Salon: Glenn Greenwald

Is Obama's civil liberties record understandable?

Glenn Greenwald — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:28:00 PST

Earlier this week, Kevin Drum said that "nine times out of ten" Obama's policies are "pretty much what [he] expected" but that "the biggest one-time-out-of-ten where he's not doing what [he] expected is in the area of detainee and civil liberties issues." Similarly, Andrew Sullivan cited "accountability for war crimes and civil rights" as among the very few issues on which he finds fault with Obama. Matt Yglesias objects to those observations as follows:

Both Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan say they think most people are too hard on Obama, but express disappointment at his record on civil liberties issues. I agree that the civil liberties record hasn’t been exactly what I would have wanted, but I'm continually surprised that people are disappointed in this turn. Of all the things for an incumbent President of the United States to take political risks fighting for, obviously reducing the power of the executive branch is going to be dead last on the list. If you want to see civil liberties championed, that’s going to have to come from congress.

It's interesting how what was once lambasted as "Constitution-shredding" under George Bush is now nothing more than: Obama's "civil liberties record hasn’t been exactly what I would have wanted." Also, the premise implicitly embedded in Matt's argument is the standard Beltway dogma that there would be serious political costs from reversing the Bush/Cheney abuses of the Constitution and civil liberties. The success of Obama's campaign -- which emphatically and repeatedly vowed to do exactly that -- ought to have permanently retired that excuse.

Even more important, Matt seems to be implying that he knew all along that Obama never really intended to fulfill his multiple campaign promises to restore civil liberties and dismantle the Bush/Cheney war on the Constitution. So all of those righteous speeches and commitments and campaign positions were nothing more than dishonest instruments for manipulating and placating the people who supported his campaign? I don't necessarily disagree with that assessment. I neither believed nor disbelieved what Obama said during the campaign, but instead intended to wait for the evidence before deciding. And particularly once I watched Obama -- once his party's nomination was secure -- flagrantly violate his pledge to filibuster any bill containing telecom immunity, I had no expectations that he'd feel at all compelled to adhere to his other promises.

But is it really that surprising that many people did believe that Obama actually meant what he said, given that the entire campaign was predicated on his self-proclaimed uniqueness as a candidate and his over-arching intent to rid our political culture of corroding cynicism and to restore hope and faith in the political process? If Obama ran a campaign which purposely elevated the hopes of so many people -- particularly younger and new voters -- while secretly harboring the knowledge that he did not feel at all bound by what he was promising, isn't that a fairly serious indictment of his character, as well as a dangerous game to play for the Democratic Party? And during the time he was vigorously supporting Obama's candidacy last year, did Matt ever point out that Obama didn't really mean what he was saying when he spoke about these matters -- a fairly significant point to make when commenting on the election? If Obama had no intention of "reducing the power of the executive branch," why did he repeatedly proclaim that he would?

But what strikes me as the most significant aspect of Matt's commentary is that this mitigating analysis was rarely, if ever, applied to Bush. I've been reading many arguments from Obama supporters over the last couple of weeks insisting that Obama can't possibly give civilian trials to all Terrorism suspects because having to free detainees whom they can't convict in court would be politically catastrophic; but doesn't that same reasoning justify Bush's decision to open Guantanamo and hold terrorist suspects without charges? After all, how could Bush afford to risk acquittals any more than Obama?

Similarly, if Matt's argument is true that it's natural and inevitable that Presidents will try to maximize their own power -- and that it's Congress' responsibility to check that -- doesn't that mean that Bush and Cheney got a bad rap all these years for their so-called "Constitution-shredding," and that the ultimate responsibility for their abuses lies not with Bush, Cheney David Addington and John Yoo, but rather with Tom Daschle, Bill Frist, Harry Reid, Denny Hastert and Nancy Pelosi? If it's the responsibility of Congress to check presidential abuses -- since, as Matt argues, no rational person would ever expect the President to voluntarily impose or even accept limits on his own power -- then the real controversy should be about why Nancy Pelosi and company didn't do more to publicize Bush/Cheney extremism and impose limits on what they were doing. Matt, however, seemed to argue the opposite in the past -- as he when he insisted that the controversy over what Pelosi knew about torture was irrelevant because she was just a "bit player" in the whole affair. If complaints about Obama's civil liberties abuses are overheated because it's unreasonable to expect him to do anything different, shouldn't the same be said of Bush and Cheney?

