Friday, July 28, 2006

❄ BUSH BEFUDDLED?  

The following exchange between a reporter and GW Bush took place during today’s [28 July 2006] “press availability”:

Q “Thank you. Mr. President, and Prime Minister Blair, can I ask you both tonight what your messages are for the governments of Iran and Syria, given that you say this is the crisis of the 21st century?”

PRESIDENT BUSH: “Want me to start? My message is, give up your nuclear weapon and your nuclear weapon ambitions. That’s my message to Syria -- I mean, to Iran. And my message to Syria is, become an active participant in the neighborhood for peace.” [1]

The White House asserts that Iran intends to build nuclear weapons, but it has never asserted that Iran has a nuclear weapon. This is a White House transcript, not a Doonesbury strip. Will the White House issue a clarification? Or will it trust that prospects are better if the public imagines that Teheran has a nuclear weapon, or nuclear weapons? Or will it simply observe that everyone knows that Bush doesn’t talk straight so no one will pay any attention to it? But people have to wonder: does Bush think straight? Has he been led to believe that there is a possibility that Iran has a nuclear weapon? Has he been told about some Israelis’ having insisted that once Iranian specialists solved key problems in learning how to build a nuclear weapon the game was already lost? [Please look at my discussion of those Israeli assertions earlier on this blog: ISRAEL PUSHES WHITE HOUSE TO CONFRONT IRAN, 14 January 2006.]

[Note 1]: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/07/20060728-1.html

Bruce 2:24 PM

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Thursday, July 27, 2006

❄ UNIFIL DEATHS IN LEBANON [I]  

The deaths of four UNIFIL observers in southern Lebanon a few hours ago pose the question whether the deaths were ‘deliberate’ or merely ‘reckless’. Did Israel murder the United Nations observers, or were their deaths merely the result of Israeli recklessness?

An Irish former UNIFIL participant, Tom Clonan, was interviewed on the RTE radio program Morning Ireland today. He is familiar with the Observation Post which was attacked, and his account of the Observation Post and of Israeli practices seems to me to offer more for an understanding of this episode than I’ve seen in the press.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2006/0727/morningireland.html

Dr. Clonan is Security Analyst of The Irish Times. His views, similar to those in the RTE interview, are published today in The Irish Times, “Israel Agenda May Be to Drive Out the UN.”:

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2006/0727/1153813803467.html

[Article available by fee or institutional subscription, e.g. on LexisNexis.]

Another Irish view on the Lebanon affair, but written before the UN observers’ deaths, is that of Michael D. Higgins, president of the Irish Labour Party and its foreign affairs spokesman:  “The End of International Law?”. [1]

[Note 1]: http://www.labour.ie/campaigns/listing/20060725173337.html A modified version was published in The Irish Times, 27 July 2006, under the title “Is This the Beginning of the End of International Law?: The European Union has handed the Midle East to the militarists.”

Bruce 7:03 AM

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Saturday, May 06, 2006

❄ MICHAEL V. HAYDEN: ‘REASONABLE’ SURVEILLANCE?  

General Michael V. Hayden has been identified by unnamed newspaper sources as a frontrunner to be named Director of Central Intelligence in place of Porter Goss, whose resignation was announced today.

In January 2006 General Hayden advanced a remarkable theory to vitiate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and justify unwarranted interception and use of communications to and from “U.S. persons,” principally US citizens. In a speech at the National Press Club [1] General Hayden said, in part:

“Inherent foreign intelligence value is one of the metrics we must use. Let me repeat that: Inherent foreign intelligence value is one of the metrics we must use to ensure that we conform to the Fourth Amendment’s reasonable standard when it comes to protecting the privacy of these kinds of people. ... [T]he standard of what was relevant and valuable, and therefore, what was reasonable, would understandably change, I think, as smoke billowed from two American cities and a Pennsylvania farm field. And we acted accordingly.”


The Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

After General Hayden had delivered his remarks the floor was opened for questions. The following exchange took place between Hayden and Jonathan Landay of Knight-Ridder:

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I’d like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I’m no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American’s right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use —

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually — the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But the —

GEN. HAYDEN: That’s what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But does it not say probable —

GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says —

QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard —

GEN. HAYDEN: — unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, “We reasonably believe.” And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say “we reasonably believe”; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, “we have probable cause.” And so what many people believe — and I’d like you to respond to this — is that what you’ve actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of “reasonably believe” in place in probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?

GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn’t craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order. Just to be very clear — and believe me, if there’s any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it’s the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you’ve raised to me —and I’m not a lawyer, and don’t want to become one — what you’ve raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is “reasonable.” And we believe — I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we’re doing is reasonable.

From General Hayden’s reading of the Fourth Amendment it follows that the State must seek a search warrant only when it proposes an unreasonable search. Reductio ad absurdum.

