Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Going Chris Matthews One Better

by tristero

Should the president have the right to break the law and gather information after 9/11? Chris Matthews tells us what he thinks:

MATTHEWS: We’re under attack on 9-11. A couple of days after that, if I were president of the United States and somebody said we had the ability to check on all the conversations going on between here and Hamburg, Germany, where all the Al Qaeda people are, or somewhere in Saudi [Arabia], where they came from and their parents are, and we could mine some of that information by just looking for some key words like “World Trade Center” or “Pentagon,” I’d do it.

TICE [a former NSA official]: Well, you’d be breaking the law.

MATTHEWS: Yeah. Well, maybe that’s part of the job.

Well, I’ll see Matthews and raise him. I think the president of the United States should have detained for questioning the relatives of anyone suspected of involvement in 9/11. I don’t care what anyone says about guilt by association, if you’re related to bin Laden, for example, then by God, nothing in the weeks after 9/11 should stop the US Government from keeping you around for some extended questioning.

The thing is… nothing did stop the the Bush administration from detaining bin Laden’s relatives and other Saudi nationals here in the US after 9/11 for as long as they wanted. Except, of course, the Bush administration itself.* Oh, and it would have been perfectly legal to detain them, but they didn’t bother. That’s right: no laws had to be broken. Bush just had to exercise some common sense and summon the patriotic will to disobey his Saudi masters… oops, I mean good friends.

A corollary question: Would an illegal wiretap have prevented 9/11? Well, if it takes breaking the law to gather that kind of information, then yeah, let’s Dirty Harry Cleans Up Frisco, fellas! Screw the law.

But y’know what’s kinda funny? It really wasn’t necessary to break any laws to gather information that would have prevented 9/11. But it really is pretty important to have someone around who understands the language when they first come in::

Before Sept. 11, U.S. agencies collected about 30 communications from suspected al Qaeda operatives or other militants referring to an imminent event, but many were false alarms, a U.S. intelligence official said on Monday.

“You can’t dismiss any of them, but it doesn’t tell you tomorrow is the day,” the official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. [Oh?? Shades of Austin Powers: “That’s not my Swedish Penis Pump.” Read on.]

Messages from members of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network included the phrases “Tomorrow is zero hour” and “The match begins tomorrow,” which government sources have said were picked up on Sept. 10 by National Security Agency eavesdropping on global communications.

Those two messages were not translated from Arabic until Sept. 12.

But let’s cut the crap. Matthews’ little conversation was about quite a serious topic, but the topic wasn’t the security of the United States which is adequately served by its security laws (the competence of its agencies under Bush is a different story). You don’t gotta be a cowboy to be president. Or a torturer, or a murderer of prisoners. And Matthews knows this. And he also knows what his real topic is:

Is it ok for George W. Bush to continue to violate the laws of the people and the government of the US? Is it ok for Bush to insist he is answerable only to the Voice of God in his head but not to any court of law?

Chris Matthews thinks that’s just fine. And y’know something? I don’t think Bush even has to pay him to say so. Kinda gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?

*Now, you may have noticed, if you clicked the link to Snopes, that they make a point of debunking the claims that the flights of bin Laden relatives and Saudi nationals occurred immediately after 9/11 and before the FBI questioned them. No argument with that: I’m not claiming Jim Garrison-style conspiracy, just incredible incompetence mixed with political pressure from on high (and no one believes permission for those flights didn’t come straight from Crawford’s Answer To Churchill himself).

Now the flights to evacuate the Saudis started a mere five hours after airspace opened up on 9/13. Most of the fugitives… I mean passengers, were not interviewed. Then, on Sept. 20, only nine days after the attacks, a flight with 26 passengers, mostly related to the terrorist mastermind left the US. Now twenty two of these people were interviewed and swore they knew nothing. Wouldn’t you? And they scrammed out of the country.

That’s what I call a thorough investigation.

