Bush Pardons

Is Andrew Sullivan King of America?

davidswanson — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:23:09 -0400

By David Swanson

Of course, I'm going to argue no, that Andrew Sullivan is no more the king of America than is Barack Obama or George Tenet or Eric Holder or any of hundreds of other people claiming to be. But nobody other than the king or queen of the USA could overrule the Constitution and place particular people and categories of people above the law while keeping everybody else under it. Let's take a look at Sullivan's recent Atlantic article:

Americans want, and need, to move on from the debate over torture in Iraq and Afghanistan and close this tragic chapter in our nation’s history. Prosecuting those responsible could tear apart a country at war. Instead, the best way to confront the crimes of the past is for the man who authorized them to take full responsibility. An open letter to President George W. Bush.

By Andrew Sullivan

Dear President Bush,

Now, I, for one don't want to move on from talking about torture and murder and aggressive war and political prosecutions and illegal propaganda and death squads and stolen elections and warrantless spying, etc., I want to move on from the actual things themselves. Most of them are still around because they are not being prosecuted. Far from tearing apart a country, creating one in which we are all under the same set of laws would bring us together. And how exactly are we a nation at war? There is no war on our soil or threat to it. Most families have no members engaged in the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. The cost of the wars is being shoved off on our grandchildren. Just about the only sense in which our country is at war, other than the devastation being imposed on other countries and a relatively small number of US familes, is the consistent use of claims of war as a justification for domestic abuses. OK, maybe there's one other sense in which we are at war: Sullivan is experiencing the sort of delusional thinking that can follow battle. Bush take responsibility? Think about those words for a minute.

We have never met, and so I hope you will forgive the personal nature of this letter. I guess I should start by saying I supported your presidential campaign in 2000, as I did your father’s in 1988, and lauded your first efforts to wage war against jihadist terrorism in the wake of 9/11. Some of my praise of your leadership at the time actually makes me blush in retrospect, but your September 20, 2001, address to Congress really was one of the finest in modern times; your immediate grasp of the import of 9/11—a declaration of war—was correct; and your core judgment—that religious fanaticism allied with weapons of mass destruction represents a unique and new threat to the West—was and is dead-on. I remain proud of my support for you in all this. No one should forget the pure evil of September 11; no one should doubt the continued determination of an enemy prepared to slaughter thousands in cold blood in pursuit of heaven on Earth.

So, as of 2000, Sullivan had zero ability to judge political candidates and/or had never read Molly Ivins. Should this past record of deadly misjudgment commend his opinions to us now? As of 2001, Sullivan believed a crime constituted a war, and as of 2009, following the disaster created by that pretense, he still thinks the same thing. Following the slaughter of 1.3 million Iraqis, Sullivan still holds out as potential justification for abuses, the supposed existence of an enemy prepared to kill "thousands" of Americans. And Sullivan is -- through it all -- still proud of having supported Bush, or so deep in a deranged fantasy about winning Bush over that he's willing to tell him flattering lies.

Of course, like most advocates of the Iraq War, I grew dismayed at what I saw as the mistakes that followed: the failure to capture Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora; the intelligence fiasco of Saddam’s nonexistent stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction; the failure to prepare for an insurgency in Iraq; the reckless disbandment of the Iraqi army; the painful slowness in adapting to drastically worsening conditions there in 2004–06; the negligence toward Afghanistan.

A coordinated campaign to deceive a nation about the grounds for war is an "intelligence fiasco"? Preparing for the resistance of the Iraqi people would have improved the supreme crime of aggressive war? Escalation in Afghanistan, too, would have improved that criminal and aggressive war? When Sullivan reads about mass murderers on the domestic scene, does he complain about their mistakes or their crimes? Think about exactly what Sullivan would like Bush to apologize for, and to the people of what country Sullivan wants such an apology addressed. Then ask yourself whether giving up the deterrence of major crimes in the future is a price worth paying for such an apology. Then remember that we are talking about a man who does not apologize and is as likely to apologize as Sullivan is to admit that the peace movement was and is right.

These were all serious errors; but they were of a kind often made in the chaos of war. And even your toughest critics concede that, eventually, you adjusted tactics and strategy. You took your time, but you evaded catastrophe in temporarily stabilizing Iraq. I also agree with the guiding principle of the war you proclaimed from the start: that expanding democracy and human rights is indispensable in the long-term fight against jihadism. And I believe, as you do, that a foreign policy that does not understand the universal yearning for individual freedom and dignity is not a recognizably American foreign policy.

My favorites among Bush's toughest critics have no use for this slimey defense. If what has been done to Iraq is not a catastrophe, what -- other than perhaps an embarassing TV appearance for Sullivan -- could be? Bush did not from the start claim to be expanding democracy. He pasted that over the missing WMDs and ties to 9-11. But it was hogwash, and the state of democracy and human rights in Iraq is no more secure than in the United States. Bush believes in basing foreign policy on freedom and dignity? Can Sullivan possibly mean for even Bush himself to believe that line? Should someone throw a shoe at Andrew? I'm not sure what else would snap him out of this.

Yet it is precisely because of that belief that I lost faith in your war. In long wars of ideas, moral integrity is essential to winning, and framing the moral contrast between the West and its enemies as starkly as possible is indispensable to victory, as it was in the Second World War and the Cold War.