Or we could ask how ‘reasonableness’ is established, and how the issue is resolved if the State’s claim to ‘reasonableness’ of a specific search—here a program of interceptions—is contested. General Hayden’s position is that he, as Director of NSA, determined ‘reasonableness’; that the program was and ought to have remained secret; and that therefore only those who were properly privy to the secret could have contested it, and then only within the limited circle of those entitled to the secret. Hence Congressional oversight or appeal to the Courts is precluded, unless someone who has learned about the secret intercept program goes public.

General Hayden’s position also neglects the fact that there is law—an Act of Congress—which expressly prohibits what he chose to do as Director of the NSA and defended in January as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

USC Title 50 § 1802(a)(1) authorizes warrantless electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information, subject to some conditions, provided “there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of the communication to which a United States person is a party;” [This distinguishes “content” from facts that might be gathered about a transaction.] Note that one US person is enough. Title 18 § 2511 (2)(f) states in part that “the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance ... and the interception of domestic wire, oral, and electronic communications may be conducted.” One term, setting scope, is domestic. For domestic surveillance FISA provides the “exclusive means”. If domestic surveillance does not follow the terms of the FISA Act it is illegal. Of course, as everyone including the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee has said, we don’t know exactly what NSA did, because they won’t say. Secret.

We can, however, work General Hayden’s language a bit further. Not every person in the United States is a “United States person”, despite General Hayden’s attempt to convince his audience that any terrorist who stepped across the border would become protected from surveillance. In General Hayden’s words “And by the way, ‘U.S. person’ routinely includes anyone in the United States, citizen or not.” But 50 USC § 1801(i) defines a “United States person” as “a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence (as defined in section 1101(a)(20) of Title 8)” and further defined associations and corporations. [3] “So, for example,” Hayden continues, “because they were in the United States—and we did not know anything more—Mohamed Atta and his fellow 18 hijackers would have been presumed to have been protected person, U.S. persons, by NSA prior to 9/11.” But not thereafter? What General Hayden does not put on the table is that the law does not ban intercepts but distinguishes those intercepts which may be made without warrant, with Executive approval from those which may only be undertaken pursuant to court-issued warrant, subject to the conditions stipulated in law. The plain meaning of General Hayden’s subsequent lines is that the communications of US persons are intercepted and judged, despite the law. “If the U.S. person information isn’t relevant, the data is suppressed.”

Whether General Hayden is actually nominated to succeed Porter Goss as CIA Director or not, the claim that the Executive can undertake warrantless interception whenever it says that doing so is ‘reasonable’ is pernicious and should be confronted head on. Hayden’s remaining as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence after his January 23rd remarks is further evidence of problems which few Congressional Republicans, and no one in the White House, seems inclined or ready to address.

[Note 1]: Remarks by General Michael V. Hayden, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and Former Director of the National Security Agency, Address to the National Press Club, “What American Intelligence & Especially the NSA Have Been Doing to Defend the Nation,” Natonal Press Club, Washington, D. C., January 23 2006. http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2006/01/hayden012306.pdf

[Note 2:] http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sec_50_00001809----000-.html

[Note 3:] And the Congressional Research Service called attention to this definition in Elizabeth B. Basan, “The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: An Overview of the Statutory Framework and Recent Judicial Decisions,” 22 September 2004, CRS Report RL30465, p. 11 note.

Bruce 3:40 PM

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Saturday, January 14, 2006

❄ ISRAEL PUSHES WHITE HOUSE TO CONFRONT IRAN   

In 2005 and 2006 Israeli officials have made claims about Iran reminiscent of Israeli statements in August 2002 which pressed the United States to attack Iraq. In 2002 urgence was attributed to an alleged Iraqi ‘program of weapons of mass destruction.’ In early 2005 the Israeli defense minister spoke of a ‘point of no return’, an invented ‘red line’ to describe the time at which Iran might have learned how to process uranium to obtain the fissile material for a nuclear weapon. In late 2005 and early 2006 Israeli officials spoke openly of this ‘point of no return’. A New York Times headline states: “Israel Wants West to Deal More Urgently With Iran: Fears Early Nuclear ‘Point of No Return’ ”  [Note 1]  Since Iran is believed unable to make a nuclear weapon for several years—and then only if decisions and technical achievements all fell into place—the purpose of inventing an illusory ‘point of no return’ appears to be to advance the crisis into 2006, or at least into the remaining 36 months of GW Bush’s second term.

Recall first the August 2002 declarations.

