Ambition Makes You Look Pretty Ugly...

Title lyrics from Radiohead's "Paranoid Android."

One of the most frustrating facets of any conversation with fervent opponents of President Obama is their unwillingness or inability to see that they are pretty much railing against an administration they were supporting just 8-plus months ago. Indeed, they never seem to argue against Obama as currently constituted, but instead against an apparition of a presidency that had no shot of ever materializing in the first place.

Just as the American left continues to huff the intoxicating fumes of a primary season long since past, the right continues to focus its ire on a fanciful combination of standard political rhetoric and old-fashioned scaremongering. Neither seems to understand that the Obama of the imagination, that master of oratory who would sweep us into an age of world peace and harmony and convert the United States into a vast Utopia, existed only in the minds of those who chose to believe it out of desperation and those that needed it as a large, slow-moving target at which to foist all angst and antagonism.

The reality is, as always, a lot more pedestrian. To the delight of the right, it seems that you don't need a real liberal Leviathan to stir the masses; a mirage works just as well. But for the left, the Inauguration hangover seems to linger. But, as Tom Engelhardt and David Swanson noted, it has been difficult to distinguish Obama's 8 months from a third Bush term. I also discussed some glaring similarities a month prior, but there are plenty more. To wit:

Obama's campaign continually called for a return to transparency in government. A return to the rule of law. Ad infintum. Ad nauseum. He called Bush's use of signing statements an "abuse." Yet, Obama has already committed such "abuses" several times during his presidency, drawing criticism from members of both parties. His defense is of course a familiar refrain: The statements "have been based on mainstream interpretations of the Constitution and echo reservations routinely expressed by presidents of both parties" and "he could disregard the negotiation instructions under his power to conduct foreign relations." In other words: "Screw off, Congress."

The really titillating part of that defense is the "routinely expressed" part. There are many things that have been done by previous presidents, but repetition does not exonerate. And lest we forget, that theorem goes against what seemed to constitute the only plank in his platform, namely a break from the past.

During the campaign, Obama also promised to curb government abuses regarding prisoners in the War on Amorphous Nouns. Despite all the handwringing from Cheney et al, there was never any danger of mass prosecutions for the torture of American prisoners at Guantanamo or elsewhere.

First, never in American history has a government leader been prosecuted for such crimes. Clowns like Jim Traficant can go down, but never for something that calls the whole system into question. Never for proxy wars in Latin America. Never for funneling arms to Islamic terrorists (when convenient). And, as we shall see, never for strapping live leads to someone's genitals. (And really, it's not difficult to agree with the thought that we'd have to do some real soul searching and research to determine whether that does indeed cross some line. Cause, you know, moral lines are hazy.)

This instance won't be any different. At most, we'll be offered up some sacrificial lambs/bad apples who'll be pardoned shortly thereafter. The left's fantasy of prosecutions of Cheney or Rumsfeld are never going to happen. But even in tossing a small sliver of acquiescence to opponents of US interrogation policy, Obama has effectively validated Bush policy.

Though there may be an investigation of sorts, Obama has declared that only those that went beyond the policies instituted by the Bush administration qualify for discipline. In other words, John Yoo's memos are the effective law. There will be no question as to the legality of that one-man legislation. So, while constantly proposing a radical shift from Bush-era policy in speeches, Obama validates and solidifies it in practice.

The same goes for dragnet surveillance, with the administration claiming that the federal government is immune from litigation because of Bush-era legislation. The illegality of its actions have no bearing here. Obama, like his predecessor, claims that by definition if the government does something, it is legal. Three cheers for change.

Returning to US detention policy, Obama seems to have discovered that Bush set him up quite nicely in that arena:

The Obama administration has decided not to seek new legislation from Congress authorizing the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges at at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Wednesday.

Instead, the administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.

It gets better:

But President Obama’s advisers are not embracing the more disputed Bush contention that the president has inherent power under the Constitution to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely regardless of Congress.

The Justice Department said in a statement Wednesday night that “the administration would rely on authority already provided by Congress” under the use of force resolution. “The administration is not currently seeking additional authorization,” the statement said.

Contrary to that claim, this position is not a switch from Bush policy. Bush used that same legislation to justify almost every action he took. Indeed, he was prepared to use that same legislation to go to war in Iraq, until it became evident that a hastily-prepared October vote in an election year would be even more politically beneficial.

Here, the administration is hiding right out in the open. Far from a reversal of Bush policy, the Obama administration is effectively thanking Bush for giving it so much leeway in foreign policy, war-making and wholesale suspension of Constitutional clauses. I'm sure that change is here somewhere. Maybe I just don't know where to look.

How about health care? Surely such an avid socialist like Obama would scare the piss out of the insurance companies with his speech to Congress, right? Well, not so much:

Shares of U.S. health insurers climbed on Thursday after analysts saw no "game changers" from President Barack Obama's highly anticipated speech on health reform.

Following the speech, analysts predicted any changes to the system would be moderate, with Obama backing many initiatives put forth earlier this week by a leading Senate committee. The possibility a threatening public health plan would be enacted also now seemed doubtful, analysts said.

"There wasn't anything said that is drastically changing the outlook as to what might come out of Congress," said Steve Shubitz, an analyst with Edward Jones.

You read that correctly. After the speech, stocks of insurance companies rose. Despite of all the rhetoric and scaremongering, the investors took away from that speech pretty much what I did. Namely, that anything that comes out of a health care bill will actually be a boon for the insurance companies.

First and foremost being the individual mandate. Why wouldn't the insurance companies love that? Everyone has no choice but to pay them (go free market!), but any supposed government competition will never materialize. Those that can't afford the insurance will simply have their premiums paid to the private companies by the government. Somewhere, Ronald Reagan is wiping a tear from his eye with muted applause.


Related:

When You Were Here Before...Couldn't Look You in the Eye Aug 9, 2009
Conventional Folly August 20, 2008
What Orwell Didn't Know August 1, 2008

Sphere: Related Content

Bushian Rhetoric in Action: Iraq Pullout

Remember kids: A 'timetable' for withdrawal of American troops, bad. A 'time horizon' for the same, good. It may seem a semantic argument to most of us, but in the bi-polar reality of American politics the difference becomes amplified by virtue of from whence it emanates. That is, whether the speaker is branded with an 'R' or a 'D.'

President Bush agreed to “a general time horizon” for withdrawing American troops in Iraq, the White House announced Friday, in a concession that reflected both progress in stabilizing Iraq and the depth of political opposition to an open-ended military presence in Iraq and at home.

Combined with the admission of the true state of Afghanistan, the administration is slowly vindicating the opinions of those it has shouted down and stonewalled for the last five years, even if it is hesitant to admit it.

The suggestion of troop withdrawal presents itself as the administration's admission of the flailing status of negotiations over the long-term presence it was attempting to foist onto Iraq, which was more prepared for the onslaught than Bush had hoped. I have documented the details of that agreement in some depth. As per usual, the administration would never frame it as such, but the truth can easily be inferred, a practice which everyone should be well acquainted with by now.

The article cited presents its own frustrations, namely the nasty habit of our stenographer press to instantly parrot whatever meaningless term the administration bestows upon something to blur its true meaning. In a country with an ostensibly free press, one would assume that journalists would be capable of replacing the term 'time horizon' with 'timetable' so as not to play the administration's hand for them. It's obvious why the administration would avoid the latter term, as they have consistently called anyone in support of it cowards or worse. The press, however, is under no obligation to adhere to the administration's semantic gamesmanship.

