A new lengthy article in this morning’s New York Times purports to set forth “new details about why the [CIA interrogation] tapes were made and then eliminated.” Written by Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti (who broke the original story), what the article primarily does is rely on anonymous sources to assign principal responsibility for the tapes’ destruction to mid-level CIA official Jose Rodriguez. But in doing so, the article identifies, in passing, the critical question that remains unanswered: what was the involvement of George Bush and Dick Cheney in the videos’ destruction?
Scrutiny of the C.I.A.’s secret detention program kept building. Later in 2003, the agency’s inspector general, John L. Helgerson, began investigating the program, and some insiders believed the inquiry might end with criminal charges for abusive interrogations.
Mr. Helgerson completed his investigation of interrogations in April 2004, according to one person briefed on the still-secret report, which concluded that some of the C.I.A.’s techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the international Convention Against Torture. Current and former officials said the report did not explicitly state that the methods were torture.
A month later, as the administration reeled from the Abu Ghraib disclosures, Mr. Muller, the agency general counsel, met to discuss the report with three senior lawyers at the White House: Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel; David S. Addington, legal adviser for Vice President Dick Cheney; and John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council.
The interrogation tapes were discussed at the meeting, and one Bush administration official said that, according to notes of the discussion, Mr. Bellinger advised the C.I.A. against destroying the tapes. The positions Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Addington took are unknown. One person familiar with the discussion said that in light of concerns raised in the inspector general’s report that agency officers could be legally liable for harsh interrogations, there was a view at the time among some administration lawyers that the tapes should be preserved.
Shane and Mazetti previously reported that “several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.” In that article, they quoted one senior intelligence official “with direct knowledge of the matter [who] said there had been ‘vigorous sentiment’ among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes.” The White House has simply refused to say whether they were behind the decision.
Just consider how significant that question is, and how striking it is that it remains unanswered. By the time Addington and Gonzales were discussing this matter, it was well known — obvious — that those interrogations tapes were critically relevant to a number of judicial proceedings and government investigations, including The 9/11 Commission’s. It is thus highly likely, to put it mildly, that any decision to destroy that evidence would constitute the crime of obstruction of justice, the same federal felony for which Lewis Libby has now (in a different matter) been convicted.
And here are the two top legal aides to the President and the Vice President participating in a meeting where the destruction of this vital evidence was expressly considered, yet we do not know what it is that they said. Did they advise that the tapes be destroyed of give implicit permission for it? If so, it very likely means that Bush and/or Cheney (and certainly their top aides) committed serious felonies.
But does anyone really believe that we’re going to find out the answers to those questions any time soon? And even if we did find out the answers, and even if they were incriminating, does anyone believe that there would ever be any consequences, any accountability, for this wrongdoing by anyone above a mid-level position of responsibility, such as Rodriguez?
* * * * *
In case after case, our political establishment has adopted the “principle” that our most powerful actors are immune from the rule of law. And they’ve adopted the enabling supplemental “principle” that any information which our political leaders want to keep suppressed is — by definition, for that reason alone — information that is “classified” and should not be disclosed.
The instruments used to secure these prerogatives are numerous and growing. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick this week summarized the Bush administration’s 10 most egregious legal inventions to enable lawbreaking, including the “states secrets privilege” which has now “has ballooned into a doctrine of blanket immunity for any conduct the administration wishes to hide” and the claim that “everyone who has ever spoken to the president about anything is barred from congressional testimony by executive privilege.” All of these developments have a common strain, a shared objective: ensuring that our highest political officials and our most powerful corporations are beyond the reach of the law.
Thus, our establishment believes that any information that would shed light on whether our most powerful actors have broken the law is information that shouldn’t be disclosed. In those accidental cases when — via unauthorized leaks — information is disclosed that demonstrates that crimes have been committed, our establishment bands together to insist that nothing be done, that there is no need to investigate or hold anyone accountable, and that the only real wrongdoing is by those “the leakers” who disclosed the lawbreaking.