I agree with Matt's explicit point that Congress has an important role to play in checking presidential abuses -- a role they've clearly abdicated no matter which party was in control. He's also right that Presidents don't easily relinquish power. But it's hardly unreasonable to object when someone runs for high political office based on clear and repeated promises that they have squarely violated. Whatever else is true, watching Obama embrace extremist policies can still be "disappointing" even if one isn't surprised that he's doing it. I could understand and accept a lot more easily this blithe acquiescence to Obama's record if it weren't for the fact that progressives and Democrats spent so many years screaming bloody murder over Bush's use of indefinite detention, military commissions, state secrets, renditions, and extreme secrecy -- policies Obama has largely and/or completely adopted as his own. One can't help but wonder, at least in some cases, how genuine those objections were, as opposed to their just having been effective tools to discredit a Republican president for partisan and political gain.

A key British official reminds us of the forgotten anthrax attack

Glenn Greenwald — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 03:28:00 PST

(updated below)

Britain is currently engulfed by a probing, controversial investigation into how their Government came to support the invasion of Iraq, replete with evidence that much of what was said at the time by both British and American officials was knowingly false, particularly regarding the unequivocal intention of the Bush administration to attack Iraq for months when they were pretending otherwise. Yesterday, the British Ambassador to the U.S. in 2002 and 2003, Sir Christopher Meyer (who favored the war), testified before the investigative tribunal and said this:

Meyer said attitudes towards Iraq were influenced to an extent not appreciated by him at the time by the anthrax scare in the US soon after 9/11. US senators and others were sent anthrax spores in the post, a crime that led to the death of five people, prompting policymakers to claim links to Saddam Hussein. . . . On 9/11 Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, told Meyer she was in "no doubt: it was an al-Qaida operation" . . . It seemed that Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, argued for retaliation to include Iraq, Meyer said. . . . But the anthrax scare had "steamed up" policy makers in Bush's administration and helped swing attitudes against Saddam, who the administration believed had been the last person to use anthrax.

I've written many times before about how the anthrax attack played at least as large of a role as the 9/11 attack itself, if not larger, in creating the general climate of fear that prevailed for years in the U.S. and specifically how the anthrax episode was exploited by leading media and political figures to gin up intense hostility towards Iraq (a few others have argued the same). That's why it's so striking how we've collectively flushed this terrorist attack down the memory hole as though it doesn't exist. When Dana Perino boasted this week on Fox News that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term," most of the resulting derision focused on the 9/11 attack while ignoring -- as always -- the anthrax attack.

What makes this particularly significant is that the anthrax attack is unresolved and uninvestigated. The FBI claimed last year that it had identified the sole perpetrator, Bruce Ivins, but because Ivins is dead, they never had the opportunity -- or the obligation -- to prove their accusations in any meaningful tribunal. The case against Ivins is so riddled with logical and evidentiary holes that it has generated extreme doubts not merely from typical government skeptics but from the most mainstream, establishment-revering, and ideologically disparate sources. Just consider some of the outlets and individuals who have stated unequivocally that the FBI's case against Ivinis is unpersausive and requires a meaningful investigation: The Washington Post Editorial Page; The New York Times Editorial Page; The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page; the science journal Nature; Senators Pat Leahy, Arlen Specter and Charles Grassley; physicist and Congressman Rush Holt, whose New Jersey district was where the anthrax letters were sent; Dr. Alan Pearson, Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; and a vast array of scientific and legal experts in the field.

Here we have one of the most consequential political events of the last decade at least -- a lethal biological terrorist attack aimed at key U.S. Senators and media figures, which even the FBI claims originated from a U.S. military lab. The then-British Ambassador to the U.S. is now testifying what has long been clear: that this episode played a huge role in enabling the attack on Iraq. Even our leading mainstream, establishment-serving media outlets -- and countless bio-weapons experts -- believe that we do not have real answers about who perpetrated this attack and how. And there is little apparent interest in investigating in order to find out. Evidently, this is just another one of those things that we'll relegate to "the irrelevant past," and therefore deem it unworthy of attention from our future-gazing, always-distracted minds.

UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler notes that the FBI has become increasingly defiant towards requests that its claims be reviewed by an independent panel; of course, that couldn't happen unless the White House and Congress permitted it to.

Tough-guy John Bolton, hiding under his bed

Glenn Greenwald — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:26:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

John Bolton is the prototypical right-wing pseudo-tough-guy: cheering on every war he can find without ever getting near any of them. And as usual for this strain of play-acting, chest-beating warrior, all of the belligerence and craving of vicarious power masks a deep and pitiful cowardice. That is often the principal purpose of warmongering from a distance. Yesterday, Bolton -- on "Washington Times Radio" -- revealed that he is so petrified of Terrorists that he would not feel safe in New York City during the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and would not even allow his family there (audio here):

Host Melanie Morgan: Given the nature and danger of bringing these terrorists to American soil, where do you think is the most safe place to be when they get here and this trial begins? Where would you put your family? John Bolton: Well, not New York City, I'm afraid to say. This is part of the callousness and the really, lack of professionalism and judgment to put them on trial anywhere in the United States in civilian courts.

