The prosecution of Diaz follows the pattern followed in other states by federal prosecutors, targeting popular Democratic officeholders, often on vague and ominous charges shortly before close elections. In Diaz's case, it was loans to his campaign by plaintiff lawyer Paul Minor, that the prosecutors claimed influenced Diaz and gave Minor an advantage when his cases came before the Mississippi Supreme Court. The problem with that theory was that Diaz had recused himself on every single case of Minor's and could not have possibly had anything to do with the outcome of Minor's cases.
The Raw Story recently featured an interview with Justice Diaz telling what happened. Every Mississippian with the slightest interest in what is going on in this state should read it:
Diaz: One of the main reasons that I feel that I as an individual was targeted rather than my conduct was targeted was because there were actually other judges that I served with who also had campaigns loans guaranteed by Paul Minor and these judges were not prosecuted. Specifically, the Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, Edwin Pittman, also had a campaign loan guaranteed by Paul Minor.
The main difference between me and Pittman was that Pittman voted in all of Minor’s cases and even authored opinions that were favorable to Minor and his clients while I did not participate. Now, I am not saying that Pittman did anything wrong. However, I could never understand, and it has never been explained to me, how his conduct and active participation and favorable rulings were ignored and I was indicted and prosecuted for bribery and I had never been involved in Minor’s cases.
The only reasonable explanation seems to be that prosecutors were more interested in specific individuals and not the conduct of an individual. James Thomas (who has since died) was another judge I served with who had a campaign loan guaranteed by Minor. Judge Thomas also participated in Minor’s cases and was not prosecuted. I do not believe, and do not want to be seen as implying, that Thomas did anything inappropriate, just that under similar circumstances I was prosecuted and others were not. Federal prosecutors were fully aware of these other loans but chose not to prosecute them, even though these judges ruled in Minor’s favor in cases before them. Again, I did not participate in any of Minor’s cases and was indicted and tried for bribery [and eventually exonerated]. The only reasonable explanation is that prosecutors were more interested in prosecuting particular individuals.
There are many facets to the story of the events surrounding the much-publicized trial of Diaz, Minor and state trial judges John Whitfield and Wes Teal, and hopefully someone will eventually write a book that weaves together the numerous threads spun by Karl Rove, the Justice Department, Dunn Lampton, and the FBI. When and if the whole story is told, it will likely be revealed as a part of a nationwide project by the Bush administration to use the justice system—judges, prosecutors, and the FBI—to further its own partisan political ends. It will not reflect well on any of the officials involved in the proceedings, least of all District Judge Henry Wingate, whose rulings on critical issues invariably favored the prosecution.
It will be interesting to see how General Petraeus manages to spin that reality in the coming weeks.FOREMAN: So Nir, we keep hearing reports, though, nonetheless out of Baghdad. People saying that give us time, we are trying to get this government worked out. We are going to make some progress. Do you see any way that can happen?
ROSEN: No. This has been the case for the past ... two years at least. There is no hope. There is no government. Neither side is interested in compromise and why should they? The Shias control Baghdad. They have removed the Sunnis from Baghdad, from Iraq's political future.
FOREMAN: What's going to change that if anything?
ROSEN: Nothing is going to change that.
I must eat humble crow as a prognosticator, however, having offered to bet anyone that Gonzales would leave the day that Bush leaves. I was flat wrong. I remained silent until now, because I didn't understand why I was so wrong. I still don't and neither the MSM or the blogosphere has helped to enlighten me.
Greg Palast believes that Karl Rove quit in order to work his dark magic for the next Republican presidential candidate, but I am skeptical of that explanation, since Rove's magic has dramatically faded in the last couple of years. That explanation, even if true for Rove, wouldn't explain Gonzales's exit, since Gonzales has no marketable skills beyond his willingness to betray every principle he swore to uphold if ordered by his boss to do so.
I briefly considered what one might call the Lew Alcindor substitution. As a graduate student at UNC Chapel Hill, I watched UCLA, on March 3, 1968, crush UNC for the NCAA Mens Division basketball championship. Most humiliating, though, was Alcindor's being taken out of the game long before it was over. Perhaps Bush is demonstrating that he doesn't need Gonzales any more—that he can act with impunity for the rest of the game without having the nations' chief prosecutor in his hip pocket.
