Politics & Our Crazies

I do my darndest to keep this a single-issue blog, but sometimes there are other issues that make other topics just so tempting. I could basically Twitter my reactions to the financial crisis ("OMG." "WTF??" "PLZ HELP" "MORE KRUGMAN") and my political quarterbacking hasn't paid off for anyone yet. But then there's Michele Bachmann. I have read so many hilarious posts about her today - they have really kept my spirits up. I read Blue Texan and laughed for a long time.

"I'm starting to believe Michelle Bachmann isn't actually a real politician at
all, but instead, an unusually gifted performance artist who's engaged in a
brilliant post-modern parody of an insane wingnut.
Over the weekend, she gave a radio interview to Assrocket, and here's how she describes her blogging and social media outreach as a member of Congress.
'I’m a foreign correspondent on enemy lines and I try to let everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington.'
This is beyond unhinged. It sounds like a press release from Stormfront."

The full chronicles of Minnesota's Rep can be found all over the blogosphere so I won't go into her amazing repertoire (see BarbinMD instead). I enjoy Ms. Bachmann as I would a talk radio personality. Except that after a moment you realize - oh my god, people actually elected her.

Now, why is this a big deal or at all relevant? Well, the Republicans have quite a crew of attention-grabbing crazies in their stable right now. They say outlandish, at times threatening, things that are not grounded in reality. I'm not sure if this is part of a political game, to basically be an actor and create your own drama around a given issue, or if the pols are truly stupid.

In any case, their ignorance is making it a lot tougher to dig out of the hole Bush made for us. You have Kansas' Senators fear-mongering about the possibility of Guantanamo detainees being transferred to their state. And Dick Cheney, fear-mongering, possibly because it's a hard habit to break. I'm not saying we need to run a glitzy PR campaign for all the innocents in Guantanamo but Good God, we really need to let the public know what the situation is there. These detainees received no fair trial that would exonerate them, and are little known otherwise to Americans. Not much has really changed since Guantanamo opened - "these guys are the worst of the worst!! Right?" There are plenty of people who will try to perpetuate that view (Bachmann, certainly). I think there is a lot of work to do between now and the time when the Obama DoJ finishes their reviews. Judging by their approach so far, I think the Obama DoJ will keep a low-profile on this stuff. I think it's essential that somebody explains who these people are in Guantanamo to the world (and of course, heroically enough, many people are...Andy Worthington, Glenn Greenwald, Digby, Valtin, The Talking Dog, Candace Gorman...these people are on my blogroll for a reason!). I would like to see the Obama Administration be a little more proactive on this front, but in any case, Guantanamo is closing. We need to make this as smooth (and just) as possible.

And Michele Bachmann, just yikes.

Obama & Geneva

AFP:

"On Friday, lawyers for 30 detainees filed a motion accusing the
Obama administration of violating the Geneva Conventions in its
treatment of the estimated 240 prisoners remaining at the controversial prison
camp.

Obama has vowed to close the camp within the next 12 months, and has
ordered individual reviews of the cases against each of the remaining
prisoners." [emphasis suppplied]

Hmm...all is not well at Guantanamo.

Update: Details:

"Lawyers for 30 detainees are seeking 'to end respondent's violation of
certain provision of the Third Geneva Convention,' a court filing obtained by
AFP said Thursday.

The attorneys argue the violations -- such as detention in solitary
confinement for 22 hours a day -- are part of an established policy against
their terror-suspected clients at the remote US naval base in southern
Cuba.

A Pentagon report said last month that conditions for the 240 men who
remain imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay are in line with the Geneva Conventions -- a
review that was harshly criticized by rights groups.

The New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents
some Guantanamo prisoners, said detainees 'continue to be held in inhumane
conditions that violate US obligations under the Geneva Conventions, the US
Constitution and international human rights law.'"

3,000 Documents, or 3 Torture Memos?

[I hope it is not too tiresome to cross-post my recent diary at TalkLeft here...it is a synthesis of my two previous posts, basically, but I think it is far more coherent]

3,000 Documents, or 3 Torture Memos?

Now, look. I don't want to be pegged as a conspiracy theorist. But I find what the Obama Administration has done over the past few days with regards to some important torture-related issues a little strange.