The cowardice on display here is difficult to overstate -- and to behold without being ill. I lived in Manhattan on 9/11 and for many years thereafter. For weeks -- even months and years after that attack -- it was widely assumed that New York would be a likely target for another attack, but I never heard a single New Yorker -- not one -- talk about fleeing the city or hiding their family in some faraway place. During the 2004 election, New Yorkers voted for the candidate who wanted to treat Terrorism like a law enforcement problem over the pseudo-tough-guy "war president" by a margin of 80-20. The fears engulfing Bolton and which he's attempting to infect the country with are found almost exclusively among this species of war-mongers obsessed with flamboyant -- and very public -- rituals where they proclaim their own "strength" and "courage."

John Bolton and his comrades love to run around accusing anyone who doesn't want to wage more wars of being an "appeaser" and "surrendering" to Terrorists, but Bolton's cry here is the ultimate, definitive surrender: I'm too scared of the Terrorists to go about my normal life. I'm too petrified even to have my family in the same city as a terrorist trial. We can't adhere to our normal political system because the Terrorists will kill us all. Given Bolton's comments, this might be the most ironic and desperate book title in the history of publishing:

All over the world, countries have put terrorists on trial in their largest and most important cities -- London, Madrid, Mumbai, Denpasar (the capital of Bali). That's because their countries weren't flooded by meek, frightened little men like John Bolton who want to send their fellow citizens to bomb and invade as many countries as they can find in order to conceal and compensate for the suffocating cowardice revealed by both his life and these comments. It's a natural human instinct to try to prove to the world that one possesses exactly those characteristics which one most lacks -- which is why right-wing warriors of the type represented by John Bolton are so desperate to prove their Churchillian courage and resolve, always from the safest and most risk-free distances.

* * * * *

Quite related to all of this, Brad at Sadly, No examines what he calls American elites' "nationalist narcissism. They believe not only that America has the right and the duty to be the 'dominant' country in the world, but that every other country in the world should be talking forever about how wonderful we are." It's not hard to understand the source of their need to constantly have affirmed what Newsweek's Howard Fineman this week calls "our special destiny" as he frets that Obama is failing to salvage it by not keeping the U.S. at the Center of the World. It's the same need that makes John Bolton and his comrades endlessly try to prove to the world how tough and brave they are even as they hide from and cower before Terrorists. There are many reasons why America is a country perpetually at war, but this warped and broken psychological state -- weak and frightened individuals cheering on faraway wars as a means of feeling tough and strong, all justified by our own Supreme Specialness -- is one of the leading causes.

UPDATE: As he does on a virtually daily basis, Glenn Beck today perfectly illustrates this syndrome (h/t Atrios):

UPDATE II: An email I received from Jesse Levine, counsel in New York City's Law Department:

All of your recent posts have been on the mark, albeit depressing. Today's Bolton post resonates most with me, because on 9/12 I started working in the Emergency Command Center as I did for the next several weeks. Apart from working on the supply logistics (I was in a different agency then), I attended incident command meetings, which included new rumors of threats and assessments. When the Law Department formed the World Trade Center Unit, I became Assistant Chief and besides my litigation responsibilities, I prepared witnesses for the 911 Commission and NIST investigations. I also supervised the evidence gathering team that was documenting the City's response to the disaster. Through all of that I marveled at the bravery of the unsung heros of the response and aftermath, and not just the uniformed forces. I also saw the bravery of thousands who flocked to the City from all over the country to help. For a creep like Bolton to try to project his fears on the rest of us is disgusting.

That about sums it up.

Phil Carter's resignation from key detainee policy post

Glenn Greenwald — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 02:26:00 PST

(updated below)

Phillip Carter is a lawyer, a former Army Captain, a veteran of the Iraq War and a very harsh critic of the Bush administration's detention and interrogation policies. He was a vigorous supporter of Barack Obama's campaign, and in 2008, became the Obama campaign's National Veterans Director. In April of this year, he was appointed the top Pentagon official for detainee affairs, but yesterday, he suddenly "quit without explanation just days after Obama confirmed in an interview with Fox News in Beijing that his administration would miss its Jan. 22 Guantánamo closure deadline."

