Getting Bin Laden

Andrew Sullivan makes an excellent point

Personally, the one thing that sticks in my craw the most about the Bush era was how much he too his eye off the ball by not making sure he "got" Osama.

I am not arguing that getting Osama bin Laden would have solved all our problems, made the Afghan War a success or won the War on Terror. It doesn't matter. Simple justice demands that the man responsible for 9/11 should not die in his sleep of old age. No, that will not do.

Can Obama's Afghan surge net Osama in the bargain? Impossible to say. Clearly the trail is cold. It's possible Bin Laden may already be dead. But Bush let 8 years go by without a serious effort mounted to bring Bin Laden to justice. If Obama succeeds in capturing or killing Bin Laden it would be the final repudiation of Bushism.

Cheney wanted to send the Army into Buffalo!!!

Can you imagine!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/25/us/25detain.html?_r=2&hp

It would have been quite the wake-up call, I suppose. And suppose they had screwed up? Imagine if there was collateral damage in Buffalo?

And I wonder if the military brass would have been willing to go along? I suspect that there would have been a real pushback on this one, had it gone that far.

My God, Cheney was out of control.

War crimes cannot be pardoned

Scott Horton makes some interesting points about the limits on the U.S. government's poweres to shield Bush-era officials from war crimes prosecutions. Read the whole thing here, http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment#hbc-90004897 but the bottom line is that former Bush officials linked to the torture polices should be very wary about overseas travel -- ever.

The worms begins to turn

First off, when Fourth-graders begins to ask about torture (and Rice has to respond with legalisms to her vain attempt to defend it) then I think we can see signs that the tide is turning.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050301739.html

On top of that, the latest New York Times article featuring dramatic CYA by Porter Goss and Condi Rice is more evidence that things are going south for the torture crowd very fast.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/04/us/politics/04detain.html?ref=politics

I think that Cheney, Addington, Yoo and others should be getting very, very worried. Their unindicted co-conspirators are scrambling for the exits and they will be left holding the bag. What is interesting is whether Bush, himself, will be held accountable or Cheney will take the fall.

One amazing thing about all this is how quickly it's unravelling. Indeed. if it were not for the economic crisis this would probably be transfixing the nation. The economic crisis will ebb, but the problem for war criminals is that their crimes never become too old to deal with. Cheney's health may eventually save him from the worst ( a la Pinochet), but younger guys like Addington and Yoo may see justice done.

Cheney's legacy

Andrew Sulivan's devastating summary:

It is very rare to get someone with the same stratospheric levels of arrogance and incompetence as you find in Dick Cheney. Let's go to the tape: A war launched on false premises, a trillion dollar debt in a period of growth, a destruction of America's moral standing, the loss of one major city (New Orleans) and the devastation of another (New York City), two horribly bungled military campaigns that have trapped his successors for decades, a political party decimated for a generation, his closest aide in jail for obstruction of justice, his own daughter and grand-child targeted by his own party as second-class citizens in the state they live in. And a war criminal. Did I miss anything?

Froomkin explains how it's the cover-up that often gets you

Good read: http://www.discourse.net/archives/2009/04/its_often_the_coverup_that_gets_you.html

Obama's game

First off, the release of the torture memos is laudable and very, very important. And I think that Holder's assurances that CIA operatives not be prosecuted for war crimes they may have performed undeer guidance from the DOJ memos may be defensible for now. That's because the real targets for prosecution should first, and foremost, be the policymakers who ordered the torture. I don't want to see any more Lyndie England affairs, where some grunt takes the fall for official misconduct.

That said, Greenwald is critical of Obama's call for the following good reasons.:

The more one reads of this, the harder it is to credit Obama's statement today that "this is a time for reflection, not retribution." At least when it comes to the orders of our highest government leaders and the DOJ lawyers who authorized them, these are pure war crimes, justified in the most disgustingly clinical language and with clear intent of wrongdoing. FDL has a petition urging Eric Holder to immediately appoint a Special Prosecutor to determine if criminal proceedings should commence. Obama did the right thing by releasing these memos, providing all the information and impetus the citizenry should need to demand investigations and prosecutions. But it is up to citizens to demand that the rule of law be applied.

Here's what I think may be going on. I think Obama is in a very delicate situation here. The very last thing he wants is for this to be perceived as a partisan affair, mere retribution against the losing party using the legal system. Given the extremely toxic partisan atmosphere of modern US politics there will inevitably be some who will make this charge, but it is vital that it not stick. Obama seems to have the rare ability to look at the long-term and I think he's very, very reluctant to set any precedents down that road.