Three Israeli officials were reported to have made statements to this effect in mid- August, though one—Foreign Minister Shimon Peres—hedged his call for action by insisting he was not urging the US to war. On 18 August the Israeli government sought to back away from its public agitation for war. The subject is delicate, and it is therefore useful to quote actual language of the reports.  [Note 2]

Ariel Sharon. 16 August 2002. AFP, citing Haaretz: “Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has urged the United States not to delay its threatened strike on Iraq any further. Postponing a military operation against Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime ‘will not create a more convenient environment for action in the future,’ the Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Sharon as saying Friday [16 August 2002] in a message sent to the US administration.” [Note 3]

Simon Peres. 15 August 2002. CNN: “Attacking Iraq now would be ‘quite dangerous, but postponing it would be more dangerous,’ Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres said Thursday [15 August 2002]. ‘The problem today is not if but when,’ Peres said, ‘and if they think we wait, [Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] will change, and if he will change, it ... will be for the worse; he will have more weapons.’ ”  [Note 4]

Ranaan Gissin. 16 August 2002. CBS: “Israel is urging U.S. officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, an aide to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said Friday. ... ‘Any postponement of an attack on Iraq at this stage will serve no purpose,’ [Ranaan] Gissin said. ‘It will only give him (Saddam) more of an opportunity to accelerate his program of weapons of mass destruction.’ ”  [Note 5]

Backtrack! Sharon’s office denies he urged war. 18 August 2002. South African Broadcasting Company report, relying in part on AFP: “Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, has denied that Israel is urging the US to attack Iraq, a source from the prime minister’s office said. ‘We are not pressing the United States to bring forward an attack on Iraq,’ Sharon told today’s weekly cabinet meeting, according to this source.”  [Note 6]

Now let’s compare Israel’s 2005-2006 comments on Iran.

We should begin by registering White House attention—at least in ‘Dick’ Cheney’s office—to Israel’s policies on Iran. Cheney said, on the day he began his second term as US vice-president, that Israel could strike pre-emptively against Iranian nuclear facilities, though he said “everybody would be best suited or best treated and dealt with if we could deal with it diplomatically.” [Note 7]

Only a week later the Israeli defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, was in London, where he spoke of the ‘point of no return’ and said that “None of the western countries can live with Iran having a nuclear capability.” The Guardian reports:

“Gen Mofaz, who was born in Iran but left for Israel while a child, said: ‘Iran is very close to the point of no return, which means the enrichment of uranium, and we believe that the leadership of the US, together with the European countries, should stop as soon as possible this military nuclear programme in Iran.’ 

“He added that this point of no return would be reached ‘in less than a year’ and that it would only be ‘a matter of years’ after that that it would assemble the bomb.” [Note 8]


Then on 11 December 2005 the Sunday Times [London], citing unidentified military sources, reported that “Israel’s armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March [2006] for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran.” [Note 9] And further:

“Defence sources in Israel believe the end of March to be the ‘point of no return’ after which Iran will have the technical expertise to enrich uranium in sufficient quantities to build a nuclear warhead in two to four years.” [Note 9]


The New York Times reports remarks of Israeli Major General Aharon Zeev-Farkash, who retired as director of Israeli military intelligence on 5 January 2006. Excerpts from their report, on the ‘point of no return’:

“[General Zeev-Farkash] . . . said Israel believed that the moment was no more than a year away, although estimates differ among governments, based on different views of how advanced Iranian technology has become. Once Iran starts enriching uranium, the general said, it will need just six months to a year to achieve the ability to produce fissile materials. . .

“General Farkash [said] . . . that within another two and half to three years, Iran will have enough fissile material for a nuclear bomb, if it is able to construct and run 2,000 to 4,000 centrifuges . . .

“ ‘We have a crucial six months to a year to do something,’ he said, adding that ‘unfortunately when I say this to our friends and allies, they like to focus on the third step,’ the production of the bomb, ‘rather than the first step.’

“ ‘The first step is the most crucial, when Iran will achieve independent research and development capacity to enrich uranium—we all agree,’ the general said. ‘Then it’s not an intelligence problem, but a political decision.’  ” [Note 1]

On 3 January 2006, in his last interview before his major stroke, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke of Iran in a way which echoes his August 2002 comments about Iraq: “In any event, time is not working in favor of anyone who wants to prevent Iran from becoming nuclear. [Israel] is not the spearhead, but we are working together when it comes to intelligence and evaluation with the United States, together with European countries.” [Note 1]

Of course, concern about Iran’s nuclear intentions is not confined to Israel. Iran alone has the ability to convince others that its intentions are confined, as it insists, to uranium enrichment for reactor fuel, and that it will not enrich to the higher concentrations of 235U required for a nuclear weapon. But it could convince others, if it chose to do so.

[Note 1]: Steven Erlanger, “Israel Wants West to Deal More Urgently With Iran: Fears Early Nuclear ‘Point of No Return’, The New York Times, 13 January 2006.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644_pf.html

[Note 2]: The discussion of August 2002 is taken from my paper “Iraq: Go to War? and the Nuclear Question”: http://www.gcdd.net/TX.024=2002.12.08.Iraq.pdf

[Note 3]: Agence France Presse, http://www.arabia.com/afp/news/mideast/article/english/0,10846,267538,00.html

[Note 4]: CNN http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/08/15/peres.iraq/

[Note 5]: CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/18/world/main519037.shtml

[Note 6]: South African Broadcasting Company http://www.sabcnews.com/world/the_middle_east/0,1009,41059,00.html

[Note 7]: David Sanger, “Cheney Says Israel Might ‘Act First’ on Iran,” The New York Times, 21 January 2005.