This is the same pattern seen over and over: leakers reveal that Bush broke the law for years by spying on Americans without the warrants required by law, and every investigation — legislative and judicial — is successfully blocked, and Congress then moves to legalize the lawbreaking. The top aide to Bush and Cheney, Lewis Libby, is found unanimously by a 12-person jury to have lied deliberately with the intent of blocking an FBI and Grand Jury investigation into illegal leaks and is sentenced by a conservative judge to prison, yet is protected from jail time by the President while our media and political establishment cheer almost unanimously.
Our largest telecommunication corporations reap huge profits by brazenly violating numerous, long-standing federal laws (.pdf) for years by enabling government access to our communications without any judicial approval, and our political establishment bands together to demand that they be protected from any consequences and that any efforts to uncover what happened be squelched. Our government implements a secret torture regime that violates numerous laws and treaties and Congress acts to legalize it and provide retroactive immunity to the lawbreakers. Congress subpoenas numerous officials to find out why 9 federal prosecutors were fired and, when the subpoenas are literally ignored, nothing happens.
And now, our government just destroys evidence crucial both to all sorts of court proceedings and a comprehensive investigation into the worst attack on U.S. soil in our history — part and parcel of its general pattern of destroying or “losing” key evidence — and the Honorable, Independent Attorney General tells both the legislative and judicial branches that they have no right even to investigate. And although we know for a fact that the top aides to both Bush and Cheney were involved in discussions of whether the tapes should be destroyed, we have no idea what they said and are unlikely ever to know, and even if we did find out, it’s impossible to envision anything happening as a result.
* * * * *
And thus we have a perfect oligarchical system in which, literally, our most powerful and well-connected elite are free to break the law with impunity, exempt from any consequences. While exempting themselves, these same figures impose increasingly Draconian “law and order” solutions on the masses to ensure that even small infractions of the law prompt vigorous prosecution and inflexible, lengthy prison terms.
As Matt Stoller recently noted in an excellent post on the bipartisan orthodoxies that are untouchable in political debates, “there are 1 million people put in jail for doing what Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George Bush have done” (buying and consuming illegal drugs) and “2 million people are in prison in America, by far the highest total of any other country in the world.” It’s almost impossible for the non-rich to defend themselves effectively against government accusations of criminality, and judges have increasingly less sentencing discretion to avoid imposing harsh jail terms. Punishment for crimes is for the masses only, not for members in good standing of our political and corporate establishment.
Where our political elite break the law, our leading media stars and pundits fulfill their central purpose by dutifully arguing that establishment figures who have broken the law have done nothing wrong and deserve protection, even our gratitude, when they do so. In the view of our establishment, even mere civil liability — never mind criminal punishment — is deeply unfair when imposed on lawbreaking corporations, as we see in the “debate” over telecom immunity.
This same warped principle is also expressed in how our establishment scorns the work John Edwards did in representing maimed or dead individuals against the corporations which, through recklessness or negligence, destroyed their lives. From a letter from Theodore Frank of the American Enterprise Institute to the New York Times today (h/t Jay Diamond):
There is a critical distinction between Mitt Romney’s and John Edwards’s wealth. Mr. Romney, as a businessman, made investments that created wealth. Mr. Edwards, as a trial lawyer, made his money through lawsuits that merely took from one pocket and gave to another, and probably destroyed wealth in the process. (Mr. Edwards’s multimillion-dollar medical malpractice verdicts almost certainly hurt the quality of health care in North Carolina.)
Little wonder that Mr. Romney understands that to improve the economy, one needs to expand the pie, while Mr. Edwards’s policy proposals focus entirely on the redistribution of the existing pie without thought for the future adverse consequences to the size of the pie.
Anything that results in accountability for our largest corporations is inherently bad, even when they’re found under our legal system to have broken the law or acted recklessly. Thus, John Edwards’ self-made wealth is deeply dishonorable and shameful because it came at the expense of our largest corporations and on behalf of the poor and dirty masses, while Mitt Romeny’s wealth, spawned by his CEO-father’s connections, is to be honored and praised because it benefited our establishment and was on behalf of our glorious elite.
