Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Torturing The Troops And Their Families

by digby

Oh fergawdssake. Here we go again with St John McCain and Mr Elizabeth Taylor pretending to care about the military when they’re actually just trying to save their miscreant leader’s face and kicking the can down the road a few more FU’s. (I wonder where the third Musketeer Huckleberry is this morning? He must be working overtime to ensure they can’t get enough votes to keep the US Government from torturing and indefinitely imprisoning anyone the Boy King deems his enemy. Busy day.)

Anyway, here’s the latest lame maneuver from the Torture Twins:

Speaking on the Senate floor this morning, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), an ardent opponent of a pro-troop measure to relieve the stress on the overstretched armed forces, announced he will propose a toothless, watered-down substitute to the Webb amendment.

McCain said he and Sen. John Warner (R-VA) have teamed up to put together a “sense of the Senate” amendment to express “very clearly that we all want all our troops home and we understand the stress and strain that’s been inflicted on the men and women in the military and the guard and reserves.”

Sorry flyboy. Your “sense of the senate” isn’t going to do jack about this:

While generals and politicians debate strategy and funding for the Iraq war on Capitol Hill, the cost of the conflict is tallied in places like this quiet subdivision, where Kelly Bridson each night listens to her 10-year-old son’s bedtime prayers for his stepfather’s safety: “The light of God surrounds you. The love of God enfolds you. The power of God protects you. …”

Army Spc. Joe Bridson is stationed in the volatile city of Samarra, Iraq, about 80 miles north of Baghdad. The prayers could well be goodnight hugs if not for the vagaries of military service in the era of the volunteer army: Joe Bridson is now in the 14th month of what originally was to have been a four- to six-month deployment in Iraq.

Bridson’s situation is hardly unique. Scores of readers of msnbc.com’s Gut Check America project wrote of loved ones in similar situations, either repeatedly deployed to the combat zone or languishing there months after their deployments were to have ended.

Their stories put a human face on stark statistics showing that the U.S. military — a small force by historical standards — is stretched thin after more than four years in Iraq and six in Afghanistan. Repeated deployments of active military members and reservists and diminishing “dwell times” between postings to the war zone have taxed soldiers and taken a growing toll on the home front.

“Families are truly exhausted,” says Patricia Barron, who runs youth programs for the National Military Families Association. “They are starting to feel the stresses of separation more acutely.”

Kelly and Joe’s story is but one of thousands that illustrate how the lack of resolution plays out on a personal level.

Fears rise when the phone calls stop

Kelly waits anxiously for each phone call from her husband. They come almost daily and trigger fears of the worst kind when they don’t. That often means that someone in his company has been injured or killed and the military has cut off phone access until the next of kin has been notified. That’s when Kelly starts looking out the window, fearing the worst.

“There have been times when we’ve gone seven, eight days,” says Kelly. “After 48 hours, you know it’s not yours. … And I know it sounds terrible, but then you think, ‘Thank God it’s not mine.’”

When the phone finally rings, Kelly sinks into the crimson-and-rust cushions of her sofa and listens as Joe describes his days on patrol.

While it is a relief to hear his voice, their conversations raise other concerns. Joe’s moods are unpredictable, ranging from tenderness to rage.

“I never know who I’m going to get on the phone,” Kelly said. “He’s really been in the thick of it. … He worries that he won’t be the same person when he gets back.”

The couple had been together about six months when Joe learned he would be deployed to Iraq in August 2006 with the rest of the 3rd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division, based at Fort Bragg, N.C., as a machine-gunner for his squad in Charlie Company.

It was a blow, though not entirely unexpected. And the separation seemed manageable. Kelly had spent years as a single mom and built a successful career as an insurance agent.

They decided to get married when Joe was on a short leave in December, even though his deployment was coming to an end — or so they thought. Young Chase, Kelly’s son from a previous marriage, was a beaming best man in the ceremony.

“We knew it would be tough,” Kelly said.

‘The guessing … makes you crazy’

But extensions of his unit’s tour of duty and the uncertainty of how long he would be in Iraq made it worse.

“One month (extension) stretched into two, two months stretched into three,” Kelly recalled. “… The unknowing, the guessing, that makes you crazy. It makes the soldiers crazy.”

The war has not slowed for the 150 soldiers of Charlie Company, who have conducted hundreds of missions over the past year trying to root out insurgents in Samarra, a city of 200,000.

