Mess We Can!

In the world of global politics, President Obama has had his moments.  He was served a plate of excrement, and has managed a fairly decent record on the world stage.

However, there are exceptions:  He has failed to close Guantanamo. He has doubled-down on the empire-sodomizing black hole of Afghanistan. He got some sort of Portuguese dog, which I assume is mostly cork.

And these are sizeable exceptions.  On 90210, Ray Pruitt was a pretty good boyfriend to Donna Martin, except when he would knock her around occasionally.

Now we move to Libya, the 3rd front of our impending 12-front middle eastern military sunday fun day action.

I’m no strict constructionist. In fact, self-proclaimed “strict constructionists” are usually unreasonable and unhinged longbeards with homemade napalm, or (in most cases), politically motivated clowns who hold these views only when self-servingly expedient.

However, I can’t deny the fact that this is another unilateral executive power grab I genuinely abhor.

 As Greenwald points out:

The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.

As Commander-in-Chief, the President does have a duty to protect and defend the United States. In instances of self-defense, the President would be within his constitutional authority to act before advising Congress or seeking its consent.

I understand that it’s hard to put that Executive Power Genie Back in the bottle. 50+ years of unchecked war partying will do that.

But despite the qualifiers trotted out by the President, there’s no getting around the blatant abuse of power this action constitutes. As Michael Lind points out in his excellent reading of constitutional / international law:

However, while the Security Council can authorize member states to undertake a war for purposes other than national or regional self-defense, it cannot order any country to do so. The U.S. agreed to participate in the United Nations only because the U.N. charter makes it clear that each member state has the right to decide, on the basis of its internal constitutional processes, whether to take part in an enforcement action authorized by the Security Council.

In other words, there are two distinct systems of authorization, one international and one national. Under international law, the U.S. lacks the authority to engage in wars unrelated to its own defense or that of its allies. Security Council action might lift that legal restraint. But once the Security Council has acted, Congress must still authorize the military action by formal voting, not by mere “consultation” with the president.

Yes, Qaddafi is crazy. Yes, he controls a lot of oil, and this country uses a lot of refined oil to fuel its transport vehicles and Japanese sex dolls (diesel).  But if we’re truly just going around protecting citizens of other countries from their crazy despots, we still have dozens to go. I’m not sure we want tio get into that. (d.r.a.f.t?)

Eugene Robinson took a moment from his affable chuckling to write an excellent article this morning. This about sums it up…

Gaddafi is crazy and evil; obviously, he wasn’t going to listen to our advice about democracy. The world would be fortunate to be rid of him. But war in Libya is justifiable only if we are going to hold compliant dictators to the same standard we set for defiant ones. If not, then please spare us all the homilies about universal rights and freedoms. We’ll know this isn’t about justice, it’s about power.

Amen.

Revising Misery

Pastor Jones, You're up.

Hey! So just in time for not-midterms, our plucky ex-president has been making the rounds talkin’ bout readin’ and writin’ and having his feelings hurt by a jackass rapper who called him a racist after his administration sat on its hands while thousands of poor (and mostly black) Americans drowned. According to W, 9/11 Arbor Day this was worst moment of his presidency. Poor little buddy. Of course, in 2010 you can call the president a racist all you want, and you might get a radio/tv show out of it.  In fact, calling the president a racist during a time of war is now the best way to support the troops.

Anyway, in his new book, Steinbeck Bush opines on one of his favorite pasttimes…

In “Decision Points,” the former president writes that he was asked by the CIA for permission to waterboard Mohammed (dubbed KSM), who was suspected of having information about additional terrorist plots. “Damn right,” Bush says he responded.  He adds that he would make the same call again, in order to save lives.

Ho-hum. Another day. Another admission of war crimes. Good thing he didn’t do anything serious – like lie in a civil deposition about getting his dick sucked. Otherwise, he might be held accountable. And how did they quantify the lives that were saved? Or is that just something you say? Like “your kids are adorable.”

1. Actionable KSM intelligence was received by the FBI, through a Lebanese-american agent, not through the use of torture. The CIA got nothing real from this bloodsucker. I could care less if this guy got hurt, but drop the pretense that torture is reliable. it’s not. it’s also immoral. but i guess we shouldn’t be better than our enemies. no wonder it’s so easy for them to recruit idiot kids to do their bidding.  As Think Progress thoroughly detailed…

• CIA Official: CIA interrogations of KSM produced ‘total f*cking bullsh*t.’
“But according to a former senior C.I.A. official, who read all the interrogation reports on K.S.M., ’90 percent of it was total f*cking bullsh*t.’ A former Pentagon analyst adds: ‘K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.’” [Vanity Fair, 12/16/08]

• FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan: Torturing Zubaydah was unnecessary.
“I’ve kept my mouth shut about all this for seven years,” Soufan says. But now, with the declassification of Justice memos and the public assertions by Cheney and others that “enhanced” techniques worked, Soufan feels compelled to speak out. “I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective,” he says. “We were able to get the information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a couple of days. We didn’t have to do any of this [torture]. We could have done this the right way.” [Newsweek, 5/4/09]

Of course our media has been quick to clarify this issue for everyone. They love definitive substance. and slacks.