Naturally, our establishment sees itself as Good, and thus, whatever their most powerful leaders do — even when illegal — is never really bad. It can’t be, because they do it. Hence, George Bush’s and Lewis Libby’s felonies aren’t really like the felonies of the “drug dealers” and the other street dirt. Neither the Law nor Jail are for the clean, good, upstanding establishment members, so sayeth Jay Rockefeller and Fred Hiatt and Joe Klein and David Ignatius and the rest.
* * * * *
Most revealing of all, anyone who insists that this should be different — anyone who believes that our highest political officials and largest corporations should be held accountable when they break the law — is a shrill “partisan,” bent on vengeance and Guilty of obstructionism: trying to prevent the political establishment from operating in a harmonious, bipartisan manner to do their Important Work. At least under the Bush presidency, investigations into wrongdoing are bad and disruptive and mean-spirited, and calls for consequences for illegal behavior are shrill and nasty.
Digby yesterday analyzed the sudden emergence of the Bipartisan Centrism fetishists — the David Borens and Sam Nunns and David Broders and other old System Guardians who are threatening to back the third-party candidacy of Michael Bloomberg unless they quickly see more “bipartisanship.” As Digby notes — and one should read her whole post — these Harmony Mavens were nowhere to be found during the last six years when our government was fully controlled by a one-party machine that did what it wanted without the slightest consequence.
Only now that the prospect has emerged — however small and remote it is — that there appears to be some rumblings of dissatisfaction among the masses over the deep corruption pervading every pore of our establishment are they now decreeing that we need Harmony and Bipartisan Cooperation:
I wrote about it right after the 2006 election — as soon as the Republicans lost power, I knew the gasbags would insist that it’s time to let bygones be bygones and meet the Republicans halfway in the spirit of a new beginning. GOP politicians have driven the debt sky-high and altered the government so as to be nearly unrecognizable, so logically the Democrats need to extend the hand of conciliation and move to meet them in the middle — the middle now being so far right, it isn’t even fully visible anymore.
Digby’s right that this is an effort to enforce establishment-protecting ideological orthodoxies. The campaigns of Edwards, Mike Hucakbee and Ron Paul each, in their own ways, signify that there is some intense unrest and deep dissatisfaction with our political establishment, and this has to be quashed by the concealing device known as “bipartisanship.” But it also an attempt to ensure that nothing of any significance is exposed, that none of the lawbreaking and corruption of the last six years — which they all enabled and cheered on — sees the light of day.
There is a mildly increased desperation that is palpable among our political and media elites to protect and defend their system. The extent of their wrongdoing over the last several years — political, legal and economic — is so extreme that the potential for upheaval in the event of accountability is extreme as well. Their chief weapon to protect those privileges is immunity from the rule of law, and most of our political controversies — over presidential power and state secrets and executive privilege and torture and eavesdropping and these CIA videos — really share the same root: the effort of the establishment to maintain their immunity from impropriety-exposing legal proceedings and, thus, from political consequences.
Just as the warantless eavesropping revelations did, the CIA video scandal presents an extremely clear and straightforward case of serious lawbreaking by our highest government officials. It’s far less complex and far more serious than the scandals that brought down Richard Nixon. That a rational person would be highly skeptical about the prospects that we will find out what happened, let alone that there will be consequences for any of it, is pretty compelling evidence of the kind of country we are becoming.
Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book “How Would a Patriot Act?,” a critique of the Bush administration’s use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, “A Tragic Legacy“, examines the Bush legacy.
© Salon.com
This is a great article! Sometimes I get a little impatient with Greenwald obsessing about Joe Klein or some other trivial player on the political scene, but then he comes back with a hammer like this, and all my former admiration for him returns.
Poor Glenn, getting all that cognitive dissonance into your head so you could explain the madness to us. Pharoah is guided by the (flat-earth blood drinking) Gods to rule us. If Pharoah is wrong then the Gods are WRONG and the Gods are NEVER WRONG, so Pharoah is always RIGHT. All Empires die. All richfilth are parasites and when allowed they ALWAYS destroy the host. Always. 4000 years. Of course they are above the Law. They OWN the Law. They always have. And we put our heads down and allow it to happen. “Yes, My Master. I obey. Peace is war. Obedience is Salvation. I live for you. I die for you.”