Therefore it's very important that he be seen as being forced to take action. He can't take the lead. That's why criticism from Greenwald and others is useful because it helps build that pressure.

If Obama had any interest in actually blocking the eventual prosecution of somebody for war crimes this would have been a good place to draw his line by redacting the hell out of the memos, as certain powerful elements apparently wanted. Instead nearly every damning word has been released.

Remember there is no statute of limitations for these crimes. I fully expect that prosecutions will come. Indeed, as more and more evidence comes out it the pressure will become irresistible. Remember that there are, apparently, videos and photos of much, much worse things that were done. "Murder and rape" were the words Sen. Lindsey Graham used.

By all means keep complaining. I doubt that Obama actually minds.

Forever at risk

Meanwhile, (Phillip) Sands reiterated a warning that he made in his book. “If I were they,” he said, referring to the former officials in question, “I would think carefully before setting foot outside the United States. They are now, and forever in the future, at risk of arrest. Until this is sorted out, they are in their own legal black hole.”

The article: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/04/13/090413ta_talk_mayer?ref=fp5

Make them less willing to help us commit war crimes

Kevin Drum makes the excellent point that embarrassment is the reason why the torture memos ought to be released.

Brennan's argument is that release of the memos might embarrass allies who helped us torture prisoners. He might even be right. But if that makes foreign intelligence services more cautious about helping us commit war crimes in the future, that would be a argument in favor of releasing the memos, not against it.

The vital point

Made by Andrew Sullivan while talking about the possible Spanish war crimes proscutions againts US lawyers, emphasis mine:

The lawyers are the beginning. Bush and Cheney are - and must be - the ultimate targets. They belong in jail. And there are no statutes of limitations on war crimes.

Details: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/03/is-justice-closing-in-on-yoo.html

Drip, drip, drip. Yes, it was torture

Step by step, drip by drip, the torture regime is falling apart.

The latest blow is another former Bush administration lawyer who was involved with Gitmo saying that yes, it was torture and the administration's entire approach was misguided and borne of panic.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/27/guantanamo-torture-decrie_n_180123.html

It was knowable

Daily Kos has a good post running down how the factors leading to today's financial woes were predicted.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/3/25/713036/-Nobody-Could-Have-Known

It's like the cries that "No one could have predicted the levies would fail" in New Orleans. Of course the Weather Channel was doing the first episode of its then-new series "It Could Happen Tomorrow" about New Orleans and its vulnerability to hurricanes. It was the second most likely disaster (after a new SF earthquake -- how ready are we for THAT).

This "nobody could have predicted it" excuse is really lame.

Are we ready for what we're going to find out?

More torture memos to be declassified that will be very embarrassing to the CIA, Newsweek reports.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/190362

What we already know is horrific enough, but the intel community is fighting so hard to keep the secret that one can only wonder how bad it must be.

And percolating in the background is the whole question of the secret surveillance program that was so objectionable that even John Ashcroft thought it went too far. And Ashcroft was OK with the torture. How bad will THAT news be, when (if?) we find out?

Cheney re-emerges

I don't want to reward CNN's John King by watching his interview of VP Cheney, but fortunately there are some reporters who get paid to watch this sort of thing so I don't have to and here is a summary of what was said: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney16-2009mar16,0,2699764.story

I guess it would be expecting too much for the previous administration to at least wait until the first 100 days go by before launching into partisan criticism of the new administration, but the Bush crowd was never much for observing customary restraints.

It's pretty disgusting for Cheney to criticize the abandonment of torture and other illegal behavior as making us less safe, but it's no surprise. But it's really rich to claim that Bush's policies were not to blame for the economic mess. I'm quite sure that if we were still sailing along in our blissful bubble that the Bush folks would be rushing to claim credit for it and saying that Obama was just coasting off their success.

We can be sure it will be worse than we thought

That's the one thing we can be sure about the extent of the Bush administration's use of torture.

The Daily Mail outlines the allegations of Binyam Mohammed here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1160238/How-MI5-colluded-torture-Binyam-Mohamed-claims-British-agents-fed-Moroccan-torturers-questions--WORLD-EXCLUSIVE.html

We have years of horrid revelations ahead of us.

What we already know for certain is enough to justify convictions under all sorts of international and domestic law under the same standards that have been applied to people from other nations as far back as World War II and as recently as Dafur.