The Alcindor explanation doesn't make much sense, either. Gonzales was Bush's insurance policy that covered his whole administration and he will not get another Gonzales confirmed by the Senate, even with the Democrats as feckless as they have been since returning to majority status.
It is difficult to believe that Gonzales left to avoid impeachment or because he was about to be indicted. He's the attorney general of the United States; without a special prosecutor, there is no way he will be indicted by his own department. The Democrats lack a sufficient majority in the Senate to remove Gonzales even if the House of Representatives voted to impeach.
Sidney Bumenthal, Writing in Salon, contends that Rove was the puppeteer pulling Gonzales's strings:
From the beginning of his rise with George W. Bush until the day of his abrupt resignation, Alberto Gonzales was anointed, directed and protected by Karl Rove. At the Department of Justice, Gonzales served as Rove's figurehead. In the real line of authority, the attorney general, a constitutional officer, reported to the White House political aide. Bush did not nickname Gonzales "Fredo," after the weak brother in "The Godfather," without reason.
As White House counsel and attorney general, Gonzales operated as the rubber stamp of the two great goals of the Bush presidency -- the concentration of unaccountable power in the executive and the subordination of executive departments and agencies to partisan political imperatives. Vice President Cheney directed the project for the imperial presidency, while Rove took charge of the top-down politicization of the federal government. Gonzales dutifully signed memos abrogating the Geneva Conventions against torture, calling them "quaint," and approved the dismissal of U.S. attorneys for insufficient partisan zeal.
Thus when Rove left, goes the argument, Gonzales the puppet collapsed.
There may be some truth in this. Gonzales is clearly not the sharpest tack in the box, and his usefulness to the Bush administration largely rested on his unswerving loyalty and obedience to Bush, Cheney and Rove.
Still, there is something extremely odd about all these people close to the president leaving 17 months before the end of the administration that makes me feel that there is more to these departures than what has been said up to now. Too many dogs are not barking in the night. This blogger is not privy to what Washington whispers, but something tells me that Gonzales's departure is related to Rove's departure and that this is a big deal.
Time will tell.
Of course, we all believe what he told Paul Gigot—that he sincerely desires more quality time with his family back in Texas.
We also believe that pigs fly.
Addicts to power don't resign voluntarily, and Mr. Rove certainly qualifies as such an addict, along with nearly everyone of significance in the White House. It therefore goes without saying that Mr. Rove was asked to resign by George W. Bush, and, given Bush's friendship and almost total reliance on Rove for political advice—which in this strange government has come to mean the same as policy advice—Bush's decision to dump Rove portends a political development of tectonic magnitude.
It is unlikely that Rove is being let go for failing to win the 2006 elections, or that his policies might lead the Republican Party to disaster in 2008. Bush is a lame duck president and, besides having nothing to lose in 2008, has shown no dissatisfaction with Rove's shortcomings.
It briefly crossed my mind that Bush, approaching the end of his presidency, is contemplating how to make the transition from controversial and almost universally loathed psychopath into a widely-admired, wise elder statesman, and may have realized that being closely associated with the junkyard dog that is Karl Rove is rapidly becoming a liability. This is unlikely, however, because Bush doesn't operate that way. Rove's strategy was the major reason that Bush became president, and Bush has shown a mafia-like loyalty to his friends and benefactors far beyond what one would reasonably expect from a person with his sense of entitlement. Bush wouldn't have fired Rove unless he absolutely had to.
Besides, Rove knows all the White House dirt, especially since he is responsible for much of it. Given Congress's complacency towards Bush's known impeachable acts, it is difficult to imagine anything that Karl Rove might reveal that would make much difference. Some offenses, however, while not as damaging to the constitutional fabric as Bush's expansion of executive power, have the power, if revealed, to provoke such a degree of popular outrage on the gut level that the resulting outcry would compel Congress to act. Since Rove undoubtedly has knowledge of such behavior on the part of Bush, Cheney and others, Bush would not fire him lightly, irrespective of any feelings of loyalty.
There is a strong possibility that Rove has good reason to know that the Bush administration is about to sink and that he had best jump before he goes under with the rest of the crew. As one of the principal navigators responsible for sailing the ship of state into an iceberg, he stands to shoulder much of the blame when it goes down.
Whatever the reason for Rove's departure, this is a big deal. We just don't know quite yet how big.
I am utterly disgusted and pessimistic. This really seemed like a no-brainer.