See? Simple.
Good article. This administration has been more interested not in preserving old growth and other wilderness areas, but in the conservation and expansion of a different sort of real estate: law free zones.
Given these new powers and precedents, what sort of candidates and interests should we expect to be most acutely interested in “emigrating” to them in the future? Organized crime must look to D.C. as the nest that holds the goose that lays the golden egg.
Paul Bramscher: I like your concept of the “law free zone”. The US has now joined all those other so-called democracies of the world, Mexico, for example, which our State Department declares as allies (Pakistan, Israel, for example,) who have “rules of law” (ha ha). Great. Law is as law does, and the US respects “law” about the same as everyone else.
A legitimate question those in the current “power establishment” should begin asking themselves is……where will this decadence eventually lead? Particularly given ecological realities will soon (very soon) start overwhelming political trivialities. In the end, we are all humans…frail and vulnerable unless we work together.
I don’t think any of us want the “law of the jungle” to become the law of the land, but that is where it seems to be heading unless those in DC wake up to the tsunami heading their way…..Reality always comes creeping back and those living in the dreamworld of DC better get a clue.
Please, tell me I am wrong, but this seems obvious.
Ken
A great article; the point is hammered home irrefutably.
The point, however, is easily extended to several other pieces of the big picture. First, consider how this immunity for the ruling class connects to widening wealth inequality. As the Filthy Rich at the top of society move further & further away from the rest of the population, class tensions rise, & it becomes increasingly necessary for the FR to pass laws protecting their ill-gotten gains. You can have some sort of “democracy” in a society with moderate inequality, but when the inequality becomes massive & obscene, the concept of democracy becomes meaningless. You simply have a state ruled by the rich for their own benefit.
Second, consider the dynamics of this phenomenon of the increasingly two-tier society — the Filthy Rich, and the rest of us. Increasingly, the Filthy Rich have one set of laws, while the rest of us have another. The life experience of the FR is one thing; the life experience of the rest of us is something very different. This phenomenon is an inevitable end-result of capitalism, which acts to concentrate wealth into ever-fewer hands. As the FR get fewer and richer, they are able to completely dominate the government & all state institutions. State power, including military power and police surveillance, becomes simply a tool via which the FR seek to extend the global scope of their plundering, & to protect their position (by crushing dissent) at home.
So long as money spent on elections is considered untouchable under the rights of free speech the oligarchy will control the government. Without real campaign finance reform no other real reform is going to happen.
RichM - nice summary, but isn’t just absurd? And soon isn’t going to be readily apparent to everyone including the self-centered, shallow, heartless, soul-less??, pathetic, unempathetic, filthy rich that they are DIRECTLY responsible for ongoing suffering of innocence? How much does anybody need? Orders of magnitude more than others? Talk about unsustainable.
In my humble opinion, this is when the power of numbers and the safety of numbers will come into play (and I think it already is). I sure know I wouldn’t want to be filthy rich - where is the joy in it?
What is it that Jesus said about the eye of the needle?
samh41 - Elections are structured as they are, precisely because this guarantees that the Filthy Rich can buy & control government. Though it would be wonderful if we could get campaign finance reform, we can’t — because the guys in Congress have already been bought, and will always reliably torpedo such legislation.
buffalo_ken — Sure it’s absurd. I don’t think, though, that it will ever be apparent to the FR themselves that they’re responsible for the suffering of innocents. All the anti-Castro lunatics in Florida, for example, remain completely unaware of any suffering caused by their former plutocratic rule in Cuba. They think they’re the “good guys,” and that Castro is “the tyrant.” // As Greenwald says in the article, “Naturally, our establishment sees itself as Good…” Oligarchs have a great capacity for viewing themselves in a favorable light.
Chalmers Johnson lists four “sorrows of empire” in his analysis of the causes of the failure of our republic, and this torture tape issue clearly demonstrates the third sorrow of empire, to wit: “…the replacement of truth by propaganda and disinformation and an acceptance of hypocrisy as the norm for declarations coming from our government.”
