No black man in America is safe - because of me

The amount of overblown, wingnut-like hyperbole flying around in the so-called "progressive" American blogosphere over the arrest of Henry Gates has risen to such hysterical levels that it isn't even possible to discuss the facts in a rational manner.

Take this exchange:

Amen (13+ / 0-)

seems to me that this idea of not placing all the blame on the officer sounds alot like the attitude back in the 70's of women who were raped or beaten that perhaps they were to blame

by Bluerall on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 08:34:05 AM MDT



*
that's asinine (0+ / 0-)

The comparison doesn't even compute.


by catnip on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 11:03:36 AM MDT


o
* [new] no you are assine (0+ / 0-)

the safety of people in their own homes and black men especially in their own homes should be inviolate.

gates should have been able to say anything he damn well pleased in his own home at any decibel level that did not disturb neighbors who, by definition, cannot be disturbed by noise at high noon.

gates has a documented upper respiratory infection which prevented him from making undue noise.

no black man in america is safe because of attitudes like yours.

and if you think i am calling you a racist, go ahead.

racist is as racist does.

i am not backing down on this one. not. one. inch.


by fernan47 on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 11:09:09 AM MDT


get off your pulpit (0+ / 0-)

Comparing what happened to Gates to what happens to rape victims is asinine. Period.

no black man in america is safe because of attitudes like yours.

Pathetic. Absolutely fucking pathetic.


by catnip on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 11:14:46 AM MDT


#
* you are pathetic (1+ / 0-)


and apparently structurally a racist.

as a women of color.

as a women aware of sexual victimization to the max.

you are the asshole in this scenario.

what makes you think what you think of my pulpit of the least importance to anyone, anywhere?

by fernan47 on Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 11:21:08 AM MDT

Oh, I'm used to being called a racist. You couldn't criticize Obama during his campaign at sites like Daily Kos without expecting that someone would throw that at you. But let's get serious here - if people want to hold up Gates as the poster boy for racial discrimination they have to look at his behaviour and how it contributed to the situation. Thus, the comparison to what happens to rape victims who aren't believed definitely is asinine and it's an insult to those rape victims.

Tale a look at this quote and tell me that Gates doesn't need a reality check and that his victimization allows him to be blameless:

My driver is a large black man. But from afar you and I would not have seen he was black. He has black hair and was dressed in a two-piece black suit, and I was dressed in a navy blue blazer with gray trousers and, you know, my shoes. And I love that the 911 report said that two big black men were trying to break in with backpacks on. Now that is the worst racial profiling I’ve ever heard of in my life. (Laughs.) I’m not exactly a big black man. I thought that was hilarious when I found that out, which was yesterday.

It looked like someone’s footprint was there. So it’s possible that the door had been jimmied, that someone had tried to get in while I was in China. But for whatever reason, the lock was damaged. My driver hit the door with his shoulder and the door popped open.

The bottom line - based on the facts - is that everyone overreacted here: Gates, the police officer and Obama. And if people really want to have a discussion about racial discrimination in America, I can think of so many other examples that could suffice as a jumping-off point. Placing Gates up on some pedestal as an example is hardly the best place to start. And if you want some real insight into village behaviour, look no further than the torches and pitchforks being carried at some so-called "progressive" sites against people like me who believe that facts, not emotions, should be driving this discussion. After all, it was the emotions of both men involved - Gates and Crowley - that escalated this story in the first place.
 

Bailing out an alleged SA apartheid enabler?

Talk of a possible bankruptcy filing by General Motors has been rampant in the US and Canada lately. And this news seems to provide a huge nudge in that direction as GM will now face increasing legal fees and settlement payouts if these South African apartheid victims win their case.

US court allows apartheid claims

A United States judge has ruled that lawsuits can go ahead against several companies accused of helping South Africa's apartheid-era government.

IBM, Ford and General Motors are among those corporations now expected to face demands for damages from thousands of apartheid's victims.

They argue that the firms supplied equipment used by the South African security forces to suppress dissent.

The companies affected have not yet responded to the judge's ruling.

'Wilful blindness'

US District Judge Shira Scheindlin in New York dismissed complaints against several companies but said plaintiffs could proceed with lawsuits against IBM, Daimler, Ford, General Motors and Rheinmetall Group, the Swiss parent of an armaments maker.

"Corporate defendants accused of merely doing business with the apartheid government of South Africa have been dismissed," she said.

The plaintiffs argue that the car manufacturers knew their vehicles would be used by South African forces to suppress dissent. They also say that computer companies knew their products were being used to help strip black South Africans of their rights.

Can we as citizens actually be comfortable knowing that part of the GM bailout money is going to defend these allegations?

Further:

The US and South African governments supported the companies' efforts to get the complaints dismissed.

They argue that the legal action is damaging to international relations and may threaten South Africa's economic development.

Weak, weak excuses in defense of horrendous human rights violations. And can you imagine how many heads will explode when/if the Obama administration publicly stands behind these companies? How will his supporters possibly defend that?

Scheinlin dismissed a number of claims against several of the companies and made the following rulings on the Ntsebeza and Khulumani cases. The judge:

• found the plaintiffs in Ntsebeza adequately pleaded that Daimler, Ford and General Motors aided and abetted apartheid, torture, extrajudicial killing and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment -- in part because their security personnel were "intimately involved" with the torture and inhuman treatment of several plaintiffs and also because the companies provided the military equipment and trucks used by the South African Defense Forces and the special branch for attacks on protesting citizens and activists;
link

Obama: Failing To Deal With Torture

While I was watching Black Money on Frontline Tuesday nite, one particular part of the Saudi/British government relationship around the BAE scandal stuck out for me. To get the Blair government to drop the investigation into BAE, the Saudis threatened to withdraw their support in the GWOT. It worked.

That tactic sounded very familiar...

The US has threatened to withhold intelligence from the UK if evidence of the alleged torture of a British resident [Binyam Mohamed] held at Guantánamo Bay is made public.

Details of how the “terrorist” detainee was allegedly tortured — and what UK intelligence services knew about it — must remain secret because of the American threats, the High Court ruled yesterday.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said lawyers for the Foreign Secretary had told them that the threat by the US still applied under President Obama. Oppostion [sic] MPs accused the Government of giving in to blackmail.

Plus ca change... These politicians play with peoples' lives every single day. What's a few dead Brits when there are major scandals to cover up?

The US government had previously [under Bush] tried to buy Mohamed's silence with a sham plea bargain that would have forced him to stay silent about his torture. He refused.