What, pray tell, is moral about framing a moral contrast between "the West and its enemies" and who is this pair of clowns (Sullivan and Bush) to tell me who my enemies should be and what's wrong with their morality, and then to identify them with the peoples of entire continents?

But because of the way you chose to treat prisoners in American custody in wartime—a policy that degraded human beings with techniques typically deployed by brutal dictatorships—we lost this moral distinction early, and we have yet to regain it. That truth hangs over your legacy as a stain that has yet to be removed. As more facts emerge, the stain could darken further. You would like us to move on. So would the current president. But we cannot unless we find a way to address that stain, to confront and remove it.

Nothing could darken this stain further. Torture is a drop in a sea of blood created by aggressive war. But if we can perform the indescribable indecency of accepting that Sullivan simply won't address the crime of aggressive war (a crime that almost inevitably brings torture with it), then Sullivan is perfectly right in how he addresses torture -- or he would be if he were to include the significance of its illegality.

I have come to accept that it would be too damaging and polarizing to the American polity to launch legal prosecutions against you, and deeply unfair to solely prosecute those acting on your orders or in your name.

Damaging to the American polity? Establishing that a president can make laws by signing statements, executive orders, and secret memos strikes me as hugely damaging. Including among those laws the legalization of torture, aggressive war at a president's whim, and warrantless spying strikes me as devastating and, yes, polarizing. We have divided the nation into those who make the laws and live above them, and the rest of us who have no role in making the laws but live under them. Sullivan would not be the first pundit to take this position if what he means to say is that we should not prosecute high officials because the corporate media would take the opportunity to go completely insane. Frankly, I think that's a price worth paying, because we are going to pay it either way. If elected officials continue to take their orders from the corporate media, it will go insane just as surely as if its dominance is challenged. The same goes for the gangs of corporate pawns threatening racist violence at astroturfed media events; if they are what worries Sullivan he should stop and read some of his favorite hard-headed authors on the history of appeasement. But Sullivan (and Doug Feith for that matter) is exactly right that it makes no sense to prosecute Bush's subordinates for crimes he ordered without prosecuting him first.

President Obama’s decision thus far to avoid such prosecutions is a pragmatic and bipartisan one in a time of war, as is your principled refusal to criticize him publicly in his first months. But moving on without actually confronting or addressing the very grave evidence of systematic abuse and torture under your administration poses profound future dangers. It gives the impression that nothing immoral or illegal took place. Indeed, since leaving office, your own vice president has even bragged of these interrogation techniques; and many in your own party threaten to reinstate such policies in the future. Their extreme rhetoric seems likely to shape—to contaminate—history’s view of your presidency, indeed of the Bush name, and the world’s view of America. But my biggest fear is this: in the event of a future attack on the United States, another president will feel tempted, or even politically compelled, to resort to the same brutalizing policy, with the same polarizing, demoralizing, war-crippling results. I am writing you now because it is within your power—and only within your power—to prevent that from happening.

Again with the "time of war" every time a horrendous and unconstitutional abuse of power is justified. The president has no business deciding anything here. The attorney general has a duty to uphold the law. Obama has the same legal duty we all have not to obstruct justice. And such abuses are exactly as unconstitutional even when "bipartisan" and would be even if you could get 18 parties to support them. Sullivan is right to point to Cheney's bragging. Another word for it is confessing. And Bush has done the same. They have both admitted repeatedly on television to authorizing torture. Bush has signed executive orders and signing statements to the same effect. Cheney and John Yoo have both stated publicly that Bush was responsible. Sullivan's biggest fear is right on, but too theoretical. The wars and spying and rendition and lawless detention and unjustifiable secrecy and indeed torture are ongoing now. The current White House claims the power to torture if it chooses to now. This hypothetical stuff was OK eight months ago, but not any longer. The danger is more immediate and should be expressed as such. Obama is formalizing a system of indefinite preventive detention in a way that one administration alone could not have done. The same goes for the use of signing statements, orders, decrees, and secret memos.

Don’t misunderstand me. The war was compromised, not by occasional war crimes, or bad snap decisions by soldiers acting under extreme stress, or the usual, ghastly stuff that war is made of. All conflicts generate atrocities. Very few have been without sporadic abuse of prisoners or battlefield errors. As long as these lapses are investigated and punished, the integrity of a just war can be sustained.

But this war is different. It began with a memo from your office stating that—for the first time—American service members and CIA officers need not adhere to the laws of warfare that have governed Western and American war-making since before this country’s founding. The memo declared that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to captured terror suspects but that all prisoners would be treated humanely unless “military necessity” required otherwise. This gaping “military necessity” loophole—formally opposed in a memo by the member of your Cabinet with the most military experience, Secretary of State Colin Powell—was the beginning of America’s descent into the ranks of countries that systematically torture prisoners. You insisted that prisoners be treated humanely whenever possible, but wars with legal loopholes for abuse and torture always quickly degenerate. In its full consequences, that memo, even if issued in good faith, has done more damage to the reputation of the United States than anything since Vietnam. The tolerance of torture and abuse has recruited more terrorists than any al-Qaeda video, and has devastated morale and support at home. Your successor remains profoundly constrained even now by this legacy—compelled to prevent the release of more photographic evidence of war crimes under your command because of the damage it could still do to American soldiers in the field.