Those is “public service” are required to take an oath, and this oath is not an expression of fealty to any particular institution of government, but to the Constitution itself.
Is it of any concern to anyone, including Mr. Greenwald, that the existence of the CIA is not legitimate and that the legislation that gave rise to it, the National Security Act of 1947, is itself unconstitutional?
If the secret police operating within a secret state security apparatus commit transparently illegal acts, is anyone surprised? No one is actually surprised even though pious expressions of outrage are heard far and wide. The righteous themselves are engaged in hypocritical posturing.
The Constitution has been violated so many times that the oath to defend it from enemies from without and within becomes de facto an oath to engage in acts of pure political expediency.
The government no longer has a foundation of principal, a Supreme Law of the land.
“The campaigns of Edwards, Mike Hucakbee and Ron Paul each, in their own ways, signify that there is some intense unrest and deep dissatisfaction with our political establishment…” It is much more than mere dissatisfaction with an “establishment”, Mr. Greenwald.
It is a revolt against those institutions and political figures who have cynically and systematically destroyed the rule of law.
There is more afoot than mere dissatisfaction at the spectacle of corruption and malfeasance, there is a revolutionary anger and a deep patriotic desire to return to Constitutionally-based government and the rule of law.
Bipartisanship: “Hey, you’re ‘elite’ and I’m ‘elite.’ What they hell are we fighting about? Let’s get to the stealin already!”
“Should we eliminate habeas corpus altogether(GOP), or just a bit at a time (DEM)?”
“Torture - good (DEM), or great (GOP)?”
“Illegal spying on Americans for reasons still unrevealed? All in favor? GOP/DEM: Aye!”
Of course, “bipartisanship” assumes there are only two groups of citizens living in America. Guess the Libs and Greens and the rest no longer exist and/or aren’t “good” like the “establishment.”
cruxpuppy,
While everyone’s complaining about each and every CIA blunder, I’m glad to hear that you’re with Chalmers Johnson in pushing for an ABOLITION of the CIA. The problem with the Left is they don’t want ANY portion of gubbmint removed and think that it’ll all spoonfeed the people ! Well, gubbmint is spoonfeeding the Military Industrial Complex and Corporate America while at the same time giving the big FUCK YOU to us working/middle/lower class. Mr. Greenwald would do better to call for TERMINATING the CIA altogether as it NEVER served its purpose and the “Cold War” is long over anyway.
maxpayne -
Agreed!
On the other hand, I don’t want to be the one-legged man in the ass-kicking contest.
A nation does need an efficient intelligence gathering apparatus. The problem with the CIA is accountability. It becomes an enemy of the Constitution when it is not transparent. As it is, we cannot distinguish between an inside job and a true terrorist attack. We have an unaccountable secret government and a sham constitutional government.
While doing away with the C.I.A. the not so Supreme Court might as well get the flick.Any institution that makes decisions on party lines could be replaced by a computer.
To confirm the obvious and consonant with the gist of Greenwald’s screed, it’s no wonder that the letter below evinced no response from any of the three pols to whom it was sent.
Senator - I have increasingly heard & seen references to the state of readiness within the military establishment and the intentions of the administration to attack Iran. Is it reasonable to imagine that this possibility concerns you & your office? I certainly hope that such an outrageous but utterly unsurprising act by the claque in and around the upper reaches of the administration is a matter of utmost concern to you. The prospect of such a war is horrifying. What is your stance in the matter?
As for impeachment of the President & Vice-President, all the parsing, nuancing & equivocating in the world serves to confirm the invertebrate nature of the Democratic Congress, as has been suggested. If, for no other reason, impeachment is not taken up with these two who have committed impeachable acts, then you and yours are establishing precedent for even more egregious misdeeds with future incumbents. The aversion to impeachment, when considered in the context of recent history, is ever more inexcusable.
As a registered democrat, I am weary of the onslaught of fund raising surveys sent in my direction. I don’t need to be surveyed; I need to be persuaded that the party holds values by which it will act to counteract the relentless lying of the two-term oligarchy. Anything less than this suggests to me that you are members of the loyal opposition more interested in remaining in office and symbolically jousting than representing my concerns.