Whatever happened to Mr Mohamed is something no US administration - Republican or Democrat - wants revealed to the public. In fact, the latest attempt to quash justice in this matter is even more bold:

Guantanamo Attorneys Face Possible Prison Time for Letter to Obama Detailing Client’s Allegations of Torture

Attorneys Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour could face six months in a US prison because of a letter they sent to President Obama explaining their client’s allegations of torture by US agents. Smith and Ghappour represent Binyam Mohamed, the British resident recently released after seven years in US custody, where he claims he was repeatedly tortured, first in a secret CIA prison and later at Guantanamo

Tell me if this makes sense to any of you:

AMY GOODMAN: Officials from the Department of Defense who monitor and censor communication between Guantanamo prisoners and their lawyers filed a complaint against Mohamed’s lawyers for “unprofessional conduct” and for revealing classified evidence to the President.

Excuse me? As the president, is he not allowed to view classified evidence? Anyone?

AMY GOODMAN: The memo the lawyers sent to Obama was completely redacted except for the title. It had urged the President to release evidence of Mohamed’s alleged torture into the public domain. Clive Stafford Smith and Ahmad Ghappour have been summoned before a D.C. court on May 11th.

Did his virgin eyes burn when he read the memo title? Is a redacted memo some sort of national security threat? Am I missing something?

And while all of you Obama maniacs are slapping each other on the back since he announced he was going to close down Gitmo (while you weren't busy checking out the latest dress Michelle was wearing), perhaps you can explain to me what right Obama's Pentagon had to fire Canadian Gitmo prisoner Omar Khadr's lawyer last week? That decision was reversed by a military judge on Tuesday but:

Omar Khadr's U.S. military defence lawyer is stuck in limbo after his superiors attempted to remove him from the Canadian's case, an attempt a military judge subsequently shot down.

As a result, Lieutenant-Commander Bill Kuebler is still Mr. Khadr's assigned counsel, but has been shut out of his Washington office while his boss, chief defence counsel Air Force Colonel Peter Masciola, asks a judge to reconsider his decision.

LCdr. Kuebler was fired last Friday following a long-standing feud with Col. Masciola.

LCdr. Kuebler argued that his boss did not have the authority to dismiss him. On Tuesday, Colonel Patrick Parrish, the judge in the Khadr Guantanamo Bay case, agreed, overruling the dismissal.

Kuebler has been a tireless advocate for Khadr and has had to fight the Pentagon every step of the way - a Pentagon that is terrified that evidence of alleged torture in this case as well will come to light.

Can you see a pattern here? So early in the Obama administration? Is there any indication that anything beyond lip service will be paid to these torture allegations? Let's not forget that all through his 2 year campaign while Bush was still in office doing who knows what with suspects' human and civil rights around the world, Obama repeated the zombie-patriot mantra "The US does not torture".

If that was true then and if it's true now, then what is he trying to hide?

Related:

Glenn Greenwald - There are no excuses for ongoing concealment of torture memos

Red Cross says doctors helped CIA "torture"

Ray McGovern - After Torture, Resurrection

CCR - D.C. Circuit Court Decision Refuses to Allow Advance Notice Before a Guantanamo Detainee is Transferred; "The Court held that it could not test the Executive’s promise not to transfer someone to a country where he could be tortured."
 

Hail to Their Chief?

So, it seems I'm failing to be a stereotypically humble and starstruck Canadian by not - as the CBC's Don Newman put it on Wednesday - feeling as excited as an expectant child on what he described as being like Xmas Eve, this nite before Barack Obama's maiden visit to a foreign country - mine.

I suppose the fact that I'm not Christian and don't equate the US president with a jolly, old fat guy in a red suit (whom I gave up believing in as well long ago) might be factors in my lack of enthusiasm for this peculiar analogy. Or, more likely, the fact that Obama's doing what amounts to a fly-by (a 5 hour visit which would have saved copious amounts of money spent on excessive security if he'd just decided to stay on the plane and invited Canada's chosen ones to have their hasty audience with him therein) could be another reason for my inability to fawn excessively while, as the typical Canadian that I am supposed to be, saying I'm sorry for whatever perceived slight or embarrassment that may cause him and his entourage.

If I were to be totally honest about what I actually am feeling about this blessing, this honour being bestowed on my oh so inconsequential albeit natural-resource-rich and soldiers-willing-to-die in-Afghanistan-for-the-so-called-GWOT-filled country, I'd have to say that it's pesky things like this that have soured my changeyhopeyness:

WASHINGTON — Even as it pulls back from harsh interrogations and other sharply debated aspects of George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism,” the Obama administration is quietly signaling continued support for other major elements of its predecessor’s approach to fighting Al Qaeda.

In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

And earlier this month, after a British court cited pressure by the United States in declining to release information about the alleged torture of a detainee in American custody, the Obama administration issued a statement thanking the British government “for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information.”

These and other signs suggest that the administration’s changes may turn out to be less sweeping than many had hoped or feared — prompting growing worry among civil liberties groups and a sense of vindication among supporters of Bush-era policies.

So, unless Obama shows up here on Thursday and announces that he's immediately releasing Omar Khadr (WHO WAS A CHILD SOLDIER AND HAS BEEN ROTTING IN GITMO FOR YEARS, MR PRESIDENT) you'll just have to excuse me for not giving a crap about what will surely be a very politically correct and non-threatening to the status quo visit.

That this man - who constantly reminds people that he owes his current status as the first African-American president to people who were much braver than it appears he'll ever be willing to be about human and civil rights - should be greeted as the next great hope for the (rightly crumbling) American empire (and, thusly, Canada and the rest of the world) in a fashion equal to the joy felt by children at Xmas time is utterly inappropriate.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

There will be no cookies and milk left out in my house for him tonite. And, when the morning comes, I certainly won't be chanting that Christ is born! upon news of Obama's arrival.
 

Omar Khadr Turns 21 in Gitmo

On Wednesday, the only Canadian citizen being held indefinitely in Gitmo and who was originally seized as a child soldier in Afghanistan, Omar Khadr, turned 21. Despite new protestations from Liberal leader Stephane Dion, the federal Conservatives continue to take a wait and see approach (which is nothing short of political pandering to the Bush administration's whims) when it comes to attempting to secure Khadr's release any time soon.

Unfortunately, Khadr was dealt yet another blow when the US congress failed to restore habeus corpus rights:

A Republican filibuster in the Senate yesterday [Wednesday] shot down a bipartisan effort to restore the right of terrorism suspects to contest in federal courts their detention and treatment, underscoring the Democratic-led Congress's difficulty with terrorism issues.

