And the Bear South shall sweep
To thrust her claws far and deep
Into the mountains, the seas and the prairies
Grasping farmland and dairies
Sparing not honey or berry
Nor prince nor monastery
Alas, you will never find rest
For the Bear wheels East and then West
And now with our global warming
Fresh routes are still forming
To the North; now a lake
For the Bear to swim for her take
History has an odd and sometimes irreverent way of repeating itself. Most of us saw the fall of the USSR (Reagan’s “Evil Empire”) as a triumph of the god-fearing West over the evil, atheist and Communist state. The truth is more complex than that and has a long and Byzantine trail through history. Russia has always been a little paranoid about her neighbors, but rather than build a border fence like ours at Mexico, Russia has preferred to control her fate by forming buffer states under her influence. East Germany was both a buffer state and had a fence because the West resisted creation of further buffers. Part of that is a natural outcome of ever more distant buffers because what was once a buffer becomes integrated into the central control of Russia herself. This process has been going on for centuries. Indeed, the word “Ukraine” means border. Belarus is “White Russia.” Now Russia has had some rough patches in her history when greater buffers might have saved the day for the motherland. The Mongols swept through many of her border states. Napoleon made it to the outskirts of Moscow and Hitler nearly drove through to the heartland. Buffers prevailed.
History shows that Russia has been involved in the formation of many states as well as alliances that offered her space and time from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Much of the early history is tied closely to Byzantium and the Orthodox Church, if we look south, but Russia has not been fixed on Georgia and the Caucuses or Bulgaria and the Balkans. She has wrestled with Poland and the Baltic states and has tried to annex Finland (a noteworthy military failure although they outnumbered the Finns). She wants warm water ports and farmland and forests and “friendly” (read that subordinate) neighbors. We should not be strategically or even tactically surprised by her incursion into Georgia. Georgia has been in the Bear’s sandbox for centuries. Our presence in Western Europe for decades after the Second World War served to place Russia in the awkward position of challenging our intentions, especially with hundreds of thousands of our troops in Germany. Were we bluffing, or would the USA actually commit troops to fend off the Bear? But now we are preoccupied with a pointless preventive war in Iraq and dallying in a former Russian buffer state (Afghanistan). We can shake our fingers or employ nuclear weapons, but we have no credible force to encourage Russia, the Bear, to cease and desist. We have hollowed NATO by our departure and have not yet strengthened the smaller nations of Europe to carry their own sabers. As Americans, we need to make some weighty decisions. Our economy is in shambles; we have already outsourced much of our defense to low-bid and no-bid contracts; we have alienated our “Old Europe” allies and have put our “New Europe” allies in peril by encouraging them to resist militarily before they are ready and by failing to create credible alliances. We cannot fight our way out nor can we buy our way out. Our encouragement of Georgia is similar to the encouragement we provided the Kurds before Saddam crushed them or before the Hungarians and Czechs were over-run by Russian tanks. Even the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as well as Poland to the west expected our help to achieve freedom from the clutches of the Bear. We broadcast Radio Free Europe, the Voice of America and hinted that we would assist these European brethren. They may still love us, but the bitterness of unanswered brutal oppression lingers. Georgia is only the latest example and it will remind them all of our hesitation and our rhetoric of “looking into the eyes/soul of Putin” while they look at Russian boots. Russia has historically employed the flooding of neighbor states with ethnic Russians in order to generate stability and loyalty in her buffer states. Estonia is especially filled with Russians, but so were Ukraine and Belarus much before them. If the Russian justification of entering Ossetia or Abkhazia “to protect ethnic Russians” sounds like the German rationale for entering the Sudentenland, it is the same. The only difference is that the Russia placed Russians there to begin with to help guarantee a loyal buffer. Stalin, a Georgian by birth, frequently used boxcars to cross-balance ethnic Russians in the far-flung reaches of the USSR, but he was only keeping up with Russian history and using the technology of the time. He did not invent the practice.
The Cossacks, in the time of the Czars, were quick to ride out to punish any breakaway vassal state or any group that had the temerity to challenge Mother Russia. That practice was aided by an Orthodox Church that often exiled or excommunicated individual nobles who were feared by the central state. There was little difference between Church and State. Communism was merely another ideology that served as an overlay or a garnish to the fundamental Russian approach to protecting the state. As a child, I recall praying for the conversion of Russia, but I was unaware that we needed to pray for the healing from the paranoia that has gripped her for a millennium. Putin is doing what Russians and the current president want done. Do not expect that to be changed by investment in US Steel or Getty Oil. It is basic Russian and it has worked to their satisfaction.
All this sounds negative, and it is. It is far from hopeless, however. Let us list a few approaches we must consider to make things better:
Use more tools than the military option. We have seriously damaged our military in the past 7 years and cannot stretch it any further. We need real diplomacy through rebuilt alliances with old friends. Iraq has not only damaged our military, but has alienated our friends who we need to balance power region by region. We need official friends and need to encourage their participation in the process of ongoing international relations; not merely the military support of wars that we start without their consultation and agreement.
Rebuild the military to the numbers and quality we need to defend our homeland and to confront real threats to our national security. Iraq had no real capability to reach us in any significant way to pose a threat. I won’t even mention the fear mongering of weapons of mass destruction. Although we know and most of us knew that Iraq had none, even the slowest among us knew that the Iraqis had no delivery system capable of a real threat to us.
Immediately stop the practice of encouraging dissent and discontent in foreign countries as a specific policy. It has not worked in any of the countries enumerated above nor in Cuba nor Iran or any country you might pose. Worse, it engenders resentment in those countries that believe that we will support them in ways that we will not or cannot do.
Reconsider the security effects of global economics when we invest or permit investment in our corporations. It is easier to deny entry to a threat than to nationalize an industry to remove them from our critical industries. NAFTA and CAFTA have not brought prosperity to us or to our friends. Most corporations (foreign as well as domestic) pay absolutely no income taxes. Given the loss of control over our own resources including our human resources, should we be opening ourselves to unlimited investment by foreign companies and governments?
We cannot change the nature of the Bear, but we can build a better Bear trap and can learn how to use our moral leadership by earning it back by being true to ourselves as well as our word. The world forest is large and dark and sometimes scary, but if we join with other nations, we can protect one another from the paranoid Bear. The last thing we need to do is to confront the Bear with a slingshot and a prayer. Actually, that could be the last thing
Peace,
George Giacoppe
20 August 2008
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
War in Georgia
When I heard about the conflict in the Caucasus between the Republic
of Georgia and Russia, and especially Michael Klare’s (author of
"Blood and Oil") comments about its relationship to United States
designs on the huge oil deposits nearby, something rang a bell.
Then I remembered. Jeremy Scahill, in his book "Blackwater: The Rise
of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army," has a short chapter on
Blackwater and Caspian Sea oil. Take a look at a map of the region
and you see that Georgia is located smack in the corridor between the
Caspian and the Black Seas. Its closest neighbor, bordering its south
and east, is Azerbaijan. Scahill tells us that in order to protect
western oil and gas interests in that region, the Pentagon “deployed
‘civilian contractors’ from Blackwater and other firms to set up an
operation that would serve a dual purpose: protecting the West’s new
profitable oil and gas exploitation in a region historically
dominated by Russia and Iran, and possibly lay the groundwork for an
important forward operating base for an attack against Iran” (p. 173).
Now, with the battle over Georgia, we see more of what’s going on.
According to Klare, the United States, beginning with the Clinton
administration, has been pouring arms into a province, Georgia, that
had never had a real army of its own (it is, after all, the Russian
province which gave the world Josef Stalin). Now it’s armed to the
teeth, and those arms (plus special forces training similar to the
kind the U.S. has long exported to its neighborhood friendly
dictators via the School of the Americas) apparently gave it the
notion that it could simply invade Ossetia without consequences. In
Azerbaijan, the tactic is a bit subtler, but possibly more dangerous:
send in private “contractors,” i.e. mercenaries, instead of our own
forces. And why? Because we love democracy, as the President would
have it; because we love freedom?
Not exactly. As Scahill and Klare make clear, it’s about oil, folks.
Russia and its Caspian Sea region has all this oil. And we have
almost none (Klare, in a recent essay, “Portrait of an Oil-Addicted
Former Superpower,” contends that, because of its insatiable need for
foreign oil, the U.S. has already faded as a superpower). Russia also
has these former provinces which seem open to western money,
influence, and clandestine activities—not to mention that western-
owned pipeline which bypasses Russia and therefore avoids Russian
control. More than that, both countries, Georgia and Azerbaijan, are
“sandwiched between Russia and Iran,” so sending uniformed American
troops could be provocative, but sending private contractors keeps
things a bit quieter (at least, that was the hope).
Now, however, the Georgian attack on Ossetia and the overwhelming
Russian response has blown things into stark relief. The United
States has been caught playing a risky game, inciting the Georgians
into a tweak of the Russian bear’s whiskers, and no doubt doing the
same in Azerbaijan. In the latter country, according to Scahill,
Blackwater mercenaries are being used to “bolster Azerbaijan’s
military capabilities, including creating units modeled after the
United States’ most elite Special Forces, the Navy SEALs—this in a
country, according to Human Rights Watch, already prone to employing
“torture, police abuse, and excessive use of force by security
forces.” In Georgia, though, the Russian bear has struck back, with
consequences no one can really predict. What we can predict is that,
once again, the United States is stirring up a witch’s brew of
conflicting loyalties, as in Iraq, which may prove impossible to
control. And it is doing so in a region that has exploded before, and
could well explode again. For all we know, that may be the intention
here: start a little backfire, set the tanks and planes rolling, and
perhaps find the excuse the Bushies have been looking for to invade
yet another muslim country, Iran. Then the United States of America,
the great “peacemaker,” will have torched not just Afghanistan, not
just Iraq, not just Georgia, but the whole damn region.
Meantime, our leaders are singing their song of outrage: big bully
Russia has attacked a defenseless “democracy,” is trying to
reincorporate Georgia into its “empire,” and must withdraw,
immediately. How noble they sound, demanding a ceasefire, pretending
to work hard for peace—all the while knowing that they themselves are
the incendiaries, the naughty boys who simply can’t stop pouring oil
on fire, or fire on oil, take your pick. Only this time, the game is
not working very well. Russia holds all the cards here. It has all
the oil, and the United States has nothing but oil debt. So weakened
has the Bush Administration made us (Klare points out that with the
average GI in Iraq using 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels per day,
America’s gasoline bill for 160,000 troops comes to more than $14
million per day, or $5.1 billion per year) that it took France’s
President Sarkozy to put together an initial cease-fire.
At this writing, Georgia is licking its wounds and a once-invincible
superpower is left with nothing but protests about the brutality of
Russia’s “invasion.” That, and the vain hope that somehow its oil
exploitation in the Caspian region can survive the blow. If it does
not, and if the U.S. keeps adding fuel to the regional fire (such as
today's Bush administration action of using military planes to send
"humanitarian aid" to its dear ally, Georgia), the least of the
consequences may be the $200-a-barrel oil prices that many have
predicted.
Lawrence DiStasi
of Georgia and Russia, and especially Michael Klare’s (author of
"Blood and Oil") comments about its relationship to United States
designs on the huge oil deposits nearby, something rang a bell.
Then I remembered. Jeremy Scahill, in his book "Blackwater: The Rise
of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army," has a short chapter on
Blackwater and Caspian Sea oil. Take a look at a map of the region
and you see that Georgia is located smack in the corridor between the
Caspian and the Black Seas. Its closest neighbor, bordering its south
and east, is Azerbaijan. Scahill tells us that in order to protect
western oil and gas interests in that region, the Pentagon “deployed
‘civilian contractors’ from Blackwater and other firms to set up an
operation that would serve a dual purpose: protecting the West’s new
profitable oil and gas exploitation in a region historically
dominated by Russia and Iran, and possibly lay the groundwork for an
important forward operating base for an attack against Iran” (p. 173).
Now, with the battle over Georgia, we see more of what’s going on.
According to Klare, the United States, beginning with the Clinton
administration, has been pouring arms into a province, Georgia, that
had never had a real army of its own (it is, after all, the Russian
province which gave the world Josef Stalin). Now it’s armed to the
teeth, and those arms (plus special forces training similar to the
kind the U.S. has long exported to its neighborhood friendly
dictators via the School of the Americas) apparently gave it the
notion that it could simply invade Ossetia without consequences. In
Azerbaijan, the tactic is a bit subtler, but possibly more dangerous:
send in private “contractors,” i.e. mercenaries, instead of our own
forces. And why? Because we love democracy, as the President would
have it; because we love freedom?
Not exactly. As Scahill and Klare make clear, it’s about oil, folks.
Russia and its Caspian Sea region has all this oil. And we have
almost none (Klare, in a recent essay, “Portrait of an Oil-Addicted
Former Superpower,” contends that, because of its insatiable need for
foreign oil, the U.S. has already faded as a superpower). Russia also
has these former provinces which seem open to western money,
influence, and clandestine activities—not to mention that western-
owned pipeline which bypasses Russia and therefore avoids Russian
control. More than that, both countries, Georgia and Azerbaijan, are
“sandwiched between Russia and Iran,” so sending uniformed American
troops could be provocative, but sending private contractors keeps
things a bit quieter (at least, that was the hope).
Now, however, the Georgian attack on Ossetia and the overwhelming
Russian response has blown things into stark relief. The United
States has been caught playing a risky game, inciting the Georgians
into a tweak of the Russian bear’s whiskers, and no doubt doing the
same in Azerbaijan. In the latter country, according to Scahill,
Blackwater mercenaries are being used to “bolster Azerbaijan’s
military capabilities, including creating units modeled after the
United States’ most elite Special Forces, the Navy SEALs—this in a
country, according to Human Rights Watch, already prone to employing
“torture, police abuse, and excessive use of force by security
forces.” In Georgia, though, the Russian bear has struck back, with
consequences no one can really predict. What we can predict is that,
once again, the United States is stirring up a witch’s brew of
conflicting loyalties, as in Iraq, which may prove impossible to
control. And it is doing so in a region that has exploded before, and
could well explode again. For all we know, that may be the intention
here: start a little backfire, set the tanks and planes rolling, and
perhaps find the excuse the Bushies have been looking for to invade
yet another muslim country, Iran. Then the United States of America,
the great “peacemaker,” will have torched not just Afghanistan, not
just Iraq, not just Georgia, but the whole damn region.
Meantime, our leaders are singing their song of outrage: big bully
Russia has attacked a defenseless “democracy,” is trying to
reincorporate Georgia into its “empire,” and must withdraw,
immediately. How noble they sound, demanding a ceasefire, pretending
to work hard for peace—all the while knowing that they themselves are
the incendiaries, the naughty boys who simply can’t stop pouring oil
on fire, or fire on oil, take your pick. Only this time, the game is
not working very well. Russia holds all the cards here. It has all
the oil, and the United States has nothing but oil debt. So weakened
has the Bush Administration made us (Klare points out that with the
average GI in Iraq using 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels per day,
America’s gasoline bill for 160,000 troops comes to more than $14
million per day, or $5.1 billion per year) that it took France’s
President Sarkozy to put together an initial cease-fire.
At this writing, Georgia is licking its wounds and a once-invincible
superpower is left with nothing but protests about the brutality of
Russia’s “invasion.” That, and the vain hope that somehow its oil
exploitation in the Caspian region can survive the blow. If it does
not, and if the U.S. keeps adding fuel to the regional fire (such as
today's Bush administration action of using military planes to send
"humanitarian aid" to its dear ally, Georgia), the least of the
consequences may be the $200-a-barrel oil prices that many have
predicted.
Lawrence DiStasi
Friday, August 08, 2008
The Department of Just Us
By God, we love to compete
It’s so rewarding and neat
And you can always tell
Because of our smell
We’re frugal and chaste
Upright and laced
Not spendthrifts so bawdy
Or common or gaudy
We’re loyal and true
And nothing like you
Though we hold all the cards
And have special guards
To keep out most gnats
And all Democrats
Monica Goodling has brought a new dimension to the DOJ. We suspected that the department was corrupt given the leadership of John Ashcroft who, when on his own, could not win running as an incumbent against a dead man or the leadership of Alberto Gonzales who could not recall anything he said or did during his tenure or Michael Mukasey who could not call torture what it is unless if it were done to him. Corruption is as much a product of the inept as it is of the sinister schemer. The incompetent are slow to recognize the signs of corruption and are less likely to be able to respond effectively when it is uncovered. The incompetence can be technical, interpersonal or ideological. I believe that we have seen all three aspects in the past 7+ years of the George II reign. John draped marble statues so as to not offend the eye, yet allowed detention of Middle East residents of the US to be rounded up and incarcerated like criminals but without trials and he established the extraordinary system of detention and “enhanced interrogation” of Guantanamo. Alberto Gonzales furthered the policy of absolute executive immunity through his tacit if not direct approval of torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and sites of extraordinary rendition such as Syria. Ideology of “strict” Christian fundamentalism makes both marble modesty and torture in the defense of country “heroic.” International law sees these latter actions as illegal and yet none of the serial DOJ triumvirate admits illegality. Not incidentally, even the internal Inspector General of the Justice Department found serious lapses in law.