Mr. Greenwald did a good job in this article, and could have expanded the list of subverting accountability to such notables as the way Bush continued using torture after the first court ruled against it. (They keep maintaining their immoral/illegal stance, and sending it to different courts for battles over nuance not substance.) Then of course there is the debacle of New Orleans. The same kind of hedging by Cheney as to whether he’s part of the executive branch; and similar dissembling by Gonzales as to his basis for a loyalty oath, etc. There is of course the various lies that relate to why our soldiers are in Iraq beginning with many respectable figures who did what they could to blow the whistles and establish the degree to which the case was fixed for war.
An interesting article would be an attempt to demonstrate any singular policy or area of this administration’s reach of power that has not corrupted whatever it touched, inverted whatever it set out to do, or taken any viable sense of responsibility for either, etc.
Whenever I read about the latest travesty to justice brought on by these lawless power hungry American born gestapo(s), I think of the guy who murders his wife then argues that the judge must grant him custody as the sole remaining parent. THAT is the level of morality at play with this disgusting adminstration, this stain on America’s heart, body and soul!
“what the article primarily does is rely on anonymous sources to assign principal responsibility for the tapes’ destruction to mid-level CIA official Jose Rodriguez.”
So, is it to be assumed that Rodriguez is going to fall on his sword for Dick and the Idiot? I don’t think so. As I recall, he is on the docket for the House Judiciary Committee on Jan 14th. This could be really fun. Whose going to take the fall? CIA or Exec? Will Rodriguez barter for a pardon from Bush or for immunity from Conyers? Interesting dilemma.
I have a suspician that the Dick leaked the info about the destruction of these tapes as retribution for the Intel community leak of the NIE and Iran ending their Nuclear program in 2003. And don’t forget, the CIA is still pretty pissed off about the Plame outing.
The only way we can even begin to hold any of these monsters accountable is through impeachment hearings. It is the only way that the truth will ever see the light of day because it is outside of the control of the Supreme Court or the Justice Department. Hopefully, this whole tape destruction thing will finally get so nasty that Nancy will no longer be able to keep impeachment hearings “off the table”.
Oh, and I agree that the CIA needs to be accountable too. But that ain’t going to happen until the Department of Homeland Security (Jeez! Why didn’t they just name it Gestapo and get it over with?)is dismantled.
IMPEACH ‘em ALL!!! NOW!
One comment:
Vote for Dennis Kucinich - otherwise, we are toast!
There’s nothing more to say.
Great article, but it touches on another phenomenon we are seeing - the cult of celebrity. The Los Angeles District Attorney has declined to charge Brandy with Manslaughter (against the wishes of the California Highway Patrol) for the death of another motorist when she crashed her SUV. Another example of how the “Elites” in this country get a walk, even when they kill someone. Paris, Nichole, Lindsey get countless DUIs, moving violations and drug charges, and still rake in the cash, and those at the bottom swell our prisons for years. And we won’t even get into OJ and all of the other A, B, C, and D list celebs who kill thier spouses, girlfriends, friends, fans, etc, while stealing, shoplifting, kidnapping, and driving without a license (I’m lookin’ at you, Brit!).
I used to laugh at people who told us to kill our TVs, stop spending, get involved, get informed, and live with our eyes open. Now I am know they were right. I will be helping in this election cycle for the first time in my life. I have already helped in Iowa, driving 1000 miles to try to make a difference before it is too late. I will now help in my own state. It has taken this kind of outrage for me to get out of the chair, but by god,I’m standing now, and I’m not going to take it anymore! Get out of your chair with me, and let’s get control. This isn’t the first time that the wealthy have tried this, but realities on the ground have always pushed them back into their mansions and onto their polo ponies. We can do it again, but we have to shake our cynisism that makes us idle with dispair. I hate what we have become, and I am fighting back. I’ll join all of you shoulder to shoulder this year - let’s roll!
cross-posted @ Salon
I agree with Glenn’s analysis, particularly that this is indeed a pathology of the political establishment. The ascendancy of the present monarchical War Criminal-in-Chief and the Republic Party was achieved, in part, by the maladministration’s open scorn for, and defiance of, the rule of law, especially well-settled constitutional precepts and obligations.