This tactic has been seen in the past, both in the run-up to the Iraq invasion and after, most recently when every journalist began using the term 'special groups,' on precisely the same day the administration gave them their cue so as to blur the lines between the Iranian-backed Shiite militias we oppose and the Iranian-backed Shiite militias we support. Americans have been granted a free press by the Constitution. The next step is to find journalists who care to exercise that right. The government can do its own dissembling, it doesn't need a complicit press for aid.


Related:

Iraq SOFA: Out on the Curb?, July 14
When a Guest Becomes a Squatter, June 15
Testimonial Vindication, April 8

Sphere: Related Content

Torture: Truth and Consequences

Stuart Taylor has a piece in the upcoming issue of Newsweek suggesting that President Bush pardon everyone in his administration who might be held liable for war crimes sometime in the future. (Well, he puts quote marks around war crimes because, you know, that's all it takes to cast doubt on their occurrence.) Actually, despite the scare quotes, Taylor quickly admits that war crimes have occurred, saying "dark deeds have been conducted in the name of the United States government in recent years: the gruesome, late-night circus at Abu Ghraib, the beating to death of captives in Afghanistan, and the officially sanctioned waterboarding and brutalization of high-value Qaeda prisoners."

Given that admission, one might imagine he would support the imposition of consequences for those in the government who violated nearly every statute on the books, both domestic and international, in regards to treatment of detainees. One would be wrong.

It's a bad idea. In fact, President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers. (It would be unseemly for Bush to pardon Vice President Dick Cheney or himself, but the next president wouldn't allow them to be prosecuted anyway—galling as that may be to critics.)

Yes, a President pardoning himself would be a tad "unseemly." Stronger adjectives could certainly be used as well. Why would Taylor, who readily admits crimes have been committed, warn against prosecution, you ask?

The reason for pardons is simple: what this country needs most is a full and true accounting of what took place. The incoming president should convene a truth commission, with subpoena power, to explore every possible misdeed and derive lessons from it. But this should not be a criminal investigation, which would only force officials to hire lawyers and batten down the hatches.

Pardons would further a truth commission's most important goals: to uncover all important facts, identify innocent victims to be compensated, foster a serious conversation about what U.S. interrogation rules should be, recommend legal reforms, pave the way for appropriate apologies and restore America's good name. The goals should not include wrecking the lives of men and women who made grievous mistakes while doing dirty work—work they had been advised by administration lawyers was legal, and which they believed was necessary to prevent terrorist mass murder.

No telling how we would respond if we thought the administration was being less than forthcoming. Taylor's argument here is absurd on its face. For one thing, nearly all of the things he contends would come out of an obfuscation commission have already made their appearance. There has already been plenty of discussion of the administrations policies, the interrogation rules were already in place whether they were ignored or not, and apologies doesn't bring back lives and reputation. If it's America's good name he's after, it is highly doubtful that the families of the men who died as a result of US custody will be quick to forgive, nor will denizens of the Mideast who see the War on Terror as a 21st-Century Crusade (a term which Bush himself has applied to it, remarkably.) If Taylor is dying for apologies, his argument breaks down by considering prosecution and apologies - whatever they're worth - mutually exclusive.

Following Taylor's logic, if a man broke into his house, robbed him and harmed his family he would seek only an apology as retribution. Any attempt to prosecute the culprit would simply cause him to "batten down the hatches" and the whole truth might not come out.

If the last seven years have taught Taylor anything, it's that the way to find the truth is not through the administration. Repeatedly, the government has denied every accusation only to modify its stance once the truth became apparent. Why, then, would a truth commission prove any different? The facts regarding torture are readily available, and the question of their legality has been answered many times over.

So-called "truth commissions" are of course common practice of American governance, and undertaken precisely because they arrive completely devoid of consequences, allowing the perpetrators to return a couple administrations later to do it all over again. Many of those in the Bush administration are veterans of the Nixon administration, and despite the Church Commission's findings, have revitalized the lawless Presidency. No matter how many times support for dictatorial coups or funneling illegal arms through Enemies of the State are exposed, "truth commissions" ensure that those actions will continue. A slap on the hand would be deemed too harsh an outcome.

If it's America's reputation that Taylor is after, he would be wise to support the imposition of consequences. It is precisely this tactic of never admitting or altering wrongdoing that is responsible for that reputation in the first place. If he wants to improve America's standing, he could start by pushing for America to show the rest of the world that we don't think we're above the law. We toss bellicose rhetoric around the globe with reckless abandon at those who violate any rule or agreement, yet we expect the world to stand aside as we violate every statute on the books banning mistreatment of detainees. Or we demand that the private mercenaries we subsidize face no prosecution for the outright murder of unarmed Iraqis.

Asking the US to subject itself to the same rules it imposes on everyone else isn't anti-American. It's a rational expectation of fair practice. Setting up a committee to enumerate to the world all that we've done wrong and ensuring that nothing will be punished or change will only erode America's reputation further.


Related:

Tortured Logic, April 14
Down Is the New Up, April 25
Trickle-Down Responsibility, May 9

Sphere: Related Content

Missile Defense: Rehabbing the Cold War

Apparently not content with starting a new Cold War with Iran and Islamist countries in general, the Bush administration is pushing hard for a reprise of the old Cold War through installation of a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. The inclusion of the term 'defense' of course is meant to obfuscate the reality that the sites will include missiles, and thus be fully capable of playing offense just as well.

The posturing began long ago, in Bush's first term, when Congress first established that it would do absolutely nothing to fulfill its Constitutional duties and allow the separation on powers to simply fade into the abyss. In December of 2001, in a move which telegraphed quite transparently the current maneuvers, Bush decided on his own to pull out of the US's 30-year commitment to the ABM treaty with Russia.

"Today I am giving formal notice to Russia that the United States of America is withdrawing from this almost 30-year-old treaty," Bush said in the White House Rose Garden. "I have concluded the ABM treaty hinders our government's ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks."

Under US Code, "treaties to which the United States is a party are equivalent in status to Federal legislation, forming part of what the Constitution calls ‘the supreme Law of the Land.’" So, in withdrawal from the ABM without congressional consultation, Bush was essentially unilaterally striking a law from the books, using his newfound (invented) status as President-at-war powers, which of course would eventually be used to justify everything from war without Congressional declaration to torture. Congress, though, was still in a conciliatory mood only months after the WTC collapse and not about to assert itself on a seemingly minor infraction.

Yet, as we have seen, the administration has out-maneuvered Congress at nearly every turn since, and the last week has begun to bear the fruit of the ABM withdrawal, leaving Russia is none too pleased.

"If the real deployment of an American strategic missile defense shield begins close to our borders, then we will be forced to react not with diplomatic methods, but with military-technical methods," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

In a world governed by principles of universality, US leaders would understand that their response should the roles be reversed would be similar. But, as we know, to suggest that the same rules that the US applies to other countries be applied in turn is sacrilege and anti-American. Not pro-logic or rational, but anti-American. It doesn't put too much of a strain on the imagination to consider what would happen if Russia, say, tried to install missiles on Cuba.

The stoking of the old Cold War flames returns us to the prevailing theory in American politics, namely, that all other countries should have a foreign policy that aims to support US interests rather than protecting their own. Thus, while Bush claims the Czech (and maybe Polish) shield is necessary to protect his own citizens, he declares it unfair for the Russians to see said shields as a threat to the security of their own people.