Update: Democrat Gene Taylor, U. S. Representative from the 4th District of Mississippi (Gulf Coast) voted for this abominable bill, which was passed by the House yesterday. Thanks, Gene, for giving away some more of our freedoms under the pretense of protecting them. You failed us utterly.
Representative Bennie Thompson did the right thing.
Republicans Lott, Cochran, Wicker and Pickering voted like the administration whores they are, which came as no surprise whatever.
House of Representatives Roll Call Vote
Senate vote not available on Thomas
This week was the last straw. Gonzales gave the finger to the Congress and the rest of the nation and Bush ratified that finger. The president should fire Gonzalez, and if he doesn't the solicitor general should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate him. If that doesn't happen, then Congress should impeach.
As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales’s talk about a dispute over other — unspecified — intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it “different” from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up.
Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.
If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.
New York Times: Mr. Gonzales's Never-Ending Story
Bush has finally demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty that he is not simply a bad president, but a knave, and that there is nothing he will not do to preserve his power and the power of his close supporters. That much of the mass media have not yet reached this conclusion—at least openly—is testimony to its stupidity and corruption.
For the first time in a political career notable for lack of compassion towards convicts, Bush has commuted Scooter Libby's sentence long before his conviction has been affirmed on appeal, for the obvious reason that that the sound of the cell doors closing behind him might have persuaded Libby to spill the beans on Karl Rove, vice president, Dick "Go fuck yourself" Cheney, or even the president himself.
With a sufficient robo-Republican minority in the Senate Bush can defeat any impeachment proceedings, We hanged Nazis at Nürnberg for doing exactly what Bush has done: attacking a nation that was no threat to either its neighbors or the United States. If he cannot be impeached for lying the nation into an illegal war he is virtually immune from being removed from office, no matter how heinous his crimes
Since the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia is charged with prosecuting contempt of Congress charges, Bush, through his buddy Gonzales, can squech any efforts by Congress to enforce its subpoenas through the judicial system.
That leaves only the inherent contempt power of Congress, which can send its sergeant-at-arms to arrest a recalcitrant official and haul him/her before the appropriate chamber to be held in contempt. Anyone want to make bets on what will happen if the sergeant-at-arms of the house attempts to arrest Karl Rove or Dick Cheney? The thought of such a confrontation is enough to sicken this constitutionalist and small-r republican.
The nation is presently as close to a coup as it has ever been. The institutions of our government are being stressed to the breaking point.
Let us pray that they hold.
Remember one caviat: Over the past six years the Washington Post has printed most of its political ink in support of the Bush Administration, including some of its most idiotic and counterproductive policies. The really important information to be conveyed by these articles will be the information that is left out.
We wrote in 2000:
Like corporations, like governments.Jungian psychology often refers to the "shadow," meaning that part of the personality that is rejected and repressed but which still exists and exerts a deep influence upon the conscious ego. Likewise, organizations may be usefully imagined as casting a corporate shadow--institutional issues and facts that by tacit agreement don't exist in the corporate consciousness. It's easy to ascertain the shadow of your own organization; make a list of issues, events and things that cannot be mentioned, let alone discussed. Often these unmentionables are extremely important to the life of the organization, and ignoring them can spell institutional disaster, either from within or without. Nevertheless, the organization achieves a stable identity, a corporate ego, by denying and refusing to consider issues, events and things that threaten the corporate identity. Like the human ego, the corporate ego perceives the raising of those issues as a threat to its very existence and reacts in ways that from the outside often seem irrational and self-destructive. What is being preserved is not the organization but its ego, which has identified itself with the whole organization.
Of course, the Republicans must nominate somebody that's electable, and the present herd of contenders is pitiful at best.
On the other hand, it was obvious in 2000 that George W. Bush had absolutely nothing to bring to the presidency beyond his family name, but, nevertheless, a shade under half the electorate was willing not only to overlook his monumental shortcomings but to invest him with virtues he did not even remotely possess. One can only hope that the electorate is wiser as well as sadder now that it has become impossible to ignore the bitter fruits of its willful foolishness bordering on collective insanity.
Palast is the author of Armed Madhouse: From Baghdad to New Orleans--Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of a White House Gone Wild
in an updated paperback edition. The
JP has reviewed the original edition.
Read Palast's interview with Buzzflash.