But their success would have been at least limited if their heinous behavior were exceptional not only in degree, but in kind. But it isn’t. The rogues in power have gotten as far as they have precisely because they correctly understand that the political elite and its sycophantic and corporate-controlled media coverage tacitly agree, to paraphrase the late Leona Helmsley, that “We don’t abide by laws, we just promulgate them. Only the little people must abide by laws.”
As I’ve observed before, in a political process that requires candidates to perpetually amass sufficient wealth to participate, and which validates and rewards the wealthy over the principled, it’s not surprising that principle has become obsolete, or “quaint”. (Thus, when a politician like Chris Dodd takes a stand on principle, his colleagues and the chattering infotainwhore class reject this possibility out of hand, and conclude that his behavior is some kind of self-serving “stunt” to attract voters, aka campaign contributions.)
Even superficially-principled politicians like John Conyers and Barney Frank have expressed derision, even contempt, towards citizen outrage at their disinterest in challenging the maladministration’s abuses of law and power. They prefer to keep busy doing deals in other areas. Politicians have devolved into mere brokers or technocratic managers, eager to keep the game going, and eschewing any notion that they are obliged to undertake politically problematic and risky duties like preserving and enforcing the rule of law.
The FISA debacle is an egregious example of the bipartisan political SOP that boils down to convicted ABSCAM Congressman Ozzie Myers’ observation: “money talks; bullshit walks”. But the politicians’ general disdain for law, at least when it impinges on the order and comfort of the Oligarch’s Club, is manifest everywhere. (Those who naïvely trust “viable”, i.e., pre-selected, candidates who give lip service to restoring the “rule of law” underestimate the powerful co-opting undertow that comes with election to high office.)
That’s why Larry Craig can still hold his head high on the floor of the Senate, and why Arlen Specter was so eager to rationalize Craig reneging on his belated but quasi-honorable intention to resign. It’s why Congress finds time to censure Move.on, issue declarations in praise of Christmas, and ensure that Amerika can watch a highly-anticipated NFL football game on teevee. Freed from the tenebrous and challenging responsibility of exercising Constitutionally-mandated oversight and the “checks and balances” set forth in that document, Congress is free to serve and enable despotic executive power and the extended oligarchy to which they belong.
There is a critical distinction between Mitt Romney’s and John Edwards’s wealth. Mr. Romney, as a businessman, made investments that created wealth. Mr. Edwards, as a trial lawyer, made his money through lawsuits that merely took from one pocket and gave to another, and probably destroyed wealth in the process.
The American Enterprise Institute’s lies deserve no space in the mainstream media. Capitalists create almost zero wealth. What capitalists do is consolidate wealth, and abuse it. Wealth comes from the earth, the biosphere, the people. Wealth should remain spread out, not consolidated. The New York Times is failing its responsibility to serve the public interest by pushing the capitalist lies.
The proper action for individuals is to shift one’s exchange/association away from the capitalists and toward local communities.
The CIA routinely violates its charter and operates within the United States. Operation Mockingbird, which has been in effect for decades, is a CIA program to control the press and propagandize Americans. This is not news and anyone who bothers to look it up could get most of the details of their objectives. The real problem is that the American people have almost willfully turned over the fourth estate of the press to the first estate of the executive. We are now living in a fascist dictatorship that people would simply rather not discuss and by the time the fascists consolidate their control, it will be a little late to whine and complain. Draw your own conclusions.
We have a congress that is part of our government that is elected. The majority of our government is not elected. They are insulated, thier budgets off the books. They don’t have to obey any laws because everything they do is secret.
The so called elected side are the only ones we have to police the secret ones. Yet even they are not privy to the secrets. And the ones that are privy seem to be making laws to retroactively protect themselves and the executive branch from laws that are enforcable.
What a stinking mess. The best thing to do could be to get rid of the whole stinking mess of them and start over.