The 56 to 43 vote fell short of the 60 needed to cut off debate and move to a final vote on the amendment to the Senate's annual defense policy bill. But the measure did garner the support of six Republicans, a small victory for its supporters. A similar proposal drew 48 "yea" votes last September.

The Supreme Court had previously ruled that such detainees did have the right to appeal their detention in federal court, but the court invited Congress to weigh in on the issue. At the urging of the Bush administration, the Republican-controlled Congress last year voted to sharply limit detainee access to the courts. Since then, the high court has agreed to hear in its upcoming term another legal challenge concerning the habeas corpus rights of detainees at Guantanamo.

The authors of last year's bill said that advocates of such rights would open the federal courts to endless lawsuits from the nation's worst enemies. "To start that process would be an absolute disaster for this country," said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), an Air Force Reserve lawyer who was instrumental in crafting the provision in question in last year's bill.

What Graham and his Republican colleagues don't appear to understand is that the denial of basic legal rights to detainees has already created a "disaster" for their country via the loss of America's integrity and credibility. And Omar Khadr certainly is not one of America's "worst enemies".

And, as senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said after Wednesday's GOP filibuster:

The Senate's action "calls into question the United States' historic role of defender of human rights in the world," Leahy said. "It accomplishes what opponents could never accomplish on the battlefield, whittling away our own liberties."

So, as Omar Khadr sits and waits, this country's inaction is absolutely shameful:

"Canada is alone among Western nations in not having secured the release from Guantanamo of one of its nationals. Prime Minister Harper must finally ensure Mr. Khadr receives the same consular support that any other Canadian -- detainee or not -- would receive," Dion said in a statement released after he met with Khadr's lawyers.

Khadr's U.S. defence counsel, Lt.-Cmdr. William Kuebler, said the Canadian government has never asked for his client's release.

But he said Dion's comments indicate there is a growing movement to ensure Khadr's legal rights are protected.

"I'm hopeful, based on what we've seen recently from the Canadian Bar Association, which came out and called upon the prime minister to command Omar's repatriation last month, and the very courageous decision by Mr. Stephane Dion and his colleagues today, to call on the government to see that Omar is released from Guantanamo," he told CTV Newsnet.

"I think we're starting to turn a corner in Canada, similar to what happened in Australia and the U.K., when those countries finally got fed up by the treatment of their citizens by this process."

Why has it taken our government this long?

Meanwhile, as I noted here in August, this is what Omar Khadr has been reduced to:

Mr. Edney said that when he saw Mr. Khadr recently, his client was so mentally debilitated that he wanted nothing more than crayons and some paper to colour on. Contrary to federal government assurances that Mr. Khadr is doing just fine, Mr. Edney said, his client is actually "ill and going blind. He needs all sorts of help."

That is Bush/GOP-style "justice" - enabled by my country's government.

Everyone involved in perpetuating Omar Khadr's suffering is culpable.

Saying "happy birthday" just sounds trite. I can only hope that Omar experienced at least some moments of joy on his day - if that's even possible for him anymore.

Related:

U.S. prison stunting Khadr’s development, lawyer charges

Video: Avi Lewis' interview of Micahel Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights regarding Khadr's fate.
 

FISA: More of What the Democrats Have Wrought

It was bad enough that the Dems caved on the FISA bill, but now more details of exactly what that bill entailed are coming out and they show just how much power Bush was really given by that rush to avoid looking like cowards.

Via the NYT:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records, Democratic Congressional officials and other experts said.

So, how did that happen, you ask? Simple: if the Democrats had actually read and analyzed the bill before they decided to please almighty Bush by dealing with it before they left for their summer vacations, they would have discovered (and some did, obviously) just how many more rights they were giving away on behalf of their constituents.

The new legislation is set to expire in less than six months; two weeks after it was signed into law, there is still heated debate over how much power Congress gave to the president.

“This may give the administration even more authority than people thought,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush and Clinton administrations and a co-author of “National Security Investigation and Prosecutions,” a new book on surveillance law.

Several legal experts said that by redefining the meaning of “electronic surveillance,” the new law narrows the types of communications covered in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, by indirectly giving the government the power to use intelligence collection methods far beyond wiretapping that previously required court approval if conducted inside the United States.

And this cannot just be blamed on the so-called Blue Dogs. Dealing with this bill could have been deferred by Pelosi and Reid until the "heated debates" about what they were offering for approval were exhausted. Instead, after the bill was passed, Democratic leaders just told their angry cheerleaders to just wait six months, they'd fix it all then.

Well, now that word has gotten out about just how much they've royally screwed up, it's wait until September while Bush spokespuppets pretend they had no idea (gosh, darn, golly) that this bill would give the boy king even more power.

Bruce Fein, who has been pushing for impeachment spoke to the NYT about the possible ramifications of this bill:

At the meeting, Bruce Fein, a Justice Department lawyer in the Reagan administration, along with other critics of the legislation, pressed Justice Department officials repeatedly for an assurance that the administration considered itself bound by the restrictions imposed by Congress. The Justice Department, led by Ken Wainstein, the assistant attorney general for national security, refused to do so, according to three participants in the meeting. That stance angered Mr. Fein and others. It sent the message, Mr. Fein said in an interview, that the new legislation, though it is already broadly worded, “is just advisory. The president can still do whatever he wants to do. They have not changed their position that the president’s Article II powers trump any ability by Congress to regulate the collection of foreign intelligence.”

And this quote certainly describes the bottom line here:

That limitation sets a high bar to set off any court intervention, argued Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, who also attended the Justice Department meeting.

“You’ve turned the court into a spectator,” Mr. Rotenberg said.

I really have to wonder (and since I've almost run out of pejorative adjectives to describe the willfully ignorant congressional Democrats and their cheerleading, lapdog supporters, I won't turn this into an overly long screed) why - after these Dems have refused to impeach, refused to do everything possible to end the Iraq war, refused to stand up to this dictatorial "president" and refused to act like they work for the American people - why anyone continues to support them. Just how many second, third, fourth and fifth chances do they get to prove themselves to be the protectors of human and civil rights they claim to be?

They have failed. Continually. And the only thing they can offer is "wait".

For what??