In the long run, the US is essentially in the process of doing whatever it can to provoke Iran into doing something stupid and provide the US-Israel alliance a justification for attack. All rhetoric aside, these actions still hide the fact that any uranium enrichment being undertaken in Iran is supervised by the IAEA, is legal under the terms of the NPT, and at a level 20 times too low for weaponization.

But, of course, this is all according to plan. By continuously stoking the embers of international animosity, the government is able to provide the populace with an outward enemy. An enemy which requires their quiet ceding of civil rights and provides an imperative of electing yet another administration which will continue down the same path. By directing attention outward, the government ensures that there are enough voters willing to vote against their own self-interests in November and accept quietly the assault on their freedom and pocketbooks.

Related:

US Steps Up Covert Action Against Iran, June 29
US Foreign Policy Principles, June 25

Sphere: Related Content

US Steps Up Covert Action Against Iran

With the aid of Congressional Democrats, the Bush administration has received funding for covert action within Iran, with the aim of gathering intelligence on its nuclear program and destabilizing the regime.

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

In order to have funding diverted to the operations, the Executive branch must submit a Presidential Finding to the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House, Senate, and both Intelligence committees, which means that the Democratic leadership, while outwardly pretending to enforce the mandate given to it in the 2006 elections, have instead been complicit in allowing the brinksmanship to continue. This is part-and-parcel of the false foreign policy spectrum I detailed last week.

United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

The Bush administration going well beyond the scope of Congressional authorization is nothing new, as it remains committed to the idea, within the scope of the Unitary Executive theory, that there is absolutely nothing in the power of Congress to prevent the President from directing the military to do anything in the field. That the framers could not possibly have had that it mind when writing the Constitution should be evident, but nonetheless it is a tact the administration has taken since its inauguration. Taking the Unitary Executive to its logical conclusion, however, would stipulate that should the President direct US forces to assassinate a foreign official, it would acceptable despite the law against such actions.

In this instance, the Bush administration has claimed that any operations undertaken by the JSOC, rather than the CIA, need not be included in the Finding submitted to Congress, and is thus immune from any oversight or required approval. Again, there is nothing inherent in that principle which would prohibit the JSOC from carrying out assassinations or other illegal activities. Indeed, one Congressman sent a letter to President Bush insisting that lethal action was prohibited, but the White House has not seen fit to answer.

In order to bypass military officers who object to the preconceived objective of a war with Iran, the administration has created an atmosphere in which the decision-making for these operations is handed instead to civilians. Civilians, one would assume, more slaves to ideology than military pragmatism, making them obvious allies for Bush and Cheney.

The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

“The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations,” [John] Sheehan [former commander of US Atlantic Command] said. “If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can’t have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.”

The covert action within Iran is merely a continuation of two running themes: one, the Bush administration invoking Executive Privilege to engage in any action it wants, legality be damned, and two, the Democrats in Congress more than willing to offer no obstacles.

More than simply frustrating, the shear incompetence of the Democratic leadership to prevent any of the administration's efforts is a clear dereliction of duty. Bush likes to say that he listens to his commanders in the field, but the line of military officers opposing an attack of Iran is growing by the day, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, and of course Admiral Fallon, who was forced out as commander of CENTCOM for his insolence on the issue.

Unlike the officers, though, Democrats in Congress control funding, and could put a halt to any of Bush's operations, but continue to be steamrolled by the fancy packaging and refuse to uphold the clear will of the voters, who overwhelmingly want the US out of Iraq and oppose a war with Iran.

Perhaps most glaring, though, is the large historical elephant in the room in the form of Afghanistan. We've seen the result of this kind of covert action before: the Taliban, al Qaeda, and the destruction of the World Trade Center. As part of the operations, the US is cooperating with Sunni dissident groups who, apart from being closely tied to al Qaeda--enemy number one--are believed to have "operated against American interests in the past."

The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

Another fine friend is the Jundallah, described as "a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists" by Vali Nasr of Tufts University, who continues to suggest that the group has ties to both al Qaeda and the drug trade.

The US has also provided funds and intelligence to the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), a group which has been on the State Department's terrorist list for more than a decade. This relationship, by definition, makes the US a sponsor of terrorism. If the MEK are terrorists, and the US is sponsoring them, there is only one possible logical conclusion. So, while the US decries Iran's cross-border activity in Iraq, it continues to engage in its own meddling. Yet one is wrong and one is right? One doubts President Bush will call for the freezing of the assets flowing to that particular known terrorist group.

More likely than not, the real plan here is to provoke Iran into an action which would justify military activity within the short time Bush has in office. The likelihood of any of these groups achieving a regime change or destabilization they haven't in the past decade of trying is not large, but the chances of Iran finding signs of American weapons on any captured militants are not all that small. Such findings could invoke Iranian action, and deliver Cheney his war.

John Bolton has already floated the idea that Bush will attack if McCain loses the election, and it seems he is indeed laying the framework for what is sure to be yet another foreign policy disaster as we speak. History only serves as a lesson to those who pay attention to it.

Related:

North Korea contrasted with Iran, June 28
False choices in foreign policy, June 26
Ignoring history's lessons, May 19

Sphere: Related Content

Administration Halts Solar Energy to....Wait For It....Study Possible Environmental Harm

In what is possibly the most transparent move in the history of the Executive Branch, the Bush administration has called for a two-year moratorium on new solar projects on federal lands while it studies the environmental impact.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

After spending the last 7 years obstructing the EPA, the administration would have the public swallow with complete credulity the idea that it is now deeply concerned about the effect of energy plants on the environment.

The move could not be any more transparent, as it coincides precisely with the same administration's call for renewed offshore drilling, declaring that now is not the time to worry about environmental harm which may stem from the drilling. Although solar energy is a microscopic portion of the total domestic energy picture, the elimination of even the possibility of alternative forms of energy is just one more way for the administration to push the nation further toward the cliff of fatal oil dependency.

Bush, in public statements, recognizes the need for alternative energy, but in practice he has done everything in his power, sometimes beyond it, to prevent the EPA from preventing oil exploration. Yet, now his environmental conscience won't allow him to witness solar energy proceeding without two years of study.

Related:

Erroneous Responses to Oil Prices, June 21

Sphere: Related Content

Appeasement in North Korea

When President Bush addressed members of the Knesset on May 15, he compared those that seek a diplomatic tact to foreign policy to Neville Chamberlain and Nazi appeasers.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Yet, a little more than a month later, Bush stood outside the White House to announce his administration's success in appeasing the third member of the 'Axis of Evil' regarding its nuclear ambitions.

First, I'm issuing a proclamation that lifts the provisions of the Trading with the Enemy Act with respect to North Korea.

And secondly, I am notifying Congress of my intent to rescind North Korea's designation as a state sponsor of terror in 45 days. The next 45 days will be an important period for North Korea to show its seriousness of its cooperation. We will work through the six-party talks to develop a comprehensive and rigorous verification protocol. And during this period, the United States will carefully observe North Korea's actions -- and act accordingly.

Only a political system in which party affiliation trumps logical consistency could such an agreement be met with any reaction other than indignation at the glaring hypocrisy. In addition to portraying the Democrats asking for discussions with Iran prior to bombing the Islamic republic as appeasers, Republicans have made a career of mocking the Clinton administration's negotiations with the very same North Korea in the mid-90s. Colin Powell was once forced to apologize for suggesting that the Clinton negotiations were a good start, although unsuccessful. One would be hard-pressed to find many differences between those two negotiations, but Stephen Hadley did his best to dissemble.