Carter said he was resigning due to "personal issues," and -- like Greg Craig before him -- remained loyal to Obama by refraining, at least thus far, from publicly criticizing any administration policies. I have no idea what actually motivated Carter's abrupt resignation, but here's what I do know: so many of the detention and other "War on Terror" policies Obama has explicitly adopted were the very same ones which Carter (as well as Obama) repeatedly railed against during the Bush years, in Carter's case primarily in blogs he maintained both at The Washington Post and at Slate. Whatever else is true, the policies Obama has adopted in the last six months in the very areas of Carter's responsibilities were ones Carter vehemently condemned when implemented by Bush.

Last week, the Obama DOJ announced that it would deny trials to several Guantanamo detainees and instead send them to military commissions. In May, 2008, Carter condemned military commissions in general as "fundamentally and fatally flawed" and argued that "the rule of law will prevail only if they are perpetually blocked." He cited a trial in a "civilian court" (his emphasis) of accused terrorists that had just been held by France -- "using a combination of open and sealed (i.e., classified) evidence to prove the defendants' guilt in a six-day trial" -- and argued the U.S. should copy that model: exactly the "civilian court" model the Obama administration has decisively rejected for many, perhaps most, detainees.

More notably, in a separate post from April, Carter harshly condemned the Bush administration's decision to use a military commission to try Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, accused of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Tanzania. Carter suggested that trying detainees for "war crimes" for pre-2001 acts violates the Constitution's ban on ex post facto punishments (since the U.S. was not at war at that time), and independently, he objected to "the deliberate decision to take this case away from federal prosecutors," arguing that "our default choice for the prosecution of suspected terrorists should be federal court" because "the substantive and procedural due process granted by federal courts has strategic value -- it confers legitimacy on the outcome." While the Obama administration commendably sent Ghailani to New York to be tried in a civilian court, it just announced two weeks ago that Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, whose case originated as a criminal investigation with the FBI, would now be turned over to a military commission for prosecution in connection with the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole -- raising all of the serious objections Carter voiced to the Ghailani case.

Carter had also voiced serious concerns over the Bush DOJ's use of the "state secrets" privilege as a means of evading vital constitutional and other legal questions -- only to watch the Obama DOJ do the same thing. He insisted upon a distinction between conventional wars of the past and the "War on Terror" when claiming presidential power -- pointing out that conventional wars have limits and come to an end and the "War on Terror" doesn't -- only to watch the Obama administration discard that distinction and instead adopt exactly the Bush/Cheney "war" theory as a means to detain people with no charges. During the campaign, he expressed excitement over what appeared to be Obama's stated willingness to prosecute Bush officials for war crimes, only to watch Obama, once elected, quickly insist that we should Look Forward, not Backward. Relatedly, Carter advocated real consequences for DOJ torture-approving lawyers such as John Yoo (specifically, his firing from Berkeley), only to watch the Obama administration take multiple steps to protects such officials from any legal consequences. He applauded the Bush Pentagon's cancellation of a key appointment of Gen. Jay Hood to Pakistan on the ground that Hood had presided over Guantanamo and was thus "tainted by torture," only to watch Obama appoint the highly tainted Gen. McChyrstal as his commander in Afghanistan.

As I said, I have no idea whether any of this played a role in Carter's resignation, and it's certainly possible that loyalty to Obama would prevent him from voicing these complaints. He's a thoughtful analyst who is not easily pigeon-holed and I don't want to attribute ideas to him he hasn't expressed [for instance, Carter supported the work I did on the Pentagon's military analyst program but also defended Obama's vote for telecom immunity, though on the ground that the Government should be held accountable for illegal spying (another position the Obama administration has undermined)]. But what is abundantly clear is that many of the Bush/Cheney policies which Carter found most offensive are ones which the new administration has explicitly adopted as its own. Equally clear is that, following Greg Craig, this is now the second high-profile resignation of a relatively devoted civil libertarian in a short period of time. Combine that with the still-missing-and-unconfirmed Dawn Johnsen, and all of this leaves those who are indifferent or hostile to civil liberties values -- people like John Brennan and Rahm Emanuel -- with even fewer counter-weights than before.

UPDATE: James Joyner adds some thoughts about Carter's resignation, which I generally share (again, excluding speculation over why he resigned), but one his commenters claims I was wrong in what I wrote because Carter approved of both civilian trials and military courts-martial as a means of trying terrorists, and only disapproved of "special military tribunals created after 9/11." The commenter correctly describes Carter's position, but I don't see how that makes what I wrote wrong. Aside from the fact that Carter explicitly advocated that we follow France's example of trying terrorist suspects in "civilian courts," and separately wrote that "our default choice for the prosecution of suspected terrorists should be federal court" (links above), the military commissions used by Bush and now Obama are not military courts-martial and don't use the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Instead, they are the very "special military tribunals created after 9/11" which the commenter indicates (correctly) Carter opposes.