Samarra has been hit by two major insurgent attacks in recent months. In June, a bomb destroyed the minarets of a sacred Shiite site, the Golden Dome mosque. In August, dozens of gunmen raided the city’s police station, killing three people.

Eleven members of Charlie Company have been killed and 40, including Joe, have been awarded Purple Hearts for battle wounds. He was shot in the forearm last month but was back out on patrol three days later. Kelly says he’s also suffered two concussions — one from an IED and another from a grenade blast.

Still, what may have been the worst moment of the war for Joe and Kelly came in April, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that U.S. Army tours would be extended from 12 months to 15.

Joe heard the news not from his commander, but by phone from Kelly. She said he couldn’t believe it would include his company.

“His exact words were: ‘It better not be us. I will f—ing lose it,’” recalled Kelly. “And I thought, ‘Oh my God, is something in his brain going to snap?’”

It would be one thing if this war had any real purpose beyond saving Junior Bush from the embarrassment of having to withdraw before his term was up. Or if the congress and the president were willing to tell the American people that they need to reinstitutue the draft (which was always the plan for long term military operations like this.) But they know that this country has no intention of allowing that so they are putting the burdens on these soldiers and marines to prove their manhood for them and save their sorry political asses — just like so many of them did when they were young.

Add this despicable willingness to break the military they purport to love to the pile of horrors these Republicans have wrought. Really, is there anything these people are too ashamed to do? I don’t think so.

Calls:

Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)
DC: 202-224-6665
Anchorage: 907-271-3735

George Voinovich (R-Ohio)
DC: (202) 224-3353
Cleveland: (216) 522-7095

Elizabeth Dole (R-North Carolina)
DC: 202-224-6342
Raleigh: 866-420-6083

John Warner (R-Virginia)
DC: (202) 224-2023
Roanoke: (540) 857-2676

Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky)
DC: 202-224-2541
Louisville: 502-82-6304

Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania)
DC: 202-224-4254
Harrisburg: (717) 782-3951

From Christy at FDL:

Bonus – Ask Harry Reid to “don’t let Republicans obstruct – make them stand and filibuster”:

Harry Reid
DC: 202-224-3542
Las Vegas: 702-388-5020

You can email, here.

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Time To Shock The Monkeys

by digby

As we hold our breath to see if the Senate will Restore Habeas Corpus (go to the link to find the appropriate numbers to call) I thought I would reprise my post from the day the heinous bill was signed:

A Day Which Will Live In Infamy

Today President Bush took the constitution and tore it into little pieces.

President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a “vital tool” in the war against terrorism.

Bush’s plan for treatment of the terror suspects became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.

[…]

The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is “one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history.”

“The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions,” said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.

“Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act,” he said.

Yet, here is the very next sentence in that AP report:

The swift implementation of the law is a rare bit of good news for Bush as casualties mount in Iraq in daily violence.

I assume that was written without irony.

I don’t ever want to hear anyone on the right talk about moral values again. They are concepts which they clearly do not understand. And if they dare to bring up the Bible or Jesus Christ after this I will laugh in their faces, knowing that by their own standards they are going straight to hell for what they’ve done.

Remember these faces:

Where’s St. John McCain? How odd that he isn’t there to enjoy the poisonous fruits of his labor.

Update: Jack Balkin talks about the new law, here.

Let’s fix this POS. It’s a disgrace.

h/t to the great Billmon for the monkey pic

Surprise, Surpise, Surprise

by digby

So His Eminence John Warner is going to screw the troops again.

..in an interview Tuesday, the senator said he is “reconsidering his position” in light of the administration’s willingness to move closer to him on expediting some reduction in U.S. troop levels this year in Iraq. “It took a lot of convincing to make the first units come home before Christmas,” Mr. Warner said. “There is a lot of importance in that.”

Yeah, there’s a lot of “importance” in Warner and George W. Bush hosting a treacly Christmas pageant featuring a handful of troops who were scheduled to come home anyway.

I have written a longer piece on the perfidy of Senator Lucy Van Peldt Warner’s predictable habit of pulling the football out from under Democrats over at CAF. I don ‘t know why any Democrat ever trusts him. (Good riddance to the bastard.)

This is nonsense. The Dems should force these republicans to vote on the amendment every single day and explain why they think it’s a good idea to wear out the military to the breaking point.