While one could point to defective leadership by the Attorney General to mitigate the actions of Monica Goodling, they are far more complex and extensive. The scope and nature of the corruption are vastly different. The Attorneys General affected our national appearance to the outside world and Alberto Gonzales affected the employment of some 93 politically appointed US Attorneys for the period of the Bush Administration. Monica Goodling potentially has affected the employment of 120,000 career attorneys in the Department of Justice for the indefinite future. The US Civil Service system has been a model merit system that uses testing and performance standards applied by other career servants and not political or religious grounds for hiring or promotion. Corruption of that scale has, until now, not ever been seriously threatened. What happened?
First, Monica Goodling may have graduated from a little known law school, but she knew enough about the law to plead the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution to prevent self-incrimination. She was one of about 150 graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School absorbed by the White House after she was hired by the Republican National Committee. Remember John Ashcroft? He is now “Distinguished Professor of Law and Government” at Regent. The Huffington Post repots that Kay Coles James was named by Bush as head of the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (2001-2005). That job affected the careers of about 1.8 million federal civil service employees. Ms. James was formerly Dean of Regent’s Robertson School of Government. Accidental and coincidental, I am pretty sure! It was equally coincidental that Jim David, current Assistant dean for Administration in the Robertson School of Government served in the Justice Department as Deputy director for the Task Force for Faith Based and Community Initiative. Huffington quotes Jim David after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans “We do not grieve, however, for the flooded and destroyed sex clubs that filled men with lust and degraded women.” “We do not miss the casinos that preyed upon individuals whose lack of self-control deprived families of needed food and shelter. We do not lament the destruction of voodoo stores prevalent in New Orleans before the flood.” In pleading the Fifth, Monica clearly chose the law rather than the Commandment to not bear false witness. Nice evangelist touch.
When we understand that Ms. Goodling took a direct hand in the hiring decisions, it is not comforting that she used Google to get background information in three major areas: political affiliation; religious and sexual orientation; and loyalty to GW Bush. These were not “tie-breakers,” but an integral part of the decision. There was no weight given to experience or what most of us would call “qualifications.” I do not know of a more direct way to ensure mediocrity or, worse, incompetence, than to systematically employ criteria that are irrelevant to the jobs being filled. As you have probably read, Goodling used the computer search engine using “god, guns+gays.” Other applicant key words included: “abortion,” “homosexual,” and “Florida recount.” On second thought, perhaps we should be grateful that the key words were not truly job requisites.
Now, I do not want to be naïve and assume that because Goodling is Republican, that she was therefore dishonest. Nor is it true that Conservatives are godless louts who always believe that the ends justify the means. What we need to understand is that this breech of the law and disregard for ethical behavior will have long term consequences that are highly negative and may lead some Democrats to “justify” partisan illegal behavior in hiring and firing and that the compromise of the Civil Service System is absolutely unacceptable as is the outsourcing of these jobs to contractors on a similar partisan basis. I understand that the hiring and firing practices of the 93 US Attorneys was also illegal. I don’t like it, but it is almost to be expected that some maneuvering will happen with political appointments even when the job as US Attorney is apolitical. The Civil Service must remain free from partisan hiring, promotion and firing if we are to ever attain even modest qualifications for labor. Let there be no compromise. Let the job essential qualifications determine the winners and losers. That gets me to Goodling’s sports analogy of “building a farm team” for the GOP. We have seen what the GOP did with the K Street project by teaming with the lobbyists to their self perpetuation and the sale of more earmarks than have ever been seen before or since. That was building the “dollar farm team.” We have seen the building of the “legal farm” through appointment of judges that agree with the unitary executive concept and executive immunity from prosecution for crimes.
I can recall some relatives in Albany, NY complaining that only opposing party cars parked on many Albany streets were towed during snowstorms. It was done using voter registration and automobile registration rolls. Partisanship will rear its ugly head in some unusual places. As Americans, we have an abiding interest in a clean and non-partisan Civil Service. It is not cute. It is not funny. It is illegal and it is damaging to organizational effectiveness. We cannot allow illegal “farm teams” to be part of our nation. And I am getting to hate sports analogies applied to non-sports, anyway. It seems to lead to cheerleading and winning and losing instead of building a government for and by the people.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
8 August 2008
It’s so rewarding and neat
And you can always tell
Because of our smell
We’re frugal and chaste
Upright and laced
Not spendthrifts so bawdy
Or common or gaudy
We’re loyal and true
And nothing like you
Though we hold all the cards
And have special guards
To keep out most gnats
And all Democrats
Monica Goodling has brought a new dimension to the DOJ. We suspected that the department was corrupt given the leadership of John Ashcroft who, when on his own, could not win running as an incumbent against a dead man or the leadership of Alberto Gonzales who could not recall anything he said or did during his tenure or Michael Mukasey who could not call torture what it is unless if it were done to him. Corruption is as much a product of the inept as it is of the sinister schemer. The incompetent are slow to recognize the signs of corruption and are less likely to be able to respond effectively when it is uncovered. The incompetence can be technical, interpersonal or ideological. I believe that we have seen all three aspects in the past 7+ years of the George II reign. John draped marble statues so as to not offend the eye, yet allowed detention of Middle East residents of the US to be rounded up and incarcerated like criminals but without trials and he established the extraordinary system of detention and “enhanced interrogation” of Guantanamo. Alberto Gonzales furthered the policy of absolute executive immunity through his tacit if not direct approval of torture at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and sites of extraordinary rendition such as Syria. Ideology of “strict” Christian fundamentalism makes both marble modesty and torture in the defense of country “heroic.” International law sees these latter actions as illegal and yet none of the serial DOJ triumvirate admits illegality. Not incidentally, even the internal Inspector General of the Justice Department found serious lapses in law.
While one could point to defective leadership by the Attorney General to mitigate the actions of Monica Goodling, they are far more complex and extensive. The scope and nature of the corruption are vastly different. The Attorneys General affected our national appearance to the outside world and Alberto Gonzales affected the employment of some 93 politically appointed US Attorneys for the period of the Bush Administration. Monica Goodling potentially has affected the employment of 120,000 career attorneys in the Department of Justice for the indefinite future. The US Civil Service system has been a model merit system that uses testing and performance standards applied by other career servants and not political or religious grounds for hiring or promotion. Corruption of that scale has, until now, not ever been seriously threatened. What happened?
First, Monica Goodling may have graduated from a little known law school, but she knew enough about the law to plead the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution to prevent self-incrimination. She was one of about 150 graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School absorbed by the White House after she was hired by the Republican National Committee. Remember John Ashcroft? He is now “Distinguished Professor of Law and Government” at Regent. The Huffington Post repots that Kay Coles James was named by Bush as head of the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (2001-2005). That job affected the careers of about 1.8 million federal civil service employees. Ms. James was formerly Dean of Regent’s Robertson School of Government. Accidental and coincidental, I am pretty sure! It was equally coincidental that Jim David, current Assistant dean for Administration in the Robertson School of Government served in the Justice Department as Deputy director for the Task Force for Faith Based and Community Initiative. Huffington quotes Jim David after the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans “We do not grieve, however, for the flooded and destroyed sex clubs that filled men with lust and degraded women.” “We do not miss the casinos that preyed upon individuals whose lack of self-control deprived families of needed food and shelter. We do not lament the destruction of voodoo stores prevalent in New Orleans before the flood.” In pleading the Fifth, Monica clearly chose the law rather than the Commandment to not bear false witness. Nice evangelist touch.
When we understand that Ms. Goodling took a direct hand in the hiring decisions, it is not comforting that she used Google to get background information in three major areas: political affiliation; religious and sexual orientation; and loyalty to GW Bush. These were not “tie-breakers,” but an integral part of the decision. There was no weight given to experience or what most of us would call “qualifications.” I do not know of a more direct way to ensure mediocrity or, worse, incompetence, than to systematically employ criteria that are irrelevant to the jobs being filled. As you have probably read, Goodling used the computer search engine using “god, guns+gays.” Other applicant key words included: “abortion,” “homosexual,” and “Florida recount.” On second thought, perhaps we should be grateful that the key words were not truly job requisites.
Now, I do not want to be naïve and assume that because Goodling is Republican, that she was therefore dishonest. Nor is it true that Conservatives are godless louts who always believe that the ends justify the means. What we need to understand is that this breech of the law and disregard for ethical behavior will have long term consequences that are highly negative and may lead some Democrats to “justify” partisan illegal behavior in hiring and firing and that the compromise of the Civil Service System is absolutely unacceptable as is the outsourcing of these jobs to contractors on a similar partisan basis. I understand that the hiring and firing practices of the 93 US Attorneys was also illegal. I don’t like it, but it is almost to be expected that some maneuvering will happen with political appointments even when the job as US Attorney is apolitical. The Civil Service must remain free from partisan hiring, promotion and firing if we are to ever attain even modest qualifications for labor. Let there be no compromise. Let the job essential qualifications determine the winners and losers. That gets me to Goodling’s sports analogy of “building a farm team” for the GOP. We have seen what the GOP did with the K Street project by teaming with the lobbyists to their self perpetuation and the sale of more earmarks than have ever been seen before or since. That was building the “dollar farm team.” We have seen the building of the “legal farm” through appointment of judges that agree with the unitary executive concept and executive immunity from prosecution for crimes.
I can recall some relatives in Albany, NY complaining that only opposing party cars parked on many Albany streets were towed during snowstorms. It was done using voter registration and automobile registration rolls. Partisanship will rear its ugly head in some unusual places. As Americans, we have an abiding interest in a clean and non-partisan Civil Service. It is not cute. It is not funny. It is illegal and it is damaging to organizational effectiveness. We cannot allow illegal “farm teams” to be part of our nation. And I am getting to hate sports analogies applied to non-sports, anyway. It seems to lead to cheerleading and winning and losing instead of building a government for and by the people.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
8 August 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
I Know How To Win Wars
Not content with crowing about his macho credentials once, Republican presidential candidate John McCain, on July 18 in Albuquerque, blared out his assertion twice:
“ I know how to win wars. I know how to win wars.”
If this were not so alarming, it would be funny. I mean this is the guy who got shot down over North Vietnam on one of his first combat missions, spent the rest of the war as a POW, and may well have provided information to the enemy about American strategy and tactics. Worse, this was not McCain’s only mishap: before he got to Vietnam, he crashed his airplanes no less than 4 times. One, on the deck of the aircraft carrier Forrestal, occurred when he “wet-started” his A4E Skyhawk while awaiting takeoff and “caused a jet of flame to strike the Phantom F4 immediately behind him. That caused a Zuni rocket to ignite and launch, starting a chain of events that killed at least 164 men” (from George Giacoppe, splinters-splinters.blogspot.com, June 30, 2008).
So here we have a “hot-dog” Navy pilot, who seems to have escaped several courts-martial for reckless behavior while flying because of his father’s position in the Navy, who then becomes a “hero” because he is shot down over North Vietnam. It is presumably this “heroic” status as a POW (he would have had a great deal of time to think), and all those crashes which taught McCain “how to win wars.” Of course, the United States cannot by any stretch of the imagination claim a win in Vietnam, but that’s another matter.
But let’s look at the war McCain claims in his win column—the war in Iraq, now going so swimmingly because of the surge which McCain backed. To begin with, this is not and never has been a “war.” No war was ever declared. The United States simply imposed an arbitrary deadline for the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, to get out of his country. When he did not, the U.S. invaded, first with a rain of bombs and missiles, then with a ground invasion. It is now accepted by almost everyone that the justification for invading Iraq—the famous WMD Saddam supposedly had—was a blatant lie. So this aggression, which McCain claims as a war he knows how to “win,” was illegal from the beginning. According to international law, such aggression is a crime against humanity, the supreme crime of all the crimes a nation can commit.
The occupation which followed the U.S. invasion was also a crime. It has resulted in an estimated 1 million Iraqi deaths, the destruction of an entire country including its infrastructure, the exile of more than 2,000,000 Iraqis (out of a population of 26,000,000) who could not survive the civil war the invasion and occupation unleashed, and the displacement of at least 2,000,000 more within the country. The entire nation has gone from the richest Arab nation in the Middle East with an almost universally educated populace to a third-world basket case: spotty electricity, polluted water, hospitals and schools hardly functional. Its oil production, once second only to that of Saudi Arabia, has been since the invasion in a state of almost complete disrepair. Recent agreements, signed with U.S. and European oil companies, guarantee that most of the revenue from Iraqi oil will be stolen by the West rather than supporting the Iraqi people themselves. As to the surge, its most visible sign is the ethnic segregation of a population which used to live in totally mixed neighborhoods. Huge blast walls, similar to those in Israel, line most of Baghdad’s streets. And the real success of the “surge” has been the paying off of the Sunni population which comprised most of the insurgency. Sunni leaders and their soldiers now get weekly salaries courtesy of the U.S. Government, a payoff which is apparently cheaper than financing the fight against them.
This is the war McCain “knows how to win.” It will “only” cost the United States, when it is done, something in the area of 2 trillion dollars, a military crippled by the strain, a reputation as a decent nation in tatters, and the lifeblood of more than 4,000 men and women (not to mention the thousands crippled in various physical and mental ways for the rest of their lives.) It will also make the world, and America itself a more dangerous place for all Americans.
And all this for a lie.
In the face of all this, one can only work and pray and organize to prevent “Hot Dog” McCain and his ilk from ever ever getting the chance to teach us “how to win” more such lovely wars.
Lawrence DiStasi
“ I know how to win wars. I know how to win wars.”
If this were not so alarming, it would be funny. I mean this is the guy who got shot down over North Vietnam on one of his first combat missions, spent the rest of the war as a POW, and may well have provided information to the enemy about American strategy and tactics. Worse, this was not McCain’s only mishap: before he got to Vietnam, he crashed his airplanes no less than 4 times. One, on the deck of the aircraft carrier Forrestal, occurred when he “wet-started” his A4E Skyhawk while awaiting takeoff and “caused a jet of flame to strike the Phantom F4 immediately behind him. That caused a Zuni rocket to ignite and launch, starting a chain of events that killed at least 164 men” (from George Giacoppe, splinters-splinters.blogspot.com, June 30, 2008).
So here we have a “hot-dog” Navy pilot, who seems to have escaped several courts-martial for reckless behavior while flying because of his father’s position in the Navy, who then becomes a “hero” because he is shot down over North Vietnam. It is presumably this “heroic” status as a POW (he would have had a great deal of time to think), and all those crashes which taught McCain “how to win wars.” Of course, the United States cannot by any stretch of the imagination claim a win in Vietnam, but that’s another matter.
But let’s look at the war McCain claims in his win column—the war in Iraq, now going so swimmingly because of the surge which McCain backed. To begin with, this is not and never has been a “war.” No war was ever declared. The United States simply imposed an arbitrary deadline for the president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, to get out of his country. When he did not, the U.S. invaded, first with a rain of bombs and missiles, then with a ground invasion. It is now accepted by almost everyone that the justification for invading Iraq—the famous WMD Saddam supposedly had—was a blatant lie. So this aggression, which McCain claims as a war he knows how to “win,” was illegal from the beginning. According to international law, such aggression is a crime against humanity, the supreme crime of all the crimes a nation can commit.