Too Important For Bloviators

by digby

I would like second Glenn Greenwald’s call for a special Select Committee to investigate the illegal NSA wiretapping scandal. This issue is obviously too complex and difficult to be handled by Arlen Specter’s Judiciary Committee. I realize that the nation can’t get enough of Blowhard Biden and Huckleberry Graham after their riveting Kabuki star turns over the past week but I would hate to see them get over exposed. Trying to stay awake while boring senators get turned inside out by much more nimble witnesses is thrilling TV, I know, but we don’t want to overdo it.

Glenn points out that the House has a select bi-partisan committee up and running right now to investigate the federal response to hurricane Katrina so it’s not as if this is unusual. It is commonly used for hearings of national importance like the Katrina response, the Clinton impeachment hearings, Iran Contra, Watergate and others. This is that important and it should be treated that way. If it’s left up to Huckleberry’s cornpone lectures and Tom Coburn’s insane ramblings the hearings will be quickly made irrelevant by the incompetent questioning and bored media reaction alone.

These hearings are going to be about a fundamental constitutional understanding of how our system of government works. The stakes are very high. We could be setting a precedent for a unitary executive that completely abrogates the system of checks and balances. The committee will interview legal experts who are going to make arguments that the president has a right under the constitution to ignore the laws and I don’t want Dianne Feinstein being the one to challenge them.

The other side is going to question opposing views with a simple bullshit rationale about saving the babies from the boogeyman. We cannot leave the much more complicated opposing argument to gasbag senators questioning much more agile legal minds than theirs. We need real, practising lawyers who know the issues and know how to question a witness.

After watching the soporific Alito sideshow this week, it’s quite clear to me that the judiciary committee is not a venue in which to get to the bottom of this.

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“Who’s Being Naive, Kay?

by digby

Today, I’m calling a moratorium on calling Democrats spineless losers. This op-ed column by Harry Reid is one of the most in-your-face challenges I’ve seen in quite some time and it gets right to the heart of the matter:

In 1977, I was appointed chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission. It was a difficult time for the gaming industry and Las Vegas, which were being overrun by organized crime. To that point in my life, I had served in the Nevada Assembly and even as lieutenant governor, but nothing prepared me for my fight with the mob.

Over the next few years, there would be threats on my life, bribes, FBI stings and even a car bomb placed in my family’s station wagon. It was a terrifying experience, but at the end of the day, we cleaned up Las Vegas and ushered in a new era of responsibility.

My term on the gaming commission came to an end in 1981, and when it did, I thought I had seen such corruption for the last time. Unfortunately, that has not been the case. It is not quite the mafia of Las Vegas in the 1970s, but what is happening today in Washington is every bit as corrupt and the consequences for our country have been severe.

Our nation’s capital has been overrun by organized crime — Tom DeLay-style.

The gangsters are the lobbyists, cronies and lawmakers who have banded together and abused their power to serve their own self-interest. The casinos are the Capitol, which has had its doors thrown open for special interests to waltz in and help themselves, and the victims, of course, are the American people.

There is a price to pay for the culture of corruption, and we can see it in the state of our union.

Consider the state of our economy. On one side is Big Oil, which reaped $100 billion in profits in 2005. On the other side are middle-class families. Their wages are declining at the same time they are paying more for gas, heat, education and other needs.

Take the state of health care. On one side are the HMOs that benefited greatly from a $10 billion slush fund in the Medicare bill. On the other side are seniors who face gaps in their coverage and the high cost of prescription drugs.

And then there is our national debt. On one side are the special interests and the multimillionaires who have received tremendous tax breaks over the last five years. On the other side are our children and grandchildren who will pay for these tax cuts when they inherit billions in debt.

In our country today, we are seeing what happens when lawmakers and lobbyists conspire to put the needs of special interests before the needs of the American people. We have a country that grows more dependent on foreign oil each day. We have cronyism like that exposed by Hurricane Katrina, and we have a national security policy that does a good job of protecting Halliburton’s bottom-line but not a good enough job protecting the American people.

Damn!

This is exactly how this should be framed. They are a criminal mob. Democrats should not shy away from using that exact language because it’s absolutely true.

“I AM the federal government.”