The first event was the massive withholding of documents pertaining to the interrogation tapes (all 92 of them) that the CIA (criminally) destroyed. The ACLU asked for the documents, and their Blog of Rights covers it:

"Today we were expecting a list of documents pertaining to the contents of the
interrogation tapes destroyed by the CIA. We've been waiting for it all day, and
at 5:20 p.m., we got zilch, save a letter from the DOJ telling the Judge
presiding over the case that they won't turn over anything.
These 3,000 documents include summaries, transcripts, reconstructions and memoranda relating to the destruction of the tapes. Also withheld: the list of witnesses who may have viewed the tapes or had custody of the tapes before their destruction."

This stuck out to me because I remembered that there was a bit of excitement a few weeks ago as to what those documents contained. mcjoan wrote at the time:

"The most encouraging bit from the letter: 'The CIA intends to produce all of the
information requested to the Court and to produce as much information as
possible on the public record to the Plaintiffs.' It would appear that the CIA
under Panetta intends to cooperate fully in this."

Well the exact opposite happened! Here is what we will get: "The CIA will provide these lists to the Court for in camera review on March 26, 2009." It is not mcjoan's fault that the CIA completely lied, but it will be our fault if we continue to believe them.

Following directly upon this news of the massive withholding of evidence from the public (and another promise broken), the Justice Department moved to declassify three torture memos from the Bush-era. These memos will detail the legal framework for torture and the permitted techniques. It will be the abstract version of what is detailed in the 3,000 documents Obama doesn't want you to see about tapes destroyed so you could not see torture in action.

The statute of limitations on torture is pretty short (8 years). And Obama is clearly going to take his time in revealing what happened. The call for action is going to have to come from outside his Administration.

I think it is important to keep track of the steady stream of B.S. on accountability and general detention/interrogation issues from the Obama Administration because there is almost certainly a strategy behind it. Is it a coincidence that news of three new torture memos coming out follows directly on the witholding of 3,000 documents? We know Obama does not care about investigating Bush, and his administration does not seem morally squeamish about using the "you were just following orders" excuse. What is frustrating is that the Obama Administration doesn't mind revealing the legal frameworks for torture - documentation for the record books, I suppose - but they are totally unable to come to grips with the actual torture done to detainees. Let's throw out Binyam's case. Hide the actual evidence. Deny habeas corpus to non-Afghanis that are to this day held at Bagram.

It feels to me that the Obama Administration on the subject of interrogation and detention policy is playing a media game. One well-publicized commendable thing comes on the heels of another in a series of legal actions that defend Bush executive power or deny justice to the victims of torture. The drip drip of information completely controlled by the Obama Administration becomes (hypothetically) our consolation for the lack of criminal prosecutions or a "day in court" for people like Binyam Mohamed.

Well, I don't think the executive branch should be allowed to control our access to such information, or grant such immunity to our Bushco criminals. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have an independent investigation in charge of what is leaked and what is not, who is tried and who is not, what evidence is revealed and what is not. We really don't need something as shameful, embarrassing and criminal as what happened over these past 8 years controlled by White House spin doctors.

The Endless B.S. of the CIA

Reading this article from the ACLU Blog of Rights I was reminded of something. I thought to myself, hey, weren't people excited by the potential upside of the revelation that the CIA had 92 (not two: they forgot the "9," apparently, honest mistake) interrogation tapes? And yeah, they were (from mcjoan):

"The most encouraging bit from the letter: 'The CIA intends to produce all of the information requested to the Court and to produce as much information as possible on the public record to the Plaintiffs.' It would appear that the CIA under Panetta intends to cooperate fully in this."

Yeah...well, that didn't actually happen:

"Today we were expecting a list of documents pertaining to the contents of
the interrogation tapes destroyed by the CIA. We’ve been waiting for it all day,
and at 5:20 p.m., we got zilch, save a letter from the DOJ telling the Judge presiding over the case that they won’t turn over anything.

These 3,000 documents include summaries, transcripts, reconstructions
and memoranda relating to the destruction of the tapes. Also withheld: the list
of witnesses who may have viewed the tapes or had custody of the tapes before
their destruction."

The material will be reviewed, but in private, for the protection of the CIA.

The CIA destroyed evidence of criminal acts, and the evidence of that evidence is being held out of our reach - by the Obama Administration.

I think it is important to keep track of the steady stream of B.S. on accountability and general detention/interrogation issues from the Obama Administration because there is almost certainly a strategy behind it. Is it a coincidence that news of three new torture memos coming out follows directly on the witholding of 3,000 documents? We know Obama does not care about investigating Bush, and his administration does not seem morally squeamish about using the "you were just following orders" excuse. What is frustrating is that the Obama Administration doesn't mind revealing the legal frameworks for torture - documentation for the record books, I suppose - but they are totally unable to come to grips with the actual torture done to detainees. Let's throw out Binyam's case. Hide the actual evidence. Deny habeas corpus to non-Afghanis that are to this day held at Bagram.