The occupation which followed the U.S. invasion was also a crime. It has resulted in an estimated 1 million Iraqi deaths, the destruction of an entire country including its infrastructure, the exile of more than 2,000,000 Iraqis (out of a population of 26,000,000) who could not survive the civil war the invasion and occupation unleashed, and the displacement of at least 2,000,000 more within the country. The entire nation has gone from the richest Arab nation in the Middle East with an almost universally educated populace to a third-world basket case: spotty electricity, polluted water, hospitals and schools hardly functional. Its oil production, once second only to that of Saudi Arabia, has been since the invasion in a state of almost complete disrepair. Recent agreements, signed with U.S. and European oil companies, guarantee that most of the revenue from Iraqi oil will be stolen by the West rather than supporting the Iraqi people themselves. As to the surge, its most visible sign is the ethnic segregation of a population which used to live in totally mixed neighborhoods. Huge blast walls, similar to those in Israel, line most of Baghdad’s streets. And the real success of the “surge” has been the paying off of the Sunni population which comprised most of the insurgency. Sunni leaders and their soldiers now get weekly salaries courtesy of the U.S. Government, a payoff which is apparently cheaper than financing the fight against them.
This is the war McCain “knows how to win.” It will “only” cost the United States, when it is done, something in the area of 2 trillion dollars, a military crippled by the strain, a reputation as a decent nation in tatters, and the lifeblood of more than 4,000 men and women (not to mention the thousands crippled in various physical and mental ways for the rest of their lives.) It will also make the world, and America itself a more dangerous place for all Americans.
And all this for a lie.
In the face of all this, one can only work and pray and organize to prevent “Hot Dog” McCain and his ilk from ever ever getting the chance to teach us “how to win” more such lovely wars.
Lawrence DiStasi
Friday, July 25, 2008
Hussein in Yarmulka
Among the dismaying news items from yesterday, July 23, were these two:
1) a photo of presidential hopeful Barack Obama at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, wearing a yarmulka—the skull cap worn by Jewish men on occasions deemed culturally or spiritually significant;
2) an interview on NPR with distinguished Israeli historian, Bennie Morris, concerning the op-ed piece he wrote in the July 18 New York Times predicting that “Israel will almost surely attack Iran’s nuclear sites in the next four to seven months.”
Consider the Morris prediction first. Despite all the talk about a new effort by the United States to engage Iran diplomatically, the war threats from Israel have never really ceased. Coming from Bennie Morris—a historian who was among the first to publicize the true story of the 1948 ethnic cleansing perpetrated by the Israelis, including the infamous massacre at Deir Yassin, and so one who knows intimately the grave crimes committed by his country—this was grim news indeed. So were his reasons for why Israel cannot count on diplomacy to stop the Iranians from “getting a nuclear weapon,” and the reasons why Israel is certain that Iran with a nuclear weapon would mean an Iran which would drop a nuke on Israel. Simple, said Morris: “the Iranians are not rational people.” They are controlled, he said, by religious zealots who are irrational; they “threaten Israel with destruction every day.” Here, once again, we have the purposeful distortion of what Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, which was not so much a threat as a prediction: “the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”—and one that Iran scholar Juan Cole says “does not imply military action or killing anyone at all.” By contrast, it is Morris’ article that contains the real threat, for what he concludes it with is this: Iran should hope that Israel’s conventional strike succeeds, for though it would mean “thousands of Iranian casualties and international humiliation,” the alternative—Israel being forced to use its nuclear weapons on an Iran that did succeed in building its own nuke—“is an Iran turned into a nuclear wasteland.”
Isn’t this rich? Here we have an Israeli scholar who has researched the international crimes his nation has committed and continues to commit. He also must be aware that his nation is controlled by a Zionist ideology which is nothing if not zealous, racist, and ruthless in its admission that in order for it to survive, it must rid Palestine of all Palestinians, and perhaps Iran of all Iranians. He also must know that his nation is animated by a sense of its own superiority—that is, the superiority of even a single Jewish life over the lives of thousands of Palestinians or Arabs or Muslims—indeed, a nation whose leaders have routinely referred to Palestinians as insects or worse. Finally, he clearly, in the very op-ed piece under discussion, threatens Iran with a nuclear holocaust. And he is calling the Iranians “irrational.” He is saying that the Iranians are so “irrational” that they cannot be trusted with a single nuclear weapon (ignoring the fact that the best U.S. evidence indicates that the Iranians gave up their nuclear program in 2003).
"But doesn’t Israel have nuclear weapons itself?" asked the NPR interviewer. “Yes,” said Morris, “but they have never threatened anyone with their use.” In other words, unlike the irrational Iranians, the Israelis are MORAL people; they would NEVER use nuclear weapons, or even threaten to use them (again, forgetting his own words). But wait: who has been at war for virtually its entire existence as a nation? Who has attacked and continues to attack a population with virtually no weapons, and certainly none comparable to the American-supplied planes, tanks, rockets, and ships possessed by armed-to-the-teeth Israel? Who has just written an entire essay that is essentially a threat of nuclear destruction? And from the other side, who has Iran ever attacked in modern times? No one, unless we call Iran’s defending itself from Iraq’s aggression in 1980 an “attack.” No, what Iran has done is make the supreme error of taking over its own oil fields. It has made the supreme error of getting rid of its U.S.-backed and-created dictator, the Shah. It has made the supreme error of telling the western powers, including Israel, that it doesn’t need them and their exploitation. And in the lexicon that pertains today in Israel and the United States, that translates into that dread word: “irrational,” which justifies not only a pre-emptive strike, but a nuclear holocaust.
The sad part of all this is that Barack Obama has made irrational statements agreeing with such propaganda. As I noted in a previous blog, Obama, groveling before the rabidly pro-Israel minions at the recent AIPAC conference in Washington, DC, said:
“Now, there's no greater threat to Israel or to the peace and stability of the region than Iran…. The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.”
Then yesterday, he continued his groveling, attending sit-downs with no less than half a dozen Israeli leaders, topping it off with his yarmulka-enhanced photo op at the Wailing Wall. This is truly disturbing stuff. For it not only indicates the lengths to which Obama now seems willing to go to demonstrate his fealty to Jewish Americans and the money they contribute to Democratic Party candidates, but also his fear of the concerted power of Jewish-controlled opinion in the United States and the West. This is a serious situation indeed. For where Obama has been at great pains to downplay what would seem to be his logical concern for his own people in his own country—the African Americans who are supporting him almost universally and who need his help—he does public prostrations meant to announce in bold type his willingness to “go to the wall” on behalf of a foreign nation that has been at the center of international conflict for its entire existence, and now threatens a neighboring nation with a nuclear holocaust.
Any hope, therefore, that an American president would finally take a look at history and conclude that the United States places itself and all its people in peril by supporting a nation that condemns entire peoples and religions to sub-human status, must be abandoned. Absent growing outrage from Americans themselves, and that includes condemnation of the powerful forces in this country, like AIPAC and other Jewish organizations, which exist to bludgeon politicians into undying support for Israel regardless of its actions or its threats, we can expect more of the same, with the consequent rising frustration and hatred from Arab and Muslim nations.
What a terrible irony for a man whose middle name is “Hussein.”
Lawrence DiStasi
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Saturday, July 19, 2008
Let's kill all the lawyers
In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, part II, we find Dick the butcher, one of the rebel followers of Jack Cade, uttering these lines:
“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.” (IV.ii.83-84)
Especially after listening to Congressional hearings featuring such legal eagles of the Bush Administration as John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, Jim Haynes, and most recently Douglas Feith, the lines seem uncannily appropriate to our time. Each lawyer has taken the stand in his turn and, like that other legal eagle, former President Bill Clinton, chosen denial and obfuscation and parsing of words as the means to escape all culpability. In Clinton’s case, though, the offense involved fellatio in the Oval Office—a rather crude offense, but not one that endangered the Republic. In the case of Yoo, Addington, Gonzalez, Haynes and Feith, by contrast, the offenses amounted to supplying the legal justification for war crimes, most notably the torture that now almost everyone agrees took place at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and probably numerous other “black sites” around the world. Such torture subverts not only several treaties to which the United States is a signatory—the Geneva Conventions, the Torture Convention of 1984—but also the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and the policies for interrogation laid out in the Army Field Manual.
All these lawyers, of course, argue either that they were just doing the job their client, the President of the United States or, in some cases Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld asked them to do; or that they were endeavoring to “protect the security of the nation.” In order to do this, they argue, they had to find a way to extract vital information from “the bad guys” captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Thus they argued in memo after memo, and in meeting after meeting, that since this was not a regular war, the rules governing prisoners of war (POWs) did not apply; or that even if they did apply, these particular “bad guys” were not regular, uniform-wearing troops but were “enemy combatants” (i.e. terrorists) and undeserving of the protections offered by the Geneva Conventions. Yoo and his boss Jay Bybee—another legal eagle now rewarded with a lifetime position as a federal judge—took a slightly different tack. They argued that the Geneva rules governing torture were outdated, having defined torture much too broadly. They then “tortured” torture to refer to only that kind of treatment which led to injury equivalent to “organ failure or death” or long-term psychological damage.
What resulted from all these coordinated attempts to justify “taking the gloves off” was torture. Prisoners were hooded for long periods, shackled to the floor like dogs, kept standing for long hours until their ankles swelled to excruciating size, sexually humiliated in a host of ways, frightened with dogs, religiously tormented, and waterboarded. All these methods (18 of them were outlined in Haynes’ December 2, 2002 memo to his boss, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld), both alone and in combination, were meant to reduce a prisoner to total hopelessness, misery, disorientation, de-personalization, and psychosis, the aim being to force him to reveal what he knew about future terrorist plans or the whereabouts of superiors.
The astonishing thing about all this—especially as it is laid out in numerous books and articles like Philppe Sands’ recent Torture Team—is that where usually we expect the military to be pushing for tougher measures in war and civilians in the Justice Department to be reigning them in with legal objections (as happened in World War II regarding internment of civilians), here the opposite occurred. In 2002 it was civilian appointees in the Pentagon, the Department of Justice and the White House who argued ferociously for extreme interrogation methods, and Pentagon lawyers, usually in the Judge Advocate General’s office, who objected to the violations of U. S. laws and military traditions. In short, instead of trying to reign in the hawks in the military, the Bush Administration let loose its own Chicken hawks. It was these civilian policy makers who badgered and bullied and, most often, simply cut the military lawyers out of the decisional loop entirely. And indeed, what Philppe Sands, himself an English barrister, concludes is that in the Bush Administration, policy ruled. The policy was set by civilians, by Bush himself, by his Machiavellian Vice President Cheney, and by all the sycophants, mostly lawyers, who followed and sought to please their clients by offering advice they wanted to hear. In Sands’ words:
“The legal advice was fitted around the policy” (Sands, p. 226)
If the policy was war in Iraq, the lawyers found ways to justify it. If the policy was torture, the lawyers found ways to disqualify prisoners from protections against it, or found ways to define torture so narrowly that almost anything was permissible. And overall, they argued fiercely that even if it were torture, it was necessary to save the people from terrorism. This was the tack taken by that distinguished legal eagle, not a part of the administration but one of the reigning nabobs at Harvard’s Law School, Alan Dershowitz. He it was who invented the last-ditch rationale, the “ticking time-bomb” scenario. Its import was simple, or simple-minded: if we capture a terrorist whom we suspect has information about a bomb, a nuclear weapon about to explode in a crowded city, what could possibly limit our attempts to get that information in time? Shouldn’t our policy be that any and all methods are warranted in such a dire emergency?
Without questioning this ridiculous scenario—for how often could it be, aside from on an imaginary thriller like “24” (the favorite program of most of the interrogators at Guantanamo, as well as many of the lawyers), that a single captive would have such information, with his captors knowing he had it?—the Administration based policy on it. And administration lawyers gave the requisite advice: it is legitimate to do virtually anything to prisoners to make them talk. In short, the legal advice was fitted around the policy—just as, earlier, as we learned from one of Britain’s diplomats, the intelligence required to justify invading Iraq was fitted around that policy as well.
What Sands points out in Torture Team, however, is that lawyers have a legal obligation not simply to win for their clients, not simply to provide them with legal rationales for the unlawful behavior they wish to engage in (this is the job rather, of mafia lawyers), but the obligation to warn them of the legal consequences of such actions. Lawyers have a primary responsibility to make sure their clients do NOT resort to measures that violate the law. Lawyers are officers of the court. And what the government lawyers in the Bush Administration failed to do, it now seems clear, was sound the alarm about the legal peril facing their clients for the illegalities they wanted to employ.
Instead, they strove mightily to frame arguments and find justifications for those illegalities, as well as expedients to indemnify both themselves and their clients from the penalties such acts incurred. They worked mightily to avoid their culpability for the war crimes that resulted from their arguments. And for the most part, they succeeded.
On the other hand, perhaps they did not succeed as thoroughly as they once hoped. The 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, to which the United States is a signatory, makes very clear that not only are public officials prohibited from “intentionally inflicting” physical or mental pain upon a person (including so-called enemy combatants), but there are no circumstances, including a war against terrorism, that justify such treatment. Not only are all such acts criminal offenses, but more important, “any act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture” is also a criminal offense. In other words, the lawyers whose arguments authorized such acts are also culpable—as the Nuremberg Trials demonstrated.
This is not just an academic argument. In June 2006, in the Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld case, the Supreme Court ruled that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention did, in fact, apply to all Guantanamo detainees. Taliban or al-Quaeda, state combatants or enemy combatants, all had these rights. Justice Anthony Kennedy went even further. He wrote that “violations of Common Article 3 are considered ‘war crimes,’ punishable as federal offenses, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel” (quoted in Sands, p. 174).
Of course, this “ominous” decision put the Bushies, including the lawyers, in a bit of a panic. For one thing, the Torture Convention of 1984 contains the requirement that all parties to this Convention, i.e. all nations who signed it, are “required to investigate any person who is alleged to have committed torture.” This act also “criminalizes any act that constitutes complicity” in torture (Sands, p. 177). So what did President Bush and his lawyers do? Why they proposed, and passed the Military Commissions Act, signed into law in November of 2006. This act “created a new defense to alleged breaches of Common Article 3…where the misconduct concerned the ‘detention and interrogation of aliens’ between September 11, 2001 and December 30, 2005” (Sands p. 208). Thus it gave the interrogators, and the lawyers, and any Bush Administration officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for their crimes. Rather a nice ploy, it seems. Commit crimes that violate the law both domestic and international; then create a new law absolving oneself of guilt for the crime. We’ve just seen a re-enactment of this in the bill that gave telecommunications companies immunity from their crimes in spying on the American people.
But the rejoicing in the White House may have come too soon. For as two jurists pointed out to Philippe Sands when he questioned them about the immunity legislation, this was a “very stupid” thing to do. Such legislation, allowing a crime to be covered up, “was almost an admission that a crime had occurred.” As one of the jurists pointed out, it had all the earmarks of a “pactum scaelaris,” or “evil pact,” bringing into play that part of the Criminal Code which “showed that contributing to the avoidance of an investigation of a crime could itself give rise to complicity” (Sands, p. 208).
Sands sums up the case he makes throughout the book as follows:
“The lawyers advising the Administration played a decisive role in subverting the system of international rules that should have protected all detainees from cruel and degrading treatment, a system that the United States had done so much to put in place. This was no mere accident or oversight. Nor was it a case of responding to a legitimate request that came up from the ground-level interrogators at Guantanamo, as the Bush Administration would have us believe. September 11 gave rise to a conscious decision to set aside international rules constraining interrogations.”
In short, it was the lawyers who enabled torture by subverting the constraints against it. Absent their legal arguments rationalizing the banned techniques, circumventing the international constraints against them, and justifying their use in the alleged crisis, the torture could not have happened. Which brings us back to Shakespeare’s formulation for a remedy:
“First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Lawrence DiStasi
=
“The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.” (IV.ii.83-84)
Especially after listening to Congressional hearings featuring such legal eagles of the Bush Administration as John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzalez, Jim Haynes, and most recently Douglas Feith, the lines seem uncannily appropriate to our time. Each lawyer has taken the stand in his turn and, like that other legal eagle, former President Bill Clinton, chosen denial and obfuscation and parsing of words as the means to escape all culpability. In Clinton’s case, though, the offense involved fellatio in the Oval Office—a rather crude offense, but not one that endangered the Republic. In the case of Yoo, Addington, Gonzalez, Haynes and Feith, by contrast, the offenses amounted to supplying the legal justification for war crimes, most notably the torture that now almost everyone agrees took place at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, and probably numerous other “black sites” around the world. Such torture subverts not only several treaties to which the United States is a signatory—the Geneva Conventions, the Torture Convention of 1984—but also the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and the policies for interrogation laid out in the Army Field Manual.