– Comment uttered by Tom DeLay to the owner of Ruth’s
Chris Steak House, after being told to put out his cigar because of federal government regulations banning smoking in the building, May 14, 200

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Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

by digby

Hindquarters writes yesterday:

George W. Bush is Churchill’s heir in our century.

He explains:

Regular readers of this site know that we admire, above all others, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill. President Bush’s reference to “victory” as the mandate he gives to his commanders recalls, intentionally, I am sure, Churchill’s great speech upon becoming Prime Minister in May 1940–the speech in which he said, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

This is what brought the comparison to mind. First, here’s Junior:

So that was a good question. Thank you. (Applause.)

Let’s see, yes, ma’am. I’m running out of time here. You’re paying me a lot of money, and I’ve got to get back to work. (Laughter.)

First of all, I expect there to be an honest debate about Iraq, and welcome it. People can help, however, by making sure the tone of this debate is respectful and is mindful about what messages out of the country can do to the morale of our troops. (Applause.)

I fully expect in a democracy — I expect and, frankly, welcome the voices of people saying, you know, Mr. President, you shouldn’t have made that decision, or, you know, you should have done it a better way. I understand that. What I don’t like is when somebody said, he lied. Or, they’re in there for oil. Or they’re doing it because of Israel. That’s the kind of debate that basically says the mission and the sacrifice were based on false premise. It’s one thing to have a philosophical difference — and I can understand people being abhorrent about war. War is terrible. But one way people can help as we’re coming down the pike in the 2006 elections, is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm’s way, and the effect that rhetoric can have in emboldening or weakening an enemy.

That “I can understand people being abhorrant about war” passage really sings, doesn’t it? You can easily see why it would bring to mind this passage from Churchill:

You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

Bush is complaining about his political opponents pointing out that he’s a lying sack of shit. Churchill is bucking up the British people as they are being bombed mercilessly by the Germans duiring the blitz. Who could fail to be moved by the comparison?

Now that I look at it, I can see another analogy. Bush begging his kool-aid drinkers to come out and vote is necessary to ensure his party’s survival. When we win, it’s going to be a nasty few years for Republican politicians as they face the consequences of their criminal reign.

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Pat Robertson Has High Standards

by tristero

And they’re all green. See, with a 50 million buck Israeli real estate scam deal on the line, Pat now thinks it was “clearly insensitve at the time” to say Sharon’s stroke was divine retribution for the Gaza withdrawal.

It never ceases to amaze me how clearly phony, how greedy, and how cynically irreligious America’s “spiritual leaders” are. And how many people are willing not only to respect their whacked ideas, but actually send them oodles of their hard-earned money. What a racket.

And that is why every day I wake up and pray for The Rapture to come., “Please God, take all these self-righteous clown up to their Final Reward and leave me down here.” I mean, is that too much to ask from a truly merciful Divinity?

Ripper Takes The Fifth

by digby

It looks like General Geoffrey D. Ripper might finally be coming into the crosshairs. It is long overdue. This sadistic piece of rubbish is largely responsible for instituting the war crimes that have contributed to our becoming a pariah state. Junior and the Nixon Retreads loved the guy.

Not that I’m holding my breath, but this article in the WaPo this morning indicates that he’s suddenly taking the fifth now that the notorious Col. Pappas has been granted immunity in return for his testimony:

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, a central figure in the U.S. detainee-abuse scandal, this week invoked his right not to incriminate himself in court-martial proceedings against two soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to lawyers involved in the case.

The move by Miller — who once supervised the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib — is the first time the general has given an indication that he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, according to military lawyers.

Harvey Volzer, an attorney for one of the dog handlers, has been seeking to question Miller to determine whether Miller ordered the use of military working dogs to frighten detainees during interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Volzer has argued that the dog handlers were following orders when the animals were used against detainees.

[…]

Miller’s decision came shortly after Col. Thomas M. Pappas, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib, accepted immunity from prosecution this week and was ordered to testify at upcoming courts-martial. Pappas, a military intelligence officer, could be asked to detail high-level policies relating to the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib.