You read it here: Gonzales will cease to be the attorney general of the United States on the day that George W. Bush ceases to be president, which is almost certain to be January 20, 2009.
The reason (for the tenth time): Bush, Cheney and Rove are toast if Gonzales goes. A Democratic congress will not confirm another Gonzalez willing to obstruct justice the way Gonzales has. The next attorney general will not have as his raison d'etre the protection at all costs of Bush and Company. So don't look for Gonzales to be replaced.
The media are playing games with the American public over this issue.
Everyone has their own theory about why those six were fired, but here are the principal ones:
- To make way for administration-favored lawyers to pad their resumes with the prestigious position. This is one of the reasons advanced by the administration;
- To eliminate attorneys not willing to bring frivolous voter fraud cases against Democrats shortly before elections. The fact that most of the fired attorneys were located in highly contested states supports this thesis;
- To kill investigations and prosecutions of Republicans for corruption and install U. S. Attorneys who would instead prosecute Democrats;
- This is related to the previous reason: To stop Carol Lamm, U. S. Attorney in San Diego, from further investigations and prosecutions of Republican corruption. Under this theory, the remaining firings were merely a smokescreen to obscure the real objective of the administration, which feared that Lamm would follow the trail of corruption higher and higher in the administration.
Corruption on a grand scale cannot be hidden without an infrastructure of corrupt law enforcement that ignores graft and abuses of power and concentrates its resources on red herrings like voter fraud or election fraud. The current federal prosecution of Paul Minor and two judges for bribery here in Jackson is a typical example of what the Bushites like. Minor, a wealthy trial lawyer, has been contributing to Democratic campaigns for many years, so a conviction on just one count would tar the image of the plaintiffs' bar and eliminate Minor's influence in future elections. Since one of the financial mainstays of the Democratic party is plaintiffs' lawyers, anything that reduces their influence or income helps the Republicans. Thus the intense lobbying for tort "reform" designed to eliminate the large judgments that have allowed the trial lawyers to be a political force on behalf of the common man. Interestingly enough, the prosecutors in the Minor trial are from the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. This is an important case for the Bushites.
For that reason, it is highly unlikely that Bush will fire his longtime crony Gonzales, no matter how much heat he takes. Gonzales is the one official that can protect Bush, Cheney, Rove and the rest of the criminal conspiracy from exposure. Gonzales is the one official that can prevent an FBI investigation or kill one that comes too close. Bush will throw all his other minions under the bus before he fires Gonzales, because a Democratic Senate will not confirm another Gonzales. This is so important that it bears repeating:
As long as Bush can control the Justice Department, the only remedy for his crimes is impeachment, and although Bush's crimes might be heinous and proven beyond a reasonable doubt, there are not enough Republicans in the Senate with the integrity, intelligence, or courage to vote for impeachment.A Democratic Senate will not confirm another Gonzales.
Under those circumstances, Bush would have to be even stupider that I thought to fire Gonzales. I don't think he's that stupid.
That says everything, doesn't it?Incidentally, in the "is-it-funny or scary" category, I note that President Bush in his address commented that U.S. attorneys are "decent people. They serve at our pleasure."
The question arises: Why don't the Sunnis and Shiites temporarily make up until the U.S. troops leave, after which they can fight it out or come to terms with each other? Nothing would be more persuasive of withdrawal than a united Iraqi government that pacifies Iraq and gives the Americans no reason to stay. In other words, to get the U.S. forces out of Iraq, the different sides must bury their differences and unite. The logic is impeccable. Iraqis are not so stupid or so blinded by religious prejudice that they don't see this, and it is foolish to think otherwise.
So what's the problem? Why are the Iraqis, especially the Sunnis, so hostile to the U.S. and the Shia when all they have to do is come together and ask the U.S. to leave?
It's because no one in Iraq believes that the U.S. intends to ever leave. Accepting this proposition changes the political equation drastically in terms of how each side calculates the costs and benefits of each course of action.
If the U.S. forces stay in Iraq, the U.S. will not allow a sovereign and strong democratic government to rule Iraq, because the first thing a popular government will do is ask the U.S. to leave. Once the U.S. leaves, it will then do whatever is necessary to appropriate its vast oil resources for the benefit of Iraq and the Iraqi people, not for the benefit of the international oil corporations like ExxonMobil and BP.