All these lawyers, of course, argue either that they were just doing the job their client, the President of the United States or, in some cases Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld asked them to do; or that they were endeavoring to “protect the security of the nation.” In order to do this, they argue, they had to find a way to extract vital information from “the bad guys” captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Thus they argued in memo after memo, and in meeting after meeting, that since this was not a regular war, the rules governing prisoners of war (POWs) did not apply; or that even if they did apply, these particular “bad guys” were not regular, uniform-wearing troops but were “enemy combatants” (i.e. terrorists) and undeserving of the protections offered by the Geneva Conventions. Yoo and his boss Jay Bybee—another legal eagle now rewarded with a lifetime position as a federal judge—took a slightly different tack. They argued that the Geneva rules governing torture were outdated, having defined torture much too broadly. They then “tortured” torture to refer to only that kind of treatment which led to injury equivalent to “organ failure or death” or long-term psychological damage.
What resulted from all these coordinated attempts to justify “taking the gloves off” was torture. Prisoners were hooded for long periods, shackled to the floor like dogs, kept standing for long hours until their ankles swelled to excruciating size, sexually humiliated in a host of ways, frightened with dogs, religiously tormented, and waterboarded. All these methods (18 of them were outlined in Haynes’ December 2, 2002 memo to his boss, SecDef Donald Rumsfeld), both alone and in combination, were meant to reduce a prisoner to total hopelessness, misery, disorientation, de-personalization, and psychosis, the aim being to force him to reveal what he knew about future terrorist plans or the whereabouts of superiors.
The astonishing thing about all this—especially as it is laid out in numerous books and articles like Philppe Sands’ recent Torture Team—is that where usually we expect the military to be pushing for tougher measures in war and civilians in the Justice Department to be reigning them in with legal objections (as happened in World War II regarding internment of civilians), here the opposite occurred. In 2002 it was civilian appointees in the Pentagon, the Department of Justice and the White House who argued ferociously for extreme interrogation methods, and Pentagon lawyers, usually in the Judge Advocate General’s office, who objected to the violations of U. S. laws and military traditions. In short, instead of trying to reign in the hawks in the military, the Bush Administration let loose its own Chicken hawks. It was these civilian policy makers who badgered and bullied and, most often, simply cut the military lawyers out of the decisional loop entirely. And indeed, what Philppe Sands, himself an English barrister, concludes is that in the Bush Administration, policy ruled. The policy was set by civilians, by Bush himself, by his Machiavellian Vice President Cheney, and by all the sycophants, mostly lawyers, who followed and sought to please their clients by offering advice they wanted to hear. In Sands’ words:
“The legal advice was fitted around the policy” (Sands, p. 226)
If the policy was war in Iraq, the lawyers found ways to justify it. If the policy was torture, the lawyers found ways to disqualify prisoners from protections against it, or found ways to define torture so narrowly that almost anything was permissible. And overall, they argued fiercely that even if it were torture, it was necessary to save the people from terrorism. This was the tack taken by that distinguished legal eagle, not a part of the administration but one of the reigning nabobs at Harvard’s Law School, Alan Dershowitz. He it was who invented the last-ditch rationale, the “ticking time-bomb” scenario. Its import was simple, or simple-minded: if we capture a terrorist whom we suspect has information about a bomb, a nuclear weapon about to explode in a crowded city, what could possibly limit our attempts to get that information in time? Shouldn’t our policy be that any and all methods are warranted in such a dire emergency?
Without questioning this ridiculous scenario—for how often could it be, aside from on an imaginary thriller like “24” (the favorite program of most of the interrogators at Guantanamo, as well as many of the lawyers), that a single captive would have such information, with his captors knowing he had it?—the Administration based policy on it. And administration lawyers gave the requisite advice: it is legitimate to do virtually anything to prisoners to make them talk. In short, the legal advice was fitted around the policy—just as, earlier, as we learned from one of Britain’s diplomats, the intelligence required to justify invading Iraq was fitted around that policy as well.
What Sands points out in Torture Team, however, is that lawyers have a legal obligation not simply to win for their clients, not simply to provide them with legal rationales for the unlawful behavior they wish to engage in (this is the job rather, of mafia lawyers), but the obligation to warn them of the legal consequences of such actions. Lawyers have a primary responsibility to make sure their clients do NOT resort to measures that violate the law. Lawyers are officers of the court. And what the government lawyers in the Bush Administration failed to do, it now seems clear, was sound the alarm about the legal peril facing their clients for the illegalities they wanted to employ.
Instead, they strove mightily to frame arguments and find justifications for those illegalities, as well as expedients to indemnify both themselves and their clients from the penalties such acts incurred. They worked mightily to avoid their culpability for the war crimes that resulted from their arguments. And for the most part, they succeeded.
On the other hand, perhaps they did not succeed as thoroughly as they once hoped. The 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment, to which the United States is a signatory, makes very clear that not only are public officials prohibited from “intentionally inflicting” physical or mental pain upon a person (including so-called enemy combatants), but there are no circumstances, including a war against terrorism, that justify such treatment. Not only are all such acts criminal offenses, but more important, “any act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture” is also a criminal offense. In other words, the lawyers whose arguments authorized such acts are also culpable—as the Nuremberg Trials demonstrated.
This is not just an academic argument. In June 2006, in the Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld case, the Supreme Court ruled that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention did, in fact, apply to all Guantanamo detainees. Taliban or al-Quaeda, state combatants or enemy combatants, all had these rights. Justice Anthony Kennedy went even further. He wrote that “violations of Common Article 3 are considered ‘war crimes,’ punishable as federal offenses, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel” (quoted in Sands, p. 174).
Of course, this “ominous” decision put the Bushies, including the lawyers, in a bit of a panic. For one thing, the Torture Convention of 1984 contains the requirement that all parties to this Convention, i.e. all nations who signed it, are “required to investigate any person who is alleged to have committed torture.” This act also “criminalizes any act that constitutes complicity” in torture (Sands, p. 177). So what did President Bush and his lawyers do? Why they proposed, and passed the Military Commissions Act, signed into law in November of 2006. This act “created a new defense to alleged breaches of Common Article 3…where the misconduct concerned the ‘detention and interrogation of aliens’ between September 11, 2001 and December 30, 2005” (Sands p. 208). Thus it gave the interrogators, and the lawyers, and any Bush Administration officials retroactive immunity from prosecution for their crimes. Rather a nice ploy, it seems. Commit crimes that violate the law both domestic and international; then create a new law absolving oneself of guilt for the crime. We’ve just seen a re-enactment of this in the bill that gave telecommunications companies immunity from their crimes in spying on the American people.
But the rejoicing in the White House may have come too soon. For as two jurists pointed out to Philippe Sands when he questioned them about the immunity legislation, this was a “very stupid” thing to do. Such legislation, allowing a crime to be covered up, “was almost an admission that a crime had occurred.” As one of the jurists pointed out, it had all the earmarks of a “pactum scaelaris,” or “evil pact,” bringing into play that part of the Criminal Code which “showed that contributing to the avoidance of an investigation of a crime could itself give rise to complicity” (Sands, p. 208).
Sands sums up the case he makes throughout the book as follows:
“The lawyers advising the Administration played a decisive role in subverting the system of international rules that should have protected all detainees from cruel and degrading treatment, a system that the United States had done so much to put in place. This was no mere accident or oversight. Nor was it a case of responding to a legitimate request that came up from the ground-level interrogators at Guantanamo, as the Bush Administration would have us believe. September 11 gave rise to a conscious decision to set aside international rules constraining interrogations.”
In short, it was the lawyers who enabled torture by subverting the constraints against it. Absent their legal arguments rationalizing the banned techniques, circumventing the international constraints against them, and justifying their use in the alleged crisis, the torture could not have happened. Which brings us back to Shakespeare’s formulation for a remedy:
“First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Lawrence DiStasi
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Sunday, June 29, 2008
Candidate McCrash
What will be the fate
Of the Manchurian Candidate?
Known to party and swirl
With dozens of girls
Showing a temper that’s famous
Using words that will shame us
While courting the Right Wing
That excuses his night flings
So, just what will unfold
Will he crash and explode?
A week ago or so, a friend handed me a short crash history of the presidential candidate. It caused me to do a little research beyond McCain’s autobiography that I had read years ago. We all know about his crash as a fighter pilot in North Vietnam and that seems to be an unfortunate reality of a man doing his job and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Chalk that up to bad luck even if you believe that he should have ejected sooner than he did. His injuries were caused by the ejection process at 500 knots and not by his judgment. There are four other McCain airplane disasters that do not easily fall into the same category however. Let us start at the beginning of his government life. McCain had the reputation of being a marginal but hard drinking midshipman while at Annapolis. According to fellow midshipman Robert Timberg who wrote, The Nightingale’s Song, “being on liberty with John McCain was like being on a train wreck.” It is that character issue that causes me to pause at those who wink and nod at the indiscretions and bad judgment of potential leaders. I see them as being either too forgiving or blind to a defect that could affect us all if McCain becomes Commander-in-Chief. After all, we have just experienced nearly 8 years of a hard drinking party animal who continuously demonstrated bad judgment in nearly every aspect of leadership and took us all along for the ride to an unnecessary war while failing to prosecute the war in Afghanistan, to a market crash, to the loss of millions of jobs, to the loss of our noble international reputation, to institutionalizing torture, to the supremacy of loyalty over competence, and to an economy that depends more on oil today than when he took office in January 2001.
The parallels between Bush and McCain don’t end with the party animal escapades but extend into the world of privilege that both enjoyed by virtue of family ties. Let us begin with McCain’s first airplane demolition. Lt. McCain was a student pilot for 2 ½ years at Pensacola and Corpus Christi after graduating from the US Naval Academy. While in Pensacola, he dated the exotic dancer (stripper) “Marie, the Flame of Florida.” His fitness reports appear to indicate that his performance was below par. Indeed, he crashed his trainer into Corpus Christi Bay while trying to land. That was often enough to boot a trainee out of flight school, but not McCain who had an active 4 star admiral dad and a retired 4 star admiral grandfather. Of course, that could have been coincidence, just as it was coincidence that W got into the Texas Air Guard despite long waiting lists of less well-connected citizens. Sometimes good stuff happens to well-connected people. His second crash happened because he was flying too low over Spain while on a Mediterranean cruise, and he took down power lines along the way. The headlines did not reflect his bad judgment or faulty depth perception, but that he was the son of an admiral. Not to worry; he was nonetheless promoted to flight instructor back at Pensacola. His third crash happened as he was flying a Navy trainer (solo) to Philadelphia on the way to an Army-Navy game. He parachuted safely, but the plane was destroyed striking a group of trees. Nobody killed…no harm; no foul? Again, the Navy glossed over the event and there was no uproar over personal use of a military aircraft. After all, what could be more important than the Army-Navy game?
John McCain’s 4th airplane disaster actually occurred on the deck of the USS Forrestal. He was waiting on deck for takeoff, and (according to one nasty version) he wet-started his A4E Skyhawk which caused a jet of flame to strike the Phantom F 4 immediately behind him. That caused a Zuni rocket to ignite and launch starting a chain of events that killed at least 164 men. The more official version attributes the M 48 Zuni launching to stray current when the system was switched from external to internal. The “angry” (Navy veterans) version described McCain as a “hot dog” pilot who wet started his aircraft and that he panicked and dropped his two 1,000 lb bombs on the deck in the ensuing fire. Regardless of what version you may read, McCain was quickly and singularly removed from the Forrestal and put in safety, some say to protect him from other crew members who felt that the accident was caused by his actions. Indeed, a Navy veterans’ group has been vicious in criticizing McCain for this incident. If there is evidence that he caused the accident, I have not read it and, personally, I feel that the stray electrical current is a credible cause. Unfortunately, McCain reported several versions of the event himself and some critics are using this as proof of his guilt. We don’t need to go there. It is clear that he got special treatment by being the only one given immediate removal from the burning ship, but if you have experienced the confusion of similar smoke, fire and chaos, you will understand that details will never be known. It is unwise as well as unfair to blame McCain for that tragedy. He has enough blame to bear as we review his crashes and behavior.
John McCain’s fifth and final crash resulted from enemy action and, again, it is not fair or wise to assume that greater skill would have avoided it. In summary, it would appear that three of the five demolitions were caused or contributed to by questionable pilot judgment and the willingness of the Navy to keep McCain flying despite marginal skills and demonstrations of “hot-dogging.” I have not read of any “near misses,” but only of his 5 crashes. In a way, I equate McCain’s actions to that of a rebellious and spoiled teen who wrecks his daddy’s Corvette only to be given the keys to a newer model. The Navy and his 4 star daddy continued to give him the keys.
McCain’s lack of maturity showed up in more personal ways as shown by this excerpt from the web entry “thought Rogue” (http://gto7.wordpress.com)
Upon returning home with the aid of crutches, he discovered his wife Carol had survived her own ordeal - a devastating car accident in 1969 which left her with her own set of crutches, four inches shorter, and considerably heavier than the model she had been.
As he went through physical therapy for his injuries and recovered just enough to be appointed commanding officer of an A-7 Corsair II training squadron in Jacksonville, FL, his marriage entered troubled waters. For all they had been through, chasing his youth (and various women), the Maverick engaged in a series of extra-marital affairs. He said, “My marriage’s collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine.”
As the web entry indicates, the party animal of his midshipman days did not disappear after 5 ½ years in the Hanoi Hilton. He was selfish and immature. These are the same characteristics that fellow senators point to today when they describe his verbal and physical assaults in the senate environs. In a quote attributed to McCain by Cliff Schecter, his temper and shameful treatment of his second wife (Cindy) shine through in a harsh and disturbing way. As Cindy twirled his hair, she said “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c___.” He offered his fatigue for a long day as an excuse. As president, he might just have a long day once in a while.
As you may remember, the Manchurian Candidate is the story of a brainwashed POW returning to the US and politics. McCain was indeed interrogated by North Vietnamese officials during his time in prison. While McCain vigorously denied that the Soviet Russians also interviewed him, KGB Major General Kalugin testified under oath that the KGB worked on a “high ranking naval officer.” Kalugin was repatriated to the United States. Colonel Bin Tin of the North Vietnamese Army testified that the Soviets indeed interrogated American prisoners and treated them badly. Bin Tin had access to all this information due to his high position in the Communist Party. Bin Tin wants normalization of relations with the Vietnamese and was warmly greeted by McCain when he testified to the US Senate. McCain, in 1991, influenced other Republican senators to stop POW/MIA investigations. Indeed, this interrogation period is troubling because it indicates that McCain was likely given special treatment due to his relationship to his father and, worse that he may have violated Article V of the US Military Code of Conduct that prohibits providing intelligence to the enemy although McCain claims that it was only accidental that he offered “military information” at the time he was getting special medical treatment. (Ted Sampley, U.S. Veteran Dispatch, December 1992). Not incidentally, McCain provided military information that described how tactical air attacks were executed; he estimated pilot losses and how replacements were provided to the mission. It is difficult not to link the two actions since they happened simultaneously. Communists seemed to delight in having the son of an admiral in custody.
Let me review the issues. If past behavior is the best predictor of future performance, then I would expect McCain to take a high risk approach to foreign and domestic affairs as president. Further, I would expect that his “other” affairs would easily outpace Clinton and probably Bush as well. Bush has claimed sobriety for several years and, if true, that would probably cut down his girl chasing. Clinton seems to be recently more discrete if not more pure. McCain’s privileged behavior is troubling even if precipitated by pain of torture that he now supports.
Choosing to focus on issues critical to the nation over self-adulation and indulgence would not seem to be likely for McCain. His renowned temper would probably aggravate delicate foreign relations. Note that he recently rebuked Senator Obama for having said that he, Obama, would negotiate with North Korea, only a matter of two weeks before Bush announced relaxation of sanctions and negotiations with North Korea. The rude disdain he has shown for his two wives (abandonment and crude sexual insult) might not easily support the agenda for women. Finally, his past behavior of expecting personal privilege would interfere with the decision process just as it has with Bush. (“My way or the highway, and there can be no compromise on my powers.”) Three of McCain’s crashes appear to be the result of faulty judgment ignored by a compliant Navy. Bush has enjoyed both compliant parents and the Congress that spoiled him rotten. If that does not bring up the memory of George W. Bush and his inability to stay with the Air National Guard; getting bailed out of weak business decisions in Oil and Baseball industries by Daddy’s friends, then I am missing something. If character means something important to the office of President, then we need to have some straight talk for a change. We cannot afford 8 or even 4 more years of indulging the perpetual adolescent.
