Iraq-Torture Scandal

KSM and MSM

davidswanson — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 12:17:08 -0500

By David Swanson

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the corporate "mainstream" media make quite a pair. We're hearing a very "balanced" debate over whether KSM should be tried in New York City, and whether the most insane objections to that proposal are really insane or not. But what are we not hearing?

We're not hearing that trying criminals for the crime of 9-11 ought to have been what we did years ago, rather than waging wars in response to a crime. We're not discussing the possibility that had alleged 9-11 criminals been tried years ago rather than being imprisoned and tortured together with hundreds of innocents depicted as subhuman monsters, the "war on terror" might have been replaced with simply the wars on Iraqis and Afghans and Pakistanis. What effect might that have had on Americans' willingness to surrender their Bill of Rights? We aren't hearing about that.

Aside from a column by my friend Ray McGovern, not of course published by the corporate media, what are we hearing or seeing about KSM's motive? Isn't motive a traditionally important element in a criminal investigation? We're told that putting KSM on trial would give him a platform for propaganda, but we're not told what that propaganda might be. If it were really so pernicious, why not expose it and refute it? Isn't that what societies that believe in free speech do with misguided speech? Don't they defeat it with more and better speech? Or is that only when it can be done without using the word "Israel"?

Outside of progressive blogs, we're not hearing that giving a somewhat fair, if less than speedy, trial to those most likely to plead guilty or be convicted, and a less fair military trial to others, and no trial at all to others still, reveals this show of justice to be a sham. If KSM were acquitted, President Obama would order him imprisoned outside the rule of law until he dies. If he is found guilty, as everyone universally expects, he may be officially murdered by the United States, motivating others to take up arms against a nation that wages and funds illegal wars, imprisons people without charge, tortures, kidnaps, renditions, and executes.

If the justice system is bent to ensure that KSM is convicted or permitted little opportunity to speak, will that bending have any permanent repercussions for our justice system? Or, to move in the other direction, having determined that "military justice" is not good enough for alleged mass murders, must we continue to pretend that it is good enough for members of the military? Can we not admit everyone into a single and improved justice system? We're not hearing that discussion.

An improved justice system would require the admission into court of videos of all confessions and interrogations. This would not include admissions made to a journalist prior to imprisonment, as in the case of KSM and Al Jazeera, but would include all interrogations since that time. And in KSM's case it might include video of the "interrogation" of his children. Years ago, allegations were made that the United States had tortured his children, including in little-heard-of manners, such as locking a child in a box with a supposedly deadly insect. More recently, secret memos emerged showing the United States to have authorized just those techniques. If this were a story about missing sex tapes, the media would be all over it. A story about the possible torture of children is far less interesting. It might open up difficult questions, such as whether someone who has been endlessly tortured, and whose children may have been tortured, can -- while still in the custody of the torturers -- give an un-coerced confession. Questions might even have to be asked about leniency in sentencing for someone who has already served time and been horribly tortured.

If this were a story about a singer or actor or athlete, we'd see investigations of the time KSM spent attending college in North Carolina. Why didn't the Americans he lived among persuade him of how horrible it would be to murder people in this country? Our media pundits are completely incapable of asking such a question without either blaming KSM's American acquaintances for his crimes or declaring KSM to be an inscrutable monster whose thinking is of absolutely no interest.

Other questions might be asked as well, such as why Dick Cheney and his supporters never talk about the two memos anymore. Remember the two memos that Cheney claimed would show that the torture of KSM and others revealed important information that saved lives. The memos are now public and show nothing of the sort. Nor was torture needed in order to prosecute KSM himself. In fact, as Marcy Wheeler has pointed out, the ability of the government to prosecute him without using evidence obtained through torture demonstrates that torture was not needed for that purpose. But why are we not talking about the two purposes torture actually serves? We know it does not produce useful information, but we also know that it produces desired lies, such as agreement to false rationales for war. And we know that it scares people, both people who fear they might be tortured and people who fear the wild beasts depicted as reachable only through torture.

As Glenn Greenwald has touched on, behaving as though terrorized, irrationally unable to believe an alleged terrorist can be held in a cell and tried in a court, is to give in to the terrorism. Worse, it is to advance it. More Americans are more terrorized following TV discussions of KSM's possible prosecution than were beforehand, because the voices on the TV promote the terror rather than the prosecution.

We are hearing about the need to avoid evidence obtained through torture. But at the same time we are hearing absolutely nothing about the need to prosecute the torturers and the creators of the torture program, at least one of whom, John Yoo, is given a platform as one of the disinterested media commentators in the MSM. This failure is an ideal way to create more KSMs. Why don't we talk about it?

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book.

Our Debt to Italy

davidswanson — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:56:02 -0500

By David Swanson

The United States of America owes much of the hope it has right now of remaining what John Adams called "a nation of laws, not men" to Italian law enforcement. Were it not for the fact that Italian prosecutors, unlike their American counterparts, answer to the law rather than a president, the enforcement of laws against a massive crime spree by U.S. officials (and their Italian accomplices) would not have begun.

In 2003, the CIA and the United States military kidnapped a man, a political refugee, in Italy. His name was Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar. Our CIA agents spied on him from their luxury hotels and gourmet-meal lives in Milano (all paid for by U.S. tax payers). They were told to kidnap Nasr and send him to Egypt to be tortured, and they did so. According to recent statements by two of them, they knew perfectly well they were violating the law. But they were not worried enough at the time to refrain from discussing the matter on their cell phones as they enjoyed the dolce vita and racked up credit card bills wasting the same currency our government claims it has a moral duty not to waste on healthcare.

Nasr was indeed kidnapped, flown to Egypt, and tortured. His wife, Ghali Nabila, testified in Italian court for over six hours. In October 2004, she had been able to see him, briefly out of Egyptian prison. (He was eventually released years later.) Nabila said in court:

"I found him wasted, skinny - so skinny his hair had turned white, he had a hearing aid."