Second, the withdrawal of U.S. forces will ultimately lead to Iraqi sovereignty over the oil fields, even if a civil war intervenes. Whoever comes out on top will take over the oil industry in Iraq. This would be true even if another bloodthirsty dictator like Saddam Hussein seizes power.
It is good bet that Bush plans never to leave Iraq. The U.S. is constructing huge bases, which clearly points to a long-term occupation whose object is the control of Iraq's oil, either to assure the U.S. a stable supply of oil (the popular view), or to keep Iraq from driving down the price of oil, which would hurt the oil companies that are the mainstay of the Bush administration.
Under those circumstances, what is the logical strategy for the Sunnis, the Shiites and the Kurds, given the assumption that the Bush administration plans to occupy Iraq indefinitely?
The Kurds, under the present situation, can have their cake and eat it, too. They control the north, which includes the major oil fields around Kirkuk, and they have been left alone by the U.S. for the most part. Their long-term objectives are independence and appropriation of oil revenues from the oil fields in their region. At the moment, they are getting neither, but they can afford to wait. The U.S will not permit exclusive Kurdish control of the oil fields and Turkey will not permit an independent Kurdish state. Having been given a free reign in their area, they can afford to wait and watch what happens in the south. They clearly have no interest in a unified Iraq under the control of any central government. Having been betrayed over and over by every nation around them, including the U.S., they are not inclined to trust anyone for their security.
The Shiites, although they want the U.S. to leave eventually, are politically in a strong position. They form the majority of the population. The U.S. has handed the government over to them, but they are discovering that there is little substance to the government they have been given. At best, this is a relatively quiet interlude in which they can position themselves to suppress the Sunnis and Baathists when the Americans leave. They can afford to bide their time.
The Sunnis, on the other hand, have nothing to gain from any possible scenario that the U.S. would allow in Iraq. They can expect nothing but oppression under the Shiites or the Kurds, whom they oppressed under Saddam. They are being ethnically cleansed from their neighborhoods in Baghdad. They have been all but banned from participation in the puppet government. The only course of action left to them is to drive the U.S. out of Iraq using the resources available to them, and those resources have turned out to be formidable indeed. It is likely that Saddam's general staff is intact, as well as the command structure of his secret police. They would be in a good position to seize power when the U.S. leaves.
This puts the Bushites in an impossible position. There is simply no way to squelch the insurgency short of putting 500,000 troops on the ground, and even that number is probably insufficient. A draft (which isn't going to happen, now that Congress is Democratic) would take years to produce a sufficient number of trained combat troops. The "surge" now being executed by Bush is no more than a stunt and would be almost comical were it not for the extreme gravity of the current situation.
In addition to the four parties mentioned above—U.S. forces, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds—there two other groups that have an interest and an influence on what happens in Iraq: private contractors and the major oil companies.
This is the first war in which practically all support functions have been privatized, to include a sizable contingent of combat personnel--mercenaries, in other words. The largest corporations, such as Halliburton, Dyncorp, and Bechtel are only the visible tip of the iceberg. They are raking in literally billions and tens of billions of dollars on this war and thus they have a strong interest in keeping it going as long as possible with as little oversight over spending as they can arrange. They have influence in Washington, especially in the White House, which has used the contracts as a form of patronage, granting them without bidding and awarding them only to Republicans. They are a strong force pushing the administration to stay the course.
The other party with a stake in the Iraq War is big oil, which has experienced its largest profits in history from the rise in energy prices. They don't need Iraq's oil assets, at least for now. In fact, they want Iraqi oil to stay out of the world market, where it has the potential to cause a collapse in oil prices. Greg Palast has written extensively on this subject and the evidence he brings to the table is persuasive that Iraq's oil has been the subject of a political battle between the neocons, who want to auction off the oil fields to private companies, and the major oil companies, who want a single Iraqi oil company that can control production and play the price game. They don't want the oil so much as they want to control production. They would be happy with a puppet government in Iraq.
There is one more party in this war that I nearly forgot: the American public, which has had quite enough of the war and is finally beginning to see through all the deception and lies used to gain public consent to the invasion. The public now wants the war to be over and no longer believes that the war is worth all the death, suffering and sacrifice that is being asked of it. Barring a meltdown in the Democratic party over the next two years, the public will elect a Democrat for president and a strongly Democratic house and senate that will end the war on whatever terms it can get.