Here’s Jim Webb:

Update: Act For Change has a nice message you can send to your senators here.

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Dial For Freedom

by digby

The cloture vote on the Restore Habeas Amendment is coming up for a vote tomorrow morning. We need to call Senators who apparently must be nudged by their pesky constituents to care about the rule of law.

Restore-Habeas.org is doing a whip count, with all the necessary numbers and info, that you can access by clicking here:

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Abizaid The Double Agent

by digby

Well that didn’t take long. I checked to see what the right was saying about General Abizaid’s comments and naturally Michael “ding dong Khameni is dead” Ledeen is appalled:

“There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran,” Abizaid said…”Let’s face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we’ve lived with a nuclear China, and we’re living with (other) nuclear powers as well.”

I’m grateful for this bit of enlightenment from the former commander of Central Command, whose failed strategy in Iraq led us to fight more effectively, especially against the Iranians’ depredations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. It was under Abizaid that the copious evidence of Iranian activity was suppressed, and we, let’s say, took it easy on the thousands of Revolutionary Guards killers running all over the country.

Gosh, it sounds like Ledeen is accusing Abizaid of something rather unpleasant, don’t you think?

Some of the commenters at LGF are a bit less opaque in their criticism:

Abizaid is of middle eastern descent IIRC, is that right?

BINGO!

It’s a sad thing when the suspicion can arise ( with validity ) that the ethnicity of a General Officer of the United States Army, may influence, even trump his patriotism.

The Iranians are not arabs, as is Abizaid, but…

Certainly, he’s a world class moron.

Wesley Clark, proved beyond doubt that one can attain the rank of General in the USA, despite being devoid of character or intellect. Abizaid,
sets this fact in stone.

This was good too:

Hmmm, Abizaid leaves and the situation in Iraq starts improving.

Coincidence?

A lil’ double loyalty perhaps?

The Freepers also weigh in:

He’d probably feel welcome back in Lebanon, Italy, or someplace like that.

[…]

I think General Abizaid’s ethnicity (I know, he’s of Arab, not Persian, extraction, but from the Mid-East nonetheless) is playing him false on this one. I’ve seen more than one General Officer miscalculate what the enemy would do based on his perception of what he would do in a similar situation; sometimes you really do have to examine the “worst case scenario”.

[…]

Abazaid is a darling poster child of the “anti war” movement…. he has a long history iof this, add to that he is of questionable patriotic character in my book, seeing he is a first generation import from Saudi Arabia ! a fellow like Abazaid getting to that level is just plain bizzarre, All arabs are smiling backstabbers and that is not “racism” it is a demographic reality

When a poster points out that they are criticizing a General, we have the piece de resistance in response:

Only Moveon calls them liars and traitors. Big difference.

This is why the pearl clutching among the right wingers and their media allies is so laughable. On the right, they treat all Generals and troops who disagree with them like garbage, in the most despicable terms possible. Look what they did to John Kerry. Why any DC liberal takes their little “patriotic” game seriously is beyond me.

Scott Horton wrote an excellent post a couple of weeks ago about all this that should be read by every Democratic consultant in Washington. They need to stop playing these silly games on Republican turf:

A recently retired flag officer friend of mine, who describes himself as a “once solid, and now wavering Republican” tells me:

Most officers, you know, are Republicans, but we all do our best to ensure that we wear no party allegiance when we put on our uniforms. It’s common to think that the Republicans love the military and the Democrats despise us. But our actual experience over the last couple of decades is that the Democrats, whether they despise us or not, leave us free to manage our own affairs and don’t interfere too much. Whereas the Republicans seem to love us so much that they know better than the career officer corps about just about everything. I’m really close to thinking that I prefer those Democrats, whether they despise us or not.

He went on to tell me that one of the things that bugged him the most about the Pentagon in recent years was the fairly overt process of politicization. “The White House was always involved in picking the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a handful of other positions, of course, but the process further down the line, especially two-stars and lower, was really peer-review. There is still a peer-review, but now it’s politicos who make the decisions, and their suspicion of where people stand in terms of party politics seems to weigh very heavily. This just ain’t right.”

[…]

The Department of Defense has limited access of military personnel to certain websites. In general, in the area of political commentary and reporting, the DOD view is that websites tightly aligned with the Republican Party or firmly committed to support the administration are fine. Websites associated with the Democratic Party or critical of the Administration are off limits.