The Vietnamese-American citizens of Little Saigon here in Orange County, California have been very sensitive to the attempts to normalize relations with the Communists of Vietnam and they already resent the attempts by the Bush Administration to minimize the importance of the hundreds of political prisoners still held by Vietnam. McCain voted with Bush 100% of the time in 2008 and 95% in 2007 including McCain’s reversal to support torture. (He was against torture before he was for it.) Maybe he has been brainwashed in Washington if not Hanoi. It is time for an accounting and not for privilege. It is time to ground McCain and take his keys away before he crashes again.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
30 June 2008
Of the Manchurian Candidate?
Known to party and swirl
With dozens of girls
Showing a temper that’s famous
Using words that will shame us
While courting the Right Wing
That excuses his night flings
So, just what will unfold
Will he crash and explode?
A week ago or so, a friend handed me a short crash history of the presidential candidate. It caused me to do a little research beyond McCain’s autobiography that I had read years ago. We all know about his crash as a fighter pilot in North Vietnam and that seems to be an unfortunate reality of a man doing his job and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Chalk that up to bad luck even if you believe that he should have ejected sooner than he did. His injuries were caused by the ejection process at 500 knots and not by his judgment. There are four other McCain airplane disasters that do not easily fall into the same category however. Let us start at the beginning of his government life. McCain had the reputation of being a marginal but hard drinking midshipman while at Annapolis. According to fellow midshipman Robert Timberg who wrote, The Nightingale’s Song, “being on liberty with John McCain was like being on a train wreck.” It is that character issue that causes me to pause at those who wink and nod at the indiscretions and bad judgment of potential leaders. I see them as being either too forgiving or blind to a defect that could affect us all if McCain becomes Commander-in-Chief. After all, we have just experienced nearly 8 years of a hard drinking party animal who continuously demonstrated bad judgment in nearly every aspect of leadership and took us all along for the ride to an unnecessary war while failing to prosecute the war in Afghanistan, to a market crash, to the loss of millions of jobs, to the loss of our noble international reputation, to institutionalizing torture, to the supremacy of loyalty over competence, and to an economy that depends more on oil today than when he took office in January 2001.
The parallels between Bush and McCain don’t end with the party animal escapades but extend into the world of privilege that both enjoyed by virtue of family ties. Let us begin with McCain’s first airplane demolition. Lt. McCain was a student pilot for 2 ½ years at Pensacola and Corpus Christi after graduating from the US Naval Academy. While in Pensacola, he dated the exotic dancer (stripper) “Marie, the Flame of Florida.” His fitness reports appear to indicate that his performance was below par. Indeed, he crashed his trainer into Corpus Christi Bay while trying to land. That was often enough to boot a trainee out of flight school, but not McCain who had an active 4 star admiral dad and a retired 4 star admiral grandfather. Of course, that could have been coincidence, just as it was coincidence that W got into the Texas Air Guard despite long waiting lists of less well-connected citizens. Sometimes good stuff happens to well-connected people. His second crash happened because he was flying too low over Spain while on a Mediterranean cruise, and he took down power lines along the way. The headlines did not reflect his bad judgment or faulty depth perception, but that he was the son of an admiral. Not to worry; he was nonetheless promoted to flight instructor back at Pensacola. His third crash happened as he was flying a Navy trainer (solo) to Philadelphia on the way to an Army-Navy game. He parachuted safely, but the plane was destroyed striking a group of trees. Nobody killed…no harm; no foul? Again, the Navy glossed over the event and there was no uproar over personal use of a military aircraft. After all, what could be more important than the Army-Navy game?
John McCain’s 4th airplane disaster actually occurred on the deck of the USS Forrestal. He was waiting on deck for takeoff, and (according to one nasty version) he wet-started his A4E Skyhawk which caused a jet of flame to strike the Phantom F 4 immediately behind him. That caused a Zuni rocket to ignite and launch starting a chain of events that killed at least 164 men. The more official version attributes the M 48 Zuni launching to stray current when the system was switched from external to internal. The “angry” (Navy veterans) version described McCain as a “hot dog” pilot who wet started his aircraft and that he panicked and dropped his two 1,000 lb bombs on the deck in the ensuing fire. Regardless of what version you may read, McCain was quickly and singularly removed from the Forrestal and put in safety, some say to protect him from other crew members who felt that the accident was caused by his actions. Indeed, a Navy veterans’ group has been vicious in criticizing McCain for this incident. If there is evidence that he caused the accident, I have not read it and, personally, I feel that the stray electrical current is a credible cause. Unfortunately, McCain reported several versions of the event himself and some critics are using this as proof of his guilt. We don’t need to go there. It is clear that he got special treatment by being the only one given immediate removal from the burning ship, but if you have experienced the confusion of similar smoke, fire and chaos, you will understand that details will never be known. It is unwise as well as unfair to blame McCain for that tragedy. He has enough blame to bear as we review his crashes and behavior.
John McCain’s fifth and final crash resulted from enemy action and, again, it is not fair or wise to assume that greater skill would have avoided it. In summary, it would appear that three of the five demolitions were caused or contributed to by questionable pilot judgment and the willingness of the Navy to keep McCain flying despite marginal skills and demonstrations of “hot-dogging.” I have not read of any “near misses,” but only of his 5 crashes. In a way, I equate McCain’s actions to that of a rebellious and spoiled teen who wrecks his daddy’s Corvette only to be given the keys to a newer model. The Navy and his 4 star daddy continued to give him the keys.
McCain’s lack of maturity showed up in more personal ways as shown by this excerpt from the web entry “thought Rogue” (http://gto7.wordpress.com)
Upon returning home with the aid of crutches, he discovered his wife Carol had survived her own ordeal - a devastating car accident in 1969 which left her with her own set of crutches, four inches shorter, and considerably heavier than the model she had been.
As he went through physical therapy for his injuries and recovered just enough to be appointed commanding officer of an A-7 Corsair II training squadron in Jacksonville, FL, his marriage entered troubled waters. For all they had been through, chasing his youth (and various women), the Maverick engaged in a series of extra-marital affairs. He said, “My marriage’s collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine.”
As the web entry indicates, the party animal of his midshipman days did not disappear after 5 ½ years in the Hanoi Hilton. He was selfish and immature. These are the same characteristics that fellow senators point to today when they describe his verbal and physical assaults in the senate environs. In a quote attributed to McCain by Cliff Schecter, his temper and shameful treatment of his second wife (Cindy) shine through in a harsh and disturbing way. As Cindy twirled his hair, she said “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you c___.” He offered his fatigue for a long day as an excuse. As president, he might just have a long day once in a while.
As you may remember, the Manchurian Candidate is the story of a brainwashed POW returning to the US and politics. McCain was indeed interrogated by North Vietnamese officials during his time in prison. While McCain vigorously denied that the Soviet Russians also interviewed him, KGB Major General Kalugin testified under oath that the KGB worked on a “high ranking naval officer.” Kalugin was repatriated to the United States. Colonel Bin Tin of the North Vietnamese Army testified that the Soviets indeed interrogated American prisoners and treated them badly. Bin Tin had access to all this information due to his high position in the Communist Party. Bin Tin wants normalization of relations with the Vietnamese and was warmly greeted by McCain when he testified to the US Senate. McCain, in 1991, influenced other Republican senators to stop POW/MIA investigations. Indeed, this interrogation period is troubling because it indicates that McCain was likely given special treatment due to his relationship to his father and, worse that he may have violated Article V of the US Military Code of Conduct that prohibits providing intelligence to the enemy although McCain claims that it was only accidental that he offered “military information” at the time he was getting special medical treatment. (Ted Sampley, U.S. Veteran Dispatch, December 1992). Not incidentally, McCain provided military information that described how tactical air attacks were executed; he estimated pilot losses and how replacements were provided to the mission. It is difficult not to link the two actions since they happened simultaneously. Communists seemed to delight in having the son of an admiral in custody.
Let me review the issues. If past behavior is the best predictor of future performance, then I would expect McCain to take a high risk approach to foreign and domestic affairs as president. Further, I would expect that his “other” affairs would easily outpace Clinton and probably Bush as well. Bush has claimed sobriety for several years and, if true, that would probably cut down his girl chasing. Clinton seems to be recently more discrete if not more pure. McCain’s privileged behavior is troubling even if precipitated by pain of torture that he now supports.
Choosing to focus on issues critical to the nation over self-adulation and indulgence would not seem to be likely for McCain. His renowned temper would probably aggravate delicate foreign relations. Note that he recently rebuked Senator Obama for having said that he, Obama, would negotiate with North Korea, only a matter of two weeks before Bush announced relaxation of sanctions and negotiations with North Korea. The rude disdain he has shown for his two wives (abandonment and crude sexual insult) might not easily support the agenda for women. Finally, his past behavior of expecting personal privilege would interfere with the decision process just as it has with Bush. (“My way or the highway, and there can be no compromise on my powers.”) Three of McCain’s crashes appear to be the result of faulty judgment ignored by a compliant Navy. Bush has enjoyed both compliant parents and the Congress that spoiled him rotten. If that does not bring up the memory of George W. Bush and his inability to stay with the Air National Guard; getting bailed out of weak business decisions in Oil and Baseball industries by Daddy’s friends, then I am missing something. If character means something important to the office of President, then we need to have some straight talk for a change. We cannot afford 8 or even 4 more years of indulging the perpetual adolescent.
The Vietnamese-American citizens of Little Saigon here in Orange County, California have been very sensitive to the attempts to normalize relations with the Communists of Vietnam and they already resent the attempts by the Bush Administration to minimize the importance of the hundreds of political prisoners still held by Vietnam. McCain voted with Bush 100% of the time in 2008 and 95% in 2007 including McCain’s reversal to support torture. (He was against torture before he was for it.) Maybe he has been brainwashed in Washington if not Hanoi. It is time for an accounting and not for privilege. It is time to ground McCain and take his keys away before he crashes again.
Peace,
George Giacoppe
30 June 2008
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Nuclear Hypocrisy
One of the things that continues to stagger me is how the media routinely follows the United States’ party line in treating the issue of Nuclear proliferation. A recent report I heard on National Public Radio, for instance, addressed the “explosive” situation in the Middle East, with experts on Iran, Pakistan and India commenting on the danger as if all three nations were equally culpable, irrational and essentially out of control where nukes are concerned. Reference was of course made to the United States’ alarmist warnings about Iran, and the Bush administration’s constant reassertion of its threat that Iran must not, under any circumstances, be allowed to continue with its alleged quest to obtain nuclear weapons. Underlining this was commentary on the fact that Israel not only supports (or demands) this U.S. stance, but multiplies it, as evidenced by the revelation that it has recently conducted military exercises said to have been a dress rehearsal for a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s “nuclear weapons facilities.”
All of which left out two crucial facts.
First, India and Pakistan are two of the states on the planet which have NOT signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran, by contrast, HAS signed it.
Second, India and Pakistan are KNOWN to have nuclear weapons, and have tested them in recent years. Furthermore, India has just been gifted with a proposed treaty whereby the Bush Administration would give India even more nuclear technology—despite the fact that it has NOT signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, much less abided by it.
Then, of course, there is the real elephant in this geopolitical room. I mean Israel. Israel is the third (fourth if we count Korea) nation on the planet which has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has not signed because, according to almost all objective observers including Israeli nuclear scientist Mordecai Vanunu, Israel has had its own nuclear weapons program for years, and is now estimated to possess at least 200 nuclear weapons along with the sophisticated rocketry to launch them. Further, Israel’s leaders, such as Golda Meir, are known to have considered firing those weapons at the beginning of the 1973 war. That they did not does not mean they would not. As neocon godfather Norman Podhoretz wrote in Commentary in 1976: “The Israelis would fight with conventional weapons for as long as they could, and if the tide were turning against them…it is safe to predict that they would fight with nuclear weapons in the end.”
So we have the following nuclear situation. Iran has joined the NPT. That treaty, in particular Article IV, guarantees unequivocally and in several places “the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination and in conformity with Articles I and II of this Treaty.” Iran has stated that its nuclear program is in fact peaceful, thereby putting it in compliance with NPT. The recent National Intelligence Estimate of the United States has also concluded that Iran, in fact, gave up all attempts to pursue nuclear weapons in 2003, and has not revived them.
And yet, we are assaulted almost daily with inflammatory rhetoric from George Bush and Israeli officials of every stripe screaming about the threat posed by Iran and its nuclear weapons, and the right of states like Israel and the U.S. to take action against this alleged “illegal” threat because the economic sanctions are not working.
“Iran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons,” we are told.
“All options are on the table,” we are told.
‘Both Israel and the United States are preparing to attack,’ we are told. Because this imperial “we”—Israel and the United States, we are told—these two peaceful and innocent and holy states are simply outraged that Iran would dare to secretly violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
But WAIT. Israel is one of only four states which refused to sign this ultimate peace treaty! Where does it get off accusing Iran for violations? Even if Iran had violated it, which all evidence says it has not, where does Israel get the right?
And WAIT, again. The United States is criticizing Iran? The United States—the only nation in the history of the world to ever use a nuclear weapon against another nation, wiping out 200,000 Japanese civilians in an instant—the United States is accusing Iran of seeking nuclear weapons?
And WORSE. For aren’t we obliged to remember that the Non-Proliferation Treaty specifically states that the nuclear-weapon states (the U.S., France, England, the Soviet Union, & China—Israel, of course, not agreeing because it has never confirmed it has nukes nor signed the NPT) declare “their intention to achieve at the earliest possible date the cessation of the nuclear arms race and to undertake effective measures in the direction of nuclear disarmament” and “the liquidation of all their existing stockpiles”? Aren’t we obliged to recall that that’s what the treaty says? And that the United States has not only NOT done that, but under the Bush administration has made clear it intends just the opposite—i.e. that it is seeking to upgrade its nuclear arsenal and outfit it for the space age so it can win unchallenged nuclear dominance in space? Isn’t this the most egregious NPT violation of all?
And this is the nation that is threatening Iran for its alleged nuclear weapons program?
In spite of its own intelligence estimate that Iran has no weapons program?
Aided and abetted and egged on (one cannot tell if it is Israel which is egging on the U.S. here, or the other way round) by Israel, the secret possessor of over 200 nuclear weapons and one of the four refusers of the NPT?
Are you kidding me?
And yet. And yet we have the idiot American media propagandizing us daily, without a touch of irony, with never a mention of Israel—except to refer to poor little Israel which feels so threatened by the possibility that Iran might some day get nuclear weapons. Poor little Israel with only 200 measly nukes, as well as rockets and submarines capable of launching them, of its own.
It is the height of hypocrisy. Though actually, the word hypocrisy doesn’t even begin to address the colossal gall, the provocative, calamitous, Imperial arrogance of this stuff.
Not to mention the fact that this kind of threat is precisely what is prohibited in the United Nations rules and by-laws. So that what we have here, on the part of the United States and its chief enforcer Israel, is something more akin to the threats and blackmail Nazi Germany began to toss around in the years leading up to World War II.
That is what we have here. And it is time the media and the American people and the U.S.Congress began to wake up to it, and do something about it before it is too late.
Lawrence DiStasi
Thursday, June 19, 2008
The Torture Conspiracy
The McClatchy newspapers—the only major media group that has even pretended to employ investigative reporters to question Bush administration policies—has done it again. This time, in a June 18 article by Tom Lasseter, it has pointed out that the “framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan,” was an organized attempt to circumvent U.S. laws and treaties “to prevent anyone…from being held accountable.” Five White House lawyers, all of them familiar to anyone who has been following this, are identified as part of the so-called “War Council:” David Addington, now chief of staff to VP Cheney; Alberto Gonzalez, one-time Attorney General; John Yoo, one-time counsel in the Justice Department; William J. Haynes II, former Pentagon general counsel; and Timothy E. Flanigan, former deputy to Gonzalez. This “War Council” met every few weeks in the office of Gonzalez or Haynes to plot their nefarious policies—policies that resulted directly in depriving arrested suspects of all legal rights, and in torture. The members of this council were, in every sense of the word, a torture conspiracy, and worse, one that “created an environment in which it was nearly impossible to prosecute soldiers or officials for alleged crimes committed in U.S. detention facilities.”
Lasseter’s article lists the memos, the direct result of the conspiracy, that did the dirty work.
Jan. 9, 2002: Yoo sent a memo to Haynes, saying that the Geneva Convention’s Common Article Three prohibiting “humiliating and degrading treatment and torture of prisoners” did not cover al Quaeda or Taliban suspects.
