviously, the President isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops, but the plan is to take down these networks in Iraq.I do think that everyone will understand that—the American people and I assume the Congress expect the President to do what is necessary to protect our forces.”
Today we have a new article from Seymour Hersh that is so mindblowing that you must do yourself a favor and go and read the whole thing right now. It’s called “The Redirection” and it starts like this:
In the past few months, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated, the Bush Administration, in both its public diplomacy and its covert operations, has significantly shifted its Middle East strategy. The “redirection,” as some inside the White House have called the new strategy, has brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The U.S. has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
One contradictory aspect of the new strategy is that, in Iraq, most of the insurgent violence directed at the American military has come from Sunni forces, and not from Shiites. But, from the Administration’s perspective, the most profound—and unintended—strategic consequence of the Iraq war is the empowerment of Iran. Its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has made defiant pronouncements about the destruction of Israel and his country’s right to pursue its nuclear program, and last week its supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on state television that “realities in the region show that the arrogant front, headed by the U.S. and its allies, will be the principal loser in the region.”
After the revolution of 1979 brought a religious government to power, the United States broke with Iran and cultivated closer relations with the leaders of Sunni Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia. That calculation became more complex after the September 11th attacks, especially with regard to the Saudis. Al Qaeda is Sunni, and many of its operatives came from extremist religious circles inside Saudi Arabia. Before the invasion of Iraq, in 2003, Administration officials, influenced by neoconservative ideologues, assumed that a Shiite government there could provide a pro-American balance to Sunni extremists, since Iraq’s Shiite majority had been oppressed under Saddam Hussein. They ignored warnings from the intelligence community about the ties between Iraqi Shiite leaders and Iran, where some had lived in exile for years. Now, to the distress of the White House, Iran has forged a close relationship with the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.
The new American policy, in its broad outlines, has been discussed publicly. In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that there is “a new strategic alignment in the Middle East,” separating “reformers” and “extremists”; she pointed to the Sunni states as centers of moderation, and said that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah were “on the other side of that divide.” (Syria’s Sunni majority is dominated by the Alawi sect.) Iran and Syria, she said, “have made their choice and their choice is to destabilize.”
Think about this for a moment. The crackerjack Bush administration — which failed to anticipate the rise of Iran once they removed its dangerous enemy from the scene — is supposed to be able to recognize who’s who among these various Muslim players and deftly play all the factions against one another in a very discrete and high stakes game in which they finesse a final outcome that brings about peace and security.
Oh. My God.
But apparently we needn’t worry because Prince Bandar is on the scene helping Dick Cheney sort everything out:
“It seems there has been a debate inside the government over what’s the biggest danger—Iran or Sunni radicals,” Vali Nasr, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has written widely on Shiites, Iran, and Iraq, told me. “The Saudis and some in the Administration have been arguing that the biggest threat is Iran and the Sunni radicals are the lesser enemies. This is a victory for the Saudi line.”
In case anyone forgot, Al Qaeda are Sunni radicals. And most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. But let’s assume they weren’t. Can anyone believe that this administration is capable of playing such a delicate geopolitical chess game? Dear God, these are people whose idea of playing checkers is to up-end the board and do a victory dance. Let’s just say that subtlety isn’t their stong suit.
This is what Bush and Cheney are talking about when they say that history will vindicate them. The believe that by tearing the middle east to pieces, when it finally settles down after years of carnage and bloodshed, they will get credit for the clever plan that set it in motion.
Read it all. There’s much more and it’s fascinating stuff. And frightening.
This is the part that gets me. When Bush brought that war criminal piece of garbage Elliott Abrams back in to the government we all should have known they were going down this road:
The Bush Administration’s reliance on clandestine operations that have not been reported to Congress and its dealings with intermediaries with questionable agendas have recalled, for some in Washington, an earlier chapter in history. Two decades ago, the Reagan Administration attempted to fund the Nicaraguan contras illegally, with the help of secret arms sales to Iran. Saudi money was involved in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal, and a few of the players back then—notably Prince Bandar and Elliott Abrams—are involved in today’s dealings.
Iran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said.
I was subsequently told by the two government consultants and the former senior intelligence official that the echoes of Iran-Contra were a factor in Negroponte’s decision to resign from the National Intelligence directorship and accept a sub-Cabinet position of Deputy Secretary of State. (Negroponte declined to comment.)
[…]
The government consultant said that Negroponte shared the White House’s policy goals but “wanted to do it by the book.” The Pentagon consultant also told me that “there was a sense at the senior-ranks level that he wasn’t fully on board with the more adventurous clandestine initiatives.” It was also true, he said, that Negroponte “had problems with this Rube Goldberg policy contraption for fixing the Middle East.”