A good example of this was recently reported by the Center for American Progress’ blog, thinkprogress.org.

ThinkProgress is now banned from the U.S. military network in Baghdad.

Recently, an avid ThinkProgress reader — a U.S. soldier serving his second tour in Iraq — wrote to us and said that he can no longer access ThinkProgress.org… The ban began sometime shortly after Aug. 22, when Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste was our guest blogger on ThinkProgress. He posted an op-ed that was strongly critical of the President’s policies and advocated a “responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq.” Previously, both the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times had rejected the piece.

Here’s what Major General Batiste, a Republican–but apparently not a sufficiently loyal Republican–had written that appears to have provoked the ban:

It is disappointing that so many elected representatives of my [Republican] party continue to blindly support the administration rather than doing what is in the best interests of our country. Traditionally, my party has maintained a conservative view on questions regarding our Armed Forces. For example, we commit our military only when absolutely necessary . . .

The only way to stabilize Iraq and allow our military to rearm and refit for the long fight ahead is to begin a responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq and replace the troops with far less expensive and much more effective resources–those of diplomacy and the critical work of political reconciliation and economic recovery. In other words, when it comes to Iraq, it’s time for conservatives to once again be conservative.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh, the team at Fox News, National Review, the Weekly Standard, and Commentary can all be read with no interruption.

Read the whole post. The politicization of the military — and the harsh treatment meted out to those in (and retired from) the military who fail to toe the line, is something that should be publicly discussed instead of running from it like a bunch of scared little bunnies every time some wingnut shows up in a uniform waving the GOP flag. This nonsense about being required to respect only the most loyal Republican officers is unamerican.

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Behind Village Walls

by digby

The Villagers swat at phantoms.

Via TPM, I see that there’s a new poll out proving that the media and political elites were right: all that distracting stuff about Move-On using the word “betray” in the same breath as a General really screwed the Democrats. People are now supporting the surge.

Not:

Most Americans continue to want troops to start coming home from Iraq, and most say the plan President Bush announced last week for troop reductions doesn’t go far enough, according to a CBS News poll released Monday. . . .

Sixty-eight percent of Americans say that U.S. troop levels in Iraq should either be reduced or that all troops should be removed – similar numbers to those before Mr. Bush’s speech.

[…]

The poll also found that despite optimistic assessments of the U.S. troop surge by Mr. Bush and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Americans are unconvinced that the surge is working.

Only about one in three (31 percent) said the surge has made things in Iraq better, while more than half (51 percent) say it’s had no impact. Eleven percent [11 percent] say it’s made things worse.

Now:

Increased 6%
Kept same 21%
Reduced 39%
Remove all troops 29%

Pre-speech, 9/4-8/2007:

Increased 11%
Kept same 19%
Reduced 35%
Remove all troops 30%

The Bush administration rolled out their biggest guns, hid behind the General’s salad and the troops’ dead bodies, demanding that everyone listen to Petraeus’s spin and obfuscation as if it were delivered directly from God himself and it didn’t do a bit of good.

Then they did their patented shrieking like a bunch of little old ladies at the unseemliness of Move-On’s horrible ad, hoping that the country was still listening and their blatant phony sanctimony would work on anyone but the media and political establishment Villagers. Apparently they still think — just as they did 10 years ago when the right pulled this crap with the Lewinsky scandal — that the American people are too dumb to see through the rich, decadent elites’ faux outrage. The ad, after all, said what a large majority of the country already believed — that The Man Called Petraeus was doing the loathed president’s bidding. The days when the GOP could evoke the smoke of 9/11 and emotionally blackmail the country into buying their cheap counterfeit sentiment are over.

Glenn Greenwald caught a perfect example of the disengaged beltway hysteria in his (must read) post today:

As but one highly illustrative example, let us revel in the Triumph of Petraeus from the Chris Matthews Show last Wednesday night:

JERRY DELLA FEMINA, ADVERTISING EXECUTIVE: Well, they’re doing a good job of it this week. Let me tell you, they couldn’t find anyone better than Petraeus. I mean, you just can’t beat a man in full uniform speaking to — well, I’ll give you Ollie North facing the Congress. You know, you stand up there, and he’s wearing a uniform. And boy, you can’t take a guy in uniform versus six overweight senators. . . .