Sense at Slate

Slate critiques the "War on the Rich" claim going around (with emphasis added my me:

It's hard to overstate how absurd these claims are. First, let's talk about the "massive increase in progressivity" that Gerson deplores. It consists largely (but not exclusively) of returning marginal tax rates to their levels of 2001, before Gerson and the epically incompetent Bush administration of which he was a part got their hands on the reins of power. Obama wants to let marginal rates for families with taxable income (not total income, but taxable income) of more than $250,000 revert from 33 percent to 36 percent, and to let the top rate—currently 35 percent on family income above $357,000—revert to 39 percent. (Here are the current tax tables.) There's also talk of capping—not eliminating, but capping—deductions on charitable giving and mortgage interest.
Obama's proposals don't mean the government would steal every penny you make above the $250,000 threshold, or that making more than $250,000 would somehow subject all of your income to higher taxes. Rather, you'd pay 36 cents to the government in income taxes on every dollar over the threshold, rather than 33 cents.
Second, this return to 2001's tax rates was actually part of the Bush tax plan. The Republicans who controlled the White House and the Republicans who controlled the Congress earlier this decade decreed that all the tax cuts they passed would sunset in 2010. They put in this sunset provision to hide the long-term fiscal costs of the cuts. The Bush team and congressional supporters had seven years to manage fiscal affairs in such a way that they would be able to extend the tax cuts in 2010. But they screwed it up. Instead of controlling spending and aligning tax revenues with outlays, the Bush administration and its congressional allies ramped up spending massively—on two wars, on a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, on earmarks, etc. Oh, and along the way, they so miserably mismanaged oversight of Wall Street and the financial sector that it required the passage of a hugely expensive bailout. Even before the passage of the TARP, the prospect of extending all the Bush tax cuts was a nonstarter. Once Bush signed the $700 billion bailout measure into law, extending tax cuts was really a nonstarter. The national debt nearly doubled during the Bush years. So if you want to blame someone for raising taxes back to where they were in 2001, don't blame Obama. Blame Bush, his feckless Office of Management and Budget directors, his economic advisers, and congressional appropriators like Trent Lott and Tom DeLay.
Third, we know from recent experience that marginal tax rates of 36 percent and 39 percent aren't wealth killers. I was around in the 1990s, when tax rates were at that level, and when capital gains and dividend taxes were significantly higher than they are today. And I seem to remember that we had a stock market boom, a broad rise in incomes (with the wealthy benefitting handily), and strong economic growth.
Fourth, we also know from recent experience that lower marginal rates on income taxes, and lower rates on capital gains and dividends, aren't necessarily wealth producers. The Bush years, which had lower marginal rates and capital gains taxes, were a fiasco. In fact, if you tally up the vast destruction of wealth in the late Bush years—caused by foolish hedge funds, investment banks, and other financial services companies, it seems like the wealthy have in fact been waging war on one another.
Finally, there has been a near total absence of discussion of what higher rates will mean in the real world. Say you're a CNBC anchor, or a Washington Post columnist with a seat at the Council on Foreign Relations, or a dentist, and you managed to cobble together $350,000 a year in income. You're doing quite well. If you subtract deductions for state and property taxes, mortgage interest and charitable deductions, and other deductions, the amount on which tax rates are calculated might total $300,000. What would happen if the marginal rate on the portion of your income above $250,000 were to rise from 33 percent to 36 percent? Under the old regime, you'd pay $16,500 in federal taxes on that amount. Under the new one, you'd pay $18,000. The difference is $1,500 per year, or $4.10 per day. Obviously, the numbers rise as you make more. But is $4.10 a day bleeding the rich, a war on the wealthy, a killer of innovation and enterprise? That dentist eager to slash her income from $320,000 to $250,000 would avoid the pain of paying an extra $2,100 in federal taxes. But she'd also deprive herself of an additional $70,000 in income!

Larison on the hypocrites who spent years calling dissent unpatriotic

Opponents of the war did not wish for Bush to fail in matters related to national security, but rather wished for him not to make colossal blunders that would undermine national security, weaken and strain our military and needlessly compromise constitutional protections and the nation’s reputation. Indeed, one might go so far as to say that Bush’s critics on the war wished that he not embark on a course of action that was bound to fail on the administration’s own terms. When Mr. Bush ended his second term as a failed President, it was his supporters who continued to back him in every bad decision he made who had ensured that he failed. In other words, in resisting the policies the President wanted and implemented his critics were actually serving the President’s best interests, and he would have been wise to heed their warnings. Perhaps then he would not have left office as one of the most-loathed and discredited Presidents in history. Obviously, Limbaugh has never argued anything remotely like this, and even if he does mean something other than what he said his statement will not be received that way.