On a different note, Wired's Noah Shachtman spoke to Carter today and came away convinced that his resignation was not due to policy differences with the administration, for what that's worth. As I made clear from the start, far more interesting than Carter's real reasons for resigning is to examine the huge gap between the views of a very respected military and legal analyst who volunteered to help get Obama elected and the positions Obama has taken since becoming President.

Greg Craig and Obama's worsening civil liberties record

Glenn Greenwald — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:25:00 PST

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

Over at Daily Kos, Barbara Morrill complains that The Washington Post's Richard Cohen "is Karl Rove dressed up in pseudo-sadness" because -- according to her -- Cohen today "whines that the Attorney General announced that the United States follows the rule of law" by giving trials to 5 Guantanamo detainees. I don't disagree with Morrill's general assessment of Cohen, but his point today is actually the exact opposite of what she describes. Cohen wasn't accusing Obama of lacking moral clarity because he's giving trials to a few of the 9/11 defendants; rather, Cohen argues that the lack of moral clarity comes from denying trials to many, perhaps most, of the detainees, who will receive only military commissions or be subjected to indefinite detention with no trials:

The Barack Obama of that Philadelphia speech would not have let his attorney general, Eric Holder, announce the new policy for trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other Sept. 11 defendants in criminal court, as if this were a mere departmental issue and not one of momentous policy. And the Barack Obama of the speech would have enunciated a principle of law and not an ad hoc system in which some alleged terrorists are tried in civilian courts and some before military tribunals. What is the principle in that: What works, works? Try putting that one on the Liberty Bell.

I point to this because it highlights an extreme logical fallacy coming from some Obama supporters ever since Holder announced the Guantanamo policy -- a fallacy that is the inevitable by-product of the administration's incoherent positions. In order to defend Obama, it's necessary simultaneously to embrace these self-negating premises:

(1) The Rule of Law and our core political values require that terrorist suspects like Khalid Shiekh Mohammed be given trials (as Morrill put it: "the Attorney General announced that the United States follows the rule of law"); (2) Obama is explicitly denying trials to many -- probably most -- of the Guantanamo detainees (as well as the "rendered" ones at Bagram), instead putting them before military commissions or, worse, indefinite detention with no charges; (3) Obama should be praised as a courageous and principled leader because he's following the Rule of Law, which -- see #1 -- requires trials for terrorism suspects.

Isn't the core inconsistency of these premises obvious? Even Richard Cohen can see it. The administration's actual position -- we'll give trials to a handful of people we know we can convict and will continue to imprison them even if they're acquitted, while affirmatively denying trials to the rest -- is about as far from a principled or even cogent position as it gets. Worse, it's impossible to defend Holder's decision to give a trial to Mohammed by appealing to "the rule of law" given that many of the detainees are being denied trials. If (as Obama defenders insist) the "rule of law" requires trials, doesn't that mean, by definition, that Obama and Holder -- by using military commissions and indefinite detention -- are trampling on "the rule of law," not upholding it?

To understand what has been happening with Obama's actions on the civil liberties front in general -- and how he came to embrace two core Bush/Cheney policies in particular (indefinite detention and military commissions) -- it's very worthwhile to read this new Time article by Massimo Calabresi and Michael Weisskopf on how and why White House Counsel Greg Craig was pushed out of his position. In essence, Craig was the voice inside the administration insisting that Obama adhere to his civil liberties campaign pledges and dismantle the Bush/Cheney apparatus that progressives (and Obama) long claimed to find so objectionable. But once Obama decided a few months into his presidency that he would not do so, Craig became disfavored and then, finally, pushed out:

Interviews with two dozen current and former officials show that Obama's public decision to reverse himself and fight the release of the [torture] photographs signaled a behind-the-scenes turning point in his young presidency. Beginning in the first two weeks of May, Obama took harder lines on government secrecy, on the fate of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and on the prosecution of terrorists worldwide. The President was moving away from some promises he had made during the campaign and toward more moderate positions, some favored by George W. Bush. At the same time, he quietly shifted responsibility for the legal framework for counterterrorism from Craig to political advisers overseen by Emanuel, who was more inclined to strike a balance between left and right.