If someone has an answer to that question, I'd sure like to hear it. And before you even think about saying that Election '08 will change everything if a Dem president is elected - think again. That's what they said about the Dems winning back congressional power in '06. Oh but this is all Joe Lieberman's fault, right? No. It isn't. When you willingly support and elect conservative Democrats who are willing to kiss Bush's ring, that's exactly what you get. Pushovers who will assure that Bush has just as much power as he wants. And when your congressional leaders play the waiting game with peoples' constitutional rights, they impact all Americans directly. Just how much of that new power do you honestly think a possible future Democratic president might be willing to roll back? Honestly.

All right. I promised this wouldn't be a long screed and I'll keep my word, but think about this: I'm a Canadian citizen. And, while only some of what your boy king does actually affects my rights (and we're feeling it here, believe me), I think it's safe to say that I'm probably more outraged about all of this than a lot of Americans who actually should be are. And I find that deeply disturbing.

h/t lyger and infowarrior.org's mailing list
 

The Padilla Verdict

Jim Lehrer interviews Curt Anderson of the AP about the Padilla verdict:



Choice quotes from the Washington Post article on the verdict:

Padilla and co-defendants Adham Hassoun, a Lebanese-born Palestinian, and Kifah Jayyousi, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Jordan, were found guilty of one count of conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim overseas, an offense with a maximum penalty of life in prison. They also were convicted of one count of conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists and one count of material support for terrorists. Sentencing is set for Dec. 5.
[...]
Padilla's lawyers charged that during his confinement, he was deprived of sleep, kept in a 9-foot-by-7-foot cell, chained in painful positions and injected with mind-altering drugs. Those conditions left him unable to participate in his own defense, the lawyers said. Padilla, like his co-defendants, did not take the stand.
[...]
During the long trial, jurors were presented with dozens of wiretapped calls, and the charges against the three men were complicated. Many observers were thus surprised that the panel took little more than a day to reach a decision.

The jury did seem to be an oddly cohesive group. On the last day of trial before the Fourth of July holiday, jurors arranged to dress in outfits so that each row in the jury box was its own patriotic color -- red, white or blue.
[...]
...in closing arguments prosecutors mentioned al-Qaeda more than 100 times, by one defense count, and urged jurors to in essence think of al-Qaeda and groups affiliated with it as an international murder conspiracy.

And the prosecution played an OBL video for the jury, which will be a point of contention in the upcoming appeal for its use as a fearmongering/ 9/11 sympathy tactic.

Check out Democracy Now!: EXCLUSIVE: An Inside Look at How U.S. Interrogators Destroyed the Mind of Jose Padilla.

The Christian Science Monitor reported: "Padilla's cell measured nine feet by seven feet. The windows were covered over... He had no pillow. No sheet. No clock. No calendar. No radio. No television. No telephone calls. No visitors. Even Padilla's lawyer was prevented from seeing him for nearly two years."

According to his attorneys, Padilla was routinely tortured in ways designed to cause pain, anguish, depression and ultimately the loss of will to live.

His lawyers have claimed that Padilla was forced to take LSD and PCP to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.

Up until last year the Bush administration maintained it had the legal right to hold Padilla without charge forever. But when faced with a Supreme Court challenge, President Bush transferred Padila [sic] out of military custody to face criminal conspiracy charges.

Questions have also been raised about whether Padilla was mentally fit to stand trial. His lawyers and family say he has become clearly mentally ill after being held in isolation.

Listen to or watch the DN! interview for more:

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty spent 22 hours interviewing Padilla last year to determine the state of his mental health. She concluded that Padilla lacked the capacity to assist in his own defense. Dr. Angela Hegarty is assistant professor of clinical psychiatry at Columbia University.

A farce of a case and a farce of a trial. Bush's America - where you can lock someone away for years on end without charge, torture him, and then haul him into court, find him guilty and call that "justice" and "victory".
 

Meet the new RCMP boss...

...same as the old RCMP boss:

TORONTO, OTTAWA — The civilian appointed to lead Canada's national police into a new era of accountability revealed Friday he was among the secret group of bureaucrats who had met to censor findings of the Maher Arar report.

“I was certainly involved in the process leading to that decision, but that decision was a decision taken by government,” RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, wearing a business suit, told reporters after the RCMP's change-of-command ceremony. He was referring to work he had done while serving as an associate deputy minister to Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.

And Day, being the arrogant, feckless ass that he is, sent his spokespuppet out to say this:

A spokeswoman for Mr. Day, the past and current boss of Mr. Elliott, said “senior officials from various departments” decided to block out the passages before the government signed off on the recommendations.

I guess his momma never asked him the obvious question: "would you jump off a bridge just because the rest of the kids were doing it?" Or maybe she did and his answer was "yes".

Welcome to the new RCMP brought to you by the new government. I'll bet you feel safer already.
 

Gonzales testifies; Bush cites al Qaeda 95 times in a speech

While Alberto Gonzales was, again, refusing to answer vital questions about the US attorney firings, what really happened at Ashcroft's hospital bedside, (C&L has the video) and insisting on dancing around the issue of torture in front of the senate judiciary committee today, his partner in crime, George Bush, gave a speech in which he referred to al Qaeda 95 times. "Al Qaeda is in Iraq and they're there for a reason," Bush said. Well, yes, they're there because you decided to illegally invade Iraq and invited them with your "bring 'em on" macho posturing.

And, as usual, Bush tried hard (it's hard work) to make the imaginary, debunked connection between 9/11 and al Qaeda in Iraq:

"I presented intelligence that clearly establishes this connection," said Bush. "The facts are that al Qaeda terrorists killed Americans on 9/11, they're fighting us in Iraq and across the world, and they're plotting to kill Americans here at home again."

Terror, terror, terror - but it's the same old story and certainly didn't stop the press from reporting on Gonzales' shady testimony.

Senators from both sides of the aisle attacked Gonzales:

"The attorney general has lost the confidence of the Congress and the American people," Leahy said. He said the administration "has squandered our trust" and told Gonzales bluntly, "I don't trust you."

Specter said there was "evidence of low morale" at the Justice Department and blasted what he described as Gonzales's lack of "personal credibility." He called the department "dysfunctional."

I imagine that what they're saying when the mics are off is much more scathing than that.

And the wrangling over the US attorney firings continues:

Gonzales again depicted himself as largely detached from controversial personnel practices, including the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys last year. But in a video message to Justice Department employees on Friday, he said, "I am sorry, and I accept full responsibility."

But that's the nature of most, if not all, of his answers - constantly contradicting himself. If he bobbed and weaved physically as much as he did verbally today, he would have collapsed from sheer exhaustion halfway through the hearings.