[Note 8]: Ewen MacAskill, “Iran Nears Nuclear ‘Point of No Return’ ”The Guardian, 27 January 2005. http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,12858,1399378,00.html

[Note 9]: Uzi Mahnaimi and Sarah Baxter, “Israel Readies Forces for Stike on Nuclear Iran,” Sunday Times [London], 11 December 2005. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1920074,00.html

Bruce 9:42 PM

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Friday, December 30, 2005

❄ REPERTORIAL EXPOSÉS & ACLU ASSESSMENT   

I’m pleased that the story of Administration ‘black site’ prisons abroad and prisoner ‘renditions’ was broken by a Washington Post reporter who is a graduate of the Politics department in which I have taught most of the last 40 years. [See Note 1]

Now the scene shifts to The New York Times, which has exposed National Security Agency surveillance practices many consider illegal. [See Note 2] The ACLU has issued a concise statement summarizing why the NSA’s practices matter [See Note 3]:

ACLU.  “NSA Spying on Americans is Illegal”  29 December 2005.

[Note 1]: Dana Priest, “CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons”, The Washington Post, 2 November 2005.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101644_pf.html

[Note 2]: James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts”, The New York Times, 16 December 2005.  http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?pagewanted=all

[Note 3]: American Civil Liberties Union, “NSA Spying on Americans is Illegal”, 29 December 2005.  http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/23279res20051229.html

Bruce 10:19 PM

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Wednesday, November 23, 2005

❄ WHO IS REVISING HISTORY?   

In November 2005 the GW Bush White House, mired in Iraq, scarred by declining approval ratings, and facing newly intense charges from Democratic critics that it had misled America into the Iraq War, resolved to launch a counter-campaign charging its critics with dishonesty and worse. In salvo after salvo, its cannoneers insisted that the critics themselves were ‘dishonest’, ‘reprehensible’, trading in ‘lies’. The breadth and recurrence of the Administration’s charges remind us of GW Bush’s declaration, in May 2005, that “See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” [Note 1] But it is unlikely mere repetition can rescue this White House from the record.

‘Dick’ Cheney offered a refined version of GW Bush’s Veterans’ Day charge that “Some democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war.” [Note 2] Cheney told the American Enterprise Institute on 21 November 2005 that

'What is not legitimate, and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible, is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence. . . .

“ . . . any suggestion that prewar information was distorted, hyped, or fabricated by the leader of the nation is utterly false.” [Note 3]

This is not a casual phrasing.

Note how narrowly drawn is his denial: ‘purposely misled’ [inserting an issue of intent, which only the suspected liar can know for sure], but even more importantly ‘on prewar intelligence’.

Cheney and Bush misled on many factual matters: WMD, Iraq-Al Qaeda connection, quality of IAEA and UNMOVIC inspections, and the necessity to go to war.

Moreover, it is a reasonable inference that they ‘purposely misled’ the American people about both their intent to war against Iraq and their reasons for doing so.

They ‘misled’ by suggesting they wanted authorization to war only as a last resort, when it is a reasonable reading of their actions that they were bent on war no matter what. And that deceit was ‘on purpose’. [Remember: they could not persuade the UN Security Council of the need for war, and they deliberately disrupted the ongoing IAEA and UNMOVIC inspections, which were not finished.] They ‘misled’ by failing to explain clearly the broader geostrategic objectives which they sought, including long-term US military basing and development of a client Iraqi government. They have not explained a connection many suspect: the intimate parallels between their choices and the objectives of Israel’s Likud.

They ‘misled’ by repeatedly talking of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ as if their claims were about nuclear weapons (‘mushroom cloud’), when on the most generous understanding they might have referred to chemical and biological weapons, nasty and dangerous but not strategically significant. They could have made that distinction clear, as many specialists have: they did not do so.

On other reasons to go to war, the White House certainly ‘purposely misled’ about the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection: there was never any information, nor any ‘intelligence’, to show a significant connection. It was pure fear-mongering. Cheney was foremost in that, and so he ‘purposely misled’. And there are the reasons never, or rarely, acknowledged. Recall Paul Wolfowitz saying that WMD was brought forward as the reason because it was the one thing agencies within the US Government could agree on: that is, no agency representative was prepared to take the burden for saying there was no WMD threat, lest the agency be proven wrong.

But the most compelling deceit, and the most incontestable, was their deliberate concealment of ignorance. They ‘purposely misled’ the American people by never telling them—not the public, not the Congress—that they did not have positive, corroborated, convincing intelligence from proven sources to support their contentions about WMD and Iraqi intentions. No agency—not the DIA, not the CIA, not the NSA—claimed to have ‘intelligence’ which met that standard. But that’s the minimum standard which must be met to go to war. Cheney and Bush knew—knew—that they had no such evidence. And yet they claimed the need to launch a war. They ‘purposely misled’ the public and the Congress about what they did not know.