This is good as far as it goes, but this war was compromised in the way that a smaller and less horrific mass-murdering rampage could be "compromised" by other lesser crimes. And what compels Obama to withhold numerous photos, videos, memos, orders, reports, testimony, diaries, and other evidence is his willingness to spit on the Constitution, his desire to keep presidents above the rule of law (for obvious reasons), his fear of the corporate media, and his desire to please the permanent bureaucracy in Washington. If he wanted to protect soldiers he would bring them home.

No, terror suspects did not deserve full prisoner-of-war status. That argument was always a red herring. Full POW rights—regular meals, exercise, and the rest—were not applicable to stateless terror suspects who themselves had no uniform or adherence to Geneva. You were right to see that as inappropriate, if not offensive. But what these suspects did deserve—simply because they are human beings—was protection from inhuman, degrading, abusive treatment or the infliction of “severe mental or physical pain or suffering” in order to procure information. This is what Geneva’s Article 3 says: whatever the nature of the combatant, in or out of uniform, and whatever his own moral rules (or lack of them), he deserves basic respect as a human being with human rights. This principle is nonnegotiable. It is the core principle of Western civilization. Resistance to the physical force of government, especially as that force is applied to people in custody, is the core reason America exists as an independent nation.

No king, not King Bush and not King Sullivan, has the power to invent new categories of prisoners. Geneva does not apply only to people who themselves uphold it. And those not accorded the rights of prisoners of war must be accorded the rights of prisoners in peace. A third category of not-quite-as-human-but-still-fairly-human prisoners cannot be invented ad hoc by royalty if we are to operate under the rule of laws. Such a policy could be smart and sensible, but there would be nothing to prevent its mutating into something else. There is a reason we make laws, make those laws public, and hold each other to them. This is clearly lost on Sullivan who, despite now unavoidably knowing that most of the "terror suspects" imprisoned by the United States in these past several years have not been guilty of any terrorism, finds it possibly offensive to suggest that they should have had too many human rights -- even though those rights might have prevented years of imprisonment for innocent human beings.

I believe that if you review the facts of your two terms of office, you will be forced to realize that, whatever your intentions, you undermined this fundamental American principle. You may not have intended that to occur. But you were the commander in chief and president, and these were presidential-level decisions. The responsibility for all of this is yours—before the American people and before the court of history. And you need finally to own these decisions, to take full responsibility for them, to account for them, to explain them, and, yes, to apologize for their scope and brutality.

Exactly, and to turn yourself in at the nearest police station. The cops guarding your mansion in Dallas are very decent sorts. I'm sure they would be willing to keep the cuffs loose.

This was never about “bad apples.” It is no longer even faintly plausible to argue that the mounds of identical documented abuses across every theater of combat in the war as it was conducted after January 2002 were a function of a handful of reservists improvising sadism on one night shift in one prison. The International Committee of the Red Cross, the Senate Armed Services Committee, dozens of reputable well-sourced news stories and well-documented books, and the many official reports on the subject have revealed a systematic pattern of prisoner mistreatment in every theater of combat, by almost all branches of the armed services, and in every major detention facility in Iraq where interrogation took place. (Revealingly, there were very few abuses in what the Red Cross calls “regular internment facilities” in Iraq—meaning those where interrogation was not taking place.)

The Senate’s own unanimous bipartisan report, signed by your party’s 2008 nominee, John McCain, proves exhaustively that the abuse and torture documented in U.S. prisons were the results of policies you chose. The International Red Cross found your administration guilty of treating prisoners in a manner that constituted torture, a war crime. Experts in the history of torture, such as the Reed College professor Darius Rejali, make very careful distinctions between the disparate acts of torture or abuse that take place in all wars and a bureaucratized top-down policy, whereby identical techniques are replicated across the globe in different services and under different commands, with some on-the-ground improvisation as well. The history of prisoner mistreatment under your command fits the second pattern, not the first.

The techniques these various sources describe are not comic-book sadism; they are not the gruesome medieval tortures of Saddam. In fact, they are coolly modern tortures, designed to leave no physical marks that could be proffered as evidence against the regimes that use them. They have been used by democracies that want to get what they believe are the fruits of torture while avoiding all physical evidence of it. As the slogan in Iraq’s Camp Nama put it, “No blood, no foul.” But torture is not defined in law or morality by the production of blood or by any specific technique—that would simply invite governments to devise techniques other than those prohibited. Torture is defined by the imposition of “severe mental or physical pain or suffering” to the point when a human being can bear it no longer and tells his interrogators something—true or untrue—to stop what cannot be endured. That’s torture, in plain English. It was the clear goal of the policy you set in motion—and implemented with great determination across the world in ships and secret sites, at Guantánamo Bay and Bagram in Afghanistan, throughout interrogation centers in Iraq.

True enough. No investigation is needed. Sullivan can be spared that "trauma." The facts are sufficiently public for an easy conviction. What's needed is a quick prosecution and a lengthy jail sentence.