With his legal advisors in tow, sitting right behind him throughout the hearing, I got the sense I was watching a mob boss testifying. That's not much of a stretch considering the lengths Gonzales has gone to try to stretch and obfuscate national and international laws. And, even though he insists he's determined to stay on and "fix" the problems in the justice department (to which one senator responded that at least he's admitting there are problems), the best thing for all sane and law-abiding people involved would be to impeach the bastard and find someone who actually believes that the law isn't a partisan, political tool. Not an easy job in DC but, at this point, they couldn't do that much worse than the lying attorney general they have now. His arrogance knows no bounds and his disrespect for the law and international treaties out to be enough to disbar him for life.

CSPAN has the video of today's hearing.

Update: Code Pink was on hand at the hearings to protest against Gonzales. You can see a video of that protest here.
 

Britain's Gitmo?

Via The Guardian:

One of Britain's most senior police officers has demanded a return to a form of internment, with the power to lock up terror suspects indefinitely without charge.

The proposal, put forward by the head of the Association of Police Chief Officers (Acpo) and supported by Scotland Yard, is highly controversial. An earlier plan to extend the amount of time suspects can be held without charge to 90 days led to Tony Blair's first Commons defeat as Prime Minister. Eventually, the government was forced to compromise on 28 days, a period which Gordon Brown has already said he wants to extend.

The Observer understands that the Acpo proposal has been discussed in meetings between Brown and senior police officers. Whitehall sources said the PM was receptive to the association's demands, but believes an upper detention limit is essential to avoid a de facto Guantanamo Bay based in the UK.

Ken Jones, the president of Acpo, told The Observer that in some cases there was a need to hold terrorist suspects without charge for 'as long as it takes'. He said such hardline measures were the only way to counter the complex, global nature of terrorist cells planning further attacks in Britain and that civil liberty arguments were untenable in light of the evolving terror threat.

This will surely be the decade remembered as the one that rolled civil rights back 50 years in the west.
 

Supreme Court to Hear Gitmo Detainees' Cases

I don't think this is good news considering the obvious right turn the US Supreme Court has taken with Roberts in charge. As Justice Breyer said this week about the school desegregation decision:

"The majority is wrong," Breyer said.

And about the court in general:

"It's not often in law that so few have changed so much so quickly."

I find that to be quite a remarkable statement coming from a supreme court judge.

So, the fact that the court has suddenly decided to take up the case of the Gitmo detainees' rights doesn't bode well for them, as far as I'm concerned:

High Court to Hear Terror Detainee Case

By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 29, 2007; 11:42 AM

The Supreme Court said today that it would review the rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees to challenge their confinements in federal court, reversing a decision in April not to take up that issue.

The justices did not say what had changed their minds. The Bush administration had praised the court's earlier decision not to review the matter.

In my mind, that means the court will most likely rule against the detainees.

At the time, only three of four justices necessary to grant review--David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer--were willing to take the two cases involved, saying "these questions deserve this court's immediate attention.'' Two other justices, John Paul Stevens and Anthony M. Kennedy, issued a statement saying they might want to hear the issue in the future.

Mainly the "liberals". So why do the conservatives now want to hear the case?

Today's order, by tradition, does not indicate which justices decided to hear the cases, but the decision to reopen the matter is unusual.

I'm not as excited as this guy, obviously:

"This is a stunning victory for the detainees," Eric M. Freedman, a professor of constitutional law at Hofstra Law School who has been advising some of the captives, told the Associated Press. "It goes well beyond what we asked for, and clearly indicates the unease up there" at the Supreme Court.

Friday: Canada's National Aboriginal Day of Action

And the protests have already begun:

Armed Mohawk protesters barricaded a highway in eastern Ontario Thursday night, vowing to set up even more blockades as a national aboriginal day of action begins at midnight.

About 40 protesters parked a schoolbus on Highway 2, near Deseronto, just before 9 p.m. ET, forcing traffic to stop and turn around at the location, which is about 50 kilometres west of Kingston.

Protest leader Shawn Brant said the blockade is just a "soft target," done in anticipation of major blockades that will be set up somewhere along the high-traffic Highway 401, between Montreal and Toronto.

Protesters also intend to hit the CN Rail line between the two cities, Brant said, not giving exact locations for the blockades, but saying protesters are armed and ready to keep their blockades up until midnight Friday.

"We've made no secret that we have guns within this camp," he told the Canadian Press.
[...]
In anticipation of blockades, Via Rail cancelled all Friday train services between Toronto and Montreal and between Toronto and Ottawa.

One day of inconvenienced rail travelers is nothing compared to what our first nations people have suffered for far too long now.

And if all levels of government have any sense at all, they'll let the protesters make their voices heard peacefully while doing everything they can to avoid another Ipperwash style tragedy.

The Assembly of First Nations chief, Phil Fontaine, has also issued a statement on "potential illegal protests" on Friday.

We respectfully urge Canadians not to criminalize First Nations people with respect to the actions they plan to take on June 29th and beyond. Our people do have a right to protest, as do all Canadians. The Assembly of First Nations has never resorted to illegal activities, or anything beyond the rule of law, to advance the causes of FN people.

We understand the frustration that exists among too many of our people. Our objective in organizing the National Day of Action is to provide a positive channel for that energy. We invite all Canadians to stand with us in support of a better life for First Nations and a stronger country for all Canadians.

In recent weeks, the AFN has met with various police forces, as well as CN and CP Rail, because of our mutual interest in ensuring public safety and security during the various events that will make up the National Day of Action.

Visit this AFN page for more information about the protests and the national events schedule.

The treatment of aboriginal people in Canada is our nation's shame. It's a humanitarian disaster. And when the current conservative minority government decided to scrap the Kelowna Accord, it derailed years of work meant to finally begin to address those issues in a substantial way. Piecemeal policies have never been enough and they certainly are not enough now. Our aboriginal people deserve justice and their third-world living conditions must be dealt with immediately. Please support their day of action in any way you can.
 

Friday Nite Video: Beds are Burning

This song came to mind when I read about Phil Fontaine's speech that issued warnings via the Canadian Club this past week:

National native leader Phil Fontaine warned a blue-chip audience on Tuesday that the anger felt in many First Nations communities has reached a breaking point.

"Frankly, we are fearful of the effect this is having on the well-being and public safety in our communities," said the chief of the Assembly of First Nations in an eloquent speech to the Canadian Club of Ottawa.

"So here I am again today, hammering away at another group. Many of our communities have reached the breaking point. The anger and frustration are palpable."