Bush, his administration and his corporate masters will never attain their objective: a puppet government in Iraq able to keep order and which permits the major oil corporations to control its oil fields. Such an outcome would have been difficult to attain under the best of circumstances by a competent, corruption-free American government. Not only has Bush violated international law in attacking a nation that was no threat to the U.S., a crime for which we hanged Nazis after WWII, but in his utter incompetence and his indifference to gross and widespread corruption, he has thrown away any opportunities the invasion might have presented. The American occupation of Iraq is now on course to a catastrophic, costly, and bitter end. An attack on Iran will only hasten the end in Iraq and even in Afghanistan.
Our story tells us who we are as a people. It delineates our values. It assigns us a place among the nations of the earth.
It also designates and characterizes our enemies. Whom we call enemies and what we think about the people, groups and nations that we call enemies is part of our story and it defines us just as much as what we call ourselves. It may be even more accurate, since the enemy is as much projection of our own unacknowledged dark side as it is an objective description of the actual enemy.
It's always been the philosophy of the JP that when intelligent people seem to be doing everything wrong and failing egregiously in what they are supposed to be doing, you are probably judging their behavior by the wrong scoring system. Ordinary expat contends that Iraq (and now Iran) are just so much meat thrown to the ignorant masses to distract from their real objective.
The only remedy to this state of affairs is to stop allowing BCR, Inc. (Bush, Cheney and Rove — convenient symbols for the fascist kleptocracy that is in control of the executive branch) to write our story for us. We can do this only by writing our own story, a story based on reality. This is all the more important since members of the power elite (BCR, Inc.) eventually come to believe the story they originally foisted upon us, a story divorced from reality.We have made it clear that most of us can be entertained forever by a cartoon reality that reduces the real complexity of life to the level of the Simpsons, --or Rush Limbaugh. We’re the market, folks. BCR Inc. just supplies the product.
It worked for a long time- it kept us occupied, and, with well-chosen archetypes as key parts of the story, it provided apparent justification for a raft of moves that consolidated executive power to an unprecedented degree. Now it is failing as a story. Now resistance to further power accumulation is growing. They need a new story. That will be Iran.
Isolated and unable to think out of the box- in a real systems fashion- the theocon and the cynical pol share the huge blind spot of coming to think their own fabricated stories ARE reality, instead of sucker bait. Fortunately for us, there is a wider world, a world where, after enough public catastrophe and elite contempt, Mussolini ends up strung up on a lamppost. A wider world view that makes a fair try at including the complexities of human society works better. It is still very flawed, but the secular, early systems thinking that brought us the US Constitution, quantum theory and the French health care system worked. We need to stop wasting time chewing on the bait BCR inc. throws us.
Read the article and ponder.
Blumenthal's description of Rice as an enabler for Bush is an astute characterization of a relationship that is looking more and more like a destructive psychological codependency
Bush is not an unintelligent man, but the incontrovertible evidence before our very eye compels the conclusion that he is a fool at best and a dangerous psychopath at worst. The damage he has done to the nation and the world cannot begun to be repaired until he leaves office.
Sidney Blumenthal: Washington's Political Cleansing
It is simply incomprehensible that some right-wing, supposedly "Christian" organizations publicly approve of torture, as long as the persons tortured are "them," and not "us." It all goes to prove the proposition that churches (or any other religious bodies) should never be permitted to have political power; they cannot resist the third temptation of Christ. Mat. 4: 8-10:The appearance of legal torture as part of the American landscape is a profound change, and certainly signals the approach of the totalitarian state, though it may not herald its actual arrival. And considering that a right-wing regime is involved, discussing the specter of fascism is not only appropriate but necessary.
Even if it does not signal the actual arrival of fascism, it's the clearest warning sign of its approach yet. Torture is a quintessentially fascist act; codifying it means that the massive brick in the wall that it represents has been plunked into place. And it's the kind of brick that can be the cornerstone of a massive national pathology of apocalyptic proportions.
After all, they have always had ways of making us talk. Now they have the legal power to do so too.