Ordered, against her will, to describe his torture, she said:

"He was tied up like he was being crucified. He was beaten up, especially around his ears. He was subject to electroshocks to many body parts."

Asked if that included genitals, she replied "Yes."

Nasr himself wrote in a letter smuggled out of prison and printed in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera:

"I was hung by my feet from the ceiling, my head down, my hands tied to my back, my feet tied up. I was subjected to electric shocks all over my body, especially in my head, nipples, testicles, and penis. My testicles where also beaten with a stick and squeezed tightly if I refused to answer their questions or was suspected of telling lies. They fixed my body to an iron door and on a wooden instrument they call the bride, where my hands where tied over my head from behind and my legs tied together or sometimes each leg on different sides. The torture that takes place during this is electric shocks, and beating with a shoe and cables."

Presidents Barack Obama and Silvio Berlusconi oppose prosecuting Americans or Italians for kidnapping this man and transporting him to his torturers. The U.S. Department of Justice will, therefore, not prosecute. In Italy, on the other hand, there is still some measure of law, law as a standard applied to all equally, without immunity for those with the power to commit the greatest crimes.

Last Wednesday, an Italian court convicted 22 CIA agents, including the CIA's current second ranking official Stephen Kappes, and one member of the U.S. Air Force. The prosecutor Armando Spataro has repeatedly asked the Italian government to issue an international arrest warrant and request extradition by the United States. It has not yet done so.

One of the convicted CIA agents, Sabrina De Sousa, openly admits that the kidnapping was illegal, but says that she feels betrayed by those who authorized the operation and failed to protect its participants from prosecution. De Sousa ignores Nuremberg Principle IV, which requires noncompliance with illegal orders or instructions:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

But De Sousa also has a point, one well exemplified at Nuremberg: Those at the bottom are not the most responsible. Those who must be held accountable first and foremost are the decision-makers at the top. And who authorized the policy of kidnapping people and shipping them off to be tortured? Three top U.S. officials have authorized rendition: Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And in this case, the presidents responsible were Bush and, almost certainly, Berlusconi.

For justice to reach to those highest levels and thereby deter the practice of kidnapping, under the name rendition, in the years ahead, justice must be permitted to proceed on the paths it has blazed thus far. Americans must make Italians aware of our gratitude for their efforts to save us from ourselves. And Italy must be compelled to obey its laws rather than its president on the question of issuing international arrest warrants and a demand for extradition. The 23 fugitives already can expect arrest if they visit any nation of Europe. They should not be free to roam the rest of the world.

By U.S. standards, Italy would be justified in kidnapping these fugitives and "rendering" them to Italian prisons. An extradition request would be a generous favor of a sort that the United States does not grant to others. Failure to take that step on behalf of the rule of law will put the blood of future rendition victims on the hands of the Italian as well as the American people.

Vi prego, i miei carissimi fratelli e sorelli, salvateci da noi stessi.

PS: One opportunity for Americans to force this issue in our own country will occur when Attorney General Eric Holder testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee at 10 a.m. on November 18th in Dirksen room 226. We should ask Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who claims to oppose torture, and Senator Patrick Leahy who chairs the committee, as well as Senator Russ Feingold and the rest of them to raise these issues, and be there to raise them ourselves.

Does Holder consider rendition legal. How does he distinguish it from kidnapping?

Will Holder extradite 23 figitives to Italy? Would he expect Italy to do the same?

Holder has accepted the instructions of the president not to prosecute top officials for known crimes. He needs to be grilled on that and informed that Congress will step up where he fails.

Holder is burying the OPR report (his departments own, years-old report on its authorization of torture), providing Congress with an excuse for inaction. He needs to be told to release it or watch it be subpoenaed and watch Congress proceed without using its delay as an excuse any longer.

In April Leahy asked top torture lawyer Jay Bybee to come in. He hasn't. Leahy needs to tell Holder that Bybee is being subpoenaed.

In April Holder testified on the House side and told me I'd be proud of my government -- When might I?

PPS: Speaking of the House side, Rep. Jay Inslee introduced this bill two years ago. This is the full text:

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The momentum of cosponsors signing onto this bill was almost certainly a large factor in the decision to have Gonzales resign.

A similar resolution that would be of use now might read as follows:

RESOLUTION
Directing the Committee on the Judiciary to investigate whether Jay Bybee, former assistant Attorney General of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary shall investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Jay Bybee, former assistant Attorney General of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Reasons to get this introduced:

The DOJ (and White House) have made clear they will not enforce the law.
We have very limited ability to influence them.
People all over the country who want a sign of hope and somewhere to put their energies that might have an actual impact could lobby for cosponsorship.
Cosponsorship of such a resolution would constitute a threat to expose secrets through a privileged impeachment hearing.
Such a threat would open up the possibility of committees using the power of subpoena as a lesser step.
A nation without laws cannot last.

####

CORRECTION: They did not prosecute Kappes.

Congress Must Stop Torture

davidswanson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:18:33 -0400

A Call for Congress to Take Action on Torture
October 28th, 2009

ADD YOUR NAME TO THOSE OF 83 HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS AND LEADERS AT
http://afterdowningstreet.org/stop

Whereas over seven years have passed since President George W. Bush fraudulently induced the U.S. congress, the American people, and the world into the illegal war in Iraq,

Whereas it is nearly five years since Specialist Darby revealed the photos of Abu Ghraib that showed us torture being committed by our government in our name,

Whereas further evidence of torture remains secret and has been hidden from the public, courts, and Congress to insulate the perpetrators from appropriate criminal liability,

Whereas over the past years we have campaigned about the illegality of this war and the need to prosecute the high-level civilian and military officials who put in place the torture,

Whereas, notwithstanding all the congressional hearings and reports so far on these matters, those officials have not been brought to justice,

Whereas a prosecutor has been appointed to address only a very small number, perhaps as few as three, of the crimes committed and none of the crimes "justified" by the clearly illegal torture memos,

Whereas the Department of Justice's limited investigation of torture threatens to invite more torture around the world by undermining the Nuremberg precedent,

Whereas the Attorney General of the United States, under the influence of the President, appears unwilling to follow the facts about the illegal war in Iraq and torture to the full extent of the law,

Whereas we as citizens of the United States do not accept the damage to our country's honor committed by these persons, the threats to the lives and well-being of our children and fellow citizens sent to illegal wars, and the transformation of our country from a beacon of liberty to a beacon of torture,

WE NOW CALL FOR ACTION:

1. We call on Congress to start impeachment proceedings against Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, as it is unconscionable that one who encouraged violations of such fundamental laws as those against torture and aggressive war be trusted to apply and shape the law.