So we might paraphrase ‘Dick’ Cheney’s denial. It would run something like this. “We may have inadvertently misled the American people. But we didn’t mean to. Anyway, only we know what was in our minds, so if we say it wasn’t ‘on purpose’ you just have to accept that. But this is really about ‘prewar intelligence.’ The intelligence reports which we made public were authored by the agencies; we said so; we simply told the American people what we’d been told; we never lied about that.” Does that help explain why his denial is so narrowly drawn?

[Note 1]: GW Bush, remarks on social security at the Greece Athena Middle and High School, Greece, New York, 24 May 2005, cited by Frank Rich, The New York Times, 19 June 2005. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/05/20050524-3.html

[Note 2]: GW Bush, remarks on Veterans' Day, Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, 11 November 2005. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051111-1.html

[Note 3]: Vice President ‘Dick’ Cheney, Speech to the American Enterprise Institute, 21 November 2005. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051121-2.html

Bruce 10:54 AM

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Saturday, November 12, 2005

❄ Context is All!   

The following text was constructed by selecting observations from an otherwise lacklustre public speech. Most of the original has been omitted, leaving this residue as a biting critique of the policies and practices of the White House. By the way, who was this trenchant critic of the current Administration? The text, with omissions marked ... , and some added highlighting:

Thank you all very much. ... We know the vision of the radicals because they have openly stated it ... [They are] utterly committed. ... [T]he civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history ... consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history. Evil men, obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience, must be taken very seriously—and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply. ...

The radicals exploit local conflicts to build a culture of victimization, in which someone else is always to blame and violence is always the solution. ...

... they have endless ambitions of imperial domination,—and they wish to make everyone powerless, except themselves. ... By fearing freedom—by distrusting human creativity and punishing change and limiting the contributions of half a population—this ideology undermines the very qualities that make human progress possible, and human societies successful. ... The rest of their grim vision is defined by a warped image of the past—a declaration of war on the idea of progress itself. ... Those who despise freedom and progress have condemned themselves to isolation and decline and collapse. Because free peoples believe in the future, free peoples will own the future. ...

[O]ur debate at home must also be fair-minded. One of the hallmarks of a free society and what makes our country strong is that our political leaders can discuss their differences openly, even in times of war. ...

Throughout history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder is justified to serve their grand vision—and they end up alienating decent people across the globe. ...

[W]e do know the love of freedom is the mightiest force of history, and we do know the cause of freedom will once again prevail.

[Source: GW Bush, remarks at Tobyhanna Army Depot, Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, 11 November 2005. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/11/20051111-1.html]

Bruce 6:20 PM

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Friday, November 11, 2005

❄ “We’re an Empire Now ... ”  

I don’t want to lose track of Ron Suskind’s report of a summer 2002 conversation with a “senior adviser to Bush”. It’s reported by Suskind in a 17 October 2004 New York Times Magazine article titled “Without a Doubt” [highlighting added]:

“The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’  ”

[Source: The New York Times, 17 October 2004.]

Bruce 2:15 PM

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Sunday, November 06, 2005

❄ BUSH IS RIGHT !  

“Truth of the matter is,” GW Bush told reporters while visiting Argentina, “there’s people who disagree with the decisions I’ve made all over the world.”

[Source: The New York Times, 5 November 2005.]

Bruce 2:31 PM

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Sunday, July 31, 2005

❄ RECRUITING FOR IRAQ

The International Herald Tribune sells classified ads. They are often accompanied by a disclaimer, titled “Reader Warning”. The disclaimer was not included with the ads published 25 July 2005, so I thought it would be helpful to show two ads published that day with the disclaimer alongside.



Readers might also wish to juxtapose one of these ads with reports of the controversy about GW Bush’s proposal to provide aid to selected parties and individuals in the ‘free’ January 2005 Iraqi elections. Cf. Douglas Jehl and David E. Sanger, “Plan Called for Covert Aid in Iraq Vote”, The New York Times, 17 July 2005.

Bruce 5:00 AM

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Thursday, July 07, 2005

❄ BUSH ON GUANTANAMO: “There’s total transparency.”

GW Bush claims [6 July 2005, during a press conference with the Danish Prime Minister at Lyngby, Denmark] that “there’s total transparency” at the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. That’s a simple, astounding lie, since the public does not know, and is not permitted to find out, who is held there, much less the details of what takes place. We do know that interrogation practices are used which seek to break detainees physically and mentally: I call that torture, even if Alberto Gonzales and George Bush do not.

This is what Bush said:

“We had a great discussion today. We talked about the upcoming G8 meeting. We talked about Africa and climate change. As well, we talked about Guantanamo. The Prime Minister is concerned about what the situation on Guantanamo says about America and our view of liberty. Let me tell you what I told him. I said, first, the prisoners are well-treated in Guantanamo. There’s total transparency. The International Red Cross can inspect any time, any day. And you’re welcome to go. The press, of course, is welcome to go down to Guantanamo.