Jan. 25, 2002: Gonzalez sent a follow-up memo to President Bush, asserting that eliminating prisoner rights under Geneva (the Yoo memo) set up a “solid defense against prosecutors or independent counsels” who might some day want to pursue war-crimes charges.
Feb. 7, 2002: Bush then followed up these memos with a memo of his own, asserting that al-Quaeda or Taliban suspects were not considered prisoners of war, and wouldn’t be given Common Article Three protections. (i.e., the memos resulted in almost immediate action.)
Aug. 1, 2002: Gonzalez requests a memo from the Justice Department, which Yoo writes, defining torture so narrowly—injury such as death, or organ failure deriving from “extreme acts”—that it could excuse almost any abuse.
March 14, 2003: Yoo writes a memo for Haynes (who was getting heat from his military lawyers about the abuses going on) asserting that even if some interrogation amounted to war crimes, the perpetrators still couldn’t be prosecuted because they were operating under Bush’s constitutional authority to wage war. “In wartime,” Yoo wrote, “it is for the president alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy.”
The conspiracy, in short, provided the legal bases for Americans to use torture, and the legal structure whereby they could escape prosecution for their crimes. These legal opinions resulted in direct and foreseeable and planned actions—first the President’s memo declaring captured detainees beyond the reach of U.S. and international laws, and then the license to interrogators to use techniques normally considered to be war crimes because the President, in his role as commander during a war, had given them sanction. Evidence exists confirming that U.S. interrogators did, in fact, use the once-forbidden techniques, i.e. torture.
Of course, what we now know is that the Justice Department itself, under new head of Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith, found John Yoo’s Aug. 2002 and March 2003 opinions so legally abhorrent, that it reversed them. We also know that the Supreme Court first, in 2006, rebuked the Bush lawyers by ruling that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions DID apply to Guantanamo prisoners; and it also recently reversed the Bush administration’s contention that so-called enemy combatants do not have habeas corpus rights (the right to challenge the reason for their detention), by ruling that, in fact, they DO. We also now know that even within the administration—especially in the Judge Advocate General’s office at the Pentagon—military lawyers and officials were horrified at what they saw being perpetrated in their names, and tried to protest. But, as Lasseter makes clear, the War Council simply shut out these protesting voices.
Now those voices are coming back to haunt them. In a Boston Globe article on June 18, Bryan Bender writes that the group “Physicians for Human Rights” has now found medical evidence corroborating the stories of eleven former Guantanamo prisoners that they were tortured. The evidence includes scars such as cheek wounds on a prisoner who says he was stabbed with a screwdriver, and burns and other scars which tend to support allegations of electrical shock and forced sodomy.
This evidence was convincing enough to General Antonio Taguba (who wrote the first report on Abu Ghraib) to induce him to write in the report’s preface: “This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.” General Taguba, now retired, then added an even harsher judgment:
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.”
Does this not complete the circle? White House lawyers engaged in a conspiracy to circumvent the laws against torture, and to provide cover for those who employed torture. The President put that conspiracy into action by asserting that those captured had no rights and so could be held indefinitely without charges and treated in any way their interrogators could devise, short of murdering them (although there are up to one hundred torture deaths alleged by researchers like Alfred McCoy.) The members of the United States armed forces and other official and non-official organizations then implemented those executive orders by treating all captives as if they were guilty, subhuman, and deserving of torture. And their actions were hidden, for as long as possible, from neutral watchdog authorities like the International Red Cross.
What more is needed, now, to begin pursuing those responsible for war crimes?
What could possibly prevent the impeachment of this President, indeed, as Vincent Bugliosi has written in a recent book, from PROSECUTING this President and all his henchmen for nothing less than a sustained conspiracy to commit war crimes?
Lawrence DiStasi
Lasseter’s article lists the memos, the direct result of the conspiracy, that did the dirty work.
Jan. 9, 2002: Yoo sent a memo to Haynes, saying that the Geneva Convention’s Common Article Three prohibiting “humiliating and degrading treatment and torture of prisoners” did not cover al Quaeda or Taliban suspects.
Jan. 25, 2002: Gonzalez sent a follow-up memo to President Bush, asserting that eliminating prisoner rights under Geneva (the Yoo memo) set up a “solid defense against prosecutors or independent counsels” who might some day want to pursue war-crimes charges.
Feb. 7, 2002: Bush then followed up these memos with a memo of his own, asserting that al-Quaeda or Taliban suspects were not considered prisoners of war, and wouldn’t be given Common Article Three protections. (i.e., the memos resulted in almost immediate action.)
Aug. 1, 2002: Gonzalez requests a memo from the Justice Department, which Yoo writes, defining torture so narrowly—injury such as death, or organ failure deriving from “extreme acts”—that it could excuse almost any abuse.
March 14, 2003: Yoo writes a memo for Haynes (who was getting heat from his military lawyers about the abuses going on) asserting that even if some interrogation amounted to war crimes, the perpetrators still couldn’t be prosecuted because they were operating under Bush’s constitutional authority to wage war. “In wartime,” Yoo wrote, “it is for the president alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy.”
The conspiracy, in short, provided the legal bases for Americans to use torture, and the legal structure whereby they could escape prosecution for their crimes. These legal opinions resulted in direct and foreseeable and planned actions—first the President’s memo declaring captured detainees beyond the reach of U.S. and international laws, and then the license to interrogators to use techniques normally considered to be war crimes because the President, in his role as commander during a war, had given them sanction. Evidence exists confirming that U.S. interrogators did, in fact, use the once-forbidden techniques, i.e. torture.
Of course, what we now know is that the Justice Department itself, under new head of Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith, found John Yoo’s Aug. 2002 and March 2003 opinions so legally abhorrent, that it reversed them. We also know that the Supreme Court first, in 2006, rebuked the Bush lawyers by ruling that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions DID apply to Guantanamo prisoners; and it also recently reversed the Bush administration’s contention that so-called enemy combatants do not have habeas corpus rights (the right to challenge the reason for their detention), by ruling that, in fact, they DO. We also now know that even within the administration—especially in the Judge Advocate General’s office at the Pentagon—military lawyers and officials were horrified at what they saw being perpetrated in their names, and tried to protest. But, as Lasseter makes clear, the War Council simply shut out these protesting voices.
Now those voices are coming back to haunt them. In a Boston Globe article on June 18, Bryan Bender writes that the group “Physicians for Human Rights” has now found medical evidence corroborating the stories of eleven former Guantanamo prisoners that they were tortured. The evidence includes scars such as cheek wounds on a prisoner who says he was stabbed with a screwdriver, and burns and other scars which tend to support allegations of electrical shock and forced sodomy.
This evidence was convincing enough to General Antonio Taguba (who wrote the first report on Abu Ghraib) to induce him to write in the report’s preface: “This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.” General Taguba, now retired, then added an even harsher judgment:
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.”
Does this not complete the circle? White House lawyers engaged in a conspiracy to circumvent the laws against torture, and to provide cover for those who employed torture. The President put that conspiracy into action by asserting that those captured had no rights and so could be held indefinitely without charges and treated in any way their interrogators could devise, short of murdering them (although there are up to one hundred torture deaths alleged by researchers like Alfred McCoy.) The members of the United States armed forces and other official and non-official organizations then implemented those executive orders by treating all captives as if they were guilty, subhuman, and deserving of torture. And their actions were hidden, for as long as possible, from neutral watchdog authorities like the International Red Cross.
What more is needed, now, to begin pursuing those responsible for war crimes?
What could possibly prevent the impeachment of this President, indeed, as Vincent Bugliosi has written in a recent book, from PROSECUTING this President and all his henchmen for nothing less than a sustained conspiracy to commit war crimes?
Lawrence DiStasi
The Torture Conspiracy
The McClatchy newspapers—the only major media group that has even pretended to employ investigative reporters to question Bush administration policies—has done it again. This time, in a June 18 article by Tom Lasseter, it has pointed out that the “framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guantanamo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan,” was an organized attempt to circumvent U.S. laws and treaties “to prevent anyone…from being held accountable.” Five White House lawyers, all of them familiar to anyone who has been following this, are identified as part of the so-called “War Council:” David Addington, now chief of staff to VP Cheney; Alberto Gonzalez, one-time Attorney General; John Yoo, one-time counsel in the Justice Department; William J. Haynes II, former Pentagon general counsel; and Timothy E. Flanigan, former deputy to Gonzalez. This “War Council” met every few weeks in the office of Gonzalez or Haynes to plot their nefarious policies—policies that resulted directly in depriving arrested suspects of all legal rights, and in torture. The members of this council were, in every sense of the word, a torture conspiracy, and worse, one that “created an environment in which it was nearly impossible to prosecute soldiers or officials for alleged crimes committed in U.S. detention facilities.”
Lasseter’s article lists the memos, the direct result of the conspiracy, that did the dirty work.
Jan. 9, 2002: Yoo sent a memo to Haynes, saying that the Geneva Convention’s Common Article Three prohibiting “humiliating and degrading treatment and torture of prisoners” did not cover al Quaeda or Taliban suspects.
Jan. 25, 2002: Gonzalez sent a follow-up memo to President Bush, asserting that eliminating prisoner rights under Geneva (the Yoo memo) set up a “solid defense against prosecutors or independent counsels” who might some day want to pursue war-crimes charges.
Feb. 7, 2002: Bush then followed up these memos with a memo of his own, asserting that al-Quaeda or Taliban suspects were not considered prisoners of war, and wouldn’t be given Common Article Three protections. (i.e., the memos resulted in almost immediate action.)
Aug. 1, 2002: Gonzalez requests a memo from the Justice Department, which Yoo writes, defining torture so narrowly—injury such as death, or organ failure deriving from “extreme acts”—that it could excuse almost any abuse.
March 14, 2003: Yoo writes a memo for Haynes (who was getting heat from his military lawyers about the abuses going on) asserting that even if some interrogation amounted to war crimes, the perpetrators still couldn’t be prosecuted because they were operating under Bush’s constitutional authority to wage war. “In wartime,” Yoo wrote, “it is for the president alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy.”
The conspiracy, in short, provided the legal bases for Americans to use torture, and the legal structure whereby they could escape prosecution for their crimes. These legal opinions resulted in direct and foreseeable and planned actions—first the President’s memo declaring captured detainees beyond the reach of U.S. and international laws, and then the license to interrogators to use techniques normally considered to be war crimes because the President, in his role as commander during a war, had given them sanction. Evidence exists confirming that U.S. interrogators did, in fact, use the once-forbidden techniques, i.e. torture.
Of course, what we now know is that the Justice Department itself, under new head of Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith, found John Yoo’s Aug. 2002 and March 2003 opinions so legally abhorrent, that it reversed them. We also know that the Supreme Court first, in 2006, rebuked the Bush lawyers by ruling that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions DID apply to Guantanamo prisoners; and it also recently reversed the Bush administration’s contention that so-called enemy combatants do not have habeas corpus rights (the right to challenge the reason for their detention), by ruling that, in fact, they DO. We also now know that even within the administration—especially in the Judge Advocate General’s office at the Pentagon—military lawyers and officials were horrified at what they saw being perpetrated in their names, and tried to protest. But, as Lasseter makes clear, the War Council simply shut out these protesting voices.
Now those voices are coming back to haunt them. In a Boston Globe article on June 18, Bryan Bender writes that the group “Physicians for Human Rights” has now found medical evidence corroborating the stories of eleven former Guantanamo prisoners that they were tortured. The evidence includes scars such as cheek wounds on a prisoner who says he was stabbed with a screwdriver, and burns and other scars which tend to support allegations of electrical shock and forced sodomy.
This evidence was convincing enough to General Antonio Taguba (who wrote the first report on Abu Ghraib) to induce him to write in the report’s preface: “This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.” General Taguba, now retired, then added an even harsher judgment:
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.”
Does this not complete the circle? White House lawyers engaged in a conspiracy to circumvent the laws against torture, and to provide cover for those who employed torture. The President put that conspiracy into action by asserting that those captured had no rights and so could be held indefinitely without charges and treated in any way their interrogators could devise, short of murdering them (although there are up to one hundred torture deaths alleged by researchers like Alfred McCoy.) The members of the United States armed forces and other official and non-official organizations then implemented those executive orders by treating all captives as if they were guilty, subhuman, and deserving of torture. And their actions were hidden, for as long as possible, from neutral watchdog authorities like the International Red Cross.
What more is needed, now, to begin pursuing those responsible for war crimes?
What could possibly prevent the impeachment of this President, indeed, as Vincent Bugliosi has written in a recent book, from PROSECUTING this President and all his henchmen for nothing less than a sustained conspiracy to commit war crimes?
Lawrence DiStasi
Lasseter’s article lists the memos, the direct result of the conspiracy, that did the dirty work.
Jan. 9, 2002: Yoo sent a memo to Haynes, saying that the Geneva Convention’s Common Article Three prohibiting “humiliating and degrading treatment and torture of prisoners” did not cover al Quaeda or Taliban suspects.
Jan. 25, 2002: Gonzalez sent a follow-up memo to President Bush, asserting that eliminating prisoner rights under Geneva (the Yoo memo) set up a “solid defense against prosecutors or independent counsels” who might some day want to pursue war-crimes charges.
Feb. 7, 2002: Bush then followed up these memos with a memo of his own, asserting that al-Quaeda or Taliban suspects were not considered prisoners of war, and wouldn’t be given Common Article Three protections. (i.e., the memos resulted in almost immediate action.)
Aug. 1, 2002: Gonzalez requests a memo from the Justice Department, which Yoo writes, defining torture so narrowly—injury such as death, or organ failure deriving from “extreme acts”—that it could excuse almost any abuse.
March 14, 2003: Yoo writes a memo for Haynes (who was getting heat from his military lawyers about the abuses going on) asserting that even if some interrogation amounted to war crimes, the perpetrators still couldn’t be prosecuted because they were operating under Bush’s constitutional authority to wage war. “In wartime,” Yoo wrote, “it is for the president alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy.”
The conspiracy, in short, provided the legal bases for Americans to use torture, and the legal structure whereby they could escape prosecution for their crimes. These legal opinions resulted in direct and foreseeable and planned actions—first the President’s memo declaring captured detainees beyond the reach of U.S. and international laws, and then the license to interrogators to use techniques normally considered to be war crimes because the President, in his role as commander during a war, had given them sanction. Evidence exists confirming that U.S. interrogators did, in fact, use the once-forbidden techniques, i.e. torture.
Of course, what we now know is that the Justice Department itself, under new head of Office of Legal Counsel Jack Goldsmith, found John Yoo’s Aug. 2002 and March 2003 opinions so legally abhorrent, that it reversed them. We also know that the Supreme Court first, in 2006, rebuked the Bush lawyers by ruling that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions DID apply to Guantanamo prisoners; and it also recently reversed the Bush administration’s contention that so-called enemy combatants do not have habeas corpus rights (the right to challenge the reason for their detention), by ruling that, in fact, they DO. We also now know that even within the administration—especially in the Judge Advocate General’s office at the Pentagon—military lawyers and officials were horrified at what they saw being perpetrated in their names, and tried to protest. But, as Lasseter makes clear, the War Council simply shut out these protesting voices.
Now those voices are coming back to haunt them. In a Boston Globe article on June 18, Bryan Bender writes that the group “Physicians for Human Rights” has now found medical evidence corroborating the stories of eleven former Guantanamo prisoners that they were tortured. The evidence includes scars such as cheek wounds on a prisoner who says he was stabbed with a screwdriver, and burns and other scars which tend to support allegations of electrical shock and forced sodomy.
This evidence was convincing enough to General Antonio Taguba (who wrote the first report on Abu Ghraib) to induce him to write in the report’s preface: “This report tells the largely untold human story of what happened to detainees in our custody when the commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture.” General Taguba, now retired, then added an even harsher judgment:
“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes.”
Does this not complete the circle? White House lawyers engaged in a conspiracy to circumvent the laws against torture, and to provide cover for those who employed torture. The President put that conspiracy into action by asserting that those captured had no rights and so could be held indefinitely without charges and treated in any way their interrogators could devise, short of murdering them (although there are up to one hundred torture deaths alleged by researchers like Alfred McCoy.) The members of the United States armed forces and other official and non-official organizations then implemented those executive orders by treating all captives as if they were guilty, subhuman, and deserving of torture. And their actions were hidden, for as long as possible, from neutral watchdog authorities like the International Red Cross.
What more is needed, now, to begin pursuing those responsible for war crimes?