Note how abandoning one's campaign promises and adopting Bush/Cheney detention and secrecy policies is now deemed "moderate" -- or, as the Time photo caption calls it, "pragmatic." The White House began panicking as they were attacked by Dick Cheney and the Right for being "soft on terror," and the results were depressingly predictable:

Obama needed to regain control quickly, and he started by jettisoning liberal positions he had been prepared to accept -- and had even okayed -- just weeks earlier. First to go was the release of the pictures of detainee abuse. Days later, Obama sided against Craig again, ending the suspension of Bush's extrajudicial military commissions. The following week, Obama pre-empted an ongoing debate among his national-security team and embraced one of the most controversial of Bush's positions: the holding of detainees without charges or trial, something he had promised during the campaign to reject. . . . The unseen struggle took place in the spring, but the results are emerging now. On Nov. 13, Attorney General Eric Holder unveiled plans to try Guantánamo Bay detainees in federal courts, as preferred by liberals, but he also announced he would try other suspected terrorists using extrajudicial proceedings out of Bush's playbook. The Administration is preparing to unveil its blueprint for closing the prison, but Obama will do so using some of the same Bush-era legal tools he once deplored.

None of this will be news to anyone following Obama's relentless and continuous embrace all year long of many of the "counter-terrorism" policies of the Bush administration -- ones which both he and progressives once claimed to find so intolerable. But particularly striking is this on-the-record justification offered by a White House spokesman:

The White House says Obama hasn't changed, just adjusted. "He and the Administration have adapted as we have learned more and the issues have evolved, but there has not been an ideological shift," says spokesman Ben LaBolt.

By embracing and defending numerous Bush/Cheney policies he once deplored, "Obama hasn't changed, just adjusted." He's learned secret things that he can't tell you about but which -- you should accept -- do justify his "adaptations." Whenever Bush followers would run out of arguments to defend their leader's actions, that's the same rationale they'd resort to: he knows secret things that you don't know and therefore we should trust him. So Obama has "learned" things that caused him to abandon his vehement condemnations of indefinite detention, state secrets, military commissions and denial of habeas corpus as unjust and un-American travesties and come to embrace them as important and necessary policies? Wow: that must have been quite an education. Don't he and his supporters owe George Bush and Dick Cheney a sincere apology for criticizing them all those years for these policies when, as it turns out, they were necessary and just all along? And see this insightful argument that makes a related point.

So one of the very few pro-civil-liberties insiders with any power is now gone, replaced by a supremely partisan Washington insider with little apparent interest in those values. One of Obama's most impressive and exciting appointments -- Dawn Johnsen to head the OLC -- has still not been confirmed despite a 60-seat Democratic Senate. Instead, the former CIA official who defended so many of the Bush-era terrorism policies, John Brennan, remains as Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser. And Rahm Emanuel -- he of the "build-power-by-increasing-Blue-Dogs" mentality and a driving force behind last year's Congressional enactment of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping -- continues to consolidate power even in these supposedly non-political areas. Given all of that -- and with the 2010 midterms approaching -- does anyone think these trends will improve rather than worsen?

Whether Obama has adopted every last radical Bush/Cheney terrorism policy -- he hasn't -- is not the point. And the question of whether "Obama is as bad as Bush" -- he isn't -- is no more relevant than the excuse that Bush's torture program shouldn't be criticized because at least it never reached the level of Saddam's rape rooms and limb removals. As even Time now recognizes, many of the policies once widely declared by Democrats to be a grave threat to the Constitution are now explicitly adopted by the Obama administration. And it's flatly inconsistent to invoke "the rule of law" to defend Obama's decision to give trials to a few Guantanamo detainees without pointing out that he's violating that very same precept by denying trials to so many.

UPDATE: The Nation's Jeremy Scahill reveals that the U.S. military is using Blackwater -- Blackwater -- as part of "a secret program in [Pakistan in] which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives." McClatchy reports that Obama has made a decision to send 34,000 more troops to Afghanistan which, if true, means, as Juan Cole says, that "Gen. Stanley McChrystal has won the struggle for policy decisively."

So, to recap: we have indefinite detention, military commissions, Blackwater assassination squads, escalation in Afghanistan, extreme secrecy to shield executive lawbreaking from judicial review, renditions, and denials of habeas corpus. These are not policies Obama has failed yet to uproot; they are policies he has explicitly advocated and affirmatively embraced as his own.

And if you haven't seen or read Bill Moyers' amazing -- and obviously relevant -- examination this week of how and why President Johnson escalated the war in Vietnam, I can't recommend highly enough that you do so.