This has been a pretty ongoing process. Let me say a little bit about the -- this is the '94 framework agreement under the prior administration. I would say that was a good-faith effort to deal with this problem, and -- but it went awry. And unbeknownst to that administration, while they were moving forward under the framework agreement to deal with North Korea's plutonium program we discovered North Korea was pursuing a uranium enrichment program, which is one of two paths to get the nuclear material you need for a bomb, either through the plutonium path, uranium enrichment.

He continues to detail some of the differences between the negotiations, but in doing so admits that the efforts to negotiate were a good effort despite the fact that "the North Koreans did not want them to succeed." Such a statement, of course, is prefaced on the idea that this time around, the North Koreans have abandoned all attempts to obfuscate the true level of its cooperation, something any trace of cynicism would not allow.

The only safety net the Bush administration has given itself is the 45 days between now and Korea's removal from the state sponsor list, but one assumes that the sham republic could stay straight for a month and a half, regardless of its true intentions.

Even the recent declarations by North Korea, the impetus to the moves, fall well short of 'forthright' and 'open.' Besides coming six months after the December 31 deadline established last October, the declaration still fails to acknowledge Pyongyang's uranium enrichment program. This program was the same program that Hadley pointed to as part of the breakdown of the Clinton-era agreements, which should at least instill some caution regarding the most recent developments.

Regardless of the outcome, the looming question still remains. Namely, how can a President decry diplomacy in no uncertain terms in May and then blissfully detail the outcome of his own diplomacy in June? If his central suggestion in Israel was that agreements are often made disingenuously by one party, then there is nothing about his own concessions which suggest that same criterion does not apply, especially given the same party--North Korea--has shown a propensity for backing out of previous deals, deals which Bush's own administration has decried as failed diplomacy and "the false comfort of appeasement." The only difference I can discern? The 'R' next to the name.

Of course, not all administration officials were pleased with the developments, especially Diplomat-in-Chief Dick Cheney, a point which may have more import than a first glance would indicate. On Thursday's Countdown, former NSC staffer Hillary Mann Leverett floated the idea that apart from the concessions with North Korea, the Bush administration may have to make some within its own ranks.

Internally, inside the U.S. government, my concern is, that the—for lack of a better word, hard-liners epitomized, I think, by Vice President Cheney, they don‘t ever give away nothing, something for nothing.

I think in terms of their agreeing with this deal on North Korea today, we could very well see and my concern is, that we could very well see a more militaristic push on dealing with the Iranians.

In other words, despite pushing the North Korea deal as the successful end to diplomacy over militarism, the Bush administration will still pursue, possibly with even more force, a militaristic angle to Iran in a quid pro quo for its own officials. It can be safely assumed, I think, that this level of logical inconsistency will be met with limp credulity, as most hypocritical elements of American politics are.

There are stark differences, though, the most glaring of which being that North Korea actually possesses nuclear weapons capability while Iran does not. While the IAEA has expressed concern over the forthrightness of the Iranian regime, it has given no indication that it believes the Iranians are pursuing weaponization, despite claims to the contrary by surrogates and spokesman such as Sean Hannity, who apparently is privy to classified information no one else is. The most recent NIE released by the State Department declared that Iran hasn't been pursuing such a program for years, but such troubling realities can never be allowed to stand in the way of a good war.

Related:

Proof President Bush Has a Sense of Irony, June 7
Israel Engages in Appeasement, May 21

Sphere: Related Content

Maliki Assures Iran SOFA Not a Threat

Despite of the image propagated by the Bush administration and its media stenographers, the Iraq-Iran relationship is a mutual alliance and not merely one-sided meddling, with Iran aiding assorted rabble allied against the US occupation. It is little surprise, then, that Nouri al Maliki traveled to Tehran this week to assuage Iranian fears of a permanent US presence in Iraq spurred by news of the looming status of forces agreement.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pushed Iran on Sunday to back off its fierce opposition to a U.S.-Iraqi security pact, promising Iranian leaders that Iraq will not be a launching pad for any attack on their country.

The agreement has become a center of contention as Baghdad tries to balance its close ties to Washington and Tehran. Iran fiercely opposes the deal, fearing it will lead to permanent U.S bases on its doorstep in Iraq amid fears of an eventual American attack.

The Iranian fears seem well-founded if current events are any guide, especially given that the proposed SOFA includes freedom of movement for US forces both within Iraq and across its borders. Neither would require the knowledge or consent of the sovereign-in-name-only Iraqi government. It is ludicrous to believe that the US, in the event of an attack on Iran, would hesitate to use some of its 50-base windfall as a launching pad.

The question, then, becomes how can Maliki make any such guarantee to the Iranians? The Bush administration has been eerily silent on the meetings, and the promise. Ostensibly, by refusing to ever acknowledge the cozy relationship between Maliki and Ahmadinejad it can continue to play up the 'special groups' angle, despite its demonstrably farcical premise. If the SOFA were signed 'as is,' Maliki would be helpless in backing up his promise, leaving a parliamentary opposition strong enough to elicit major changes in the terms.

Maliki, however, must side with Washington while still appearing to protect Iraqi sovereignty, a task becoming more difficult daily as his Da'wa Party frays beneath him. Former Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari has formed a splinter group, taking MPs with him along the way. Together, they are forming a broad nationalist coalition which will virulently oppose any deal with permanent US bases or freedom of operations for US forces.

Whatever his ability to follow through, Maliki's commitment to Iran is in stark contrast to the picture painted by President Bush.

"Iraq, today, does not represent a threat as it was during the former regime because it has become a constitutional country based on the rule of law," a statement released by his Baghdad office quoted him as saying.

"Iraq is working on developing its relations with the countries of the region on the basis of mutual understanding and cooperation," it added.

[...]

Al-Maliki also appeared to signal that Tehran would not be squeezed out by any agreement, saying Iraq's "development and stability will be provided through more bilateral cooperation" with Iran.

For its part, the US again illustrates a brilliant lack of foreign policy comprehension, unwilling to accept that Iraqis would disapprove of a deal making their country a playground for Americans devoid of Iranian influence.

U.S. officials increasingly see the criticism against the security deal as driven by Iran — particularly through al-Sadr.

"The U.S.-Iraqi negotiations (on the pact) concern the American and the Iraqi sides. As we have noticed, the Iranian contribution again is not positive regarding this," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Mirembe Nantongo told journalists Sunday in Baghdad.

While Sadr surely opposes the relationship, Maliki allies (or non-enemies, maybe) al Sistani and al Hakim have spoken out as well. IHT also reports that the Iraqi National Security Council rejected several drafts of the agreement because of blatant infringements on Iraqi sovereignty. To paint Iran as the only catalyst for opposition fits only one purpose, and it's not "description of reality."

The US has thus far engaged in a little willful ignorance on the role of Iran. By refusing to acknowledge the close relationship with the Maliki government, it can continue to play up the destructive aspects and meddling. But eventually, the reality of the Iraq-Iran ties will have to figure in to foreign policy calculations.

Sphere: Related Content

The Iranian Answer to Ahmed Chalabi Plays the Pentagon

Lost amidst the yawns greeting the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on pre-war intelligence [Is it news, anymore?] was the supplemental report on the 2001 visit between Americans and Iranian exiles in Rome, in which the US solicited yet more faulty intelligence from previously-debunked exiles.

Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that Iranian exiles who provided dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran to a small group of Pentagon officials might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service ... to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the Pentagon officials' activities after only a month, and the Defense Department's top brass never followed up on the investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The revelation raises questions about whether Iran may have used a small cabal of officials in the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office to feed bogus intelligence on Iraq and Iran to senior policymakers in the Bush administration who were eager to oust the Iraqi dictator.

Much as Ahmad Chalabi sold his bill of goods to eager and unwitting Bush officials like Doug Feith long after the CIA declared him an unreliable charlatan, US officials eager to depose Saddam and topple the Iranian regime eagerly soaked up faulty intelligence from Iranian exile Manucher Ghorbanifar.

Ghorbanifar, who was a middle man in the Iran-Contra dealings, was labeled a 'fabricator' by the CIA in 1984 in a notice which said Ghorbanifar "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and a nuisance. Any future approaches by subject...should...not be taken seriously." [SIC, pg 5] The situation mirrors that with Chalabi, whereas an exile who's been long regarded as unreliable continued to be welcomed, and paid well, by hawks in and out of the administration who were fixing the intelligence around the preordained end, rather than setting the end goal based on reliable intelligence.

Among the three members of the US party were Larry Franklin, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to passing classified information to AIPAC, Michael Ledeen, employed by the American Enterprise Institute and traveling as a citizen, and Harold Rhode, personally charged with "purging the DoD of anyone opposing the anti-Iraq policy." Surrounding Franklin's conviction, the Pentagon released a statement indicating that Franklin, in spite of the accusations, never influence Middle East policy and was thus not a liability. The Rome visits, however, belie that claim outright.

Returning to McClatchy:

The Senate committee also found that Pentagon officials concealed the contacts with Ghorbanifar from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department. Pentagon officials also provided Senate investigators with an inaccurate account of events and, with support from two unnamed officials in Cheney's office, continued meeting with Ghorbanifar after contact with him was officially ordered to stop.

Again, the Defense Department, and Feith's Office of Special Plans, was soliciting dubious intelligence from exiles, but had to conceal that it was doing so because it knew that the other US intelligence agencies would not accept any intelligence culled from meetings with Ghorbanifar as reliable. There is only one explanation for continually seeking the consult of long-debunked sources, and that is because the US team knew what they were getting. As Chalabi and Ghorbanifar supplied the stories the OSP wanted to hear, there was little concern for veracity.

Indeed, when other agencies learned of the meetings, they were none too pleased:

When the CIA and the State Department discovered that Ledeen and Ghorbanifar were involved, they opposed any further contact with the two. Ledeen's contacts, the Defense Human Intelligence Service concluded, were "nefarious and unreliable," the Senate committee reported.

On the surface, the Iranian exiles were concerned with the toppling of the Iranian regime [including a curious--and expensive--plan for a regime-crushing traffic jam], but Ledeen's association with Ghorbanifar "was widely known, and therefore it should be presumed other foreign intelligence services, including those of Iran, would know." As Iran has been the biggest strategic beneficiary of the Iraq invasion, it is not inconceivable that information could have been peddled by Iranian intelligence covertly in order to expedite the toppling of their arch-nemesis, Saddam Hussein. The animosity between Saddam and Iran seemed invisible to the OSP, however:

According to the report, Ledeen, however, persisted, presenting then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith with a new 100-day plan to provide, among other things, evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that supposedly had been moved to Iran — Saddam Hussein's archenemy.

Again Ledeen is providing a plan for the evidence he will supposedly find, rather than finding evidence and reaching a conclusion based upon it.

The Rome meetings illustrate a contradiction to the running narrative of those on the defensive over pre-war intelligence. People such as John McCain are fond of saying that, while faulty, the intelligence available at the time all told the same story and was without conflict. The reports released today tell a much different story. Aside from the shading of intelligence to fit preordained conclusions, the Bush administration actively sought the council of sources long known as "nefarious and unreliable."

That the reliability of the sources was of no concern to the DoD is perhaps one of the clearest indications of the reverse relationship between intelligence and conclusions in the years prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Sphere: Related Content

The Iraq SOFA: Not So Comfortable

When President Bush and Nouri al Maliki released the joint "Declaration of Principles" late last year, it foreshadowed a contentious battle over the July 31 deadline for a status of forces agreement (SOFA) between the two countries. In order to avoid seeking Congressional approval, Bush and Maliki are negotiating the SOFA as an 'executive agreement' rather than a formal treaty, despite the long-standing precedent of Presidents submitting such agreements to the Senate for ratification.

President Bush's plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq's security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval, according to legal specialists.

After World War II, for example - when the United States gave security commitments to Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, and NATO members - Presidents Truman and Eisenhower designated the agreements as treaties requiring Senate ratification. In 1985, when President Ronald Reagan guaranteed that the US military would defend the Marshall Islands and Micronesia if they were attacked, the compacts were put to a vote by both chambers of Congress.

In general SOFAs don't include a mutual-defense agreement, but rather concern legal aspects of hosting US forces and jurisdictional issues. While Bush is not legally bound to submit such an agreement for ratification, more than a half century of presidents have done so, especially when a mutual-defense contract is included. Considering the political implications of the Iraq conflict--surely more prescient than the Marshall Islands--his refusal to do so promises conflict in Washington this summer, especially considering the lengths by which this particular SOFA exceeds those before it. Also, previous SOFAs not submitted to Congress dealt only with leasing agreements, not a promise of defense and active military operations by US forces including arrests and detentions of Iraqis.

But the "long-term relationship of cooperation and friendship" outlined in November goes far beyond an ordinary status-of-forces agreement. It would include promises of debt forgiveness, economic and technical aid, facilitating "especially American investments" in Iraq - and the security commitments, according to Bush and Maliki's joint declaration last November.

Today, the Independent's [UK] Patrick Cockburn is reporting that the coming agreement includes US use of 50 bases, control of Iraqi airspace, and legal immunity to American military personnel and contractors. The deal, if adopted, could tie the next president's hands on any proposed withdrawal.

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilize Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

As with Bush's wariness of the US Senate, "the US is adamantly against the new security agreement being put to a referendum in Iraq, suspecting that it would be voted down." Article 58, Section 4 of the Iraqi Constitution, however, clearly dictates that the Iraqi Parliament must ratify such an agreement.

A law shall regulate the ratification of international treaties and agreements by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Council of Representatives.

But Bush knows any agreement which prolongs the American presence in Iraq will be extremely unpopular, as 70 percent of Iraqis oppose the US occupation, and thus will fight strongly to bypass the democracy he touts at every opportunity. For all its pomp, the administration is clearly opposed to democracy whenever it should interfere with its unfettered operation, be it at home or abroad.

There are several things contained in the proposed agreement which promise conflict, and they are worth considering on an individual basis.

First, there is the issue of jurisdiction over American personnel and civilian contractors. Most SOFAs, such as the one with Japan, impose stipulations on when the host country can prosecute Americans and when that right falls into the hands of the US.

Most SOFAs recognize the right of the host government to "primary jurisdiction," which is to say the host country exercises jurisdiction for all cases in which U.S. military personnel violate the host country's laws. There are two exceptions, however, which generally apply only in criminal cases involving U.S. forces personnel: When the offense is committed by Americans against Americans ("inter se" cases), and when the offense is committed by Americans in carrying out official duty. In these situations, the United States has primary jurisdiction over the accused American. [globalsecurity.org]

The proposal, however, eliminates entirely the right of the Iraqis to prosecute Americans for any crime, whether it is concomitant with official duty or not. If Japan and East Timor are any indication, US soldiers are not necessarily on their best behavior while off duty, as incidences of rape have been numerous in the former country. While any suggestion that all US soldiers are inclined to sexual battery is fallacious, to suggest that every US soldier is inherently incapable of committing crimes against the citizens of the host country is equally so.