2. Bush was president on 9/11. He received a briefing memo 2 months prior concerning al qaeda’s determination and dismissed it out of hand. Keep trying to rewrite history.

3. The show 24 is not real. Get past it.

Tancredo To Make More Noise

Former presidential candidate Tom Tancredo is back on the campaign trail, alarming the people and saying insane shit. The former Colorado Rep. is now running for governor of the state under the banner of the ironically named Constitution Party.

The Constitution Party’s (a/k/a “The Party of (Alan) Keyes”) philosophy is rooted in religious conservatism. As Colorado’s American Constitution Party explains on its website:

We, the members of the American Constitution Party, gratefully acknowledge the blessings of the Lord God as the Creator, Preserver, and Ruler of the universe and of our nation. We hereby appeal to Him for aid, comfort, guidance and the protection of His Divine Providence as we work to restore and preserve this nation as a government of, by, and for the people. Our republic is a nation governed by a constitution rooted in Biblical law and administered by representatives elected by the people to preserve, protect, and defend it against attacks by all its enemies, whether from without or within.

Just look at all those allusions to the supreme law of the U.S., adopted circa 1787.

Tancredo’s interpretation of this platform focuses on the ‘biblical’ removal of coloreds. From where, you ask? Just get em out of here. Christ. Among other practical policy considerations, Tommy T thinks Obama should not just be impeached (for being a bigger threat than al Qaeda), but that he should be sent back to Kenya.  Did I mention he hates hispanics (20% of Colorado)? Also, like many mainstream republicans, Tancredo believes the show 24 is real.   That should make for some fun campaign commercials (see below).

With Tom Tancredo as governor and Tim Tebow as Broncos’ QB (same initials), there would be nothing stopping Colorado from becoming New Utah. Although, only one of these guys would be Elway-esque and succeed in destroying the Browns. take a guess.

Once Tancredo gets rid of all the Mehicans, we can start focusing on the real plague affecting Our Great Country – greasy Italians.

Reaping the Fear

The Usual Suspects have jumped all over the thwarted Christmas plane bombing. Obviously, Dick Cheney led the grandstanding, with many acolytes not far behind, all ready to capitalize on the attempted murder of 300 people. At least Newt “tells it like it is” when it comes to Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), who waited about a minute and a half before using the incident to solicit campaign donations:

GINGRICH: In Michigan, I think Pete Hoekstra is putting together such a good campaign and has gotten such a boost out of having been intelligence committee chairman now with the attempted attack on Detroit that Pete really is becoming a dominant figure in the state.

I think that was part of why Lt. Governor Cherry probably dropped out. He’s faced with a president who clearly couldn’t have defended Detroit. We were lucky that the terrorist didn’t know how to set off the bomb or we would have had a huge disaster.

It’s really a shame for Hoekstra that nobody died. He might be Emperor of Michigan by now.

Obama has faced criticism for not using the right labels, and for apparently not yelling,  “We are at War!!” loud enough for their grandchildren to hear it in their sleep. Of course we’re at war, you fucking tards. That’s why people keep trying to bomb us. Maybe if we didn’t preemptively invade so many predominantly Muslim countries, or blindly provide support for every act of Israeli aggression, there might not be so many fucking savages trying to murder Americans.  War means that both sides are attacking. Is this irony lost?

While I find it refreshing that Obama admitted to some systemic problems with our national security apparatus (humans make mistakes?), that only means so much.  The sad thing is that one reason the Republican criticism rings hollow is because Obama (with some exceptions) has essentially maintained the  national security practices of the last 8 years. Quite frankly, I might feel a little safer if he went a different direction.

That being said, the GOP will use this incident to wag their dicks and try to captalize politically. And the 24-hr news media will eat this shit up, as they always do, because nothing sells like fear – it particular, fear in the form of a Muslim on a plane.

Perrspectives.com does a great job illustrating the blatantly obvious hypocrisy of these assholes, reinforcing the point that Dick Cheney, Pete Hoekstra, Peter King, and the rest of these blowhards have absolutely NO credibility when it comes to national security. I’d ask them to ‘shut the fuck up,’ but wouldn’t want to force Politico to practice actual journalism.