UPDATE II: Nick Baumann of Mother Jones examines other aspects of the Time article that he calls "troubling," and makes some important points about what all of this reflects about Obama and his civil liberties commitments.

UPDATE III: This new 7-minute video from Brave New Films and Robert Greenwald (no relation) synthesizes many of these issues, as it features interviews with Afghan citizens who were imprisoned with no charges and abused by the U.S. at Bagram for years. I realize it's far more important to know what Les Gelb and the Brookings Institution think about such things, but every now and then it's worth hearing from Afghans about their own country, too. In this case, their commentary about the impact of our detention policies and occupation is well worth hearing:

The extreme secrecy of the federal courts

Glenn Greenwald — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:24:00 PST

(updated below)

Once conservatives became embarrassed by their cowardly warnings that we would all be killed if we held a 9/11 trial in New York, they switched to a new argument: trials in a real court would lead to the disclosure of classified information that would help the Terrorists. In advancing this claim, they relied on the always-unhinged rantings of National Review's Andy McCarthy -- who has also suggested that Bill Ayers was the real author of Barack Obama's "Dreams from my Father"; attacked his own editors for pointing out the falsehoods of Sarah Palin's "death panel" claims, which McCarthy insisted were true; defended the Birther movement and dissented from NR's editorial rejection of it; and was excoriated by Rich Lowry for claiming that Obama "rather likes tyrants and dislikes America." This person -- someone who is often too fringe, hysterical and delusional even for National Review -- is the "legal expert" on which the Right is relying to claim that real trials will jeopardize classified information.

To see how false this claim is, all anyone ever had to do was look at the Classified Information Procedures Act, a short and crystal clear 1980 law that not only permits, but requires, federal courts to undertake extreme measures to ensure the concealment of classified information, even including concealment from the defendant himself. Section 3 provides: "Upon motion of the United States, the court shall issue an order to protect against the disclosure of any classified information disclosed by the United States to any defendant in any criminal case in a district court of the United States." Section 9 required the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to consult with the Attorney General and Defense Secretary to develop rules to carry out the Act's requirements, and the resulting guidelines provide for draconian measures so extreme that it's hard to believe they can exist in a judicial system that it supposed to be open and transparent.

To see how severe these secrecy measures are, consider what is currently being done in the criminal case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first accused Terrorists sent by the Obama administration to New York to stand trial after being interrogated and tortured for years in CIA black sites and at Guantanamo with no charges:

To ensure that secrets do not leak, Judge Kaplan has imposed a protective order on all classified information, which may be reviewed by the defense lawyers only in a special "secure area," a room whose location has not been disclosed. The order covers all materials that might "reveal the foreign countries in which" Mr. Ghailani was held from 2004 to 2006 -- the period when he was in the secret jails -- and the names and even physical descriptions of any officer responsible for his detention or interrogation, the order says. It also covers information about "enhanced interrogation techniques that were applied" to Mr. Ghailani, "including descriptions of the techniques as applied, the duration, frequency, sequencing, and limitations of those techniques." The defense lawyers, who had to obtain security clearance, cannot disclose the information to Mr. Ghailani without permission of the court or the government. Any motions they write based on the material must be prepared in the special room, and nothing may be filed publicly until it is reviewed by the government. So, last Monday, when Mr. Ghailani’s lawyers filed a motion seeking dismissal of the charges because of "the unnecessary delay in bringing the defendant to trial," they included only a few mostly blank cover sheets. The rest of the motion, which presumably offers rich details about Mr. Ghailani’s time in detention, remains secret, and a censored version will be made public only after it is cleared by the government.

Does that sound like a judicial process incapable of concealing secrets, or does it sound more like a Star Chamber where the justice system operates in the dark, even to shield government torture and illegal prisons from disclosure? Many federal judges -- particularly in criminal cases -- are notorious for being highly sympathetic to the government. That's even more true in a case involving one of the most hated criminal defendants ever to be tried in an American court, sitting a very short distance from the site where he is alleged to have killed 3,000 people in a terrorist attack. And note that the law permits the judge no discretion: if the Government claims something is classified, then "the court shall issue an order to protect against the disclosure of any classified information." With some exceptions, ever since the "War on Terror" began, nobody has safeguarded government secrets as dutifully and subserviently as federal judges -- even when those secrets involve allegations of war crimes and other serious felonies. That's what DOJ officials mean when they keep praising Southern District of New York judges for their supreme competence and expertise in handling terrorism cases. Federal courts in general love to keep what is supposed to be their open proceedings a secret, but that instinct is magnified exponentially in national security and terrorism cases.