I think the biggest mistake that was made was the anti — the “Petraeus Betray us” that ran just before that. I mean, what a setup that was. Snow could get up and say, Gee, this is a hero. How could we treat this man this way?

So if I was — you know, if this was a dirty tricks game, someone would say, Let’s put an ad in making fun of this war hero, and then let’s knock him down and show — so it was a terrible mistake…

MATTHEWS: Yes.

DELLA FEMINA: … and it really set the week off on the wrong note for people who were against the surge. . . .

[DANA] MILBANK [THE WASHINGTON POST]: Bush had a terrible August down on the ranch and then has explosive Septembers. And I think he’s won this battle already.

MATTHEWS: How so?

MILBANK: Petraeus –it’s no accident he had a Latin name. It looked like he was the Roman general returning to the republic in his gold and purple toga, and they were celebrating him and slaying white bulls. They could not get enough of this man. And anybody’s who’s even critical of the war wouldn’t dare criticize…

MATTHEWS: Right.

MILBANK: … except in the most polite way, General Petraeus because then you appear to be criticizing the troops. I think it’s game, set and match here.

Right. Except that normal American citizens who live outside the Village bubble knew before The Man Called Petraeus spoke that he would spin the war. And he did. Only in Republican establishment la-la land do people believe that generals are incapable of telling anything but the unvarnished truth. In fact, anybody who’s ever read “Beetle Bailey” or watched “MASH” (much less read “Catch 22” or any of the other great war novels) has a healthy view of the military’s fallibility. That’s part of American culture too. This embarrassing affected reverence for the General is as believable as Bush in a skin-tight Chippendales jumpsuit.

Sure, the Republicans and the media constantly drool and slaver and wax on about manly virtue and heroism no matter what the situation. They live in their own Disney-world. The rest of us know that at this point, six years on from 9/11 and mired down in a useless quagmire that they’re showing us a bad John Wayne movie circa 1958. It’s mildly entertaining, but most of us don’t mistake it for reality — or relevance.

Bush succeeded in shoring up the Republicans for one more FU. (He probably could have done it a lot more cheaply — the congressional Republicans are the most invertebrate bunch of jellyfish in American history and they’d ultimately go along with their Dear Leader if he suggested nuking Scotland.) But that’s it. He failed to change the general public’s thinking at all — indeed, if the CBS poll is correct, they may have even moved a few people in the other direction. All the sturm and drang of the last week was purely an inside the beltway circle jerk.

Update: Arianna Huffington has a great piece up on just what a masturbatory exercise it all was.

Update II: I saw Chris Cilizza somnambulently spinning the same tired tune on MSNBC this morning about the new Move-On Rudy ad. He claimed that it was a mistake because it would help Rudy in the primary in Iowa — as if Move-on was running the ad with the intention of trying to affect the GOP primary. (You could see that as he was saying it he suddenly understood that it didn’t make sense and that he might not have fully grasped the play.) When asked if the ad was accurate, he admitted that it was, but insisted that it was a problem because Republicans hate Move On. He, like the entire beltway establishment (except for Bill Schneider, of all people)has no clue about what the real strategy is here.

Chris Cilizza’s irrelevant analysis isn’t important at all. What is important is this ad, which MSNBC obligingly showed from beginning to end.

Share it with a friend.

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General Heretic

by digby

Let’s see if the right maintains its reverence for the every utterance of Iraq war commanders when they get a load of this:

Every effort should be made to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, but failing that, the world could live with a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran, a recently retired commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Monday.

John Abizaid, the retired Army general who headed Central Command for nearly four years, said he was confident that if Iran gained nuclear arms, the United States could deter it from using them.

“Iran is not a suicide nation,” he said. “I mean, they may have some people in charge that don’t appear to be rational, but I doubt that the Iranians intend to attack us with a nuclear weapon.”

The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

“I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear,” he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

“There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran,” Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. “Let’s face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we’ve lived with a nuclear China, and we’re living with (other) nuclear powers as well.”

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Justice Stuff

by digby

I heard Senator Chris Dodd on NPR this week-end talking about his new book about his father, the Nuremberg prosecutor. He was very eloquent on the subject of the rule of law and extremely passionate about restoring habeas corpus. (I do like the guy, I must say.)