A report in Tuesday's Globe and Mail quoted a First Nation leader in Manitoba threatening widespread economic disruption and a potential blockade of CN rail lines connecting Eastern and Western Canada.

Fontaine did not dismiss worries about possible confrontations this summer.

While he has a track record of favouring quiet diplomacy over barricades, he suggested to his audience that this tactic has yielded few results.
[...]
Fontaine also urged governments to work harder to settle more than 1,100 outstanding land claims, noting that at the current pace of negotiations, it would take 130 years to resolve them.

We have an obligation to do better for our First Nations people, but that certainly won't be happening under Conservative party rule.
 

Impeach Gonzales

A visibly shaken James Comey testified before the senate judiciary committee on Tuesday about the cold-heartedness and heavy-handedness of Alberto Gonzales and the White House who tried to convince a very ill and hospitalized John Ashcroft to reauthorize the warrantless wiretapping program back in 2004.

Via the WaPo:

JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source. The episode involved a 2004 nighttime visit to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff. Only the broadest outlines of this visit were previously known: that Mr. Comey, who was acting as attorney general during Mr. Ashcroft's illness, had refused to recertify the legality of the administration's warrantless wiretapping program; that Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card had tried to do an end-run around Mr. Comey; that Mr. Ashcroft had rebuffed them.

Mr. Comey's vivid depiction, worthy of a Hollywood script, showed the lengths to which the administration and the man who is now attorney general were willing to go to pursue the surveillance program. First, they tried to coerce a man in intensive care -- a man so sick he had transferred the reins of power to Mr. Comey -- to grant them legal approval. Having failed, they were willing to defy the conclusions of the nation's chief law enforcement officer and pursue the surveillance without Justice's authorization. Only in the face of the prospect of mass resignations -- Mr. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and most likely Mr. Ashcroft himself -- did the president back down.

As Mr. Comey testified, "I couldn't stay, if the administration was going to engage in conduct that the Department of Justice had said had no legal basis." The crisis was averted only when, the morning after the program was reauthorized without Justice's approval, President Bush agreed to fix whatever problem Justice had with it (the details remain classified). "We had the president's direction to do . . . what the Justice Department believed was necessary to put this matter on a footing where we could certify to its legality," Mr. Comey said.

The dramatic details should not obscure the bottom line: the administration's alarming willingness, championed by, among others, Vice President Cheney and his counsel, David Addington, to ignore its own lawyers. Remember, this was a Justice Department that had embraced an expansive view of the president's inherent constitutional powers, allowing the administration to dispense with following the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Justice's conclusions are supposed to be the final word in the executive branch about what is lawful or not, and the administration has emphasized since the warrantless wiretapping story broke that it was being done under the department's supervision.

No wonder Bush wanted Gonzales to be the new AG. He should never have been confirmed.

Watch Comey's testimony:



Earlier this month, Comey also testified before the house judiciary committee regarding the US attorneys scandal:

James B. Comey, the Justice Department's second in command from 2003 until August 2005, also told a House Judiciary subcommittee that although he was the "direct supervisor" of all U.S attorneys, he was never informed about an effort by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and his aides to remove a large group of prosecutors that began in early 2005.

At that time as well, Gonzales circumvented the regular government hierarchy to get what he and the White House wanted:

The testimony from Comey, a highly regarded former prosecutor who is now general counsel for Lockheed Martin, further undermines assertions by Gonzales and his aides that dissatisfaction with the prosecutors' work led to their dismissals. It also underscores the extent to which the firings, which originated in the White House, were handled outside the normal chain of command at Justice.

It's obvious that Gonzales has never moved on from the mindset of his previous job as WH counsel and that he still operates at the behest of Bush and Cheney while bowing to the concept that anything this president wants, he gets - no matter what. We saw it on the issue of torture, which Gonzales sanctioned by whatever legal means he thought he could get away with, and now we have confirmation that the WH was bound and determined to circumvent the FISA court - a court that did its bidding anyway - even to the point where their lackeys would pressure an extremely ill Ashcroft in the ICU to fall in line.

Unconscionable.

I don't know what more the Democrats are waiting for before they decide to impeach Gonzales. If Bush won't fire him and he won't resign, it's up to them to wrest back control of the Justice department from a man who fashions himself to be a quasi-dictator with absolutely no conscience. Gonzales is a menace to society. Reid and Pelosi have already said that impeachment is "off the table" for Bush. The least they could do is to get rid of his footsoldier.

Update: The Justice department has issued the standard denial.

The Justice Department said yesterday that it will not retract a sworn statement in 2006 by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Terrorist Surveillance Program had aroused no controversy inside the Bush administration, despite congressional testimony Tuesday that senior departmental officials nearly resigned in 2004 to protest such a program.

And, more Gonzales lies...

The Justice Department considered dismissing many more U.S. attorneys than officials have previously acknowledged, with at least 26 prosecutors suggested for termination between February 2005 and December 2006, according to sources familiar with documents withheld from the public.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified last week that the effort was limited to eight U.S. attorneys fired since last June, and other administration officials have said that only a few others were suggested for removal.

In fact, D. Kyle Sampson, then Gonzales's chief of staff, considered more than two dozen U.S. attorneys for termination, according to lists compiled by him and his colleagues, the sources said.

Torture

The tainted fruits of torture:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An al Qaeda suspect at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military prison said he was tortured until he confessed to involvement in the USS Cole attack and other plans, according to a hearing transcript released on Friday.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected mastermind of the 2000 attack on the U.S. warship, also said he told interrogators Osama bin Laden had a nuclear bomb. He said he made up that and other statements because he was being tortured, according to a transcript of a March 14 hearing held at Guantanamo Bay.

"From the time I was arrested five years ago, they have been torturing me," Nashiri, a Saudi Arabian national of Yemeni descent, said through a translator.

"I just said those things to make the people happy," he said. "They were very happy when I told them those things.

Do we have any reason not to believe his claims considering the Bush administration's track record?

It is still utterly unbelievable that there hasn't been a rebellion in the United States to take the country back from the torturers and those who make and condone the torture policies. The silence is absolutely deafening.

It's not enough to just sit in front of your television or computer screen, cringing whenever another tale of alleged torture appears. It's not enough to just fire off a few e-mails in disgust when there's proof that your president endorses torture and has taken it upon himself to even itemize what's acceptable. A man who also authorized torture flights and makes no apology for them whatsoever. And, when victims have sued the government, their cases are blocked on "state secrets" grounds because, apparently, protecting the security of the United States means covering up torture methods and locations.