Chalmers Johnson devotes an entire chapter in his book, Nemesis, to the US SOFA with Japan:

What SOFAs do, however, is give American soldiers, contractors, Department of Defense civilians, and their dependents a whole range of special privileges that are not available to ordinary citizens of the country or to non-American visitors. In the great tradition of 'extraterritoriality' that began in the world of nineteenth-century Western colonialism, they are almost never reciprocal [NATO excepted]--that is, the SOFAs bestow on Americans privileges that are not available to citizens of the host nation if they should visit or be assigned to the United States. [pp 171-172, paperback]

Strikingly, the US also demands certain guarantees it has been loathe to grant to its own detainees.

U.S. military commanders are responsible for seeing that individuals under their authority who run afoul with host-county laws receive fair trials from the host country under all circumstances. DoD directives list 14 "fair trial" safeguards or guarantees that are considered applicable to U.S. state court criminal proceedings by virtue of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. These safeguards include the right of the accused person to be tried without unreasonable delay, to be tried by an impartial court, and to be protected from the use of a confession obtained by torture, threats, or violence. [GlobalSecurity]

But even when the accused are not turned over to host authorities, US soldiers are subject to court martial. In Iraq, however, American civilian contractors would be subject to no one, as they are not under military jurisdiction. If put into effect as is, the SOFA would essentially create an army of extrajudicial contractors immune from any and all consequences for their actions regardless of severity or import, and would severely call into question the true extent of Iraqi sovereignty.

Apart from the proposed extrajudicial nature of the American occupation, the SOFA virtually guarantees a long-term US presence, most likely immune to the effect of the November election. By guaranteeing protection, the SOFA would force a hypothetical President Obama's hand by putting him in a position of either leaving American forces in Iraq or dissolving the SOFA and presenting a United States that does not follow through on its signed commitments, a terrible PR move for a green leader.

The unfettered use of bases and air space is clearly also aimed at positioning the US for future conflict in Iran, something that may begin before year's end, again holding the next president hostage. Strangely enough, such an occurrence was addressed in the Declaration of Principles agreed to by Bush:

Cooperating jointly with the states of the region on the basis of mutual respect, non-intervention in internal affairs, rejection of the use of violence in resolving disputes, and adoption of constructive dialogue in resolving outstanding problems among the various states of the region.

No more than flattering rhetoric, surely, but such is the status quo.

Either way, "Mr Bush is determined to force the Iraqi government to sign the so-called 'strategic alliance' without modifications, by the end of next month." [Cockburn] This sense of urgency requires the bypassing of both countries' legislatures--despite overwhelming precedent and written law--and is based on a desire to ensure there will be no precipitous withdrawal of American forces in January.

While the rest of us are relieved the Democratic nominating process is nearing an end, President Bush certainly wishes the distraction would continue. Expect the proposed SOFA to be a firestorm in Washington for the next couple of months.

President Bush swaddles himself in the rhetorical love of democracy, but when presented with two nations where three-fourths of the population strongly opposes a proposal, he has absolutely no qualms about subverting both.

Sphere: Related Content

This Time We Mean It. Really.

As a parent counts to three using a series of inane fractions, so has the United States government dealt with the Iraqi exile and charlatan, Ahmed Chalabi. McClatchy reports that the US has again cut ties with one of the men most responsible for war in Iraq and the concomitant faulty intelligence.

The U.S. decision...is the fourth time that the U.S. has ended an alliance with Chalabi, whom officials in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office once touted as a successor to Saddam Hussein. The State Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, however, have long regarded Chalabi as untrustworthy and a "charlatan."

Ahmed Chalabi began working with the US in the late 80s in fits and starts, but rose to prominence following the first Gulf War. At that time, he was being paid by the CIA, but that agency cut him off in 1995 after it became clear to them that he was selling fraudulent goods. Despite being known by US Intelligence as a source of false information, Chalabi used his friends in Congress to convince the State Department to pick up his tab, and he continued to fight to depose Saddam Hussein.

Perhaps no single person is more responsible for building the case for invasion than Chalabi. And certainly no one intentionally provided more false information to the government and journalists, most famously Judith Miller. This false information ranged from WMD caches to phantom ties to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Chalabi wanted Hussein gone, and wasn't the slightest bit concerned with the means, so long as he got the end he wanted.

Aram Roston, author of "The Man Who Pushed America to War," spoke to Amy Goodman in March and detailed how Chalabi got his false information into America's stream of consciousness:

No, exactly. It was—it’s all a slew of journals and a slew of television programs, but each one typically would get a piece of the pie that he was producing, a piece of the product of what ended up being phony propaganda that the Iraqi National Congress was coming up with. And they had a very elaborate system set in place to get these stories in the press and into the intelligence stream.

They weren’t very successful getting these stories into the intelligence stream. And what I found was they were most successful after the attacks of 9/11. People were very—they wanted stories about terror and about Saddam Hussein, about weapons of mass destruction. So Chalabi’s group became very successful at planting these stories. They weren’t that successful, it seems, in getting it into the CIA, because the CIA at that point didn’t trust a word that Chalabi’s group said. But they were much more successful in impacting public opinion. And that had an immense impact, obviously, on America.

Essentially, Chalabi was very good at running a propaganda campaign utilizing a cabal of journalist dupes and a credulous American public. The Bush administration, for its part, was all too happy to stoke the fire. But that the CIA didn't want any part of the intelligence speaks volumes about the run-up to the war. When the central agency for gathering foreign intelligence knows it's being sold rotten fruit, the policy makers and opinion shapers should have looked twice before biting down.

From a March, 2004, McClatchy article:

Feeding the information to the news media, as well as to selected administration officials and members of Congress, helped foster an impression that there were multiple sources of intelligence on Iraq's illicit weapons programs and links to bin Laden.

In fact, many of the allegations came from the same half-dozen defectors, weren't confirmed by other intelligence and were hotly disputed by intelligence professionals at the CIA, the Defense Department and the State Department.

Nevertheless, U.S. officials and others who supported a pre-emptive invasion quoted the allegations in statements and interviews without running afoul of restrictions on classified information or doubts about the defectors' reliability.

Aside from the now-obviously lack of truth to his intelligence, Chalabi has a long history of fraud and embezzlement.

Chalabi, who lives in London, fled Jordan in 1989 after his Petra Bank collapsed and was convicted in absentia three years later for embezzlement. [...]

Earlier this year, the State Department threatened to cut off the INC's funding for information programs and other nonmilitary activities after an audit turned up expenditures that were deemed questionable or were unaccounted for.

The inspector general's audit of $4.3 million in grants mostly criticized the group's accounting and payroll procedures. But it also found questionable expenses, including $2,070 for a gym membership, $5,541 for legal fees related to a rental dispute and other money used for first-class plane tickets.

The audit also suggests the INC may have used taxpayers' money to lobby in Washington, which is illegal.

The funding continued, however, illustrating a recurring theme. Chalibi, having been convicted of embezzlement and cut-off by the CIA for providing faulty intelligence, continued to misuse tax dollars with relative impunity. He would receive several threats, always to have his funding restored in the end. He would be similarly 'cut-off' in 2004, this week [which, of course, is unresolved,] and intermittently in between.