“Secondly, we have sent many home. These people were picked up on the battlefield. They didn’t wear uniforms, they weren’t associated with a government, but they were on the battlefield. And so we put them in Guantanamo. We wanted to find out as much as we could about what they knew about this war on terror in order to protect our citizens. Many, it turned out, were sent home.

“Thirdly, I assured the Prime Minister there’s got to be a way forward for people held in Guantanamo, and there will be. The reason why you haven.t seen any adjudication of individuals is because our court system is determining where best to try people, whether it be in a military tribunal where a person would have all -- lawyers and rights, or whether it be in the civilian courts. And once the judicial branch of our government makes its decision, then we’ll proceed forward with giving people fair and open trials.

“I just want you to remember we are in a war against these terrorists. My most solemn obligation is to protect the American people from further attack. These people are being treated humanely. There’s very few prison systems around the world that have seen such scrutiny as this one. And for those of you here on the continent of Europe who have doubt, I’d suggest buying an airplane ticket and going down and look -- take a look for yourself.”

[Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/07/20050706-3.html]

Wouldn’t you like to know what scrambling took place at Guantanamo at the prospect of correspondents from Le Monde and The Independent and twenty other papers arriving at the gates, asking for a namelist of prisoners and untrammeled interviews? Which correspondent will get there first?

Of course, we don’t know where the Guantanamo detainees were “picked up”. We do know something, however, of access by the International Committee of the Red Cross and its continuing concerns. GW Bush said that “The International Red Cross can inspect any time, any day.” Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Bush Administration pays any attention to what they say. The ICRC considers its language carefully, and that prudence is evident in its reports. Typically the ICRC reports its concerns to the detaining government; only in exceptional circumstances does it go public. The ICRC publishes the following material [excerpt] on its website:


“Releases or transfers of detainees

“The ICRC insists on interviewing in private any detainee about to be transferred out of Guantanamo Bay before his departure to allow him the opportunity to raise any possible fears of persecution should he be sent home or to a third country. The ICRC then relays the detainee's comments to the detaining authorities and makes appropriate recommendations as to how to proceed. This procedure is designed to ensure respect for the internationally recognised principle of non-refoulement which prohibits the transfer or return of a person to a country where he or she has reason to fear for his or her life, physical or mental integrity, or might be subject to other serious human rights violations.

“The ICRC follows up on all cases of detainees transferred from Guantanamo Bay to third countries, particularly if they are subsequently rearrested and deprived of their liberty. The ICRC aims to visit these detainees in their new place of detention to ensure that their treatment and the conditions of detention are in conformity with international legal requirements.

“The ICRC has regularly provided support to detainees released from Guantanamo Bay. Whenever needed, ICRC delegates are present during these releases and provide clothes and transport fares to enable the freed detainees to return to their families.

“ICRC concerns

“For the ICRC, the question of the legal status of the persons detained by the US at Bagram, Guantanamo Bay or at so-called undisclosed locations, as well as the legal framework applicable to them remains unresolved (see IHL and terrorism: questions and answers).

“For many detainees at Guantanamo Bay more than two and a half years have passed since their arrest. The ICRC has always maintained that those detainees remaining in Guantanamo Bay should either be charged and tried, released, or be placed within a legal framework that governs their continued detention. On 28 June 2004, the United States Supreme Court ruled that 14 Guantanamo Bay detainees could file for writs of habeas corpus – that is, challenges to the legality of their detention – in US federal courts. This decision has opened the door for other detainees at Guantanamo Bay to challenge the legality of their detention in US courts. The ICRC is closely following developments in the wake of the Supreme Court decision.

“The ICRC believes that the uncertainty about their fate has been a contributing factor to the mental and emotional health problems among the detainees at Guantanamo Bay observed by its delegates and reported by other sources.

“The ICRC has had regular access to the persons detained at Bagram, but not immediately after their arrest. Initially detainees were only held for limited periods of time before being transferred to Guantanamo Bay or released. However, since mid-2003 many persons have been detained for longer periods at Bagram, in some cases for more than a year. Therefore, the ICRC is increasingly concerned by the fact that the US authorities have not resolved the questions of their legal status and of the applicable legal framework.

“The ICRC’s observations regarding certain aspects of the conditions of detention and treatment of detainees in Bagram and Guantanamo have not yet been adequately addressed.

“The US authorities state that the detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay are of important intelligence value. The Geneva Conventions do not preclude the interrogation of persons deprived of liberty. However, since the detainees, particularly in Guantanamo Bay, have been subjected to unusually long periods of interrogation, the ICRC closely monitors the impact this has on them. Any interrogation has to be conducted in accordance with basic humanitarian standards.

“Beyond Bagram, Kandahar and Guantanamo Bay, the ICRC is increasingly concerned about the fate of an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held in undisclosed locations. For the ICRC, obtaining information on these detainees and access to them is an important humanitarian priority and a logical continuation of its current detention work in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Dialogue continues with the US authorities to resolve this issue.”