This quote has left a great impression on me, from ex-CIA John Gannon regarding the interrogation tapes: "'To a spectator it would look like torture,' he said. 'And torture is wrong.'”

Gannon did not actually view these tapes - this is his speculation. Knowing what we know though, especially about the particular detainees on the tapes, what he says is most likely the case. And that question - who could look at those tapes and think this was the right thing to do? - is not one we seem collectively willing to answer. So I guess it can just happen again. "Oh well."

It is wrong that the CIA destroyed evidence, and it is wrong that they tortured (and tortured and tortured and tortured...). But let's give 'em a pass huh? Hey Mr. Obama - that's not right either.

NYT Editorial on the Rule of Law

Two things in particular I liked here:

"But the break does not always seem complete enough. Even as they dropped
the 'enemy combatant' terminology, Mr. Obama’s lawyers did not seem to rule out
indefinite military detentions for terrorism suspects and their allies. They
drew a definition of association with Al Qaeda that is too broad (simply staying
in a 'safe house,' for example). Worse, they seemed to adopt Mr. Bush’s position
that the “battlefield” against terrorism is the planet. That became the legal
pretext for turning criminal defendants into lifelong military captives."

Well put. And this is important too:

"Mr. Obama also should stop resisting an investigation of Mr. Bush’s policies on
terrorism, state secrets, wiretapping, detention and interrogation. We know he
is struggling with many Bush-created disasters — in the economy, in foreign
policy and on and on. But understanding all that has gone wrong is the only way
to ensure that abuses will truly end. That investigation should be done calmly rather than under the pressure of some new, shocking revelation."

With news that three more torture memos are to be released this week, it seems like it's time to stop being side-tracked by media torture revelation rollercoasters. We must simply begin a comprehensive, no-immunity granted investigation. Because we are running out of time, as Daphne Eviatar points out on the Rachel Maddow show:

"MADDOW: So of the big potential crimes that could be investigated from
the Bush era, which of them would pose or could pose statute of limitations
issues?
EVIATAR: Well, the biggest one really is torture.
There is an eight-year statute of limitations when it comes to prosecuting
torture. And we know and there‘s been strong evidence that there was
torture including waterboarding and all sorts of bizarre humiliations of
detainees at Abu Ghraib and possibly also at Guantanamo Bay starting very early
on in 2002.
Now if you give that eight years, that means by 2010 it could be too late to prosecute."

Yes, as Eviatar points out, the statute of limitations could be extended, and John Conyers is working to do that, but it would be better to operate within existing law than hope that Congress will before 2010 vote to extend the statute of limitations. It would take an immense amount of political capital to do that.

If I were cynical...I would suggest that perhaps this is part of the Obama "avoid investigations" strategy - reveal a few memos at a time, and above all take one's time in everything related to detention and interrogation - a year to close Guantanamo, six months to review interrogation and rendition, etc. Before you know it, 2010 rolls around, and the test of integrity - do you have the will to prosecute? - is now null.

We already know that there is some truly f*ked up stuff in those memos, and that the regulatory processes that would normally prevent a CIA torture program were distorted and ignored by the executive branch. Take this for instance from the Newsweek article quoted above:

"'I now know we were not fully and completely briefed on the CIA program,'
Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein told NEWSWEEK. A U.S. official disputed the charge, claiming that members of Congress received more
than 30 briefings over the life of the CIA program and that Congressional intel
panels had seen the Red Cross report. But the CIA insisted that the report be
treated as if it had higher than top-secret classification, precluding any
public discussion of its contents."

Feinstein versus anonymous? Talk about having no one to root for. Feinstein says "hey, we were completely deceived! Ain't that something!" and the anonymous official (from which Administration? Obama's?) says that people were briefed in detail. Since the role of these intelligence committees is to provide oversight, it is extremely important to lay blame at their feet as well and make sure that future committees are given the tools and privileges they need to actually conduct oversight and blow whistles when needed. Why is it seemingly not a big deal that the intelligence committees completely sucked at their job? We could have put children in the position of Feinstein and co. and they would've done a better job. So I think the role of the intelligence committees must be reevaluated as well.