He also could shed light on how abusive tactics emerged, who ordered their use and their possible connection to officials in Washington, according to lawyers and human rights advocates who have closely followed the case. Pappas has never spoken publicly. Crawford said Miller was unaware of Pappas’s grant of immunity. “This could be a big break if Pappas testifies as to why those dogs were used and who ordered the dogs to be used,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “It’s a steppingstone going up the chain of command, and that’s positive. It might demonstrate that it wasn’t just a few rotten apples.”

[…]

Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington expert in military law, said that Miller’s decision is “consistent with his being concerned that he may have some exposure to worry about.” Fidell added: “It’s very unusual for senior officers to invoke their Article 31 rights. The culture in the military tends to encourage cooperation rather than the opposite.”

Miller has long been in the spotlight of the Abu Ghraib abuse investigations, largely because he was sent to the Iraq prison in August and September 2003 with the goal of streamlining its intelligence-gathering operations, using Guantanamo Bay, commonly called “Gitmo,” as a model. Officers at Abu Ghraib have said that Miller wanted to “Gitmo-ize” the facility, and that harsh tactics migrated from the Cuba facility via “Tiger Teams” that Miller sent to Iraq as trainers.

[…]

In an interview with defense attorneys for those MPs in August 2004, Miller said he never told Pappas to use dogs in questioning detainees. Photos of the dog handlers scaring detainees at Abu Ghraib were among the most notorious to emerge from the prison. Dogs were also used at Guantanamo Bay.

“At no time did we discuss the use of dogs in interrogations,” Miller said, according to a transcript.

Volzer, who represents Sgt. Santos A. Cardona, one of the military dog handlers charged with abuse, said he believes the grant of immunity to Pappas will essentially clear his client, because Pappas already has admitted in administrative hearings that he improperly ordered the use of dogs. Volzer said he believes that Pappas was taking direction from Miller, and that Miller was acting on instructions from Defense Department officials. Cardona and Sgt. Michael J. Smith are scheduled to be tried in separate courts-martial in February and March.

“I think the command is hiding something, and I think what they’re hiding is material that is exculpatory that says the interrogation techniques were approved by powers above General Miller,” Volzer said. “Having Pappas available to testify may have given Miller the impression that he is next to be accused of doing something inappropriate or giving inappropriate orders.”

No kidding. Miller was an artillery officer who replaced the original Gitmo Commandant who was accused of being too soft on the prisoners and not getting enough intelligence. Miller fixed that. He got reams and reams of “intelligence” with his methods. The only problem was that it was all bullshit. But they liked his bullshit so much they sent him to Iraq to torture even more bullshit out of the Iraqis.

This was during the period when Cambone, Rumsfeld and Rice were leaning heavily on the military to provide them with piles of paper to prove how well we were doing — “in-box metrics.” No bin Laden, no WMD. But lots and lots of reports.

Miller was the best brown-nosing sadist they could find to generate a flurry of paperwork based on coercive techniques virtually designed to gain false intelligence. Sadly, as a result of these ineffective and immoral methods bin Laden is still at large and we managed to create a violent anti-American opposition in Iraq. Oh yes, and we have also lost all the moral authority we built up over the course of our history. Excellent work all around.

He is a war criminal. And so are his bosses.

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Always Alert

by digby

I know everybody loves a Nixonian Republican named Martha who cries, but would it be too much for the press to actually report the backround on this little kabuki today?

TIME wrote last night:

The always-alert Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm, sent this bulletin: “Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband’s confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development.”

In case that was too much trouble for the journalists, the firm also e-mailed out a statement from the Judicial Confirmation Network calling “for the abuse to stop.”

This was all spontaneous, of course. Any resemblance to Clarence Thomas’ “high tech lynchings” or Lynn Cheney’s “this is not a gooood man” is purely coincidental.

I think it’s time for Ted Kennedy to haul some little girls who were strip searched in to testify. You wanna play? Bring it.

And it’s also time for Democrats to see this as the gift it is. For once the snivellers are the Republicans, playing against type. But that means we’re playing against type also. It’s not often that the country sees us as “too tough.” We should play like Pat Fitzgerald and say “we’re just doing our jobs, ma’am. This is important business.” Let Huckleberry and the boys whimper like little old ladies.