I am ashamed to say that I have not heard a word about the torture bill from the pulpit of my own mainstream church.Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; 9 and he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Jesus said to him, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written,
‘Worship the Lord your God,
and serve only him.’ ” (NRSV)
Tags: torture, legislation, fascism, Geneva, Christian
None of the substitutes evokes the same feelings as "terrorism" and "terrorist," although the substitutes might describe them more accurately. It is because the terms insurgent, guerilla, jihadist and partisan are far more concrete and specific. The administration has refused to tell us just what a terrorist is, for two very good reasons:
First, it gives the president the unprecedented and unchecked discretion to label a person a terrorist and deprive him of the protections of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva Conventions. That degree of power we usually associate with a dictatorship, not a republic.
Second, and more importantly, terrorism only has power when we give it power—by projecting our own shadow onto an enemy about which we know very little. Terrorism makes us fearful because it resists definition, and that is no accident. It is difficult, if not impossible, to project such evils onto ordinary men and women or even insurgents or jihadists. The target of projection cannot be too familiar, because projection becomes impossible in such a situation. Demonized persons are too likely to turn into real people when we come to know them.
Strictly speaking, a terrorist is one who strikes with the primary purpose of making us fearful. For him, the deaths of the innocent are a secondary consideration. If he fills us with terror, he succeeds, because fearful people are people whose judgment is impaired. Fearful people are easily manipulated by crafty politicians against their own interests.
When we refuse to be afraid of the terrorist, he is utterly defeated. We don't have to lift a finger.
There is no rational reason to be fearful of a terrorist attack. The danger to the average American citizen of a terrorist attack is miniscule. There are too many other things that deserve our attention. Yes, there is a small possibility that one might be killed by a terrorist, but one is far more likely to die in an automobile accident or even from influenza.
So ask yourself, has Bush or his minions even once told the American people not to fear? To be of good courage? To keep a stiff upper lip?
No. At every opportunity he has stoked that fear. He has no interest in defeating the terrorists or wiping out terrorism. It took serious creative work on the part of countless politicians, military officers, right-wing think tanks, television networks, and neocons to create an enemy evil and mysterious enough to replace communism and the Soviet Union, which may be one of the reasons that Bush chose not to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora. Why kill a perfectly serviceable enemy that can be recycled over and over to scare the American public, whose short and selective memory makes it so susceptible to this kind of repeated demagoguery?
H.L. Mencken said it best:
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, also comes to mind.
Tags: terrorism, terrorist, Osama Bin Laden, courage, projection
On a more serious note, Bush's acceptance of responsibility reminds me of Richard Nixon's acceptance of responsibility for the Watergate mess: words meant to sound repentant but spoken with no intention of doing anything different or correcting the behavior that caused the problem.
Acceptance of responsibility means more than merely mouthing words; it means that one willingly bears the just consequences of one's malfeasance or nonfeasance, which in this case ought to be the loss of office and the disgrace that ordinarily accompanies such a breach of trust.
Nixon wouldn't resign until impeachment and loss of office were inevitable. It looks like Bush is following the same philosophy: apologize but stay the course.
Bush fooled a large part of this nation into believing that we could invade Iraq on the cheap, cut taxes for the wealthy and shrink government without having to endure the cost of a war, a burgeoning deficit, inadequate public services and decaying infrastructure.
Bush lied. Katrina exposed the lie and showed him to be a liar, along with the rest of his administration and the Republican majority in Congress. There is no truth in them.
When Bush became president, FEMA was a cabinet-level department, staffed with experienced and capable managers, and adequately funded to handle serious national disasters. When Katrina struck, some four and a half years after this nation entrusted itself to the care of George W. Bush, FEMA was a cash-starved shell of its previous self, staffed by political hacks, without access to the president, and as a consequence totally incompetent and unwilling to do what needed to be done before and after Katrina. By August 2005, the agency personnel who knew what to do had left in frustration, as life and death matters came to be decided on political grounds, rather than mission requirements.
The pattern has been repeated throughout the federal government. Bush has nothing but contempt for competence; loyalty to the administration is everything. Cabinet-level departments are being run by politically reliable appointees who know nothing about the organizations they are supposed to manage. It takes years and years to develop expertise within a government agency , but less than four years to destroy it. Whoever succeeds Bush, Republican or Democrat, will be faced with the almost impossible task of restoring these agencies to functioning.
To the folks in Mississippi who feel they must be loyal to the Republican Party: It's OK to be loyal to a football team that has losing seasons, because that kind of loyalty is harmless and enjoyable. It's OK to be loyal to your family and friends because we are bound to them by ties that make their welfare a part of our welfare.