Torture continues.

That is something everyone should keep in mind.

The CIA operatives involved in torture have been giving immunity from congress.

Somewhere, in some secret US torture prison, someone is most likely being tortured as you read this - in the name of the United States.

And, let's not forget that Canada's government is doing absolutely nothing to have Gitmo prisoner Omar Khadr, who has also reported being tortured returned to our country - a move that many other countries have made regarding their nationals. Why have we washed our hands of him? Has he ceased being a Canadian?

When did that become acceptable? When was it decided that it's okay to push the issue of torture to irrelevance behind whatever other concerns of the day may be competing for the nightly news audience? Why aren't more people talking about it? Why isn't there an investigation by this Democratic congress into the use of torture? Why, in relation to the attorney scandal which surrounds Alberto Gonzales right now, aren't more people screaming that his endorsement of torture via his legal justifications made as Bush's counsel shows exactly what kind of so-called character he has? Why is he considered to be a moral authority on anything related to the concept of "justice"?

Tortured. That's what all of this is. And let's never forget the victims. They will live with their physical scars and the scars of indifference forever. They deserve more than that.
 

Why were NYC cops spying on Canadians - in Canada?

Not that their spying on Americans isn't bad enough, but what were they doing in our country and, if they were auhorized to be here, who let them in and why?

Via the New York Times:

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. Other investigators mined Internet sites and chat rooms.

From these operations, run by the department’s “R.N.C. Intelligence Squad,” the police identified a handful of groups and individuals who expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, as well as some who used Web sites to urge or predict violence.

But potential troublemakers were hardly the only ones to end up in the files. In hundreds of reports stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” the Intelligence Division chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law, the records show.

These included members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies. Three New York City elected officials were cited in the reports.

In at least some cases, intelligence on what appeared to be lawful activity was shared with police departments in other cities.
[...]
Police records indicate that in addition to sharing information with other police departments, New York undercover officers were active themselves in at least 15 places outside New York — including California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montreal, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C. — and in Europe.

According to the article, spying on political groups is "generally" legal (with restrictions), but how does that US law extend to Canada - with NYC cops involved?

In the records reviewed by The Times, some of the police intelligence concerned people and groups bent on causing trouble, but the bulk of the reports covered the plans and views of people with no obvious intention of breaking the law.

By searching the Internet, police investigators identified groups that were making plans for demonstrations. Files were created on their political causes, the criminal records, if any, of the people involved and any plans for civil disobedience or disruptive tactics.
[...]
On Jan. 6, 2004, the intelligence digest noted that an antigentrification group in Montreal claimed responsibility for hoax bombs that had been planted at construction sites of luxury condominiums, stating that the purpose was to draw attention to the homeless. The group was linked to a band of anarchist-communists whose leader had visited New York, according to the report.

And what did that have to do with the 2004 GOP convention? The NYT doesn't say and neither does the "intelligence digest", apparently. We also don't know who else besides this group the NYC cops were spying on in Canada.

The article also notes several other American groups and individuals who were spied on and infilitrated by NYC police in advance of the convention - from sponsors of an MLK birthday march to a guy with a bicycle (who was subsequently arrested) rigged for squirting harmless chalk messages on sidewalks.

We deserve to know why NYC police were in our country spying on our citizens and whether or not that type of police activity continues to this day. I certainly suspect it does. It seems to me however that we have our own police services that are quite capable of monitoring any possible threats on this side of the border (although they certainly prove to be quite inept at times, as the Arar case proved) instead of allowing city cops from other countries to wander around Canada trying to dig up dirt.

Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represents seven of the 1,806 people arrested during the convention, said the Police Department stepped beyond the law in its covert surveillance program.

“The police have no authority to spy on lawful political activity, and this wide-ranging N.Y.P.D. program was wrong and illegal,” Mr. Dunn said. “In the coming weeks, the city will be required to disclose to us many more details about its preconvention surveillance of groups and activists, and many will be shocked by the breadth of the Police Department’s political surveillance operation.”

We'll need to keep an eye on what comes out of that, along with any other secret documents the NYT decides to release in the meantime.
 

The FBI is Breaking the Rules, Again

You know, it's sad these days that the Bush administration and the powers that be have so trampled on people's rights that the public outrage meter is actually broken from extreme overuse.

Take the latest revelation about the FBI's abuse of those dreaded national security letters.

...[Justice Department Inspector General] Fine found that FBI agents used national security letters without citing an authorized investigation, claimed "exigent" circumstances that did not exist in demanding information and did not have adequate documentation to justify the issuance of letters.

In at least two cases, the officials said, Fine found that the FBI obtained full credit reports using a national security letter that could lawfully be employed to obtain only summary information. In an unknown number of other cases, third parties such as telephone companies, banks and Internet providers responded to national security letters with detailed personal information about customers that the letters do not permit to be released. The FBI "sequestered" that information, a law enforcement official said last night, but did not destroy it.

You can only bang your head against the wall so many times before you end up with brain damage over it all.

9/11 changed everything alright. It opened the door to the most corrupt, secretive, intrusive, destructive and downright fascist forms or powermongering that ordinary citizens just don't have much of a defence against anymore. Your mail is read. Your phones are tapped. Your phone records are seized. You're on camera whenever you step outside.

Those things have already been going on for a long time as everybody knows, but when government sanctions even more invasive methods of picking through every single detail of your mundane life, what do you have left? And beyond that, when agencies like the FBI already have far more legal powers than they ought to in what's supposed to be a free and democratic society and they take it upon themselves to go even further by trying to stetch the law when it's convenient for them, then what?

Oh, the Democrats will try to fix things that are so obviously wrong with the Patriot Act but, as with everything they'll try to reform or change, Bush will pull out his handy veto pen and basically flip them the bird with it. The courts aren't of much help either. Any controversial rulings that actually threaten Bush's unitary executive (kingly) power will be appealed by government attorneys and will eventually, way down the road, be taken up by the Supreme Court - a long and tedious process.

In the meantime, life ticks on and more people will have their rights and privacy violated while good old smirking attorney general Alberto Gonzales stares into the cameras and tells people not to worry - he's on top of things. And Bush will give even more speeches about the war on terror to scare people into compliance while their brains turn to nodding bubbles of mush. So it will go.

After all, if you're not one of the bad guys, why worry? Right? Now there's an attitude that's killing everything America is supposedly supposed to stand for, although it really hasn't stood for those ideals for a very, very long time if, in fact, those ideals were ever more than just comforting illusions that people had about their great country whose history of corruption goes back centuries to its very founding.