Most US questioning/torture of multitudes of ’suspects’ (other than the near-majority of those we ‘treat’ to such tender-attentions while Knowing they are “guilty of nothing-at-all”) is taped/archived — and those tapings will NEVER be available to the courts/public.
The ‘leaks’ about these particular-tapes (and/or the so-called ‘destruction’ of their copies?) was likely a ‘Ruse from onset’ — designed to surreptitiously blunt the American-publics Interest/Protest regards Torture in-general and ‘protective security measures’/loss-of-human-rights, in specific.
Firstly, they (these few ‘tapes’, so leaked/used/publicized — yet ‘unseen’) were of suspects actually/maybe ‘really bad-guys’ [an extreme-rarity among all those tortured secretly and outside-Gitmo since the onset of this ‘GWoT’-nonsense]. Secondly, descriptions of interrogations were such that methods-used were not horribly ‘over-harsh’ — and, obviously (and this-too is somewhat rare among the REAL ‘bad-guys’) it didn’t result in death or disabling-harms to these ass-clowns. Thirdly, the ‘cover-up’/destruction was subsequently couched as ‘to protect the lives of our Patriotic-protectors’ — as if there were actual terrorist-cells/operatives crawling all over the States and ’seeking targets’ (funny how these, if any ‘real-threat’ in the US, seem to overlook all the high-profile practitioners of torture and ME-mayhem around Georgetown, no?).
The intent (and huge-success) of this Mythical tape/destruction scenario is all-about ‘telling a story’ to gullible Americans: “You were under grave-threat, but thankfully noble/faceless-Patriots did your necessary/prudent dirty-work for you, and now you and kiddies are Safe — albeit your heroes (and their brave Admin-bosses facing ‘undeserved/undue criticism for it’) are now at-risk, due to all their regretted-but-required efforts on your-behalf”.
It’s all a red-herring and crafted Mind-Control myth (like so-many before/leading-up-to this one). It is meant to immunize/inoculate your thinking/opinion for the subconscious-acceptance of these neo-Inquisitions, and empower those who do-such for you to receive both your approval-of-same and keeping their anonymity and ‘all details hidden’, to-boot.
After-all, torture leading to death/dismemberment (of even any bystander, anywhere — regardless such silly-niceties like ‘probable-cause, evidence, habeas-corpus, etc.’), is supposedly just “fraternity initiation” levels of ‘needful security’ for American Interests — not any ‘Human Rights Violations’, at-all. Right?
These people are past-Masters of such subterfuge and Stunts, and we ALL know this — so why does it keep working so damn-well as Talking-Points for the Media and ‘unwashed’ here?
Vote John Edwards, otherwise we are toast.
I suggest people look into Edwards connection to the final version of the Patriot Act, his idea of mandating we pay for insurance-based health coverage, and his friends in big coal companies, before doing that.
John Edwards though doesn’t mention slashing the defence budget, having universal health care (non-profit of course!), releasing thousands of ‘over-penalized’ inmates, criminally charging Bush et al, immediately removing ALL U.S. forces from Iraq, ending U.S. imperialism (shutting down ALL bases abroad), categorically announcing no intention to bomb Iran or use nuclear weapons, replacing fossil fuels with alternative energy sources ASAP, scrapping NAFTA, expanding union membership and supporting such world institutions such as the International Court of Justice and the U.N.
That’s why Edwards has failed to distinguish himself from other corporate appointees (i.e. Hillary, Giuliani, Romney, Obama) except with his sound argument to address poverty. While I prefer Edwards to Clinton and Obama, he still tows the establishment line on most issues.
” A Nation can survive its fools, and even its ambitious. But it cannot survive Treason from within.
An enemy at the gates is less formidable for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the
Traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys,
heard in the very halls of government itself. For the Traitor appears NOT the Traitor he speaks in
accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and arguments, he appeals to the baseness
that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown
to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist, a Murderer
is less to fear. The Traitor is the PLAGUE.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero Writer, Orator, Scholar and Statesman 106 BC - 43 BC
This seems like standard criminal behavior. If there is evidence that could get you into trouble, you just destroy the evidence.