Judge Patricia Wald, former chief judge for the D.C. Court of Appeals and jurist on the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, writing in the new report "Guantánamo and Its Aftermath" (pdf):

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants to U.S. to stay in Iraq for some time, because we keep him in power. But Iraqis want us to get the hell out as soon as possible, and certainly don't want U.S. soldiers to go around killing people with impunity. And the Iraqi government is somewhat vulnerable to public pressure—in fact, seemingly more than the U.S. government. How can al-Maliki square this circle?

The draft U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement is now available from the American Friends Service Committee in a translation by Raed Jarrar (pdf) from the Arabic version. It shows how al-Maliki is trying to do it.

When Hank Paulson handed over $125 billion to America's largest banks, he neglected to force them to reveal and write down their bad assets, and thus kill the ones which are irredeemably bankrupt and should die. Paulson also took non-voting stock, and so we don't have the ability to dictate bank behavior that owners would normally have.

Thus, even though we were supposedly handing over our money in order to get credit markets working again, the banks were obviously going to just hoard the money.

Obviously:

The New York Times has a long story today about the disastrous 2004 change to the SEC's "net capital rule." This allowed America's five largest investment banks to greatly increase their leverage ratios, from 12-1 to as much as 40-1. All five investment banks have since either collapsed or transformed themselves into commercial banks.

The Times story mentions that "The five investment banks led the charge [to change the rule], including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr. Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary."

However, the story does NOT mention Paulson's 2000 testimony to the SEC, in which he specifically lobbied the SEC to make this change: 

Back in 2000, when Hank Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs, he testified in front of the Security and Exchange Commission. Among other things, he lobbied the SEC to enact a "change to self-regulation" for Wall Street. He also urged them to change the "net capital rule" which governed the amount of leverage investment banks could use. The net capital rule was indeed changed in 2004, and is now blamed for the investment banks' collapse.

 

PAULSON: The Challenge of Technology and Change to Self-Regulation in the United States

 

The third area for re-examination and reform is the structure of broker/dealer regulation, a function now shared by the SEC and the self regulatory organizations ("SROs"), principally the New York Stock Exchange and NASD Regulation Inc.

 

According to the Constitution, all appropriations bills must originate in the House of Representatives. So what was Harry Reid to do, with the House out of session and faced with the need to immediately give Wall Street $700 billion?

What he did was dig up an appropriations bill that had originated in the House and then been sent over to the Senate, where it bogged down. This happened IN 2002. Moreover, the Senate version had been co-sponsored BY PAUL WELLSTONE.

Of course, Wellstone never wrote a bill bailing out Wall Street. So Reid just gutted the bill and added that part. But Wellstone's name is still on it, on page 263 (pdf). It's like the world's investment bankers dug up Wellstone so they could punch him in the face one more time.

           

According to former CIA head George Tenet, "There were many Iraqi officials who said both publicly and privately that Iraq had no WMD."

Tenet's statement is accurate. Moreover, there were high level CIA officials who believed Iraq possessed no WMD. In addition, foreign governments stated there was no hard evidence Iraq had WMD, as did the heads of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

There's no question Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has recently been giving the White House and John McCain heartburn. On Saturday in an interview with Der Spiegel he essentially endorsed Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Then did it again today, right after speaking with Obama in Baghdad:

After talks with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki reaffirmed that Iraq wants U.S. combat troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2010, a few months later than Obama had proposed.

So it's worth looking back at the Bush administration's private views of Maliki, as stated by Donald Rumsfeld back in 2006.

Several recent articles about the Bush administration's efforts to conclude an "agreement" with Nouri al-Maliki's government report Iraqis are comparing it to the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930—something most Americans have never heard of. Here's a story from yesterday:

After Iraqi negotiators briefed lawmakers last month, politicians from all walks paraded in front of microphones to denounce the U.S. proposals. Some commentators likened the U.S. position to the Iraqi-British treaty of 1930, which gave Britain virtual control of the country and is widely seen here as a humiliation.