At the same time, though, you expressed what seemed to me to be genuine public revulsion at the techniques you authorized. On June 26, 2003, the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, you stated:

"I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy."

You did not parse torture narrowly here. You were opposed to it in “all its forms.” You also called for barring “other cruel and unusual punishment.” When four U.S. soldiers were captured early in the Iraq conflict, you stated:

I expect them to be treated, the POWs, I expect to be treated humanely, just like we’re treating the prisoners that we have captured humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.

In 2004, after the revelations of Abu Ghraib, you told al-Hurra, the U.S.-sponsored Arabic television station, “This is not America. America is a country of justice and law and freedom and treating people with respect.” You went on to say: “The people of Iraq must understand that I view those practices as abhorrent.”

Oh my goodness, you don't mean a politician could be . . . gasp . . . hypocritical?

Then how could you have authorized them? Maybe it was unclear to you at the time that most of the gruesome photographs from Abu Ghraib depicted techniques that you and your defense secretary authorized. This is an explanation in some ways, even if it is not an excuse. Photos can jar us into recognition of reality when words fail. Most of us hearing of “stress positions” or “long-time standing” or “harsh techniques” do not visualize what these actually are. They sound mild enough in the absence of further inquiry. Those photographs did us all a terrible favor in that respect: they removed any claim of deniability as to what these techniques mean. And yet you responded to Abu Ghraib by extending the techniques revealed there and codifying them in law, in the Military Commissions Act, for use by the CIA. Your administration ordered up memos in your second term to perpetuate these abuses. It is hard to escape the conclusion that you were dissembling in your initial claim of abhorrence and shock; or were in denial; or were not in control of your own administration.

It is important to note here that Bush had command responsibility and Constitutional responsibility regardless of failures to "control" his subordinates. He did not investigate or punish. He protected, concealed, and lied about what was happening.

I don’t believe you were lying. I believe you were genuinely horrified. But that means you now need to confront the denial that allowed you somehow to ignore what you directly authorized and commanded: using dogs to terrorize prisoners; stripping detainees naked and hooding them; isolating people in windowless cells for weeks and even months on end; freezing prisoners to near-death and reviving them and repeating the hypothermia; contorting prisoners into stress positions that create unbearable pain in the muscles and joints; cramming prisoners into upright coffins in painful positions with minimal air; near-drowning, on a waterboard, of human beings—in one case 183 times—even after they have cooperated with interrogators. Those Abu Ghraib prisoners standing on boxes, bent over with their cuffed hands tied behind them to prison bars? You authorized that. The prisoner being led around by Lynndie England on a leash, like a dog? You authorized that, too, and enforced it in at least one case, that of Mohammed al-Qahtani, in Guantánamo Bay.

Yes, Bush could have been horrified, although I doubt he was. But he most certainly was lying when he said the United States did not torture.

In defending these policies since you left office, you have insisted that all of these techniques were legal. But one of the key lawyers who provided your legal defense, John Yoo, is on record as saying that your inherent executive power allowed you to order the legal crushing of an innocent child’s testicles if you believed that it could get intelligence out of his father. Yoo also favored a definition of torture that allowed literally anything to be done to a helpless prisoner short of causing death or the permanent loss of a major organ. The Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention Against Torture offer blanket legal bans on anything that even looks like torture. Yoo set up a mirror image: a blanket legal permission to do anything abusive to a prisoner, hedged only by the need not to kill him. If that is your defense of the legality of torture, it is a profoundly weak one.

But leave the question of legality aside. Skilled lawyers can argue anything. Examine the moral and ethical question. Could any moral person who saw the abuse of human beings at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Camp Cropper, Camp Nama, and uncounted black sites across the globe and at sea believe it was in compliance with America’s “respect” and “law and freedom”? As president, your job was not to delegate moral responsibility for these acts, but to take moral responsibility for them. You said a decade ago: “Once you put your hand on the Bible and swear in [to public office], you must set a high standard and be responsible for your own actions.”

The point of this letter, Mr. President, is to beg you to finally take responsibility for this stain on American honor and this burden on a war we must win. It is to plead with you to own what happened under your command, and to reject categorically the phony legalisms, criminal destruction of crucial evidence, and retrospective rationalizations used to pretend that none of this happened. It happened. You once said, “I’m worried about a culture that says … ‘If you’ve got a problem blame somebody else.’” I am asking you to stop blaming others for the consequences of decisions you made.

In other words, turn yourself in.

What are you responsible for, exactly? Books have been written on this.

Here's one.

Sullivan goes on to detail at length in passages I'm omitting, some of the torture Bush authorized. This is all very well written and someone should read it to the former president. At some point, however, a member of the Bush family is not going to be willing to trouble his pretty little mind with this. A prison cell would focus Dubya's concentration. Sullivan then concludes that there is no role in restoring our republic for its citizens or our representatives or our laws. Only the former dictator himself can set things right through his own benevolence:

Only you can do what’s needed. Only you can move this country forward by taking full responsibility for the past and supporting the current president in his abolition of torture and abuse and in his conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The decisions you made were complex; it may well be that you only subsequently grasped the full import of the actions you took in good faith; that you were misled about, or misunderstood, what “harsh interrogation” meant. All presidents are human, and taking responsibility does not mean self-flagellation.