What could possibly prevent the impeachment of this President, indeed, as Vincent Bugliosi has written in a recent book, from PROSECUTING this President and all his henchmen for nothing less than a sustained conspiracy to commit war crimes?
Lawrence DiStasi
Friday, June 13, 2008
Iran Again....
In case you haven’t noticed, the war drums to attack Iran have started again. First, we heard from Israel’s former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, that an Israeli attack on Iran’s alleged nuclear sites looked “inevitable.” He said: “The sanctions are ineffective. Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.” (quoted in Robert Naiman, “Israel Threatens War on Gaza and Iran,” The Telegraph, June 7, 2008.) Prime Minister Olmert, in deep political trouble over a bribery scandal, underlined this vow in his comments after visiting Washington, by saying that “Israel and America are of one mind over the possibility of military intervention against Tehran’s nuclear programme..” In the same vein, we heard from Gareth Porter that, despite the powerful opposition from the American military to Vice-President Cheney’s push to attack Iran last summer, the situation has changed sufficiently in recent months to begin worrying again. This is because Admiral Fallon, then head of Centcom, and the main obstacle to a strike against Iran (because Iran might well do more damage to the United States in retaliation than the U.S. could do to Iran), was forced to resign. In his place is the ever-pliant General David Petraeus. This gives Cheney and the Bushies yet another opportunity to strike at Iran before they must leave office.
Now this is almost stupefying to anyone who has been following the Iran situation. To begin with, only months ago, a National Intelligence Estimate was released stating that, in the opinion of every U.S. Intelligence agency, not only was Iran NOT working on a nuclear weapon, but it had ended its nuclear weapons efforts in 2003! Well, you may say, it’s not only the nukes; the Iranians are supplying the Iraqi “bad guys” with powerful weapons to attack Americans in Iraq. But a report on May 15, 2008 detailed not one but two refutations of this claim (“Bogus Claim, al-Maliki Stall US Plan on Iran Arms,” Common Dreams, May 15, 2008). First, our ally (some would say puppet) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, “refused to endorse charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army.” In other words, the man closest to the situation refuted the U.S. claims, repeated endlessly, that Iran is supplying the arms to our enemies. They are not, he said. More important, the same report tells us that the entire American plan to stage a huge public-relations campaign convincing the American public that Iran is really the enemy in our war in Iraq, has fallen apart. Prime Minister al-Maliki first said that actual proof of Iran’s involvement was needed. Second, on May 3 a huge cache of Iranian arms said to have been captured in Karbala turned out to be a dud, as far from the “smoking gun” as it could be. According to Porter, American munitions experts hastening to Karbala to see the longed-for Iranian weapons “found nothing they could credibly link to Iran.” The cache was a bust, and U.S. commanders had to tell reporters that the big event they were expecting had to be cancelled due to a “misunderstanding.” Misunderstanding indeed. The Mahdi army has made Karbala a center of its fight for years, thus making the weapons there of supreme importance. Nonetheless, of 4 anti-aircraft missiles, 45 RPGs, 800 RPG missiles, and 570 roadside explosive devices, not a single item of Iranian origin could be identified. The whole charge against Iran as arms supplier and trainer of our enemies turned to ashes.
You might think that would do it. No Iranian nuclear weapons program. No Iranian arms dealing. But that would be the conclusion in a rational world. This is Bush/Cheney land. This is an America that has long since swallowed the Zionist cool-aid to take Israel’s so-called ‘security’ as its own. And so we get Scott McClellan, onetime press secretary in the Bush White House, telling Keith Olbermann that yes, we should expect the Bush administration to misrepresent what it knows to justify an attack on Iran. For if Dana Perino started making noises similar to those made prior to the invasion of Iraq, McClellan said, “I would be (suspicious). I think that you would need to take those comments very seriously, and be skeptical.”
It is precisely those noises that are reaching a crescendo again. And the additional factor we must now consider is whether, in fact, even Barack Obama has been made a pawn in this game—this time by AIPAC, the America Israel Public Action Committee, one of the most powerful lobbies for Israel in all of Washington. For what Obama was induced (AIPAC and American Jews in general are said to constitute as much as 60% of the contributions to the Democratic Party) into saying when he spoke to AIPAC recently, is that he holds Iran responsible for the rockets Hezbollah launched on Israel in the recent war—“Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Lebanon only to have Iran supply Hezbollah with thousands of rockets”—adding that “we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing to work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs…(to) help Israel maintain its military edge and deter and repel attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza.” In short, Obama bought into the entire AIPAC propaganda line: that poor innocent little Israel is threatened by its evil Arab neighbors seeking nuclear weapons, only wants to live in peace, and needs military and financial help from the United States in order to do so. The truth—that Israel is the ONLY nuclear power in the Middle East, that its status as the 5th largest military in the entire world ensures that no combination of its neighbors could threaten it, and that it has been engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous peoples of Palestine for more than 60 years—could make no appearance in this speech. The nonsense about Iran and its supposed nuclear threat had to be given primacy.
What this could mean is that the Bush administration, now chomping at the bit for one final gotterdammerung (an attack on muslim Iran either by itself or by a well-supported Israel), could find itself in an unassailable position. In a presidential election year, with Senator McCain sounding off daily about how naïve his rival is about war matters, Obama would have little choice but to agree with a strike, or to approve of one after the fact. This would please his masters at AIPAC, but it also could have the disastrous effect of ensuring McCain’s victory. In other words, an October surprise consisting of an air strike on Iran—Middle East intelligence analyst Wayne White has seen plans for such a strike, including “clearing a path of targets against the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles and even ballistic missile capability that could target commerce and US warships in the gulf”—could frighten the electorate into, once again, voting for the “war” party, the Republicans.
Then those who support AIPAC and Israeli interests regardless of the crimes being committed against Palestinians could well claim to have goaded the world into yet another war, the consequences of which are fearsome to contemplate, consequences which were so feared even by the macho American military last summer that the generals torpedoed the administration’s attack plans. Indeed, it is to head off such a dire eventuality that a coalition of groups in Washington is promoting a write-in to Congress campaign on June 10. An ad will soon appear to this effect in the major media outlets, calling on Congress not to get dragged into another war, but rather to insist on direct talks with Iran without preconditions.
That used to be the position taken by Barack Obama. It must be forced upon him, and upon all the war mongers, again. Call your congressional rep on or before June 10. The Bush/Cheney madness must not be allowed to hoodwink the American people yet again.
Lawrence DiStasi
Now this is almost stupefying to anyone who has been following the Iran situation. To begin with, only months ago, a National Intelligence Estimate was released stating that, in the opinion of every U.S. Intelligence agency, not only was Iran NOT working on a nuclear weapon, but it had ended its nuclear weapons efforts in 2003! Well, you may say, it’s not only the nukes; the Iranians are supplying the Iraqi “bad guys” with powerful weapons to attack Americans in Iraq. But a report on May 15, 2008 detailed not one but two refutations of this claim (“Bogus Claim, al-Maliki Stall US Plan on Iran Arms,” Common Dreams, May 15, 2008). First, our ally (some would say puppet) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, “refused to endorse charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army.” In other words, the man closest to the situation refuted the U.S. claims, repeated endlessly, that Iran is supplying the arms to our enemies. They are not, he said. More important, the same report tells us that the entire American plan to stage a huge public-relations campaign convincing the American public that Iran is really the enemy in our war in Iraq, has fallen apart. Prime Minister al-Maliki first said that actual proof of Iran’s involvement was needed. Second, on May 3 a huge cache of Iranian arms said to have been captured in Karbala turned out to be a dud, as far from the “smoking gun” as it could be. According to Porter, American munitions experts hastening to Karbala to see the longed-for Iranian weapons “found nothing they could credibly link to Iran.” The cache was a bust, and U.S. commanders had to tell reporters that the big event they were expecting had to be cancelled due to a “misunderstanding.” Misunderstanding indeed. The Mahdi army has made Karbala a center of its fight for years, thus making the weapons there of supreme importance. Nonetheless, of 4 anti-aircraft missiles, 45 RPGs, 800 RPG missiles, and 570 roadside explosive devices, not a single item of Iranian origin could be identified. The whole charge against Iran as arms supplier and trainer of our enemies turned to ashes.
You might think that would do it. No Iranian nuclear weapons program. No Iranian arms dealing. But that would be the conclusion in a rational world. This is Bush/Cheney land. This is an America that has long since swallowed the Zionist cool-aid to take Israel’s so-called ‘security’ as its own. And so we get Scott McClellan, onetime press secretary in the Bush White House, telling Keith Olbermann that yes, we should expect the Bush administration to misrepresent what it knows to justify an attack on Iran. For if Dana Perino started making noises similar to those made prior to the invasion of Iraq, McClellan said, “I would be (suspicious). I think that you would need to take those comments very seriously, and be skeptical.”
It is precisely those noises that are reaching a crescendo again. And the additional factor we must now consider is whether, in fact, even Barack Obama has been made a pawn in this game—this time by AIPAC, the America Israel Public Action Committee, one of the most powerful lobbies for Israel in all of Washington. For what Obama was induced (AIPAC and American Jews in general are said to constitute as much as 60% of the contributions to the Democratic Party) into saying when he spoke to AIPAC recently, is that he holds Iran responsible for the rockets Hezbollah launched on Israel in the recent war—“Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Lebanon only to have Iran supply Hezbollah with thousands of rockets”—adding that “we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing to work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs…(to) help Israel maintain its military edge and deter and repel attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza.” In short, Obama bought into the entire AIPAC propaganda line: that poor innocent little Israel is threatened by its evil Arab neighbors seeking nuclear weapons, only wants to live in peace, and needs military and financial help from the United States in order to do so. The truth—that Israel is the ONLY nuclear power in the Middle East, that its status as the 5th largest military in the entire world ensures that no combination of its neighbors could threaten it, and that it has been engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing of the indigenous peoples of Palestine for more than 60 years—could make no appearance in this speech. The nonsense about Iran and its supposed nuclear threat had to be given primacy.
What this could mean is that the Bush administration, now chomping at the bit for one final gotterdammerung (an attack on muslim Iran either by itself or by a well-supported Israel), could find itself in an unassailable position. In a presidential election year, with Senator McCain sounding off daily about how naïve his rival is about war matters, Obama would have little choice but to agree with a strike, or to approve of one after the fact. This would please his masters at AIPAC, but it also could have the disastrous effect of ensuring McCain’s victory. In other words, an October surprise consisting of an air strike on Iran—Middle East intelligence analyst Wayne White has seen plans for such a strike, including “clearing a path of targets against the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles and even ballistic missile capability that could target commerce and US warships in the gulf”—could frighten the electorate into, once again, voting for the “war” party, the Republicans.
Then those who support AIPAC and Israeli interests regardless of the crimes being committed against Palestinians could well claim to have goaded the world into yet another war, the consequences of which are fearsome to contemplate, consequences which were so feared even by the macho American military last summer that the generals torpedoed the administration’s attack plans. Indeed, it is to head off such a dire eventuality that a coalition of groups in Washington is promoting a write-in to Congress campaign on June 10. An ad will soon appear to this effect in the major media outlets, calling on Congress not to get dragged into another war, but rather to insist on direct talks with Iran without preconditions.
That used to be the position taken by Barack Obama. It must be forced upon him, and upon all the war mongers, again. Call your congressional rep on or before June 10. The Bush/Cheney madness must not be allowed to hoodwink the American people yet again.
Lawrence DiStasi
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Bush's War
Last night, as part of its pledge drive, KQED public television repeated the Frontline documentary, “Bush’s War.” What struck me, aside from the devastating impact of seeing closeup once again the behavior and machinations of the criminal cabal that ruled this administration, was the lack of any analysis of the actual rationale for war. If you remember, Bush was persuaded by Colin Powell to go to the United Nations in order to provide some legitimacy for his plan to invade Iraq. Accordingly, the United States was able to browbeat the Security Council into passing Resolution 1441 on November 8, 2002. This resolution gave Iraq “a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations.”
Iraq did comply, allowing Hans Blix of UNMOVIC and his inspectors to come into the country and inspect numerous facilities, and providing 12,000 pages of documents testifying to the destruction of its weapons (These documents were later borne out by the inability of the United States inspectors to find any WMD anywhere in Iraq). The inspectors found nothing except, on January 16, 2003, 11 empty 122mm chemical warheads previously undeclared. Iraq said they were old and forgotten; be that as it may, there were no chemicals detected to prove noncompliance.
Lack of evidence notwithstanding, the United States insisted that Iraq was lying. The US “cemented” this position when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his infamous presentation to the United Nations on February 5, with its mockup of so-called mobile chemical and biological weapons labs, its allegation that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were being used in a nuclear weapons program, and its allegation that Iraq had ties with al-Quaeda. It maintained these charges even after February 14, when Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei presented a detailed update on the situation in Iraq to the Security Council—in which Blix stated not only that “the Iraqis were now more proactive in their cooperation,” but also that the arguments presented by Colin Powell were not credible: the satellite images were not convincing, and Iraqis never received early warning of inspector visits (it was not known, at the time, that the mobile lab mockups were fabrications invented by the informant known as “Curveball”). El Baradei added that it was his conclusion that Iraqis did not have a nuclear weapons program (this, too, turned out to be correct.)
Undeterred by these setbacks, the United States then tried to pass a new resolution in the Security Council. Supported by Great Britain and Spain, the draft resolution on February 24, 2003, declared that “Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded to it by resolution 1441.” Therefore, it could be invaded in accordance with the “serious consequences” provision. Unfortunately for the U.S. position, most of the member states (save for the aforementioned England, Spain, and Bulgaria) in the Security Council refused to back this resolution. France and Germany stated their intention to veto the resolution. It was therefore withdrawn without a vote.
This left the United States with NO United Nations authority to invade Iraq. Resolution 1441 had not authorized an invasion, but merely urged Iraq to comply or face unstated “consequences”. The US’s proposed resolution, finding Iraq in “material breach” of its obligations and therefore subject to invasion, had been dropped for lack of support.
At this point, the United States, unwilling to abandon invasion plans already underway, resorted to a thirteen-year-old UN resolution—# 678. Resolution 678, issued on November 29, 1990, was directed against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It authorized the use of force against Iraq to “uphold and implement resolution 660 and all subsequent resolutions to restore international peace and security.” Resolution 660 of Aug. 2, 1990, in turn, had condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and demanded a withdrawal of Iraq’s troops. So 678 authorized force only to get Iraqi troops out of Kuwait—something that had been accomplished 13 years ago. This did not deter the Bushies. Another old resolution, # 687, was dusted off, and combined with 678 to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to give what was essentially an unprovoked invasion additional cover. Resolution 687 of April 3, 1991, had issued the formal ceasefire ending the Gulf War, adding several conditions: 1) Iraq destroys all its chemical and biological weapons and all ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 km; 2) Iraq agrees not to develop nuclear weapons; 3) Iraq submits a declaration of its weapons programs and voluntarily agrees to on-site inspections. UN inspectors, including Scott Ritter, had testified to the fact that Iraq had complied with virtually all of these conditions. Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei had added their confirmations that Iraq was in near total compliance in February/March of 2003. Furthermore, in Great Britain, as George Monbiot makes clear, senior legal counsels to Tony Blair had advised the Prime Minister that such resolutions could not be used to justify a new war with Iraq. Neither could Article 51 of the UN Charter, which gives States a right to defend themselves “if an armed attack occurs against them,” and even then only until the Security Council can intervene. Since Iraq had not attacked anyone in 2003, there was no legal justification for war. Period.
None of this mattered to the Bush administration. Announcing that it had authority to invade via Article 51 of the UN Charter, and via Resolution 678, for the reasons (shortly to be proven totally bogus and manufactured out of whole cloth) that Iraq was in violation of 687, it invaded anyway. In the years since, despite not finding the alleged WMD, Bush and his henchmen have continued to insist that the United Nations authorized the invasion.
Again, “Bush’s War” is riveting television, if for nothing else than to see the faces and hear once again the laughable justifications of those who promoted this costly, devastating war. But this leaves the viewer thinking only that this group resembled the “gang who couldn’t shoot straight.” The problem lies far deeper than that. This gang was made up of liars, propagandists, and war criminals. Their invasion of Iraq constituted an international crime—especially against Iraq and the Iraqi people who have suffered the destruction of their country, their lives, their families, their most elementary hopes. As such, it deserves not only the condemnation, but the prosecution of those responsible—beginning with the President and the Vice President, and including the Secretary of Defense, the head of the CIA, and countless other lawyers and enablers like John Yoo who did the dirty work. Until they are brought to account, this nation will continue to live in shame and infamy.