Doing the right thing is good strategy

Scott Horton lays out the details behind our eviction notice from our Kyrgyz airbase:

But this is far from the whole story. In fact at the time the Kyrgyz agreed to let the United States open the base, the two nations enjoyed excellent relations and the Kyrgyz public was arguably the warmest and most pro-American of the region. That changed rather dramatically, and the change did not result as much from Russian propaganda as it did from American ineptitude and misconduct. For a decade, American advisors and aid contractors had lectured the Kyrgyz on the need for budgetary transparency and anti-corruption measures. Yet when the United States Government first arrived in country with a serious contract to negotiate—for the creation of the air base—it wound up concluding an under-the-table deal with the president’s family under which most of the financial benefit from the airbase wound up parked in offshore bank accounts. That deal was cut by Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon with Rumsfeld’s direct involvement. Had a private U.S. company cut such a deal it would probably have found its officers on the other end of an indictment under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act brought by a U.S. attorney. However, following an FBI investigation that confirmed these depressing facts, the Bush Administration concluded that in this as in other areas, it would hold itself immune from the criminal law standards it applied to ordinary citizens.
But the longer-term problem was with the Kyrgyz. A prominent Bishkek lawyer discussing the dealings over the base with me pronounced a judgment that I heard consistently: “We finally got an up-close look at your government. You’re a bunch of hypocrites, no less corrupt than our own government–just a lot bigger.”
Off to a bad start, things quickly got even worse. In 2006 U.S. serviceman Zachary Hatfield shot and killed Aleksandr Ivanov, a truck driver employed by the base’s aviation fuel contractor. The incident was catastrophically mishandled by U.S. military and diplomatic personnel. U.S. spokesmen issued a statement claiming that Ivanov had physically threatened Hatfield with a knife, and that Hatfield shot him in self defense. While making vague and unconvincing statements of “regret” about the “incident,” the soldier was whisked away back to the United States. That was flight to avoid prosecution and to block a homicide investigation–such flight, of course, a serious crime unto itself. While offering vague assurances that the soldier would be dealt with under the military justice system (something which, in the eyes of the Kyrgyz, never occurred), American officials did little to atone for the crime. Kyrgyz newspapers made mincemeat of the proffered excuse, reporting that Hatfield’s claims that Ivanov was armed with a knife were untrue and establishing that Ivanov had made numerous prior deliveries to the base, and was known to the soldier. The Kyrgyz media fanned suspicions that the homicide was an unprovoked act, accounts that American officials only fueled by issuing a false report and failing to convincingly show either contrition or an intention to bring the soldier to justice. The U.S. government offered a $2,000 damages payment to Ivanov’s family on account of his death, an act widely viewed in Kyrgyzstan as a calculated insult. Although the U.S. embassy later clarified that this was an interim payment only and that a larger sum would be paid later, the damage was done.
The American management of the incident was totally bungled, leaving the local population with the idea that the Americans on the base were arrogant and not accountable to the law. The public’s view of Americans underwent a radical and sudden transformation. A nation once seen as generous benefactors now were seen as arrogant bullies.
“This base is doomed,” I was told repeatedly. It is only a matter of time before public opinion forces its closing. The question at this point is whether America will learn any lessons from this experience.

Lest anyone think this is an isolated occurrence, remember the problems we have had in Korea and in Okinawa recently over similar criminal acts involving local people. No one expects that you can avoid all criminal activity by soldiers, but how it is handled is critical. It's not just a question of strictly following the rules, it's a question of diplomacy. Soldiers shouldn't be handed over to the mob to appease the locals, of course, but they equally need to face the music just as they would back home.

Unfortunately, or Kyrgyz critic was right, the U.S. under Bush was just as corrupt as the local government, and for much the same sorts of reasons. Obama may correct this, but much of the damage has already been done. It only takes one "Aw shit" to cancel a lot of "attaboys" and Bush's "aw shits" erased the hard-earned attaboys of 200 years.

Make me

That appears to be the Bush/Rove position on testimony to Congress

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2009/01/executive-privilege-when-you-are-no.html

Gitmo didn't have to be "Gitmo"

Unsurprisingly details are starting to emerge of how Bush and Rumsfeld damaged the honor and reputation of the U.S. and especially the U.S. military.

This Washington Post articles explains how the military's initial setup of Guantanamo featured humane treatment in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Until orders came from on high.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/23/AR2009012302313.html

Rumsfeld may very well be worse than McNamara. At least he didn't set out to destroy the honor of the military.