And what happens when the next president disagrees with these two? What deters Sullivan's greatest fear of repetition of these crimes? The fear of having to say "sorry"? Should we apply that punishment to lesser crimes as well? Sullivan then goes on to suggest falsely, and contradicting his own evidence, that Bush can apologize without actually admitting guilt, since we can all pretend that this president did not know his subordinates were committing crimes.

The model is Ronald Reagan, who denied he had ever traded arms for hostages in Iran but eventually realized that that was indeed the consequence of the actions he took, the men he appointed, and the policy he pursued. Reagan’s speech to the nation on this matter was, in my view, his greatest, because it revealed humility and integrity. “First, let me say,” he told us in 1987,

"I take full responsibility for my own actions and for those of my administration. As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities. As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I’m still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior … A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not."

If you read the Red Cross report and the Senate Armed Services Committee report, I believe you will reach a similar conclusion about your own record on prisoner treatment. You may not have intended to torture people, but you did; you may have wanted to protect the country within the law, but that admirable desire too easily slid into your approval of actions that are indefensible, illegal, and deeply damaging to America’s reputation and honor. You were let down, as Reagan was. He took responsibility. You need to as well.

Demanding that you alone be held accountable and no one else be scapegoated would itself be an act of honor.

Again, remember whom you are talking to!

It would draw a line between the past and the future in the same way that Lincoln’s defense of his brief suspensions of habeas corpus conceded Congress’s sole right to remove this core constitutional provision, but defended his action as a necessary emergency measure because a mass rebellion “had subverted the whole of the laws.” You do not deserve to go down in history as the president who brought torture into the American system and refused to take responsibility for it. It is also vital that torture not become a partisan issue, that any future terror attack not become an opportunity for your party to reinstitute it or wield it as a political weapon against future presidents who are following the rule of law. After the next attack, America will need unity—not a poisonous division over the issue of torture. You had that unity after 9/11. Your successors deserve the same support.

Sullivan continues in this line, asking someone he clearly considers above the law to apologize for having acted accordingly.

Rep. Baldwin Calls for Executive Branch Accountability to Reverse Illegal Actions and Prevent Further Abuses

davidswanson — Fri, 08 May 2009 10:42:06 -0400

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin has introduced the Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009 (H.Res. 417), calling on President Obama to reverse the damaging and illegal actions taken by the Bush/Cheney Administration and to collaborate with Congress to proactively prevent any further abuses of executive branch power.

“Over the past several years, serious questions have been raised about the conduct of high ranking Bush/Cheney Administration officials in relation to some of the most basic elements of our democracy: respect for the rule of law, the principle of checks and balances, and the fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Bill of Rights,” said Baldwin. “We must restore Americans’ faith that in a democracy, we follow the rule of law and that nobody – even the President and Vice President of the United States – is above the law,” Baldwin said.

“President Obama has already begun the work of reaffirming American values of justice and freedom. I commend him for his orders to close the detention facility at Guantanamo and prohibit illegal and immoral interrogation techniques. President Obama’s efforts to renew America must also include restoring executive branch accountability. We had an administration that spied on Americans, outed a covert intelligence agent, suspended habeas corpus, held people without charges and without access to counsel, and used torture and rendition. This measure lists steps President Obama can take to proactively prevent any further abuses of executive branch power and restore the public’s faith in our government,” Baldwin said.

The Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009 calls on President Obama to:
* Affirm our nation’s commitment to uphold the Constitution;
* Fully investigate Bush/Cheney administration officials’ alleged crimes and hold them accountable for any illegal acts;
* Hold accountable Bush/Cheney Administration officials who showed or show contempt for the legal duty to comply with Congressional subpoenas; disclosed the identity of any covert intelligence agent; pursued politically-motivated prosecutions;
* Ensure that any Bush/Cheney administration official guilty of a war crime is prosecuted under the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Act;
* Affirm that it is the sole legal right of Congress to declare war;
* Criminalize lying to Congress and the American public about the reasons for going to war;
* Restore the writ of habeas corpus as an essential principle of our democracy;
* Ensure that torture and rendition are uniformly prohibited under United States law;
* Responsibly close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp;
* Ensure that Americans can bring claims against their government;
* Immediately take affirmative steps to protect all Bush/Cheney Administration documents;
* Publicly review potential abuses of the presidential pardon process; and
* Further reform the use of presidential signing statements.

A copy of the Executive Branch Accountability Act of 2009 as introduced can be found in this PDF.

Congresswoman Baldwin explains why she feels this bill is necessary:

CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVE AND ASK THEM TO COSPONSOR!

Capitol Hill Switchboard: (202) 224-3121

Find your Congress Member's phone and fax numbers.

Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by David Swanson

davidswanson — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:03:55 -0400

Book Can Now Be Ordered, Book Tour Being Planned

You can now pre-order my book at Amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/daybreakbook

It's a thick book containing everything I know - and then some - for $10 (pre-order discount price). And you can support a good cause by pre-ordering it now.

You can also call or visit your local bookstore right now and ask them to be sure to stock the book.

If you're in California, Pennsylvania, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, or Ohio please see below. I'm only coming once to any given state, so please schedule more events for the times I will be in yours! Please don't ask me later why I didn't come to your town!