It's no wonder then that the energy to keep fighting those in the no longer hallowed halls of the White House is so hard to come by these days. So few take up the cause on behalf of so many and citizens hope that's enough. It isn't, of course, especially when that fight consists of continual below the belt punches from the opposing side. They don't play by the rules and that's how they win, something that those who want to set things right seem to have to do in order to get anywhere, but won't. It's a a painfully uneven match.

Maybe when those who get tired of watching it from the sidelines decide to join in with a willingness to start a massive proverbial rumble, things will change. Then again, the government will probably just send in the riot squads like they always do. But if no one takes that chance, how we will they ever know?
 

About that 'must-do' list...

Sunday's New York Times editorial board has produced a must-do list, encouraging the Democrats to fight back against the assaults on human rights and civil liberties perpetrated by the Bush administration.

Here's what that list consists of:

1. Restore habeus corpus
2. Stop illegal spying
3. Ban Torture, really
4. Close the C.I.A. prisons
5. Account for "Ghost Prisoners"
6. Ban extraordinary rendition
7. Tighten the definition of combatant
8. Screen prisoners fairly and effectively
9. Ban tainted evidence
10. Ban secret evidence
11. Better define "classified" evidence
12. Respect the right to counsel

As the editors point out, many of these policies were written into law last fall via the passage of the Military Commissions Act which was developed after the Bush administration was rebuked by the Supreme Court.

Even if the Democrats could use their majority status to overturn that act however, long ingrained American traditions would remain.

There's no doubt that Bush has used his unitary executive power to override and sidestep congress every step of the way since he kicked off his so-called war on terrorism, but it's also important to examine how America reached the point where that type of unchecked power could actually come to exist.

Take the actions of the CIA, for example. Since its formation, it has acted virtually unimpeded through its use of covert operations worldwide in order to do everything from causing coups d'etats to carrying out assassinations. The investigations done by the Church Committee in the 70s were supposed to ensure more oversight - a fact that some people claim actually hamstrung the agency and led to the 9/11 intelligence failures.

While the old CIA may have been noted for the “cowboy” swagger of its personnel, the new CIA is, in the words of one critic, composed of “cautious bureaucrats who avoid the risks that come with taking action, who fill out every form in triplicate” and put “the emphasis on audit rather than action.” Congressional meddling is primarily responsible for this new CIA ethos, transforming it from an agency willing to take risks, and act at times in a Machiavellian manner, into just another sclerotic Washington bureaucracy.

The agency obviously didn't stop taking those risks, as we all know now.

That 2001 article by Stephen F. Knott led to this conclusion, the effects of which we are all now witnessing:

The response to the disaster of September 11th starkly reveals that members of Congress are quite adept at invoking “plausible deniability.” They are often the first to criticize, and the last to accept responsibility, for failed U. S. policies and practices. Oddly enough, a restoration of executive control of intelligence could increase the potential that the president, or his immediate deputies, would be held responsible for the successes and failures of the intelligence community. But this is a secondary consideration, for only by restoring the executive branch’s power to move with “secrecy and dispatch,” and to control the “business of intelligence,” as Alexander Hamilton and John Jay put it in The Federalist, will the nation be able to deter and defeat its enemies.

I wonder how professor Knott feels about endorsing that position today.

Regardless of all of the revelations over the decades of the "work" the CIA is doing in America's name, the mythology of the sexy spy with the nifty gagdets whose death-defeating tactics are pushed by Hollywood and applauded by millions won't end any time soon. Who would dare accuse CIA agents of being treasonous (besides people like Cheney and his henchmen who choose to out them when it's politically convenient rather than protecting them, as they're bound to do)?

While it's the job of the Democrats to try to wrestle power back from the Bush adminitration for those items detailed in the NYT's "must-do" list, the public also needs to remember that their party has used covert methods and actions when they thought it would be expedient as well.

As Scott Ritter notes*:

I personally witnessed the Director of the CIA under Bill Clinton, James Woolsey, fabricate a case for the continued existence of Iraqi ballistic missiles in November 1993 after I had provided a detailed briefing which articulated the UN inspector's findings that Iraq's missile program had been fundamentally disarmed. I led the UN inspector's investigation into the defection of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamal, in August 1995, and saw how the Clinton administration twisted his words to make a case for the continued existence of a nuclear program the weapons inspectors knew to be nothing more than scrap and old paper. I was in Baghdad at the head of an inspection team in the summer of 1996 as the Clinton administration used the inspection process as a vehicle for a covert action program run by the CIA intending to assassinate Saddam Hussein.

I twice traveled to the White House to brief the National Security Council in the confines of the White House Situation Room on the plans of the inspectors to pursue the possibility of concealed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, only to have the Clinton national security team betray the inspectors by failing to deliver the promised support, and when the inspections failed to deliver any evidence of Iraqi wrong-doing, attempt to blame the inspectors while denying any wrong doing on their part.

Obviously, this culture of covert corruption has a very long history that runs through the administrations of both of the big two parties, yet we're now expecting the current crop of Democrats (including many longstanding members who have been complicit in these affairs) to turn around and bring everything to light in order to end these types of activities? Isn't that rather like the fox guarding the hen house, as the old cliche says?

This Democratic congress may hold hearings, may investigate the Bush administration's horrendous abuses, may even impeach the president (although Nancy Pelosi has made it clear that impeachment is "off the table"), but do they have the power or the willingness to end the disastrous policies of the CIA? Will they stand up to an administration full of ex-CIA officials who now run the White House? And where does the American public stand on these issues?

It's clear the majority are outraged over the Bush administration's abuses, and so they should be. Are they willing, however, to give up the power exercised on their behalf as members of the so-called "greatest country in the world" by CIA agents and those in the numerous other intelligence agencies that are a part of the US government in order to keep them "safe"? My guess would be that only a small minority would actually demand full accountability and transparency and, even if they did, they wouldn't get it from the Republicans or the Democrats who are so entrenched in the use of those powers that they'd be loathe to surrender many of them in the end.

That's the dilemma the American people face, as do those worldwide who've been affected by these covert actions. It's doubtful they'll find much justice any time soon and time is already running out for the Democrats to deal with all of what Bush has wrought prior to the end of his term. Perhaps they should be spending less time speechifying and fundraising on the '08 campaign trail and more time actually working on the business of the country. As for the CIA, the more it changes, the more it stays the same.

* h/t Madman in the Marketplace whose work you can find at Liberal Street Fighter.