On Tuesday, President Obama described the failed Christmas airliner attack as a “potentially disastrous” failure of the system, one “that’s not acceptable, and I will not tolerate it.” Unsurprisingly, the usual mouthpieces of the right like Peter King and Ron Christie have fanned out to demand “someone will have to go” and that Obama “fire those staff members who have failed their president and failed their nation.” Even more predictable, of course, is that those same Republican voices were silent as President Bush not only sidestepped accountability but rewarded those responsible for bungling the catastrophes of 9/11, the invasion of Iraq and terror threats real or imagined.

Here, then, are 10 moments in GOP accountability for terrorism.

1. “I’m sure something will pop into my head.”
During a prime-time press conference on April 13, 2004, President Bush was asked what mistakes he had made and what lessons he had learned in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Even after 9/11, Osama Bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora, the lack of Saddam’s WMD and the growing tragedy in Iraq, Bush answer was, in a nutshell, “none.”

“I’m sure something will pop into my head here…I don’t want to sound like I’ve made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t — you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.”

2. Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients
Eight months later, George W. Bush awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to CIA Director George Tenet, General Tommy Franks and Ambassador Paul Bremer. Each was a key architect of the American catastrophe in Iraq – and so much else.

As the Washington Post reported:

In the East Room of the White House, Bush said he had chosen the trio because they “played pivotal roles in great events” and made efforts that “made our country more secure and advanced the cause of human liberty.”

Sadly, as history had already recorded, not so much.

Tenet didn’t merely preside over the CIA during the cataclysm of 9/11, but had claimed finding WMD in Iraq was a “slam dunk.” As head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Baghdad, Bremer’s disbanding of the Iraqi army and ill-advised policy of de-Baathification helped fuel the insurgency which later killed thousands of U.S. soldiers. And as we now know, General Franks refused to give the green light to send American forces to Tora Bora in December 2001, missing perhaps the only opportunity to destroy Osama Bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership once and for all.

3. “You’ve covered your ass, now.”
On August 6th, 2001, Bush received and was briefed on the now notorious PDB which ominously warned just five weeks before the September 11 attacks that Osama Bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States. President Bush’s response to the briefing, as Ron Suskind revealed in June 2006, was one for posterity:

“All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

4. “I believe the title was…”
For all of Presideny Bush’s vulgar cynicism, his administration’s nonchalance about the growing threat from Bin Laden was perhaps best expressed by then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. Rice, who held the first principals meeting to discuss the Al Qaeda danger only on September 4, 2001, was asked about the PDB memo in April 2004 by 9/11 Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste:

BEN-VENISTE: Isn’t it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?RICE: I believe the title was, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.”

5. “I don’t think anybody could have predicted…”
Two weeks later on April 24, 2004, Rice took to the op-ed pages of the Washington Post to argue, “No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration.” And in an argument she would later make repeatedly, Rice first introduced the now ubiquitous “nobody could have predicted” defense on May 16, 2002:

“I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking.”

Even as President Bush’s tenure was in its last throes, White House spokesman Tony Fratto in January 2009 showed that Rice’s talking point had legs. Spoon-fed by Fox News anchor Jon Scott’s suggestion that “nobody was thinking that there’d be terrorists flying 767s into buildings at that point,” Fratto reliably coughed up the laughably discredited sound bite:

“That’s true. I mean, no one could have anticipated that kind of attack – or very few people.”

Of course, many people – among them Bush counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke – had anticipated precisely that. On January 25, 2001, Clarke, who also helped lead the 1996 effort to protect the Atlanta Olympics from, among other things, threats from hijacked aircraft, handed the Bush national security team famous Delenda plan for attacking Al Qaeda.

6. Bush Opposes the Creation of the 9/11 Commission
On Wednesday, Congressman Peter King continued his assault on President Obama for his handling of the underwear bomber. King complained:

“The administration has not been very forthcoming in telling Congress what happened, how it happened, when it happened, so I’m not in a full position right now to say.””This administration tells very little, unlike previous administrations.”

As King conveniently omitted, the previous administration opposed the creation of the 9/11 Commission. As CBS reported in May 2002:

President Bush took a few minutes during his trip to Europe Thursday to voice his opposition to establishing a special commission to probe how the government dealt with terror warnings before Sept. 11.Mr. Bush said the matter should be dealt with by congressional intelligence committees…

“I have great confidence in our FBI and CIA,” the President said in Berlin, adding that he feels the agencies are already improving their information sharing practices.

Facing mounting public pressure for a full accounting the September 11 disaster, President Bush later relented, notifying Congress that “Now that the work of the intelligence committees is nearing its end, we must take the appropriate next steps.” Still, Bush himself refused to testify under oath to the 9/11 panel, and appeared only in the presence of Vice President Dick Cheney. And throughout, 9/11 Commission chairman Tom Kean (R-NJ) complained the Bush administration withheld information and documents essential to its investigation.