2. We call on congressional committees to subpoena those responsible for aggressive war and torture, including former president Bush, vice president Cheney, and other former senior officials complicit in war crimes; and to enforce those subpoenas through the Capitol Police, rather than the Department of Justice.

3. We call on state bar associations to begin the process of revoking the law licenses of those lawyers who put in place the legal analysis for the illegal war and the torture.

4. We call on state licensing authorities to begin the process of revoking the licenses of all other professionals who participated in the torture such as psychologists, psychiatrists and other doctors.

5. We call on the American people to contact their congressional representatives and insist that, on our watch, the high, who are the instigators of illegal wars and torture, will be brought low, and that low-level personnel will not be the only ones prosecuted for committing crimes authorized and encouraged by their superiors.

ADD YOUR NAME TO THOSE OF 83 HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS AND LEADERS AT
http://afterdowningstreet.org/stop

Forward and Post Widely!

Help Stop Torture!

SIGNED BY:
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Western North Carolina Stop Torture Now
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Obama's Narrowing Window of Opportunity

dlindorff — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:23:38 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The way I see it, President Obama has a couple of months to turn his failing administration around.

The war in Afghanistan is going south, and within a couple of weeks,
his General William Westmoreland, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, will be
coming to him asking for more troops. Things are getting hairier in
Iraq too.

His signature health care initiative is foundering, with Republicans working in lockstep to see to it that it fails.

Pressure is mounting for an honest probe into the criminality of the
prior administration in its authorization and promotion of torture
against captives--most of them innocent--in the Bush/Cheney "war" on
terror.

The stock market, which by climbing back 50% from its collapse and
the bottom it hit on March 9, gave the president a breather, is showing
signs of exhaustion, and is likely to start sinking again, as investors
realize that there is no end in sight for the recession in the real
economy.

If all this continues into December, which is after all only a
couple of months away, Congress will go into recess, and when it
returns, it will be an election year, with all House seats up for
grabs, and a third of the Senate also facing re-election. Republicans
will be in an all-out campaign to reduce the Democratic majorities in
both houses, with history on their side (in almost every off-year
election, the party of new presidents lose support both houses of
Congress).

So, what's the president got to do?

First, he needs to announce a bold peace initiative in Afghanistan.
He should reject the call for more troops, and instead call for a
regional peace conference--one that would include all the neighborhing
countries around Afghanistan, and most significantly, the Taliban. At
such a conference, he should arrange for a new government of national
unity that includes the Taliban, and then get the hell out of the
country. Obama can declare victory if he wants, but the main thing is
to get out. Ditto for Iraq, where the US is still viewed as an occupier
and is going to be forced out eventually. There is no reason to stay
another day.

Second, he should declare the disfunctional and industry-polluted
health reform plans in Congress dead and simply announce that by
executive order, he is lowering the age for Medicare to 55, and is
switching all Medicaid patients in the country over to Medicare (with
the intention of lowering that age by five years ever year until all
are covered), and shutting down the Medicaid program. He should then
submit a bill to Congress establishing a government-owned insurance
company, open to all, with no restrictions on its ability to set
pricing and reimbursement rates or to negotiate discounts from
hospitals, doctors and pharmacy companies. Or alternatively, the bill
could enable anyone to simply buy into Medicare. He should tell
Democrats and Republicans alike that any member of Congress who votes
against that bill will not see any bill with her or his name on it get
his signature in his remaining years in office. The government company
would be phased out once Medicare covered everyone.

Finally, the president needs to announce that he is sickened by the
information he has received about the prior administration's torture
program, and that he is encouraging his attorney general to fully
investigate it, and to prosecute to the full extent of the law anyone,
no matter how high up in the military or in government, who authorized
torture or who covered it up.

Congress could be expected to howl at the use of an executive order
to expand Medicare, but the president could declare a national health
emergency as justification, saying the recession had thrown too many
people off of health insurance, and that as well, states were in dire
fiscal shape and laying off workers because of the increased Medicaid
burden.

Removing older workers from employers' health insurance plans would
be a huge shot in the arm for struggling companies, as they are the
biggest users of health care. Lifting the $400 billion cost of Medicare
from state governments would free up money to prevent the layoff of
state and local employees, which is threatening to stifle economic
recovery.

Republicans can be expected to denounce the president for going
after the Bush/Cheney administration on torture, but most Americans at
this point are becoming aware of the damage that the policy has caused
to the country's international reputation, and to the soldiers in the
field.

Many people would also howl about bringing the troops home from
Afghanistan, and Iraq, but the truth is that the vast majority of
Americans are sick of both wars and would welcome an end to them.

The key to all these moves, however, is that Obama needs to explain
them not in terms of saving money, but as being the right thing to do.
Health care reform has to be presented as a moral imperative, not as a
money saver (even though covering everyone with Medicare would be a
huge net savings for everyone in the country). Ending America's foreign
wars would be a huge savings, but the real reason to do it is that the
US has no business being a global cop and imperialist occupier. And
prosecuting torture is essential if the US is to be a nation of laws.
You wouldn't know it to listen to the jaded pundits in the corporate
media, but in my experience, most Americans are basically decent
people, and would like to be citizens of a country that did decent
things, not just things that could be justified as making "economic
sense."