Via Talk Left’s fine analysis of yesterday’s hearings

Update: Rending his garments and speaking in tongues, Roger L. Simon hits a new low.

Update II: Uncomfortable with being seen as the delicate Ashley and Melanie’s they are, there’s this:

And I think Mrs. Alito was crying because she couldn’t jump out of her seat and beat the living hell out of those arrogant condescending bastards who were making those false and scurrilous implications about her husband.

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Wedge Politics

by digby

David Neiwert’s got a must read piece up on immigration, the Minutemen and the Australian race riots. Nobody does this difficult subject better than he does. Get ready. it’s going to be one of the big topcis coming up in this next year whether we like it or not.

It’s happening everywhere — in the Northwest, in California, in the Midwest, in the South, even in pockets in the Northeast. What’s important to understand is that much of this agitation is taking place under the radar, by well-financed organizations who operate through focus groups and “think tanks.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Nick Coleman described just such an operation taking place recently in Minnesota under less-than-upfront circumstances:

The woman moderator, who said she was from Maryland, wanted very much to talk about immigrants. The participants already had discussed any issues they were concerned about, except the war in Iraq. There would be no talk about Iraq, the woman said. But up to that point, no one had mentioned immigration, much to the annoyance of the moderator. So she prodded the group to complain about immigrants.

“I haven’t heard anybody talk about immigration,” Peoples, an independent, recalls her saying. “Anybody have a problem with the illegal aliens coming in?”

The group’s response to the question was “a deafening silence,” Peoples says. But the woman pushed harder, listing some of the complaints she said she had heard in other states where she had conducted focus groups. Still, no one obliged her. Instead, Peoples mentioned the immigrant workers in a nearby town, praising them for how hard they seem to work.

Not the correct answer. Someone was paying money for this. They wanted problems.

“She shut me off,” Peoples recalls. “Then she said, ‘Aren’t you having problems here?’ “

The state Republican and DFL parties each deny having sponsored the mystery focus group, as does the Republican congressman for the area, Gil Gutknecht, and his DFL challenger, Tim Walz. Also in denial mode was the office of Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who recently poured gasoline on the immigrant issue with the release of a crudely overstated report designed to inflame opinion and make immigration into a wedge issue.

That last bit was opinion. But this is fact: Anti-immigration forces are working hard to raise resentment and to exploit immigration for political gain, cozying up to politicians who will help them fence the borders.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the big picture: the anti-immigrant push really represents a significant incursion of right-wing extremism into mainstream conservatism. Each is busy empowering the other, with the end result being an American right pushed even farther to the right.

I’m not looking forward to fighting this battle. Some fair minded good people are getting caught up in it because they don’t understand that it is a manufactured political wedge issue. It’s going to be unpleasant.

If Democrats can muster the self discipline keep our poweder dry on this, it will work as a much deeper wedge into the GOP. If we don’t, we’ll be split by it too.

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Proverbs For Bloggers

by tristero

1. A blogger who knows not irony, knows not a lot:

The headline reads A Plea for Civility. And the lede begins:

After the Democrats’ thuggish behavior yesterday…

Update: Tx to kc and cleek in comments for reminding me that John Hinderaker once provided a fellow blogger with an exceptionally clear object lesson in civility.

You Go Girl!

by digby

We Democrats have a penchant for calling our party spineless and complaining that they never challenge the Republicans.

Well, get a load of this:

Bush said the war’s critics should stop questioning the motives that led him to launch the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

“The American people know the difference between responsible and irresponsible debate when they see it…. And they know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right,” Bush said.

“I ask all Americans to hold their elected leaders to account and demand a debate that brings credit to our democracy — not comfort to our adversaries,” Bush said.

[…]

Karen Finney, the Democratic National Committee’s communications director, said “the Bush administration’s attack, distract and distort tactics reflect a Nixonian paranoia that is un-American.”

Of course, saying things like this might make Laura cry and cause lil’ Huckleberry Graham to clutch his opera length pearls and purse his purdy lips together in a pout, but, you know, fuck it. This is not a goooood man.

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