If you're in another state, please contact me re dates in 2010. -- David Swanson

Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union will be published by Seven Stories Press on September 1, 2009.

"[Daybreak is] a useful guide to restore the balance of powers and reclaim our constitutional system of government."-Majorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild

"Daybreak urgently reminds us that good political intentions are not sufficient to ensure the continuation of our democracy; informed vigilance is vital to that task."-Mark Karlin, editor of Buzzflash.com

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I'm planning events around the country. If you'd like me to come to your town or can help with planning an event, please check out this info and let me know.

Here's the schedule so far:

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Cheney Is Furious At Bush Over Scooter Libby Non-Pardon

Bob Fertik — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:39:56 -0500

For 8 long years, everyone who opposed George Bush's disastrous policies was accused of being angry and bitter. But now, according to Thomas DeFrank, even Dick Cheney is angry and bitter at George Bush!

In the waning days of the Bush administration, Vice President Dick Cheney launched a last-ditch campaign to persuade his boss to pardon Lewis (Scooter) Libby - and was furious when President George W. Bush wouldn't budge...

After repeatedly telling Cheney his mind was made up, Bush became so exasperated with Cheney's persistence he told aides he didn't want to discuss the matter any further.

The unsuccessful full-court press left Cheney bitter. "He's furious with Bush," a Cheney source told The News. "He's really angry about it and decided he's going to say what he believes."

Wouldn't it be a delicious irony if our relentless efforts to stop Bush from issuing corrupt pardons actually dissuaded Bush - and turned Cheney against him?

Update 1: Karl Rove defended Libby on TV today. Of course none of his handpicked interviewers mentioned Rove's own role in the Libby-Plame scandal.

So Why Didn't Bush Pardon Everyone?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 06:41:24 -0500

The loyal Bushies are shocked, especially over the non-pardon of Scooter Libby. Atrios says Bush protected himself better by not issuing pardons:

Pardoning the people below him would remove any 5th amendment reasons to not testify

Marcy Wheeler says looking out for #1 is who Bush is:

it sure appears that Bush stayed true to himself: putting his own welfare above that of those who have protected him for so long.

If I were looking for an explanation for non-pardons in Bush's character, I would cite his contempt for others, which borders on sadism. Bush was proud to sign more death warrants than any other Governor. Remember his refusal to commute the death sentence of Karla Faye Tucker, as recounted by rightwinger Tucker Carlson?

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, "A number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker." "Did you meet with any of them?" I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. "No, I didn't meet with any of them", he snaps, as though I've just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. "I didn't meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, 'What would you say to Governor Bush?'" "What was her answer?" I wonder. "'Please,'" Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "'don't kill me.'" I must have looked shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.

Of course it's possible Bush pardoned everyone secretly, according to a well-known former White House counsel - something we wouldn't know until they were prosecuted and revealed their secret pardon.

Update 1: The Murdoch Standard says Cheney complained bitterly about Bush's refusal to pardon Scooter Libby. That just about rules out any possibility of secret pardons, except if Cheney is lying. Of course Cheney normally lies, but this story trashes Bush to his conservative base so it's unlikely to be a lie.

So why didn't Bush pardon Libby and the rest of his administration? First, he thought Libby was actually guilty of perjury. Second, he finally got sick and tired of catering to the corrupt rich, according to Nancy Pelosi's answer to Larry King:

I spoke to him about that yesterday at breakfast before we came to the Capitol and he was very proud of that. He said people who have gotten pardons are usually people who have influence or know friends in high places--is not available to ordinary people. So he was very proud of that. It was interesting. He thought that there was more access for some than others and he was not going to do any.

Of course Bush spent his entire life enjoying the advantages of having family and "friends in high places." That's how he got into the best schools, how he avoided combat in Vietnam by jumping over thousands for a coveted spot in the Texas Air National Guard, how he avoided prosecution for deserting with two years left to serve, and how he avoided prosecution for drunk driving. (The most important biography of Bush was appropriately called "Fortunate Son" by J.H. Hatfield, who was driven to suicide by Karl Rove for revealing Bush's cocaine arrest.)

So it's an irony of Biblical proportions that Bush's last official act was to stiff those exactly like him - corrupt criminals "with friends in high places."

Update 2: But why didn't Bush pardon himself? Maybe he's stupid enough to believe the Yoo/Bybee memos protect him.

Or maybe he has a real defense - that Dick Cheney made all the illegal decisions and kept him in the dark. Would Bush actually throw Cheney under a prosecutorial bus? If so, it would be the Greatest Story Every Told.

Or maybe he shares the deep psychological need of some criminals to be caught and punished. If so, where is the new David Frost to reveal Bush's tortured psyche?

Update 3: John Dean thinks Bush didn't pardon Libby because he was finally sick of Cheney:

"I suspect he's decided that he'll leave his former vice president to take care of the future care and feeding of Mr. Libby," Dean replied. "By the end of the administration, Cheney had lost his clout with this president. ... Bush may have just said, 'I've had enough of the backfiring Cheney schemes' and decided to take no action."

Who knows - maybe Bush would throw Cheney under the bus!