I'm not expecting any of this to happen, of course. This president
has shown repeatedly and convincingly that he is a creature of the
Establishment, not given to any bold initiatives or to challenges to
the status quo. I'm just saying that these are steps that could salvage
his presidency--a presidency that is seeming increasingly doomed. The
corollary is that if he doesn't do these things, he will find himself
with a diminished majority in November, 2010, a reinvigorated
Republican opposition, a tanked economy, an angry electorate (including
a lot of pissed off former supporters), and, basically, nothing to show
for his whole presidency come 2012.

And to top it off, for failing to prosecute Bush/Cheney torture, he
could well find himself subject to arrest abroad should he decide to
travel a bit once he is ousted from office in January 2013.
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book
is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Is America a Sick Country or What?

dlindorff — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:19:32 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

You see, here's the thing. When you hear about the sick, twisted
things that America's torturers have been doing, courtesy of President
George W. Bush and Vice President Darth Cheney, you have to remember
that the US military and the CIA were not really all that reliable when
it came to picking up the real terrorists. In fact, their batting
average was pretty lousy.

According to even the Pentagon's own reckoning, for example,
probably 85% of the captives being held at Guantanamo over the past
eight years were not terrorists at all, and a fair number--probably the
majority--weren't even fighting anyone when they were captured. I'm
sure that the averages at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, or at the
secret prison in Iraq are no better. The military was offering bounties
in Iraq and Afghanistan for alleged terrorists, you see, and probably
still is, but in both of those lawless, tribal countries, many people
have used the offer to settle old feuds, turning in people they wanted
to punish or dispose of, and many others just turned in random people
to get the reward money.

Remember this when you hear about torture tactics that we are
learning were used by our side--things that make waterboarding sound
like a walk in the park. We're now getting confirmation of things that
we journalists were hearing rumors of earlier: faked executions using
blanks, faked executions in neighboring rooms, followed by threats of
the same to a person who had just heard the screams and a shot in the
cell next to him, threats with an electric drill, and now perhaps the
worst yet--the threat to kill a captive's children. And of course there
is the already disclosed case of a captive who had his genitals cut
with a razor, and generous use of tasers in places on the body designed
to cause maximum pain. That, and of course there are a lot raped
captives (including young boys), and a lot of bodies yet to be dug up
of captives who were simply killed during torture.

We've got a litany of horror and abuse here that sounds like the
worst kind of stories that used to come out of Saddam Hussein's Iraq,
or the Argentine Junta or Idi Amin's Uganda. About the only thing
missing is word that the military and CIA torturers were eating their
victims, or feeding them their own genitals, but who knows? Maybe we'll
get there yet. It's hard at this point to rule anything out.

What has become of the US? We started out the victims
of an attack in 2001, with the whole world rallying to our side, and
within a matter of weeks, our government, acting in our name, had
secretly embarked on a wholly unnecessary and totally criminal descent
into the barbarity of Middle Ages.

And now? The new administration has claimed to have put a stop to
the atrocities, but it remains adamant that it is not going to root out
the evil that was already done to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people.

President Barack Obama says he does not want to look back at any
crimes that were committed. He wants to go "forward." This is not the
voice of justice, though. This is the voice of political gutlessness
and of big power exceptionalism. The same America that demands the
prosecution of war criminals in little countries like Cambodia or
Serbia or Sudan, considers itself exempt from criminal liability for
its own crimes.

Attorney General Eric Holder says he may be ready to appoint a
prosecutor to investigate cases where CIA or private contract torturers
"overstepped" the rules set by the White House and Justice Department,
but he has said he will not allow the investigation to go beyond that
to pursue the people who enabled those acts of torture--people like
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who personally instructed
torturers in Afghanistan to "take the gloves off" in one case, or
Assistant Attorney Generals John Yoo and Jay Baybee (now a federal
judge), who ruled that anything short of the destruction of bodily
organs or of a pain level equivalent to death was okay. Nor will he
allow any investigation to look at acts of torture that were
authorized, like waterboarding, if they had the sanction of the
Bush/Cheney White House.

This position taken by the new administration should sicken us all.
Worse, it should be broadly condemned, because if the descent into
barbarity which occurred with the highest White House sanction is not
investigated thoroughly, and punished fully, there is no way we can say
it will not happen again. In fact, it's safe to say that it will happen again,
the next time another charlatan gets into office and uses fear to blind
the American people to all that is right and decent, and to the
importance of maintaining the rule of law.

I know there are terrible things happening right now which demand
our attention and action--an escalating, endless war in Afghanistan
that increasingly resembles Vietnam in 1966 or 1967, a presidential
cave-on on health care reform, a sell-out on real action against
climate change, and on and on--but this particular crime--the crime of
failing to act to punish violations of the Geneva Conventions on
treatment of prisoners of war, which is being committed today by the
Obama administration--is so obscene, so directly in our faces, and is
such a stain on the whole nation, that it demands action.

We will probably never know how many innocent lives have been
destroyed by America's eight years of officially sanctioned torture,
but we can at least see to it that the people who sanctioned it, and
not just those who engaged in it (and that goes right up through the
chain of command to the Commander in Chief and to the real power behind
the throne, Dick Cheney), are put in the dock like the criminals at
Nuremberg, to face the charge of war crimes. and crimes against
humanity.

As the citizens of what we call a democracy, we can demand nothing less.
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadeelphia-area journalist. His latest
book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Clinton and Obama: The Worst and Best Thing to Happen to the Democratic Party in Years

dlindorff — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:20:06 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Bill Clinton was the worst thing to happen to the Democratic Party
and to progressives since that racist warmonger Woodrow Wilson won the
presidency and dragged the US into the utterly pointless and incredibly
bloody First World War.