That there are serious problems in the way we conducted the "war on terror" during the Bush Administration is now clear as day. Instead of waiting for some sort of critical mass of flashy news leaks from the Obama Administration, we should encourage criminal investigations to begin now. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have an independent investigation in charge of what is leaked and what is not, who is tried and who is not, what evidence is revealed and what is not. We really don't need something as shameful, embarrassing and criminal as what happened over these past 8 years controlled by White House spin doctors.

Update/Correction: I thought these three torture memos were going to be released this week. I was wrong and should've read more carefully. Yeesh. According to Newsweek: "But the White House has sided with Holder. Faced with a court deadline in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit regarding the memos filed by the ACLU, Justice lawyers asked for a two-week extension 'because the memoranda are being reviewed for possible release.'"

Noble, but the slow-going continues.

Panetta in Pakistan

From Press TV:

"Central Intelligence Agency Chief Leon Panetta has arrived in Islamabad on
a visit to discuss the US strategy on the war against terror.

Panetta held talks with Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani and Lieutenant General
Ahmad Shuja Pasha, the chief of Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), on Saturday."

Do you think this was discussed? And how so?

"Torture is routinely used in Pakistan, both to obtain confessions in
criminal cases and against political and ideological opponents. Most acts of
torture are aimed at producing a confession during the course of a criminal
investigation. However, acts of torture by military and intelligence agencies
often are intended for punishment. Torture often follows illegal abductions or
'disappearances' by Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
agency or military. Torture is often used to frighten the detainee into
compliance. If the detainee is released, it is usually on the understanding that
if he fails to do what is demanded or expected of him, a further abduction and
torture will follow. In this manner, the victim of custodial abuse can be kept
in a state of fear often for several years. Most often, the threat of torture is
enough to ensure compliance to the demands of the intelligence agencies.

Neither high social standing nor public profile deters the ISI or other
state agencies from perpetrating torture if they deem it in the interest of
'national security'-the relative anonymity of a victim only simplifies matters
for the torturers."

Wilkerson, Bagram, & Guantanamo

This week former SoS Powell's Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson penned a very revealing, and sad, editorial on the situation at Guantanamo and the Bush administration. The key revelation being that some in the Bush Administration, including of course Rumsfeld and Cheney, realized they were carelessly picking up innocents in Afghanistan but chose nonetheless to plunk them down in Guantanamo - and keep them there. Not a big surprise if you know some of the detainees' stories.

As Daphne Eviatar points out, while Obama's team has made some changes, the premise is basically the same - and the results are likely the same as well. There are over 600 people sitting in the prison at Bagram, without the same "privileges" given to those at Guantanamo - they cannot challenge their detention in the US courts, nor are they given the marginal process of a tribunal to determine if they are even combatants. And unlike Guantanamo, Obama has given no indication that he is going to shut down Bagram, a prison with a major expansion in the works.

And in OTHER NEWS, Elena Kagan was just confirmed as Solicitor General. Her belief is that those at Bagram do not deserve due process. Presumably, we could pick up a Muslim on the moon, if someone on Earth suggested (for whatever reason) that we do so, take them to Bagram, and never present them with an opportunity to find out why exactly they are in Afghanistan. The framework that resulted in the detention of innocents remains.

In the liberal heart (well, in many) there is a lot of goodwill, still, toward Obama right now - and justifiably so, as his campaign challenged Bush torture and detention policies. But the reality is that a lot is unclear and change hasn't exactly happened. For example, the Justice Department is arguing that those at Bagram were picked up on the battlefield in Bagram. And they're not saying who at Bagram wasn't picked up in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Kagan has argued in her confirmation hearing that someone picked up in the Philippines for suspected financing of Al-Qaeda is part of the battlefield - and can be held indefinitely (by the US of course). Annnnd....where are they going to be held, exactly, I ask? The CIA is now allowed to detain people short-term, but not long term. It seems likely to me and within Obama's frameworks that people captured outside Afghanistan could be plunked in Bagram, as before, without habeas corpus. What legal gymnastics can we look forward to that will justify that?

The Obama Administration needs to take steps to ensure that it doesn't create unjust hells for the innocent and Muslim. They haven't even begun to do so. Yes, I know reviews take time...but they are close to creating Guantanamo 2.0.

Update: Also, my diary on the state secrets privilege and Obama PR has now made the TalkLeft reclist. It's not exactly current, but it does demonstrate the ability of the Obama team to talk a crock and scream "national security!!!" if they need to.

Update 2: The kicker is that the US reserves the right to detain with impunity, and when they screw up, refuse responsibility. It's shameful that when we go wrong we don't at least allow people to sue in court.