Is This Really Bush's Last Pardon?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 15:26:26 -0500

Lou Dobbs is jumping for joy - his homeboys Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean got their sentences commuted by Bush. According to the NY Times,

With a day left in his presidency, Mr. Bush exercised his constitutional power to grant clemency — for the last time, according to senior administration officials

Is this really Bush's last pardon?

FBI Building's Surprising Inaugural Message

davidswanson — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:57:09 -0500

3,000 in Front of FBI Building for Inaugural Parade to Demand Bush's Arrest

For January 20th, 2009, http://arrestbush2009.com has secured a permit for the front of the FBI building for a Yes We Can Arrest Bush event during the Inaugural Parade.

We intend to fill the permitted area with attendees with ARREST BUSH signs who will demand the arrest of outgoing President Bush for crimes against humanity and numerous constitutional violations.

An ARREST BUSH sign that can be downloaded from our website, and is a free inaugural parade ticket that is required to enter our permitted area.

We call for the arrest of George W. Bush for instigating war against a sovereign nation that posed no threat, wanton attacks on civilian populations, use of torture, and violations of the U.N. Charter.

We call for the arrest of George W. Bush for lying to Congress and the American people about the reasons for invading Iraq, for the deaths of US service members and Iraqi civilians, and for the abuse of the United States Constitution.

US Park Service permit # 09-18 allows for 3,000 participants.

http://arrestbush2009.com is also the sponsor of Dupont Circle Speakout with speakers and music on January 18 & 19th from 11am - 5 pm.

Please join us as we do our duty as citizens and bring justice to the United States of America.

http://arrestbush2009.com is people joining together with one mission in mind: to arrest George W. Bush for perpetrating crimes of the very gravest of matters concerning war and peace.

Why Bush Should Not Pardon Himself

Bob Fertik — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 10:05:12 -0500

Here is an excellent multi-partisan letter explaining to Bush why he should not pardon himself. One particularly interesting part of the letter is its anticipation of the reasons Bush will cite for his pardons: the need to fight the so-called "War on Terror." We've heard that justification from Bush and Cheney for the past month, so that's an excellent guess. Of course the letter rejects that justification.

January 12, 2009

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.

RE: Pardon Power

Dear Mr. President:

We strongly urge you to demonstrate a devotion to the rule of law by refraining from presidential pardons for any current or former White House, Cabinet or agency official in your administration for torture, illegal surveillance, unconstitutional imprisonments, obstruction of justice, perjury, violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, or otherwise. These crimes rank among the most serious in the entire federal criminal code. The pardons would be tantamount to shredding the rule of law which all presidents are constitutionally obligated to honor. A signed, delivered, and accepted pardon would also be an admission of guilt.

Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis declared in Olmstead v. United States: "Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy."

The list of officials you should exclude from pardons under this standard includes, but is not limited to, Vice President Richard Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Department general counsel William Haynes, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, former White House Counsel and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former White House political director Karl Rove, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo, Chief of Staff to the Vice President David Addington, Director of Central Intelligence General Michael Hayden, and former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet. It goes without saying that you should not pardon yourself in light of the time-honored constitutional principle that no man should be a judge in his own case. This principle stems back to Dr. Bonahm's Case in 1610. Further, the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon under an impeachment cloud marked a rejection of the monarch-like principle that if the President does it, it's legal.

That you and the enumerated officials were involved in fighting the so-called War on Terror, or that their crimes may have been committed in connection with the Iraq War is not exculpatory. To the contrary, Congress and the courts have extended to the Executive Branch in general, and your administration in particular, extraordinary latitude in purportedly defending the United States. Any criminal acts committed in this context are thus particularly egregious because they exceeded even lawful authority to impinge on cherished freedoms. The crimes are also troublesome precedents that invite maltreatments of the United States military or civilians if captured or detained by our adversaries.

Nor is the excuse of "emergency" an exculpatory factor. It remains for future juries to determine definitively whether official actions were criminal, but the range of actions potentially transgressing the law is long, varied and persistent. Criminality that continues day-after-day for years cannot be rationalized as inescapable emergency irregularities. The suspected crimes reflected deliberate policies, not "heat of battle" errors of judgment.

During the constitutional convention, George Mason worried that a president might use the pardon power to evade rather than achieve justice by "pardon[ing] crimes which were advised by himself," or before formal accusation "to stop inquiry and prevent detection." But James Madison, father of the Constitution, answered that the constitutional deterrent or remedy would be impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate: "If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds [to] believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."

Later as a Member of Congress, Madison underscored that a conspicuous difference between the President and the British Monarch was that the former would be subject to impeachment for pardon abuses. In other words, the pardon was never intended to be an instrument of the President to conceal his own wrongdoing.

In 2000, you trumpeted to the American people: "I'm running for President because I want to help usher in the responsibility era, where people understand they are responsible for the choices they make and are held accountable for their actions." To pardon yourself or your inner circle to circumvent criminal responsibility would make a mockery of that high-minded pledge.

Such pardons would additionally be condemned by the rule of law teaching and practices of President Abraham Lincoln. He orated: "As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;--let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children's liberty. Let reverence for the laws… be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice." As President during the Civil War, Lincoln's actions at Fort Sumter and unilateral suspension of the the Great Writ of habeas corpus were presented to Congress for repudiation or endorsement according to law.