Clinton, by posing as a progressive, confused and undermined, and
ultimately betrayed the liberal/progressive wing of the party,
shattering what was left of the New Deal coalition and leaving the
American left adrift and riven by the conflict between those who
thought the Democratic Party was the only viable vehicle for
progressive reform and those who thought it was hopelessly in the grip
of corporate interests.

Barack Obama offers the hope of bringing that era of debilitating confusion to an end.

Not because he is the Great Black Hope of progressives, but because
he has taken the concept of selling out to corporate interests and
compromising with Republicans to such remarkable heights that
progressives hopefully can no longer be confused about the
irretrievably corrupted nature of the Democratic Party.

On virtually every issue of importance, President Obama has sided with corporate interests and the wealthy.

On the issue of war and peace, he has sided with the
military-industrial complex, with a policy of permanent occupation of
Iraq and endless war in Afghanistan, as well as continued funding of
the country’s colossal armory of death, from strategic missiles and
submarines to aircraft-carrier-group armadas to high-tech fighter
squadrons and space weaponry.

On civil liberties, he has sided with the police state, supporting
continuation of the Bush/Cheney administration’s insidious National
Security Agency spying program, defended military spying within the US,
and refused to prosecute obvious abuses by the prior administration.

On torture, the Obama administration is continuing the imprisonment
and torture of captives in Afghanistan and elsewhere around the world
at Bagram Air Base and, probably, at other secret sites, and instead of
closing Guantanamo as promised, is looking into transferring that
hellhole of torture and abuse to one or several sites in the mainland
US.

Health care reform has become a sad joke, with the emerging
“reform” bill looking for all the world like the Rube Goldberg creation
of the Clinton era that properly went down in flames. Instead of taking
on the insurance industry, the hospital companies and the
pharmaceutical industry and other parts of the profit-making
medical-industrial complex, Obama cut deals with all of them behind
closed doors, assuring that their profits would be left untouched, and
that they could essentially write their own “reform” bill through the
offices of bought-and-paid members of Congress like Senator Max Baucus.
Obama and his congressional allies carefully kept any discussion of the
single-payer idea—essentially Medicare for all, and the approach that
even Obama himself admits would be cheaper and more universal—out of
sight and off the table.

Climate change action, too, has been sold out, with Obama adopting
the approach favored by the energy industry—“cap and trade.” That
concept is a gold mine for Wall Street trading firms, which will be
doing trades next in pollution credits instead of subprime mortgages,
and for energy companies which will get free credits to sell, courtesy
of the taxpayer. And because it’s a system so easy to game, it will do
nothing or next to nothing to reduce greenhouse gases.

Finally, there’s economy and banking reform. Here Obama didn’t even
make a pretense of taking a progressive approach. There is a stimulus
program, but half of it was in the form of tax cuts—token for the poor
and middle class and significant for the rich and for businesses, and
half in the form of federal grants, often for unneeded projects like
roads and road repair which go to some of the higher paid members of
the working class, leaving the poor and the ununionized with no job
help. Meanwhile, bankers were the recipients of trillions of dollars in
bailout assistance, while nothing was done to break up the huge
mega-bank holding companies that brought on the financial and economic
crisis in the first place. Instead of picking economic advisers and
bank regulators from the many talented system critics like Nobelists
Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, Obama picked veterans of the
Bush/Cheney administration, and Wall Street shills like Larry Summers
and Timothy Geithner.

Last fall, I and many progressives urged voters to elect Obama, not
because we thought he was a progressive, but because we hoped that his
background—community organizer, raised by a single mother, experience
living in a third world country (Indonesia), multi-racial—would lead
him to make at least some right decisions. We, or certainly I, hoped
too that the energized young and working class electorate that came out
for him in the fall would continue to press him aggressively to do the
right thing on war, environment, civil liberties and the economy.

I was wrong on the first count: Obama has been a corporatist
through and through on all the major issues that matter. And I was
wrong on the second. Most of the left in the US, from the labor
movement to the environmentalist movement to the anti-war movement, has
to date remained glumly quiescent as Obama has sold them out on each of
their key issues.

But here is the silver lining: The sell-out this time is so much
more blatant, and so much more serious, than it was with Clinton, and
for all the talk about Obama’s ability to string words together, he is
so much less of a charismatic figure than the gregarious Bill Clinton,
that he is unlikely to hang on to the ardent support that propelled him
to his victory last November. The disappointment and sense of betrayal
among progressives this time is palpable, especially because, while
Clinton, by 1994, had the excuse that he was working with a Republican,
or partially Republican Congress, Obama has solid control of both
houses, but refuses to use it. If, as I expect, the recession continues
to deepen, with more and more people losing jobs and homes, if, as I
predict, health care continues to be unaffordable and inaccessible, if,
as I know will happen, evidence of deadly climate change continues to
pile up, and if, as I am equally certain, Iraq explodes and the war in
Afghanistan continue to worsen, the left is going to see Obama and the
Democrats in Congress as the failures and corrupt frauds they are, and
will abandon them.

That leaves the question of what to do, and where those frustrated progressives will turn.

I don’t claim to have the answer to that. Clearly the labor movement
needs to recognize that hitching its fortunes to the Democratic Party
has been and will continue to be a dismal failure. It needs to pull all
its political money back and only support those who are 100% allies in
the struggle for the rights of workers. No money for the party as a
whole. It should also go back to the pioneering work of people like the
late Tony Mazzocchi of the Oil and Chemical and Atomic Workers Union,
who before his death was tirelessly working to establish an American
labor party.

Other third parties on the left need to drop their individual
agendas and work towards unity, especially with the labor movement, in
order to create a broad-based left party that doesn’t have litmus tests
for inclusion—just broad principles like steeply progressive taxation,
an end to NAFTA and the WTO, democratization of the Federal Reserve
Bank, national health care, a wholesale slashing of the military
budget, by perhaps two-thirds or more, free education through four
years of college for all, and a crisis plan to attack climate change.