The Pentagon consultant added that one difficulty, in terms of oversight, was accounting for covert funds. “There are many, many pots of black money, scattered in many places and used all over the world on a variety of missions,” he said. The budgetary chaos in Iraq, where billions of dollars are unaccounted for, has made it a vehicle for such transactions, according to the former senior intelligence official and the retired four-star general.
“This goes back to Iran-Contra,” a former National Security Council aide told me. “And much of what they’re doing is to keep the agency out of it.” He said that Congress was not being briefed on the full extent of the U.S.-Saudi operations. And, he said, “The C.I.A. is asking, ‘What’s going on?’ They’re concerned, because they think it’s amateur hour.”
It is amateur hour and these zombies must be stopped. Until the Democrats, and the country, recognize this undemocratic and criminal element in our politics it is going to continue every time the Republicans take power. When they have a congressional majority with a Republican president they steal the country blind and when it’s a Democrat they harrass him so badly that its a miracle he is able to function. When they have the presidency they become despotic criminals. This has been true for the last 30 years.
And now the Bush administration has spawned untold numbers of future war criminals who will claw their way back into power so they can “prove” they were right the first time. This pattern is repeating itself over and over again and we simply have to figure out a way to put an end to it.
Today we have the DOD equivalent of Brownie running around with boatload of cash making deals with Muslim extremists and Saudi princes, whom the administration has divided up into completely useless designations of “reformer” and extremist.” Nobody knows who’s talking to who or what agenda they really have. Liberals think up complex plots like this and make them into movies. Republicans steal billions from the taxpayers and actually try to implement their hare-brained schemes.
Meanwhile, in case you’ve been away from the media for a while, Anna Nicole Smith is still dead and Chris Matthews and Cokie Roberts are desperate to find out if Bill Clinton is “being a good boy.” We’re in trouble.
Update: John Amato has the footage of Seymour hersh this morning on Wolf Blitzer. It’s a corker:
HERSH: …And in looking into that story, and I saw him in December, I found this. That we have been pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight, Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia is putting up some of this money, for covert operations in many areas of the Middle East where we think that the — we want to stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.
They call it the “Shiite Crescent.” And a lot of this money, and I can’t tell you with absolute certainty how — exactly when and how, but this money has gotten into the hands — among other places, in Lebanon, into the hands of three — at least three jihadist groups.
There are three Sunni jihadist groups whose main claim to fame inside Lebanon right now is that they are very tough. These are people connected to al Qaeda who want to take on Hezbollah. So this government, at the minimum, we may not directly be funneling money to them, but we certainly know that these groups exist.
[…]
We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11, and we should be arresting these people rather than looking the other way…
Back in 1972, the U.S. government handed a certain British émigré a rather abrupt eviction notice, informing him and the missus that they had 60 days to get out of the country or face deportation proceedings.
This event would likely have not caused much of a ripple in anyone else’s life, had the folks in question not been a married couple known to millions simply as “John & Yoko”. And so began a highly politicized, four-year legal battle for citizenship, chronicled in the documentary The US vs. John Lennon, now available on DVD.
You know the back story: After a very public and controversial courtship, John Lennon and Yoko Ono marry in 1969, the Beatles break up, and the couple begin making their own headlines with a series of mildly political “performance art” media stunts (starting with the relatively benign “Bed-In For Peace”) and then move to NYC in the early 70’s, where they begin to openly sympathize with the “radical” American political groups of the time, much to the chagrin of the Nixon administration. The apparent last straw for Tricky D.& Co. was John and Yoko’s 1972 appearance at a charity concert to help cover legal fees for White Panther Party founder John Sinclair, who had been jailed ostensibly on drug charges, but was considered by many at the time to be a political prisoner.
Declassified documents now prove that, from day one, there was direct inter-agency manipulation of John and Yoko’s deportation proceedings, from the FBI all the way up to the Oval Office, resulting in a nearly four-year long persecution that was probably best described by Lennon himself, who referred to the machinations as “Kafkaesque”.
The film features great archival footage, with recollections from the likes of Bobby Seale, John Sinclair, Geraldo Rivera, Noam Chomsky, Ron Kovic, Paul Krassner, George McGovern, and, er, G. Gordon Liddy (guess whose side he’s on). The most insightful comment comes from the ever-glib Gore Vidal, who, when asked what it was about Lennon that made him such a threat to the Nixon cabal, says: “He (Lennon) represented Life, and was admirable. Mr. Nixon, and (for that matter) Mr. Bush, represent Death, and that’s bad.” (Perhaps that is a bit of an over-simplification, but so true.)
The film is a tad dry in its execution (it was produced by VH-1, which likely accounts for the rote “Behind the Music” approach) but it’s still a compelling tale, and an important one. It has much to say about what is going on right now with the “dissent vs. disloyalty” issue (Dixie Chicks, anyone?) and the dangers of being governed by an administration that parcels up the Bill of Rights like customized selections from a dim sum cart.
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. And for that “Kafkaesque” context…start with Orson Welles’ 
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