[Source: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList265/541ACF6DC88315C4C125700B004FF643]

Bruce 2:34 AM

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Wednesday, July 06, 2005

❄ Bush “harnessing greenhouse gases”

GW Bush told an ITV interviewer, in reference to global warming and climate change,

“I think you can grow your economy and at the same time do a better job of harnessing greenhouse gases. That’s exactly what I intend to talk to our partners about.”

Bush also said, of any possible G8 policy on climate change,

“If this looks like Kyoto, the answer is ‘no’. The Kyoto agreement would have wrecked our economy.”

[Source: ITV interview, 4 July 2005, reported in The Irish Times, 5 July 2005, and the International Herald Tribune, 5 July 2005.]

How will GW Bush’s peers go about explaining to him the difference between ‘harnessing’ greenhouse gases and ‘reining in’ greenhouse gas emissions? Or does he think that greenhouse gases are just another form of natural gas, and all you have to do is get it to the consumer?

Bruce 7:43 AM

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Saturday, June 25, 2005

❄ THE CASE OF MAHER ARAR

On 26 September 2002 Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who had once worked for a software company in Natick, Massachusetts, arrived at JFK airport in New York, planning to change planes to Montreal. He was detained by US authorities, questioned and jailed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Brooklyn, and deported on 10 October 2002 to Syria. After his release from Syria, Arar stated that he had been tortured while interrogated in Syrian jails. The On 11 November 2002 The New York Times cited Reynald Doiron, a Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade official, to the effect that US authorities had yet to explain on what basis Mr. Arar was sent back to Syria and not to Canada.

On 2 June 2005 The New York Times reported further on the Arar case:


“CANADA: INQUIRY TOLD OF U.S. OFFER ON DETAINEE. A Canadian senator, Pierre De Bané testified at a federal inquiry that before United States officials deported Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, to Syria in 2002, they offered to return him to Canada on the condition that he be arrested, charged and jailed on arrival. The inquiry is investigating what role Canadian officials may have played in Mr. Arar’s deportation to Syria, where, he says, he was jailed and tortured for 10 months. Mr. De Bané, who said he was told of the American offer by an official in the Foreign Affairs Ministry, said it was turned down because there were no grounds to arrest Mr. Arar. Colin Campbell (NYT).”

Bruce 7:07 PM

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❄ ADMINISTRATION ORDERED FLIMSY ORANGE ALERTS

Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security, told a Washington forum that, according to USA Today


“The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says.

“Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or ‘high’ risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled.”


USA Today explains that the alert level is raised if a majority of the President’s Homeland Security Advisory Council favors it and President Bush concurs.

(Source: Mimi Hall, USA Today, 10 May 2005. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-05-10-ridge-alerts_x.htm The USA Today report was also cited by Frank Rich, The New York Times, 29 May 2005.)

Bruce 7:01 PM

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Tuesday, May 17, 2005

❄ CLOSE THE AIR FORCE ACADEMY

The Base Realignment and Closure Commission has now received the Pentagon’s list of military bases and facilities proposed for closure. The BRCC may cut from the list, or add to it, before it goes to the Congress. So I propose they add the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado to the list for simple closure. Why?

No public higher education institution can do its job when so marked by violence against women and an exclusivist religious orthodoxy. Had the Air Force moved more quickly, more nimbly, more persuasively against its core problems we might imagine real change. Instead, it’s time to consider a fresh start.

What would that start look like? Consider a Joint Institute of Information Technology and Engineering, decentralized in several locations. One to consider is the former naval base at Treasure Island, in San Francisco Bay, which was shut in the last round of base closings but remains in federal hands—and would have access to some of the best teaching talent in coming technologies. The BRCC anticipated ‘jointness’ in the base closing recommendations: some sign that the Pentagon was truly committed to joint work among the service arms. Here, then, is an opportunity to prepare cadets for demands of the future including, but not confined to, prospective Air Force officers.

Once upon a time there was no Air Force Academy, and no Air Force, yet the Army and Navy built squadrons to fight WWII. We read that some of the pilots of today’s Air Force fly ‘unpiloted’ aerial vehicles from consoles thousands of miles away. The drift is to move pilots out of the cockpits. Nor do we need to train Buck Rogers clones to fight imaginary wars in space. The coming missions of the Air Force can be performed as well by women as by men, and it is against the national interest that women who seek Air Force leadership positions must run the gauntlet of the Air Force Academy. And it goes without saying that capture of a United States military academy by a sect undermines the idea of equal citizens and endangers the Constitution.

I seem to remember something about ‘zero base budgeting’, several decades ago. No part of government, it was argued, should be immune from asking “is the case for this function so compelling that the next best use of the funds should not be funded?” Shall we take a new look at the Air Force Academy?

Bruce 4:03 PM

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Monday, May 16, 2005

MORE on PUBLIC MEDIA INDEPENDENCE THREATENED

The New York Times reports, under the headline “NPR Conflict With Overseer Is Growing,” [and online headline “A Battle Over Programming at National Public Radio”] efforts by the Republican-controlled Corporation for Public Broadcasting to challenge the editorial independence of National Public Radio. An excerpt:

In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.