If the ever fractious US left, and the somnolent labor movement,
cannot come together as one, there is little hope of political change
in America. At that point the alternative would be an increasing
militancy over these critical issues, outside of the electoral
arena—something that has to happen anyhow, regardless of whether a real
third party force can be put together. We know that simply organizing
occasional polite marches in Washington, or in key cities, accomplishes
nothing. We have learned that email campaigns to deluge members of
Congress with canned opinions don’t work. What has worked, and will
always work, is massive campaigns of civil disobedience, tent cities in
Washington, organized disruption of war preparations, and door-to-door
organizing. The corrupt hacks who inhabit the halls of Congress and the
White House will not do the right thing just because it is the right
thing, or because we ask them nicely. They may, if we make them fear
that they will actually lose our votes in the next election. For the
most part, incumbent Democrats know that the people who peacefully
march down Connecticut Avenue are still likely to vote for them come
the next election. They’re not going to be so sure about people who are
being hit by tear gas and water cannons and who are being hauled off en
masse to jail at protests.

We may need to start sending that stronger message.
___________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net www.thiscantbehappening.net

Six Months of Immunity

davidswanson — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:49:25 -0400

By David Swanson

Drafted in preparation for panel discussion at Veterans for Peace national convention August 7, 2009, on topic of "Holding the Architects of Illegal Wars and War Crimes Accountable."

Seven years to the day after the Downing Street Minutes meeting at which top British officials famously discussed U.S. President George W. Bush's intent to launch a war against Iraq whether or not any means could be found to legalize it, on July 23rd, the United Nations hosted a discussion of ways in which wars of aggression are given pseudo-legal cover. Included were remarks by Jean Bricmont and Noam Chomsky. It is not hard to imagine how different such discussions would be were the architects of the Iraq War ever held accountable for it in any way.

The Iraq War set a new low for the blatant openness of the lies used to justify it, and those lies included a secret memo signed by Jay Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel, that purports to legalize any illegal wars launched by a U.S. president. If that memo and the OLC memos purporting to legalize specific war crimes like torture are left unchallenged, or if an attempt is made to prosecute those who exceeded the crimes "legalized" by the memos, the United States will henceforth be understood to openly treat as legal anything a president instructs a lawyer to "legalize" including the supreme international crime banned by the UN Charter, except when that crime is committed by nations other than the United States or Israel. Vice President Joe Biden recently remarked that Israel had the right to attack Iran if it chose to, a remark that would legitimize the worst crime there is, and yet a remark that Biden clearly made in an attempt to avoid any scandal or controversy by articulating what he and those he spends his time with understood to be universally accepted.

The crime of aggressive war against Iraq could be prosecuted in a foreign court, potentially in the International Criminal Court, theoretically in U.S. federal court, or -- using an argument made by Vincent Bugliosi -- through a local or state court in the United States where Bush could be tried for the murder of U.S. soldiers. The U.S. Department of Justice could also prosecute Bush for misspending funds on a war that had not yet been authorized in any way -- funds appropriated only for other purposes, or for the crime of lying to Congress, or for using false propaganda domestically, for imprisoning children, employing assassination squads, using the U.S. military domestically, spying without warrant, exposing an undercover agent, obstructing justice, or various other crimes. And an attorney general who would do all of that (or even most attorneys general who wouldn't) would also overturn the prosecutions of political prisoners like Don Siegelman, Paul Minor, and so many others, and hold accountable those who used the Justice Department to target state and local elected officials, 85 percent of those prosecuted being Democrats and the other 15 percent consisting largely of moderate Republicans. Many of the crimes above could also be prosecuted in foreign courts. A foreign or international court could conceivably even prosecute the crime of continuing the occupation into 2009, since the UN fig leaf for the occupation expired in December 2008 and has been replaced only by a treaty drawn up between an occupier and a puppet government of the occupied, a treaty now openly violated by both parties and never properly ratified by either nation. Many of the crimes could be, and several are, the subjects of civil suits as well. Bybee, who is now a federal appeals judge, could be impeached by Congress. He and other lawyers can also be disbarred.

If the architects of the Iraq War were being held accountable in any way for launching it and, in some cases, profiting from it financially, it is likely that U.S. troops would now be withdrawing from Iraq. As it is, no withdrawal is underway, a war in Afghanistan is being expanded, the possibility of launching a war against Iran is being kept open, and illegal strikes are being launched fairly routinely into Pakistan. We have seen in the past six months not just a period of immunity, but the clear results of that immunity, the clear evidence of why "looking backwards" has an enormous impact on what you see when you look forward. Sadly, much of the peace movement has not only stopped pressing for peace and lost the funding with which to do so, but it has also failed to at long last take up the cause of deterring future war crimes by prosecuting past ones. The positive news is that human rights and civil rights groups have taken up the cause of prosecuting torture. The drawback is that they never mention aggressive war, and it is hard to imagine an aggressive war occurring without torture even if torture has been punished.

For each of the other crimes that Bush and Cheney have been granted immunity for, a similar story can be told. The crimes are not in the past, because they are being continued in the present. In the case of indefinite detention, President Obama has fought in court and made a speech in front of the U.S. Constitution at the National Archives asserting the power to do exactly what candidate Obama said was unconstitutional. Obama is imprisoning people outside of any rule of law in Bagram and Guantanamo, and proposing to keep some of them in prison indefinitely without ever bringing them to trial. He is proposing to formalize such a system and dress it up in "due process" reviews. He asserts the power to render prisoners to other nations, as well. Having promised not to render prisoners for the purpose of having them tortured, Obama now claims the power to render prisoners while promising not to use it for torture, yet failing -- in the view of many human rights advocates -- to justify the practice. It is a safe assumption that Obama's behavior would be different, that he would not be proposing to formalize preventive detention, were Bush being criminally prosecuted or impeached or held liable in civil court cases for it.