So, given that it is now indisputable that Chalabi was selling faulty goods, the only question remaining is whether the administration was simply mislead in good faith, or bought into intelligence they should have knownn was bad from the start. The former is a favorite line of defense for supporters of the invasion, but the theory doesn't hold water.

As far back as the mid-90s, the CIA knew Chalabi's story. When the Central Intelligence Agency doesn't trust the intelligence, you might want to get a second opinion before spouting it out in knee-jerk fashion.

Also, in October 2002, it was clear to many that there was plenty of dispute over the veracity of Chalabi's claims.

The Pentagon and the CIA are waging a bitter feud over secret intelligence that is being used to shape U.S. policy toward Iraq, according to current and former U.S. officials.

The dispute has been fueled by the creation within the Pentagon of a special unit that provides senior policymakers with alternate assessments of Iraq intelligence.

[...]

A major source of contention is the Pentagon's heavy reliance on data supplied by the Iraqi National Congress. The INC, the largest group within the divided Iraqi opposition, has a mixed reputation in Washington and a huge stake in whether President Bush makes good on his threat to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam by force. Its leader, Ahmed Chalabi, sees himself as a potential successor.

[...]

It is not clear whether the Pentagon solicits the views of the U.S. intelligence community on the material it collects directly from the Iraqi opposition.

A senior U.S. military official, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed grave fears that civilian officials in the Pentagon may be blindly accepting assertions by Chalabi and his aides that a U.S. invasion would trigger mass defections of Iraqi troops and a quick collapse of Iraqi resistance.

"Our guys working this area for a living all believe Chalabi and all those guys in their Bond Street suits are charlatans. To take them for a source of anything except a fantasy trip would be a real stretch," one official said.

The special unit within the Pentagon was Doug Feith's Office of Special Plans, now known as a farcical cherry-picking operation based, not on gathering intelligence, but on manufacturing a case for war.

To claim that there was insufficient evidence as to the shaky foundation upon which the case for war was built prior to invasion is to ignore the facts. Chalabi was long known as a snake-oil salesman, and it was his un-verified intelligence that provided the crux of the case. Lifelong intelligence officers were pleading with the administration to take his information lightly, but the suits who wanted war were hearing none of it.

All of this information was available before the war. Feith and his cohorts can revise history all they want, but the evidence is there.

If Chalabi had two strikes for misusing funds and selling false information, then strike three comes from his dealings with Iran.

Roston:

Well, the Iranian group that is charged by Iran with exporting...the Islamic revolution is called the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards. And...the man who runs their operations in Iraq now, and did before the war, is a general named Ahmed Foruzandeh. And Ahmed Foruzandeh is considered a very talented intelligence officer, and he’s very good at covert operations for the Iranians, and he’s very committed, he’s very sophisticated, and he’s no joke. And it’s certainly true that Chalabi had met with him before the war, before the US invasion.

What concerned American intelligence officers was when they found out—they believed he was meeting—he had met with him after the invasion, while the DIA was still funding the Iraqi National Congress’s intelligence operations in Iraq. It would have been in the spring of 2004. And they had serious concerns about that.

Now, more recently, Ahmed Foruzandeh, this man I mention in the book, he’s been named by the US government itself publicly as supporting terror, supporting insurgency. He’s been designated by the Treasury Department under an executive order as a real threat to efforts in Iraq.

Passing US intelligence to Iran:

The U.S. government has launched an investigation to determine how Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi obtained highly classified American intelligence that was then passed to Iran, Bush administration officials said Friday.

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity, said the compromised intelligence was "highly classified and damaging."

Chalabi's most recent ouster comes as "U.S. military and intelligence officials said Chalabi is close to Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' elite Quds Force." Suleimani, you may recall, brokered the cease-fire in Basra in March, and is also a proud member of the US terrorist watch list.

It is hard to imagine any single person who has done more harm to the United States as an outsider. Chalabi has pilfered money from tax payers to provide incredible, false intelligence claims that led the nation into a drawn-out, destructive occupation. Concurrently, he is negotiating and dealing intelligence secrets to Iran, our next target and current replacement for the USSR. Not only should Chalabi not be receiving US funds, he should be in a prison somewhere. Maybe he can be extradited to Jordan for his prior conviction, I hear they treat their prisoners real nice.

Sphere: Related Content

Iran Continues to Confound the US

With Afghanistan and Iraq vanquished, along with their stability, US attention has turned to Iran as enemy number one. Nevermind that North Korea actually possesses nuclear weapon capability, war must be perpetuated to prevent Iran from gaining even a sniff of such a disaster.

As noted before, the US loves to portray Iran as a purely destructive force in Iraq, funding only those militias the US isn't allied with, negotiating with only those the US doesn't want to know about. That stance is not only oversimplification, but demonstrably false.

In fact, the US and Iran occasionally find themselves on the same side of a fight, as was the case in Basra.

The causes of this convergence boil down to the logic of self-interest, although it is logic in a place where even the most basic reasoning refuses to go in a straight line. In essence, though, the calculation by the United States is that it must back the government it helped to create and take the steps needed to protect American troops and civilian officials.

Iranian motivations appear to hinge on the possibility that Mr. Sadr’s political and military followers could gain power in provincial elections this fall, and disrupt the creation of a semi autonomous region in the south that the Iranians see as beneficial.

An Iranian interest in a large Shiite swath across the region--from Iran to Lebanon--is not a secret, and the Mahdi army threatens that goal more than a US-allied Badr Brigade does, whether or not Admiral Mullen and President Bush want to admit it. Muqtada al Sadr is above all an Iraqi nationalist and one of the few Iraqi leaders who remained in Iraq throughout Saddam Hussein's rule. al Sadr would be as opposed to the subjugation of Iraq to Iran as the US.

Of course, this is not to suggest that he won't accept any free funding Iran wants to send his way, or that his idea of an independent Iraq merges at any point with the United States' idea.

But, with provincial elections coming in October, it is in Iran's interest to see as many members of the ISCI, of which the Badr Brigade is part, elected in lieu of members of Sadr's political faction as possible.

When it comes to which Shiite leader Iran and the United States want to see in power, at least for now they largely see Mr. Sadr’s ascendance as a common threat — nowhere more so than in Basra, the oil-rich capital of Iraq’s most populous region, the Shiite south.

Fred Kaplan at Slate:

It is now clear that the Badr Organization's ties to Iran are not merely as close as Sadr's; they are much closer. In fact, as the Times reports, Iran's ambassador to Iraq, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, expressed full support for Maliki's offensive in Basra and denounced Sadr's fighters as "outlaws."

Why Iran would support an offensive portrayed in the US as a fight against both al Sadr and Iran is less vague to anyone keeping realistic tabs on foreign affairs independent of the tale spun by the Bush administration.

...in the end the geopolitical calculus of the United States and Iran has to do with what kind of Shiite government they want in control.

The party that Iran and the United States are backing, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq [ISCI], is a bitter rival of Mr. Sadr’s political movement and has managed to play to the interests of both countries. Under Iraq’s Constitution, provinces can form regions with considerable independence from Baghdad. The Supreme Council advocates a large, semi autonomous region in the south, similar to Kurdistan in the north, made up of the nine southern provinces. And because many of the council’s leaders lived in exile in Iran during the rule of Saddam Hussein, Iran has political ties to the group.

Coupled with Iran’s shared Shiite heritage, such a region would amplify Iran’s influence over the oil-rich area.