Today, he and Senator Pat Leahy have launched Restore Habeas and are asking citizens to become co-sponsors of the Restore Habeas Restoration Act:

This week, we have a critical opportunity to restore habeas corpus.

The Habeas Corpus Restoration Act gives us a chance to reverse one of the Bush Administration’s many assaults on our civil liberties.

We all want to make America safe from terrorism, but becoming a nation that sanctions the unlawful detention of its own residents — detaining and jailing them without the chance to appear before a judge — does not make us safe. Instead, it violates a value that we have held dear for centuries — safeguarding our individual freedom before arbitrary state action.

You can sign up to be a co-sponsor here.

This is so important. I’m not sure this country can hope to regain its footing or protect ourselves properly in this new age unless we erase that horrible blemish of the Military Commissions Act.

Today Bush announced his new pick for Attorney General, a man who is not as bad as Alberto Gonzales or John Yoo, which is good. He’s hardly anyone in which I would put any faith to protect the constitution during this “War On Terror,” however.

Human Rights First:

Trial of Jose Padilla: Judge Mukasey supported granting terror suspects who are U.S. citizens select constitutional protections. While he ruled that the government had the power to detain Jose Padilla as an enemy combatant, he stood up to pressure from the Bush Administration and demanded that Mr. Padilla have access to counsel. He also ruled that Mr. Padilla was entitled to see the government’s evidence against him.

Judge Mukasey ruled that the government has the power to detain enemy combatants, regardless of their citizenship or place of capture. Judge Mukasey decided that the President is authorized by his powers as Commander in Chief[1] and by the Joint Resolution for the Authorization for Use of Military Force.[2] His powers cannot be questioned so long as U.S. troops are in Afghanistan and Pakistan seeking al Qaeda fighters: “At some point in the future, when operations against al Qaeda fighters end, or the operational capacity of al Qaeda is effectively destroyed, there may be occasion to debate the legality of continuing to hold prisoners based on their connection to al Qaeda…”[3]

But, Judge Mukasey also ruled that Padilla must be allowed access to counsel in order for the courts to fairly consider the government’s designation of Padilla as an enemy combatant. “…Padilla’s statutorily granted right to present facts to the court in connection with this petition will be destroyed utterly if he is not allowed to consult with counsel.”[4]

And Judge Mukasey stood up to pressure from the Bush Administration to change his ruling. “When a U.S. District Court ruled several months later that Padilla had a right to counsel, Cheney’s office insisted on sending Olson’s deputy, Paul Clement, on what Justice Department lawyers called ‘a suicide mission’: to tell Judge Michael B. Mukasey that he had erred so grossly that he should retract his decision. Judge Mukasey derided the government’s ‘pinched legalism’ and added acidly that his order was ‘not a suggestion or request.’”[5]

That last seems to me to express more of a (proper) sense of judicial prerogatives than any great devotion to human rights. However, he does deserve credit for at least adhering to the “spirit” of the constitution in demanding that Padilla have access to a lawyer and be allowed to address the charges against him, even if he held that the administration can call any citizen an enemy combatant and treat him under a separate set of rules at his discretion. That we consider this to be a mark of a great and honest conservative jurist just tells you how far down the road to tyranny this country has gone. Still, it’s better than some, so you have to give him his due.

The rest of his recent record isn’t that ambiguous:

Judge Mukasey has defended the use of the material witness statute to detain terrorist suspects without charges.

In Padilla Judge Mukasey signed the material witness warrant authorizing Padilla’s detention.

In Re Material Witness Warrant Judge Mukasey broke with the precedent established in Awadallah, arguing that the material witness statute may be used to detain terrorist suspects for grand jury proceedings and that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment, stating: “[t]he duty to disclose knowledge of crime rests upon all citizens” and “is so vital that one known to be innocent may be detained, in the absence of bail, as a material witness.”[7] He also based his argument on the fact that it is difficult to determine the need for testimonial evidence prior to trial, calling such suppositions “at best an imponderable undertaking.”[8]

Following the attacks of 9/11, Judge Mukasey closed all material witness court hearings and court documents associated with a grand jury investigation to the press and the public.[9]

In a forum held by the NYC bar association, Judge Mukasey defended charges that judges have failed to resist prosecutors’ broad use of the material witness statute, arguing that witnesses are quickly brought before judges to determine the fairness of their detention[10]

Judge Mukasey has expressed concern over using U.S. federal courts to hear cases involving terror suspects.