On August 4th Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta published a column essentially advocating immunity for all past criminals who held important positions in the federal government. Panetta excused the CIA as having obeyed Bush, failing to recognize that being asked to disobey laws by one's employer does not create legal protection. At the same time, Panetta urged immunity for Bush as well. And Panetta claimed that the United States no longer tortures. One problem with this is that, even if it were true, it would also be true that the United States offers no deterrent against torture by its government employees or future top officials. A deeper problem is found in statements Panetta has made claiming the power to, in fact, torture. Back in May, blogger Josh Marshall was mystified, writing:

"One of the weirdest moments in Vice President Cheney's speech was when he claimed that 'President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate.'"

But when you take a crime like torture and turn it into a policy question, and you choose the policy of not torturing, you maintain the power to switch to the policy of torturing without any criminal penalty -- unless someone else manages to transform torture back into a crime again. Here's Leon Panetta at his confirmation hearing, as reported by the Guardian:

"Pressed by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon about a 'human ticking time-bomb' scenario, in which a terrorist knows of an imminent attack on the U.S., Panetta said he believed torture would not be necessary to extract information. 'I'm of the view that when you look at the FBI and the US military, that they have been able to show that it is possible to get the information that's needed to protect our nation's security,' he said. However, he added: 'If we had the ticking bomb situation and I felt that whatever we were using wasn't sufficient, I would not hesitate to go to the president and request any additional authority that we would need.'"

Following Cheney's statement and Marshall's bewilderment, MSNBC asked presidential advisor David Axelrod about it. Axelrod repeatedly refused to deny that Obama believed himself to possess the power to legally torture. Predictably enough, there have been numerous reports of ongoing torture and inhuman and degrading treatment committed by the United States as well as by the government of Iraq. Were torturers being prosecuted, fewer prison guards would still be torturing.

It's the same story with warrantless spying. It's not being prosecuted, and it's also -- predictably enough -- not ending. And it's the same story with a wide variety of abuses of power that Bush engaged in to a greater extent than did those who preceded him: the abuses are being cemented in place by Obama. Rather than throwing out signing statements that altered laws, Obama has begun writing his own. Rather than throwing out executive orders that create laws, Obama has begun issuing his own. Rather than opening up records and accepting court challenges that had been blocked by claims of "state secrets," Obama is repeating and enlarging those claims. Rather than delivering subpoenaed witnesses like Karl Rove to Congress, Obama's White House Counsel is interfering in the work of the Justice Department to negotiate very partial compliance on behalf of Rove, an old friend of his. Rather than declassifying information unnecessarily made secret, Obama is making materials secret that Bush did not. Rather than rewarding whistleblowers who had been punished for their good deeds, Obama has signing statemented away constraints on his power to retaliate against whistleblowers by firing them. Were Congress holding Bush accountable for any of these abuses, Obama would be less likely to engage in them. Once Bush and Obama engage in them without protest, it may become more difficult for Congress to change course and deny the same powers to Obama's successor.

So, what can we do? There is, at http://prosecutebushcheney.org a long list of steps we can take to pressure and encourage those who need it, and to create systemic reforms that make future crimes and abuses somewhat less likely. But ultimately, we are going to need to resist through nonviolent mass action, and the sooner we realize and organize that the better. It will not be easy. It will be a lot harder than what we have done thus far. But I have seen a lot of people make great sacrifices these past few years, and their examples have the potential to inspire others. Members of Veterans for Peace have done more than anyone else. And let me give you and example from this week from a friend of ours named Cynthia Papermaster. Here's a woman with a fixed income and no health insurance who has taken a large chunk of her retirement savings out of the bank and used it to purchase air time during the most worthwhile television shows there are for advertisements demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder enforce our laws against torture. I can't advise others to make the same sort of sacrifice, but I can point out that if others did it would radically change our situation, and that by removing money from the largest banks and from health insurance companies (which by and large will not actually cover you if you become seriously ill) it is possible to do more than one sort of good deed at the same time.

The Risks of a Partial Prosecution

davidswanson — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:31:21 -0400

By David Swanson

If Attorney General Eric Holder creates a special prosecutor for torture but forbids him or her to prosecute the lawyers who facilitated torture or the top officials who ordered it, proposing to go after only torturers who exceeded the limitations outlined in the lawyers' memos, what are the risks?

The risks for Holder could, for all we know, include being fired immediately, being asked to "resign" in three-and-a-half years, not being appointed to the Supreme Court, being called names by TV loudmouths, and not being invited to dinner parties. But these risks would be much greater if Holder obeyed the law and authorized a complete prosecution of all crimes. President Obama has publicly forbidden Holder from fully enforcing the law, but said that partially doing so is a decision for the attorney general. And failure to act carries its own risks, of embarrassing prosecutions by foreign and international courts, and of a shameful legacy and bitter and regret-filled retirement.

The risks to the rest of us are far more serious. If Holder does nothing, then almost everyone involved could walk away unpenalized, thus encouraging the continued use of torture. But if Holder creates a partial prosecution based on the idea that crazy insane OLC memos are law, the outcome could be better or worse.

It could be better because torturers would be prosecuted. After all, we know of torture that preceded the memos, and we know of torture that exceeded the memos. To my knowledge we don't know of any torture that, in fact, complied with the memos. And such prosecutions could easily lead to the publicizing of evidence against higher officials (not that it's currently in short supply), making it difficult not to expand the prosecution in additional stages. Prosecuting some could lead to prosecuting the rest of those responsible.