The last page of your presidency should be an oblation to the rule of law. The pardons that we urge against would be a defilement.

Sincerely,

Ralph Nader
Bruce Fein
Senator James Abourezk
Public Citizen
Mark Green
Senator George McGovern
Edgar Cahn
Rocky Anderson

Citizens Against Presidential Pardon Abuse
1025 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20036

Will Bush Announce His Pardons On TV or in Secret?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:56:48 -0500

The Worst President Ever will give a televised farewell speech on Thursday.

"It's not something where he's trying to refight old battles. It's a very thoughtful, forward-looking speech in which the president will share the lessons he learned in office and his views on the future," Perino said.

The only real question is whether Bush will announce his blanket pre-emptive pardons on TV before a national audience, or whether he will do it secretly 1 minute before President Obama takes his oath.

If he does it on TV, he'll be able to give it a positive spin - even though it will be his Final Fuck You to the Americana people and the Constitution. The downside is that Olbermann and Maddow will rip him to shreds right up to the inaugural.

If he does it in secret, he won't be able to spin it - everyone will recognize it as his Final Fuck You.

Against Truth, Reconciliation, and Commissions

davidswanson — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 15:46:17 -0500

By David Swanson

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has introduced a bill, H.R. 104, that would create a commission to spend a year and a half looking at the various crimes of Bush and Cheney. While this might allow congressional Democrats to run election campaigns against Bush and Cheney yet again, even though those two will have been out of office for two years, it's not clear that it would do much else that would be positive.

The problem with pursuing "truth" is that there are always more tantalizing details out of reach, and there always will be. We'll never know everything about what Bush and Cheney and gang have done to us. We should strive to learn all that we can, but that task should not distract us from the fact that the President of the United States openly confesses to authorizing torture, warrantless spying, and other crimes, ( http://afterdowningstreet.org/busharticles ) and that if a judicial and penal system is to have any deterrent value it is to be found in prosecuting and punishing crimes. Moreover, allowing publicly known crimes to go unpunished tends to have the opposite effect of encouraging future violations.

Those who suggest that we need to learn whether torture was authorized, for example, should read the recent report from the Robert Jackson Steering Committee ( http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/38812 ), read the recent report from the Senate Armed Services Committee ( http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/38200 ), or simply flip on a television ( http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/38895 ). A commission is not needed to unearth information for the sake of prosecutions, because sufficient information for conviction is already in the public realm. And if anything is likely to unearth more information, it is a prosecution.

A commission with no power to punish anyone except through shame is powerless in an age of shamelessness. The commission's subpoenas would be enforced through the courts, allowing the process to be dragged out well beyond a year and a half, or allowing witnesses to refuse compliance. All of this delay would simply serve to bolster claims that the crimes of the past eight years are unimportant because in the past. And if the commission offered criminal immunity to witnesses in order to entice them to testify, then its result would be permanently blocking prosecutions in the name of revealing the "truth."

Moving the powers of Congress, which refused to impeach, and the powers of the Justice Department, which may refuse to prosecute, to an unelected commission would divorce this project from both the will of the people and the laws of the land. Congress has effectively lost the power of subpoena by failing to use its inherent power of contempt to incarcerate recalcitrant witnesses. Relying on the courts and creating separate commissions designed to rely on the courts does nothing to restore the rightful powers of the first branch of our government. Instead, Congress should reissue all outstanding subpoenas (not just continue arguing in the courts for enforcement of the old ones), issue new ones as desired, and itself enforce any that the new Justice Department does not. If Senator Ron Wyden is serious about subpoenaing more torture evidence, he should make sure that his committee does so and enforces the subpoenas. This won't take a year and a half, but how ever long it does take should be of interest to historians more than prosecutors, who should move ahead immediately without awaiting any superfluous information.

A prosecutor should be "special" or "independent," because nonpartisanship is not the same as bipartisanship. A commission made up of hesitant Democrats and cut-throat Republicans does not place the law or democratic representation above partisan goals. A truly independent prosecutor would be loyal to the law, not the concerns of any party. If Obama wants to minimize Republicans calling him bad names he should create an independent prosecutor, not support a bi-partisan commission.

Fortunately, activist groups that have been lobbying congress members for a truth and reconciliation commission have been getting nowhere. The idea is incredibly unpopular in Congress. In fact, while 56 members of Congress support creating a special prosecutor, only 11 support creating a commission ( http://democrats.com/democrats-must-demand-special-prosecutor-for-tortur... ). And more visitors to President elect Obama's website support creating a special prosecutor than support anything else whatsoever ( http://change.gov ).

While our nation has needed some reconciliation for a generation or more, and while some of us support violations of the law if accompanied by fear mongering and some of us do not, we have not been fighting a civil war. We have not been slaughtering each other. We are not so overrun with criminals that no court system could possibly process them all. We are simply in a situation in which the top elected officials in the land and a few dozen of their top staff and advisors have committed gross violations of the law and, in most cases, documented their own crimes in writing. Should we be reconciled with that?

Would placing the law above the wishes of the least popular president and vice president in history, thereby responsibly limiting his own powers, be politically disadvantageous to the new president? If you believe that one, there's no amount of truth that can ever set you free.