Judge Mukasey argued that Padilla’s case should not have been heard in a U.S. federal court because terror trials require too much time and too many resources and risk disclosure of U.S. intelligence methods to our enemies.[11]

Judge Mukasey argued that after the government was required to turn over a list of 200 unindicted co-conspirators in Rahman (1995 trial of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 9 co-defendants, charged with participating in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, plotting to destroy the UN, FBI offices and other NYC landmarks, and proposing the assassination of the Egyptian president), Osama bin Laden had the list within 10 days, thus notifying bin Laden that the U.S was aware of his involvement.[12]

Judge Mukasey has expressed views favoring administrative detention – the imprisonment of detainees without trial.

In his Wall Street Journal op-ed, Judge Mukasey urges lawmakers to consider the creation of an alternative national security law enforcement system, and laments the lack of a law authorizing pre-trial detention in the United States. In the piece, Judge Mukasey speculates that the government’s designation of Mr. Padilla as an enemy combatant might have been due to his being, “more valuable as a potential intelligence source than as a defendant.”[13]

He is far from acceptable to me. But it looks like he’s going to be confirmed, probably in a series of hearings in which certain preening Democrats will fall all over themselves extolling his virtues. (Thank God this administration is almost over.) And he could be worse. After all, they could have nominated Ted Olsen or Laurence Silberman.

Pat Leahy says that he’s going to hold up the confirmation hearings until the administration releases all the documents its been refusing to release. In response, Bush has appointed a terrible wingnut as acting AG, probably to try to force Leahy’s hand. We’ll see how that works out. It would be very satisfying if old Pat picked a big fight on this and insisted.

Meanwhile, both he and Dodd deserve props for pushing the repeal of the MCA. Passing that piece of offal was the lowest congressional moment since the filibusters of the civil rights legislation back in the day and it would be a huge relief to civil libertarians and decent people everywhere if the Democrats could dispatch it into the history’s dust bin quickly. They owe the country that much.

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The Dirty Hippies Were Right

by digby

I just love watching Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman and the rest of these Village gasbags blithely discussing Alan Greenspan’s pronouncement that the Iraq war was all about oil as if it’s always been just so obvious. It’s not even controversial except that it’s Alan Greenspan who said it, which they seem to find tittilating. But now they go on and on about how America runs on oil and that wars are fought over resources (even though it’s a “Marxist” argument *shudder*.)

Well, no shit. It was always obvious and there were a whole bunch of people who told the truth about that from the very beginning and were vilified as traitors, naifs, terrorist sympathizers and worse by these oh-so-jaded commentators who are discussing it now with all the emotion they used when they ordered their lunch today.

I’m sure you’ll all recall how everyone with any sense of decorum ran as fast as they could from the disgusting hippies who had the nerve to say this:

The denizens of the Village are just unbelievable. If we could have had a real debate in the beginning perhaps this “democracy” could have decided for itself if the trillion dollars we would spend on the Iraq invasion and occupation might have been better spent on alternative energy and conservation so we didn’t have to fight any useless wars over oil. We had a right to make that choice for ourselves not be mowed down by a bunch of oilmen and over-excited teenage media whores who wanted to run around in a military costume and pretend they were Ernie Pyle for a week or two.

Instead, Alan Greenspan says from on high that the war in Iraq is about oil and even after five years of shoving shrill neocon sanctimony and intimidation about WMD and terrorism and “Demaaahcracy” down our throats, the whole goddamned town nods its head and says, “of course, everyone knows that.” Arrrgh.

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Chafing from The Wingnuts

by digby

It seems as if I spent half my life listening to smug, arrogant former Democrats drone on and on about how they didn’t leave the party, the party left them. It’s nice to see the shoe on the other foot:

Former Sen. Lincoln Chafee said he has left the Republican Party because the national GOP has drifted too far from him on critical issues, including the war in Iraq, the economy and the environment.

“It’s not my party anymore,” Chafee, who represented Rhode Island from 1999 until 2007, told The Providence Journal in an article published Saturday

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I can’t say that I’m sorry Chafee didn’t make the switch earlier. His replacement Whitehouse is a far, far better Senator than he ever was. Still, it’s good he finally saw the light. He hasn’t been welcome in the GOP since 1994. I don’t know why he stuck with them for as long as he did.

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