The potentially worse-than-nothing outcome is due to the following concerns. If you do nothing, the lesson for future governments is that criminal activity requires intimidating the succeeding governments into inaction. If, on the other hand, you treat the crazy insane OLC memos as law, the lesson for future governments is that criminal activity is guaranteed safe if you order your lawyers to write memos "legalizing" it. This would mean that anything at all could be "legalized." And it would mean that any existing memos that have not been retracted are law. And that would mean, among other things, that, as Jay Bybee obligingly declared in a memo, any president has the right to launch a war of aggression on a whim.

So, we're back to the shameful legacy and bitter regret-filled retirement for Holder despite his having risked being mocked, fired, shunned, and not appointed. A partial prosecution, unless later expanded, could be the worst of both worlds for him. This would seem to open up at least the possibility of Holder choosing to obey our laws and treaties in full, thus guaranteeing self respect, public respect, the gratitude of billions of people around the world, and the knowledge later in life of having done the right thing when he had it in his power.

But, even a complete prosecution of torture, even one that put Bush and Cheney away for life, would fall far short of having done the right thing. What Holder has to do, either at once or in stages, if he truly wants to comply with the law, is to prosecute much worse crimes than torture, crimes everyone used to talk about before the possibility of prosecuting torture came to dominate. Many instances of torture have amounted to murder, and in some instances torture has been used to generate war lies. But the Iraq War itself has left 1.3 million human beings dead, millions more wounded, traumatized, displaced, and impoverished. If Holder really wanted to do his job he would prosecute a lot more crimes, including the misspending of funds on war that were not appropriated for it, lying to Congress about the grounds for war (among other things), using false propaganda domestically, invading Iraq in violation of the Constitution and the UN Charter and H.J. Res 114, imprisoning children, employing assassination squads, using the U.S. military domestically, spying without warrant, exposing an undercover agent, and obstructing justice. And an attorney general who would do all of that (or even most attorneys general who wouldn't) would also overturn the prosecutions of political prisoners like Don Siegelman, Paul Minor, and so many others, and hold accountable those who used the Justice Department to target state and local elected officials, 85 percent of those prosecuted being Democrats and the other 15 percent consisting largely of moderate Republicans.

Now, all of this may scare Mr. Holder into doing nothing at all. The most strategic approach for advocates of justice may be to pressure him into beginning at least a partial prosecution of one relatively minor crime, planning to expand from there, while at the same time focusing much of our energy on demanding action from Congress, action that could begin with the impeachment of Jay Bybee, the sitting federal judge who signed his name, not only to torture memos, but to a memo purporting to legalize illegal wars, a memo that will have done that if we do not act. Our energy can also go into local and state prosecutions, foreign prosecutions, structural reforms, and so on. But it is critical that, whatever we attempt to prod Holder into at the moment, we ourselves not forget the larger picture, that we ourselves not begin thinking that exceeding crazy insane memos is the chief offense, or that writing those memos is the chief offense, or that ordering those memos written and used is the chief offense. If we do not deter wars of aggression, millions more will die, and many will be tortured regardless of what else has changed. Wars of aggression inevitably use torture, and worse. Our job is to stay focused, even if it takes decades, never be distracted or deterred, and never lose confidence that we will put an end to war.

Saving Private Bergdahl

dlindorff — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 16:49:47 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Let me say from the outset that I have the greatest sympathy for
23-year-old Bowe R. Bergdahl, the US soldier in Afghanistan who was
captured and is being held by Taliban forces, and for his family, who
must be going through a living hell worrying about what is going to
happen to him.

But I’m willing to bet you that all of them are wishing, right now,
that the US had not decided back in 2001 to begin a campaign of torture
and murder against the Taliban fighters that it was capturing in
Afghanistan, and against others that it has rounded up in the so-called
War on Terror.

I sure know that if my son were ever so unfortunate as to be
suckered into joining the US military and was then dispatched to fight
and kill people in some far-off land where the US had no reason to be
in the first place, and if he were to be captured, I would want to know
that my own country had been living up to the letter of the law in
respecting every clause of the Geneva Convention regarding the
treatment of captives.

The sad truth, however, is that neither the Bush/Cheney
administration, which simply tossed out the Geneva Conventions in 2001
and said its provisions, despite being signed into law by the US, did
not apply to the war in Afghanistan, which was the first assault in
what they conceived as a borderless and endless War on Terror, nor the
Obama administration, which has refused to grant full Geneva Convention
rights to the captives it holds in places like Afghanistan’s Bagram Air
Base, or at Guantanamo Bay, or to prosecute those who tortured and
ordered torture in the prior administration, has followed the law...

For the rest of this article, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net
________________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

CIA’s Lies About Secret Program Should Have Congress In Open Revolt

dlindorff — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:04:06 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

If this were the democracy that the Founding Fathers thought they
were creating, word from CIA Director Leon Panetta that his agency had
lied to Congress and specifically that it had lied repeatedly from
9-11-2001 through the end of 2008 concerning an as-yet undisclosed
secret program, would have virtually every member of Congress in a
state of rebellion, demanding answers.

After all, the CIA is required by law to report to at least the
majority and minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees and to the majority and minority leaders of both houses of
Congress about such things.

But not only did the spy agency not report on what it was up to; it lied about what it was up to.

Now, given what we do know about the Bush/Cheney
administration—that it initiated a massive campaign of spying on
Americans by the Defense Department, the FBI, and the National Security
Agency, as well as other intelligence agencies, that it initiated a
campaign of torture of captives, including American citizens, while
asserting that the President didn’t even need to notify the courts or
the public about the arrest, detention, torture or even execution of an
American citizen if he, acting on his own, deemed that person to be an
“enemy combatant,” and given that we also know that Bush and Cheney
lied repeatedly about the justification for their invasion of Iraq, and
refused to be put under oath in their “interviews” by the 9-11
Commission, you would think the members of Congress, which was
railroaded into supporting everything from the USA PATRIOT Act to the
Iraq War invasion based on all these lies and deceptions, would be
demanding answers regarding this mysterious program.

For the rest of this story, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net