Lawrence DiStasi
Iraq did comply, allowing Hans Blix of UNMOVIC and his inspectors to come into the country and inspect numerous facilities, and providing 12,000 pages of documents testifying to the destruction of its weapons (These documents were later borne out by the inability of the United States inspectors to find any WMD anywhere in Iraq). The inspectors found nothing except, on January 16, 2003, 11 empty 122mm chemical warheads previously undeclared. Iraq said they were old and forgotten; be that as it may, there were no chemicals detected to prove noncompliance.
Lack of evidence notwithstanding, the United States insisted that Iraq was lying. The US “cemented” this position when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his infamous presentation to the United Nations on February 5, with its mockup of so-called mobile chemical and biological weapons labs, its allegation that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were being used in a nuclear weapons program, and its allegation that Iraq had ties with al-Quaeda. It maintained these charges even after February 14, when Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei presented a detailed update on the situation in Iraq to the Security Council—in which Blix stated not only that “the Iraqis were now more proactive in their cooperation,” but also that the arguments presented by Colin Powell were not credible: the satellite images were not convincing, and Iraqis never received early warning of inspector visits (it was not known, at the time, that the mobile lab mockups were fabrications invented by the informant known as “Curveball”). El Baradei added that it was his conclusion that Iraqis did not have a nuclear weapons program (this, too, turned out to be correct.)
Undeterred by these setbacks, the United States then tried to pass a new resolution in the Security Council. Supported by Great Britain and Spain, the draft resolution on February 24, 2003, declared that “Iraq has failed to take the final opportunity afforded to it by resolution 1441.” Therefore, it could be invaded in accordance with the “serious consequences” provision. Unfortunately for the U.S. position, most of the member states (save for the aforementioned England, Spain, and Bulgaria) in the Security Council refused to back this resolution. France and Germany stated their intention to veto the resolution. It was therefore withdrawn without a vote.
This left the United States with NO United Nations authority to invade Iraq. Resolution 1441 had not authorized an invasion, but merely urged Iraq to comply or face unstated “consequences”. The US’s proposed resolution, finding Iraq in “material breach” of its obligations and therefore subject to invasion, had been dropped for lack of support.
At this point, the United States, unwilling to abandon invasion plans already underway, resorted to a thirteen-year-old UN resolution—# 678. Resolution 678, issued on November 29, 1990, was directed against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It authorized the use of force against Iraq to “uphold and implement resolution 660 and all subsequent resolutions to restore international peace and security.” Resolution 660 of Aug. 2, 1990, in turn, had condemned the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and demanded a withdrawal of Iraq’s troops. So 678 authorized force only to get Iraqi troops out of Kuwait—something that had been accomplished 13 years ago. This did not deter the Bushies. Another old resolution, # 687, was dusted off, and combined with 678 to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, to give what was essentially an unprovoked invasion additional cover. Resolution 687 of April 3, 1991, had issued the formal ceasefire ending the Gulf War, adding several conditions: 1) Iraq destroys all its chemical and biological weapons and all ballistic missiles with a range greater than 150 km; 2) Iraq agrees not to develop nuclear weapons; 3) Iraq submits a declaration of its weapons programs and voluntarily agrees to on-site inspections. UN inspectors, including Scott Ritter, had testified to the fact that Iraq had complied with virtually all of these conditions. Hans Blix and Mohammed El Baradei had added their confirmations that Iraq was in near total compliance in February/March of 2003. Furthermore, in Great Britain, as George Monbiot makes clear, senior legal counsels to Tony Blair had advised the Prime Minister that such resolutions could not be used to justify a new war with Iraq. Neither could Article 51 of the UN Charter, which gives States a right to defend themselves “if an armed attack occurs against them,” and even then only until the Security Council can intervene. Since Iraq had not attacked anyone in 2003, there was no legal justification for war. Period.
None of this mattered to the Bush administration. Announcing that it had authority to invade via Article 51 of the UN Charter, and via Resolution 678, for the reasons (shortly to be proven totally bogus and manufactured out of whole cloth) that Iraq was in violation of 687, it invaded anyway. In the years since, despite not finding the alleged WMD, Bush and his henchmen have continued to insist that the United Nations authorized the invasion.
Again, “Bush’s War” is riveting television, if for nothing else than to see the faces and hear once again the laughable justifications of those who promoted this costly, devastating war. But this leaves the viewer thinking only that this group resembled the “gang who couldn’t shoot straight.” The problem lies far deeper than that. This gang was made up of liars, propagandists, and war criminals. Their invasion of Iraq constituted an international crime—especially against Iraq and the Iraqi people who have suffered the destruction of their country, their lives, their families, their most elementary hopes. As such, it deserves not only the condemnation, but the prosecution of those responsible—beginning with the President and the Vice President, and including the Secretary of Defense, the head of the CIA, and countless other lawyers and enablers like John Yoo who did the dirty work. Until they are brought to account, this nation will continue to live in shame and infamy.
Lawrence DiStasi
Monday, May 26, 2008
Bisphenol A (BPA )
Last night (Friday May 23) Bill Moyers aired a segment on the investigation of the dangers of BPA by journalists for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. It was sobering for many reasons. To begin with, here was a textbook case about why we still need newspaper journalism. The lead reporter, Susanne Rust, demonstrated both the persistence and expertise required for good journalism: she had studied endocrine disruptors in graduate school before becoming a journalist, and so was able to personally review hundreds of scientific articles to report firsthand on what they said. Needless to say, what she uncovered differed dramatically from what industry and government representatives were saying in response to the controversy. Second, the Journal Sentinel assigned no less than three reporters to this story, and gave them ample time—not hours or days but months—to thoroughly research the story. No television station would, these days, allow that much time for a story; it’s far cheaper to cover the latest murder or sex scandal.
Aside from this demonstration about the value of true journalism, the report was sobering in what it revealed about the possible dangers of Bisphenol A, and the criminal negligence of government agencies in downplaying those dangers. The internet is today full of reports about this, but one in particular provides ample reasons for anyone interested in his/her own health, and even more, the health of children or grandchildren, to be concerned. I am referring to a report by two scientists, F vom Saal (shown on the Moyers report) and C Hughes, titled “An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows the Need for a New Risk Assessment” (Environmental Health Perspectives, 2005). The article, which can be found on the website, www.ourstolenfuture.org (itself the name of a book by Colborn, Dumanosk, & Meyers), represents an overview of the scientific literature, and on that basis concludes that health standards for BPA “should be strengthened dramatically to protect public health.”
First, we should be clear about what BPA is. Though first synthesized in 1891, it was not used until 1931, when it was synthesized for use as an estrogen (only to be replaced by the infamous diethylstilbestrol (DES), because of the latter’s greater effect.) This initial intent is important because of the dangers BPA poses as an endocrine disruptor. In any case, chemists soon discovered BPA’s current use—its ability to polymerize, or form large chains, to become polycarbonate plastic. All well and good: polycarbonate plastic is hard and clear and widely useful. The fly in the ointment turned out to be that the bond linking BPA’s monomers to one another is not stable; it decays with time, releasing BPA into the materials it contacts, such as food or water. By now, many people have been alerted to the problem BPA poses in water bottles and food containers (it is used widely to line the inside of the metal cans containing foods of all kinds). But BPA is also used in making a host of other plastics, resins, fungicides, flame retardants, and even the plastic coating for children’s teeth to prevent cavities! It is ubiquitous in our plastic-drenched lives, and thereby in the environment (rivers and estuaries and our water supply) we have contaminated as well.
The government agency charged with protecting Americans from toxic dangers such as this, the EPA, has not conducted a new risk assessment for Bisphenol A in 15 years. It has essentially taken the word of the chemical industry that scientific studies (financed by the industry, of course) have shown that BPA is safe. vom Saal and Hughes, however, found a dramatically different story. First, they compared industry-funded studies with government-funded studies and found that of 115 relevant studies (11 by the chemical industry; 94 by government-funded research), “none of the 11 funded by industry reported adverse effects at low level, whereas 94 of 104 government-funded studies (from Japan, Europe, and the U.S.) found effects.” Now if you were the EPA, whom would you trust—the industry-funded studies? Or government-funded studies? Needless to say, EPA went with the industry studies.
vom Saal and Huges, however, clearly found the government-funded studies both more numerous and more convincing. They state: “the literature now provides overwhelming evidence that Bisphenol A alters cellular signaling, fetal development and adult physiology and reproduction in animals at doses far beneath the current ‘safe exposure’ level established by the U.S., 50 ppb (parts per billion).” In fact, vom Saal’s own first study reported “effects at 2 ppb, when male mice exposed in the womb (to BPA) grew up with enlarged prostates.” Not surprisingly, vom Saal’s study was severely criticized by chemical industry scientists, who said his results could not be duplicated. This must have been one reason for vom Saal and Hughes to conduct their review. Be that as it may, they found, first, that vom Saal’s results regarding the danger of even low levels of BPA had been duplicated numerous times in numerous labs. More important, more recent studies indicated that Bisphenol A, via its interaction with estrogen receptors within the cell nucleus, not only “alters expression of many genes dependent upon estrogen signaling,” but also “stimulates calcium influx into the cell,” a key process which also “alters the expression of genes involved in many different physiological processes, including brain growth, memory formation, the creation of fat cells, and reproductive development.” Indeed, in provoking these critical reactions, Bisphenol A has been found to be “more powerful” than diethylstilbestrol (DES)!
The conclusion reached by vom Saal and Hughes would seem to be a no-brainer: given its ability to alter such basic physiological functions, BPA may be involved in such diseases (all indicated by the studies reviewed) as: “obesity in adults, early puberty, reduced sperm count, breast cancer, impaired immune function, changes in brain chemistry, and changes in behavior—hyperactivity, increased aggressiveness, impaired learning, altered sexual behavior.” While all these indications come from animal studies since the relevant human research has not yet been done (indeed, it may be almost impossible to find control groups among humans who have NOT been exposed to BPA), it seems prudent to conclude that, given the widespread exposure of humans to BPA from so many sources, every individual should err on the side of caution. (Unless, that is, most of us have been so de-sensitized to chemical dangers by TV’s constant drug commercials running through their weirdly cheerful disclaimers—‘may cause headaches, stomach cramps, liver failure, heart attacks, blood clots, brain hemorrhaging, and sudden infant death syndrome’—that we’re too dumbed out to worry.)
The final conclusion of vom Saal and Hughes, however, indicates that even individual action, while prudent, will not be enough. This is because the ubiquity of BPA, most of it in unlabeled products, all leaching enormous quantities into the entire world’s water systems, means that we will all continue to be contaminated by Bisphenol A no matter what we do as individuals. As with global warming, it is governments—especially the U. S. government’s Environmental Protection Agency—which must act both nationally and globally to reduce the danger. And in order get them to do that, governments must no longer be allowed to dismiss the dangers of such a universally distributed substance. They must be deluged, starting with our own representatives, with demands for an outright ban on Bisphenol A. Whether they should subsequently be held accountable for the as yet uncalculated harm their negligence (or should we call it willful ignorance) has already caused is an open question.
Lawrence DiStasi
Aside from this demonstration about the value of true journalism, the report was sobering in what it revealed about the possible dangers of Bisphenol A, and the criminal negligence of government agencies in downplaying those dangers. The internet is today full of reports about this, but one in particular provides ample reasons for anyone interested in his/her own health, and even more, the health of children or grandchildren, to be concerned. I am referring to a report by two scientists, F vom Saal (shown on the Moyers report) and C Hughes, titled “An Extensive New Literature Concerning Low-Dose Effects of Bisphenol A Shows the Need for a New Risk Assessment” (Environmental Health Perspectives, 2005). The article, which can be found on the website, www.ourstolenfuture.org
First, we should be clear about what BPA is. Though first synthesized in 1891, it was not used until 1931, when it was synthesized for use as an estrogen (only to be replaced by the infamous diethylstilbestrol (DES), because of the latter’s greater effect.) This initial intent is important because of the dangers BPA poses as an endocrine disruptor. In any case, chemists soon discovered BPA’s current use—its ability to polymerize, or form large chains, to become polycarbonate plastic. All well and good: polycarbonate plastic is hard and clear and widely useful. The fly in the ointment turned out to be that the bond linking BPA’s monomers to one another is not stable; it decays with time, releasing BPA into the materials it contacts, such as food or water. By now, many people have been alerted to the problem BPA poses in water bottles and food containers (it is used widely to line the inside of the metal cans containing foods of all kinds). But BPA is also used in making a host of other plastics, resins, fungicides, flame retardants, and even the plastic coating for children’s teeth to prevent cavities! It is ubiquitous in our plastic-drenched lives, and thereby in the environment (rivers and estuaries and our water supply) we have contaminated as well.
The government agency charged with protecting Americans from toxic dangers such as this, the EPA, has not conducted a new risk assessment for Bisphenol A in 15 years. It has essentially taken the word of the chemical industry that scientific studies (financed by the industry, of course) have shown that BPA is safe. vom Saal and Hughes, however, found a dramatically different story. First, they compared industry-funded studies with government-funded studies and found that of 115 relevant studies (11 by the chemical industry; 94 by government-funded research), “none of the 11 funded by industry reported adverse effects at low level, whereas 94 of 104 government-funded studies (from Japan, Europe, and the U.S.) found effects.” Now if you were the EPA, whom would you trust—the industry-funded studies? Or government-funded studies? Needless to say, EPA went with the industry studies.
vom Saal and Huges, however, clearly found the government-funded studies both more numerous and more convincing. They state: “the literature now provides overwhelming evidence that Bisphenol A alters cellular signaling, fetal development and adult physiology and reproduction in animals at doses far beneath the current ‘safe exposure’ level established by the U.S., 50 ppb (parts per billion).” In fact, vom Saal’s own first study reported “effects at 2 ppb, when male mice exposed in the womb (to BPA) grew up with enlarged prostates.” Not surprisingly, vom Saal’s study was severely criticized by chemical industry scientists, who said his results could not be duplicated. This must have been one reason for vom Saal and Hughes to conduct their review. Be that as it may, they found, first, that vom Saal’s results regarding the danger of even low levels of BPA had been duplicated numerous times in numerous labs. More important, more recent studies indicated that Bisphenol A, via its interaction with estrogen receptors within the cell nucleus, not only “alters expression of many genes dependent upon estrogen signaling,” but also “stimulates calcium influx into the cell,” a key process which also “alters the expression of genes involved in many different physiological processes, including brain growth, memory formation, the creation of fat cells, and reproductive development.” Indeed, in provoking these critical reactions, Bisphenol A has been found to be “more powerful” than diethylstilbestrol (DES)!
The conclusion reached by vom Saal and Hughes would seem to be a no-brainer: given its ability to alter such basic physiological functions, BPA may be involved in such diseases (all indicated by the studies reviewed) as: “obesity in adults, early puberty, reduced sperm count, breast cancer, impaired immune function, changes in brain chemistry, and changes in behavior—hyperactivity, increased aggressiveness, impaired learning, altered sexual behavior.” While all these indications come from animal studies since the relevant human research has not yet been done (indeed, it may be almost impossible to find control groups among humans who have NOT been exposed to BPA), it seems prudent to conclude that, given the widespread exposure of humans to BPA from so many sources, every individual should err on the side of caution. (Unless, that is, most of us have been so de-sensitized to chemical dangers by TV’s constant drug commercials running through their weirdly cheerful disclaimers—‘may cause headaches, stomach cramps, liver failure, heart attacks, blood clots, brain hemorrhaging, and sudden infant death syndrome’—that we’re too dumbed out to worry.)
The final conclusion of vom Saal and Hughes, however, indicates that even individual action, while prudent, will not be enough. This is because the ubiquity of BPA, most of it in unlabeled products, all leaching enormous quantities into the entire world’s water systems, means that we will all continue to be contaminated by Bisphenol A no matter what we do as individuals. As with global warming, it is governments—especially the U. S. government’s Environmental Protection Agency—which must act both nationally and globally to reduce the danger. And in order get them to do that, governments must no longer be allowed to dismiss the dangers of such a universally distributed substance. They must be deluged, starting with our own representatives, with demands for an outright ban on Bisphenol A. Whether they should subsequently be held accountable for the as yet uncalculated harm their negligence (or should we call it willful ignorance) has already caused is an open question.
Lawrence DiStasi
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