A political party, however, is not a family; It's not a football team. Its actions have consequences far beyond family, friends and football team. Our loyalty to a political party ought to depend entirely on how competently and honestly it carries on the work of the people. There is no place for sentimentality or foolish loyalty to a den of thieves, and that is what the Republican Party has shown itself to be, time and time again since 1994 when it took control of both houses of Congress.
In 2000, FEMA was a cabinet-level functioning agency that would have made a huge difference before and after Katrina had struck. The proof of the pudding is in the eating thereof. Bush destroyed FEMA and did not replace it with anything else that could have fulfilled its mission. One year after Katrina, New Orleans is unprepared for another major hurricane and the Mississippi Gulf Coast is still a shambles with little prospect of rapid recovery. The facts speak for themselves; New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast are not priorities for the Bush administration.
The resources that should have been devoted to rebuilding the devastation and preparing for future hurricanes were and are being poured down a rathole on the other side of the world, with nothing to show for it but high gas prices and body-bags being shipped into Dover AFB under cover of darkness. It is time to wake up and smell the latrine. George W. Bush, his administration, and his party are no friends of Mississippi.
Greg Palast reveals more of the corruption and criminal negligence of the Bush administration on Katrina.
Up to two-thirds of the Army's combat brigades are not ready for wartime missions, largely because they are hampered by equipment shortfalls, Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday, citing unclassified documents.In a letter to President Bush, Rep. Ike Skelton of Missouri, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said that "nearly every non-deployed combat brigade in the active Army is reporting that they are not ready" for combat. The figures, he said, represent an unacceptable risk to the nation.
At a news conference, other leading Democrats said that those strategic reserve forces are critically short of personnel and equipment.
"They're the units that could be called upon or would be called upon to go to war in North Korea, Iran, or any other country or region," said Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., a decorated Marine who has called for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.
The Congress and the American people have been warned time and time again that our military strength is being systematically hollowed out by the administration's cannibalizing the home-front units in order to keep the forces going in Iraq.
Now, dear reader: think the unthinkable and imagine that from the standpoint of the Bush administration things are going just as planned and that its intent is to hollow out our regular armed forces and render them impotent. Let us imagine further: if the right-wingers in Washington, D.C. wanted to toss the Constitution overboard and establish some kind of authoritarian corporate state, the U.S. military as it stands now would be the biggest obstacle to a takeover; our soldiers swear to uphold the Constitution, not the president or the Congress. But ship all the weapons and ordinance overseas and destroy the morale of the domestic troops, and a well-managed paramilitary force formed from private "security" services and militarized police forces could become a Praetorian Guard in fact, if not in name.
New Orleans after Katrina is a chilling example. It was swarming with heavily-armed paramilitaries hired by by the rich and powerful, ostensibly to keep order, but in fact terrorizing the people that stayed, even in neighborhoods that had not been flooded. The National Guard is supposed to keep order in the event of natural disasters, but Louisiana's National Guard had been stripped by the Bush administration of the personnel and equipment it needed to do the job. So instead, New Orleans got soldiers of fortune with no loyalty to anyone but their paymasters. There are names for this method of keeping order, and none of them are good.
Lebanon was nearly destroyed by private armies within memory.
So be concerned, very concerned, but don't be afraid. They want you to be afraid so that you trade your freedom for a little security. It's the eternal con game; fools and cowards are the marks, as usual.
If you want some insight into the soul of the 21st Century Republican Party, consider that one of the their finest, Sen. Arlen Specter, has introduced a bill that is supposed to rectify the situation. Exactly why the situation needs to be rectified is not clear; the statute, on the other hand, is quite clear. If it wants to listen in on American citizens, the executive branch must explain to the FISA court why it feels the need to do so and the court must grant permission, which it invariably does.
From the Robo-Republican viewpoint, however, the problem is the law, not that the president has violated the law. They want to solve the problem by changing the law, not reining in the executive branch, which is what the law was intended to do in the first place.
The bill is a sham. It gives the president the power to ignore the law.
Specter is a scoundrel, along with any other Republican or Democrat that supports this bill.
References:
Balkinization: Specter Gives Up the Game-- The Sham NSA Bill
Feral Scholar (Stan Goff): Spectral Security
USA Today ignored Democratic criticism of Specter's FISA proposal