And this is Patrick Cockburn, writing in the Independent:

Critics of the agreement in Iraq see the powers being demanded by the US, such as the use of 58 bases, the freedom of the US to carry out operations and arrests without consulting the Iraqi government, and the immunity of US troops, as compromising Iraqi independence. They have denounced the deal as ominously similar to the Anglo-Iraqi treaty of 1930 under which Iraq was nominally independent but Britain retained bases and covert control.

Standard American historical ignorance isn't solely to blame here; the 1930 treaty is difficult to find, existing only as a pdf tucked away in an obscure corner of the UN website. So I thought it would be useful to put the text online here. (Thanks to Glen Rangwala for locating the pdf version.)

This is from the statement of Ryan Crocker, US Ambassador to Iraq, in front of the Foreign Relations Committee yesterday:

One conclusion I draw from these signs of progress is that the strategy that began with the Surge is working. This does not mean, however, that U.S. support should be open-ended or that the level and nature of our engagement should not diminish over time. It is in this context that we have begun negotiating a bilateral relationship between Iraq and the United States...The heart of this relationship will be a legal framework for the presence of American troops similar to that which exists in nearly 80 countries around the world...

by Jonathan Schwarz
for Democrats.com

The Politico reported last week that a senior administration official stated that conflict with Congress over the U.S.-Iraqi Declaration of Principles for an ongoing bilateral agreement between the two countries "stems largely from a sloppy Arabic-to-English translation." However, say Arabic experts, the available Arabic versions of the Declaration of Principles are almost exactly the same as the official English version, and are likely direct translations from it.

This is from James Loewen's book Lies My Teacher Told Me, a survey of what the most widely-used high school textbooks on American history leave out. It was published in 1995:

The sole piece of criminal government activity that most textbooks treat is the series of related scandals called Watergate...In telling of Watergate, textbooks blame Richard Nixon, as they should. But they go no deeper. Faced with this undeniable instance of government wrongdoing, they manage to retain their uniformly rosy view of the government. In the representative words of The United States—A History of the Republic

This seems like a good moment to remember this section of The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind:

As the meeting in Mr. Cheney's office progressed, it became clear that the vice president was ready to weigh in on what the president should do to bolster the economy, and his standing with voters worried about the economy, as the second half of his term began. A package of tax proposals, led by a 50% cut in the individual tax on dividends, had been all but buried since Mr. O'Neill took his stand against it in early September...

After the midterms, though, Mr. O'Neill could sense a change inside the White House...Now Mr. Cheney mentioned them again, how altering the double taxation of dividends would provide some economic stimulus. Mr. O'Neill jumped in, arguing sharply that the government "is moving toward a fiscal crisis" and then pointing out "what rising deficits will mean to our economic and fiscal soundness." Mr. Cheney cut him off. "Reagan proved deficits don't matter," he said.

The Washington Post reported today that key Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, were briefed on CIA interrogation techniques during 2002. Some of the article's many unnamed sources offer up this defense of them for not objecting strenuously:

Several officials familiar with the briefings recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings.

Atrios rightfully wonders:

I'm wondering where the not "thinking clearly" exception to law, constitution, and international treaty exists.

The joke here, of course, is that not only is there no such exception, there's the opposite of an exception. This is Article 2.1 of the international Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment:

Here's the Washington Post today, refusing to say Karl Rove lied about the fall, 2002 vote on Iraq:

Rove's Version of 2002 War Vote Is Disputed

Former White House aide Karl Rove said yesterday it was Congress, not President Bush, who wanted to rush a vote on the looming war in Iraq in the fall of 2002, a version of events disputed by leading congressional Democrats and even some former Rove colleagues.

Rove said that the administration did not want lawmakers to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq that soon because it would "make things move too fast," before Bush could line up international allies, and politicize the issue ahead of midterm elections. But Democrats and some Republicans involved with the issue at the time said yesterday that Bush wanted a quick vote.