The corporation’s board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations ...

Bruce 12:26 PM

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Monday, May 02, 2005

❄ One-Party State  

I’ve spent more than 45 years studying the one-party state. I TA’d in courses on nationalism and Chinese intellectual history at Harvard, and my PhD was a study of Chinese foreign policy. My principal advisor was known for his book on Mao Zedong.

At the University of California at Santa Cruz, before retiring last June, I taught the course on Chinese politics, as well as courses on war, disarmament, and the courses ‘Politics of the Internet’ and ‘Politics of the ‘War on Terrorism’.’ In short, I’m a generalist on global politics, with special attention to the differences between the one-party state and practices of participatory democracy.

I’ve said in class—choosing to declare my views rather than teach from a position of pretended neutrality by silence—that I had seen three moves by current political practitioners in the United States to overthrow the constitution and replace it with one-party governance: [1] deliberate, concerted efforts to secure control of the Federal courts by placing right-wing loyalists on the US Supreme Court and federal Appeals Courts; [2] the effort to oust by an impeachment proceeding an elected president, William Clinton, by contrivance and engineering; and [3] securing the presidency in 2000 by electoral manipulation and use of the Supreme Court. So there should be no doubt about my position. I take Hillary Rodham Clinton’s claim there is a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to be fundamentally sound, though an uncommonly forthright assertion in US politics.

This is preamble to restarting this blog. If you go to the first item on the blog, it was prompted by the GW Bush administration’s efforts to bribe Turkey, with the money of US citizens,to bring about their cooperation in the illegal war against Iraq. As you know, the White House was unsuccessful: Turkey rejected the bribery attempt.

I’m restarting the blog because of two initiatives which came to my attention today. One is an apparent effort to seize political control of the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). The second is a proposal to invite all Americans to be informers, informing against anyone they encountered who might appear strange or endangering. You’ll recall Admiral Poindexter’s proposals for ‘Total Information Awareness’. So, what are the stories?

The New York Times today [Monday, 2 May 2005] reports that ... Well, here are the headlines and subheads, and a couple of sentences:

CHAIRMAN EXERTS PRESSURE ON PBS, ALLEGING BIASES

Cites a Need for Balance

Longtime Executives See Threat to Independence of Programming

[and from the body of the report]

“The Republican chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is aggressively pressing public television to correct what he and other conservatives consider liberal bias, prompting some public broadcasting leaders—including the chief executive of PBS—to object that his actions pose a threat to editorial independence.

“Without the knowledge of his board, the chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, contracted last year with an ouside consultant to keep track of the guests’s political leanings on one program, “Now With Bill Moyers.”
...

“ ... a successor for Kathleen A. Cox, the corporation’s president and chief executive, whose contract was not renewed last month. Mr. Tomlinson has made clear to the board that his choice is Patricia Harrison, a former co-chairwoman of the Republican National Committee who is now an assistant secretary of state ... ”

[Ms. Harrison was dispatched by the White House to the Department of State to refocus US propaganda abroad, not to practice diplomacy.]

Here’s the second item that has put me on alert. It appeared on the govexec.com web site, a byline article by Siobhan Gorman of the National Journal titled “DHS chief floats idea of collecting private citizens’s information.” She writes that “According to one techie who attended the April 27 [2005] meeting, Chertoff told the group, ‘Maybe we can create a nonprofit and track people’s activities, and an algorithm could red-flag indivbiduals. Then, the nonprofit could give us the names.”

This is simply the starkest notion how to get around Constitutional and legal protections of individual Constitutional and due process rights, since the State has been buying information from private contractors since 9.11. What is noteworthy here is that it comes from the head of DHS, even though the DHS press secretary sought to dismiss the issue as “a hypothetical question with a hypothetical answer.” [http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0405/042905nj1.htm]

These two practices—SYSTEMATIC CENSORSHIP and SURVEILLANCE BY INFORMERS—seem to me the defining acts of the oppressive one-party state. It’s not too late for citizens to voice their insistence on maintaining free speech, the privacy of conversations, due process, and electoral integrity. But any citizen who is uncertain about whether these four pillars are under assault—anyone who doesn’t believe that there is a concerted effort to undermine constitutional freedoms by a ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’—should seek out someone or some sources pointing to the key initiatives and their contexts. Each person must judge for herself or himself, but the crucial reports and texts are available to all—at least as long as Washington does not imitate the capital which systematically controls it’s citizens’s Web access.

Bruce 8:07 PM

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Monday, January 03, 2005

Tin Cup

GW Bush announced today a generous program to aid tsunami victims. GHW Bush and Bill Clinton will join in calling on Americans to contribute tsunami aid through existing organizations.

This is a brilliant idea!

If it is successful, it will ease pressure to spend additional public funds for tsunami relief.

Now, l