The recent crack-down on the Mahdi Army and the upcoming provincial elections cannot be divorced in any realistic assessment of the political environment of Iraq:

During the elections in 2005, Mr. Sadr’s supporters did not vote in most southern provinces, so despite having grass-roots support they were not represented in local governments.

But the Supreme Council encouraged its followers to go to the polls, and they dominated even in places where their supporters made up a comparatively small percentage of the electorate. If Mr. Sadr’s movement participates in the next elections, scheduled for October, they are sure to fare better than they did when they did not field candidates, and the Supreme Council is likely to lose some of its power.

All this illustrates that the battle of southern Iraq is more an intra-Shiite power play, with the ISCI reluctant to give up any of its influence, than a simplified battle of good versus evil.

Control of the southern region brings with it control of Iraqi oil. So, in effect, by backing the ISCI the US is placing a Iranian-allied Shiite political party in essentially-autonomous control of Iraq's oil-exporting functions. As far as geopolitical strife is responsible for a good portion of oil prices, the situation being fostered in Basra and the surrounding region cannot help.

With Iranian-backed Hezbollah exerting its influence in Lebanon, the Iranian-backed ISCI exerting control over southern Iraq--and Iranian-friendly Syria in between--it becomes exceedingly clear that the US invasion of Iraq was the greatest strategic windfall to befall Iran in decades.

Sphere: Related Content

Yes, But Who Will Watch the Watchers?

President Bush likes to think history will remember him, and it certainly will, though probably not as he fantasizes it will. Unless blunder-prone foreign policy and economic collapses should one day become chic, in which case he may luck out.

But, for all his failings, perhaps the greatest stain his presidency will leave behind is the boot mark across the Constitution. Encouraged in his fantastical interpretations of presidential power--in practice, 'monarchy lite'--by Dick Cheney and David Addington as well as all the other usual suspects on his legal team, Bush has spent the last seven years doing his best to ensure that no President will ever have to answer to anyone again.

The problem lies not in disagreeing with the current President or opposing his policies, it lies in the understanding that the latitude and outright immunity to law Bush has claimed has unleashed the imperial presidency upon the nation, one that will still be around when someone of the opposite persuasion comes along. Thus, to acquiesce now because of agreement with Bush's policies is to simply forestall the inevitable period where someone else with whom there are sharp disagreements exerts his or her will devoid of even the slightest check.

Bush's Unitary Executive Theory--although, Cheney, not Bush is probably the impetus here--lies in the flawed concept that the writers of the Constitution were just joking when they created Congress or the Judicial branch. Believers in the theory rely principally on one passage in Federalist No. 70, while brushing aside nearly every other writing by the founders including the context from No. 70, itself.

This selective reading--paring down libraries full of text into a single passage that sort of supports their idea--has allowed them the luxury of believing that the Constitution was written by the leaders of a nation that had fought to rid themselves of a monarchy only to immediately start their own.

Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find a single lawyer not having worked for the Bush legal team who accepts the premise of the Unitary Executive and its ominous implication of an unchecked Executive branch.

The obscure (in the general sense, not to veterans of the Nixon administration like Cheney) theory has been used almost at will by Bush to justify everything from his right to prosecute a war without Congress' consent, to suspend habeus corpus, to eliminate Congressional oversight, and to ignore torture conventions, both domestic and international.

Back in October, the House passed H.R. 928, the Improving Government Accountability Act, by a vote of 404-11. A significant margin, indeed, but the Senate bested them on April 23 by passing its own version unanimously. But, one fight was still lurking in the seemingly uneventful numbers.

Congress is close to enacting the most significant boost in three decades in the independence of the cadre of government watchdogs -- federal inspectors general -- but the lawmakers have retreated from a key change involving the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Senate on April 23 approved, by unanimous consent, S. 2324, the Inspector General Reform Act of 2008. But the bill passed only after the lawmakers agreed to an amendment by Senator Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., which, among other items, deleted a provision giving the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) jurisdiction to investigate misconduct allegations against department attorneys, including its most senior officials.

Unlike all other OIGs who can investigate misconduct within their entire agency, Justice's OIG must refer allegations against department attorneys to the department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The latter office, unlike the OIG, is not statutorily independent and reports directly to the attorney general and the deputy attorney general.

In practice, the Kyl ammendment ensures that any investigations of top Justice officials would be done, not by an independent investigator immune from political termination, but by someone directly under the very people he or she is investigating. And nothing would legally prevent the official under investigation from having the investigator terminated.

Another significant difference between the House bill and the White House-sponsored Senate bill is that the Senate bill does not require cause for termination of an IG as the House bill does.

Under the House measure, inspectors would be appointed to seven-year terms and could only be removed from office for cause, such as neglect of duty, inefficiency, conviction for a felony or other inappropriate conduct. The House version also would require the independent watchdogs to submit their budgets directly to Congress in addition to the White House.

The White House complained that those requirements would encroach on the president’s constitutional authority to oversee executive branch employees and requests.

The new Senate bill includes no term limits for inspectors and would require the president’s budget to include how much money each inspector general requested and the amount recommended by the agency. The disclosure would allow Congress to see whether agencies are trying to hamstring inspectors by restricting budget funds.

President Bush has utilized signing statements in the past to simply wipe away parts of the law he doesn't like, but now it seems he has a few members on the front lines willing to save him the trouble.

That Bush was allowed to threaten a veto on a bill with 97.3% support in the House is outlandish, yet that's what happened. And Congress, strong-willed fellows that they are, simply asked the White House to strike from the House bill what it didn't like and include what it wished.

Somewhere, a 2nd-grade civics student is firing off an angry letter informing Congress that a 60% majority overrides a veto. 97% flies in just under the wire.

Like most erosion, the bleeding of the Constitution is a one-way street. One from which it will take a long time to recover. For Congress to continue bending to the will of a monarch wannabe is to perform a great disservice to the Republic its members are sworn to uphold. In this particular instance, it's not as if there was not enough precedent to deny the Bush administration its demands. Previous misdeeds are readily available.

President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department office from investigating the role of department lawyers in creating and overseeing the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping program, according to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The revelation from the attorney general came as the department released documents sent late Monday night to Congress in which the chief of the internal unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), repeatedly implored his bosses to grant him the security clearances to conduct his investigation.

And just in case someone might think the Bush administration was just protecting national security:

[At] the same time, "a large team of attorneys and agents" in the Department's Criminal Division had quickly been cleared to investigate the leak of information about the NSA program to the New York Times.

Further, the Civil Division, which would litigate legal and FOIA challenges involving the NSA program, got clearances for some its people; and, writes Jarrett, "Five private individuals who make up the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board" have been briefed on the program and given security clearances.

The pattern is clear. The granting of clearance had absolutely nothing to do with national security and everything to do with whose side the recipients were on. Performing oversight? No, thanks. Defending the program in defiance of law and logic? Jump on board. Have a look at some state secrets.

Those 'five private citizens' supposed to protect civil liberties? Well, of course, they are "appointed by and serv[e] at the pleasure of the President." Hardly a sign of neutrality, especially under Bush.

What's more, Bush's move was entirely without precedent:

In his April 21 memo [to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, OPR chief H. Marshall] Jarrett writes [that] OPR, which was created in 1975 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation, adding that OPR has conducted many "highly sensitive investigations involving Executive Branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels."

The most recent success of Bush's perpetual push to completely eliminate even cursory oversight of the Executive branch is but one more shot across the bow of the Constitution and the Separation of Powers. Congress may have to start launching some volleys of its own if it would like to keep the Legislative and Judicial branches as more than mere window dressing.

Sphere: Related Content