Even during the Bush years, numerous defendants accused of terrorist acts were tried and convicted in federal courts -- John Walker Lindh, Richard Reid, Zacarias Moussaoui, Ali al-Marri, Jose Padilla. Those spewing the latest right-wing scare tactic (Osama bin Laden will learn everything if we have trials!) cannot point to a single piece of classified information that was disclosed as a result of any of these trials. If that were a legitimate fear, wouldn't they be able to? Like most American institutions, our federal court system is empowered to shield from public disclosure anything the government claims is secret. Just look at the extreme measures invoked in the Ghailani case to see how true that is.

UPDATE: As indicated, nobody -- including the right-wing fear-mongers -- can claim that any of the numerous terrorist trials conducted over the last ten years resulted in the release of any classified or other harmful information. Standing alone, that fact illustrates how baseless is this fear; if "disclosure of sensitive information" were a real risk, wouldn't they be able to point to instances where that happened during any of the numerous Bush-era terrorist trials?

The sole example cited by the Right is the 1995 trial of accused World Trade Center bomber Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. Both Andrew McCarthy, who was one of the prosecutors in that case, and former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who was the judge presiding over the trial, have made the claim that the Rahman trial resulted in the disclosure of secret information that Osama bin Laden somehow used to his benefit.

Even leaving to the side the fact that these two individuals are among the most extreme right-wing ideologues who always insist that we must abandon our normal rules of justice lest we get slaughtered by the Terrorists, one of two things is true regarding their claim about that trial: either (1) McCarthy and/or Mukasey failed to use the protections of CIPA to prevent the disclosure of classified information, which means the disclosures were the result of their ineptitude or disregard for the law, not a natural by-product of terrorist trials; or (2) the released information was not "classified," which -- given how the U.S. Government classifies virtually everything it can find -- renders highly dubious their fear-mongering claim that Osama benefited from non-classified information released at the 1995 trial. Adam Serwer elaborates on this latter point here.

Rule-of-law extremism engulfs primitive Eastern Europe

Glenn Greenwald — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:22:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

Lithuania is currently embroiled in a bizarre and deeply confusing political controversy which reveals what happens when a country becomes gripped by extremist ideologies. Evidence has emerged that Lithuanian intelligence agencies allowed secret CIA prisons to be maintained in their country during the Bush era. Just because such prisons would be "illegal" under the so-called "law" of Lithuania and various international conventions to which that nation is a signatory, irresponsible leaders of that country are demanding "investigations" and even possibly legal consequences if it turns out crimes were committed. What kind of a backwards, primitive country would do something like this?

[I]ncreasingly, after years of issuing denials, Lithuania's leaders are no longer ruling out the possibility that the CIA operated a secret prison in this northern European country of 3.5 million people, and that its government will have to deal with the fallout. Last month, newly elected President Dalia Grybauskaite said she had "indirect suspicions" that the CIA reports might be true, and urged Parliament to investigate more thoroughly.

What sort of a newly elected President would get into office and then start demanding that actions From the Past -- rather than the Future -- be investigated, just because they might be "criminal"? This deeply irresponsible Lithuanian leader apparently doesn't care about inflaming partisan divisions, and worse, appears blind to the dangers of criminalizing policy disputes. Even more outrageously, Lithuania faces one of the steepest recessions in all of Europe; obviously, this is a time, more than ever, that Lithuanians should be Looking to the Future, Not the Past. Instead, they're wallowing in deeply inflammatory, partisan and extremist rhetoric like this:

Valdas Adamkus, who was president when the CIA prison was reportedly in operation, from 2004 until 2005, said he had no personal knowledge of the covert program. But he raised the possibility that Lithuanian security officials could face prosecution if the reports are confirmed. "If this actually did occur, and it is grounded with proof, we have to apologize to the international community that something like this went down in Lithuania," he told the Baltic News Service. "And those who did it," he added, "in my eyes are criminals" . . . . Dainius Zalimas, a legal adviser to the Lithuanian Defense Ministry, said the existence of a covert prison would violate both Lithuanian statutes and international human rights conventions that the government signed. If firm evidence is gathered by the Parliament, he said, prosecutors would be obliged to open a case and could target both Lithuanian and U.S. officials. "From a legal point of view, it would mean that Lithuania, along with the United States, was contributing to quite serious violations of human rights," said Zalimas. . . .

"Criminals"? "Prosecutions"? "Obliged to open a case"? "Violations of human rights"? Just because they maintained a few secret prisons in violation of domestic and international law? What kind of crazy, purist, Far Leftist utopians are running that place? They need a heavy dose of pragmatism so they can understand all the reasons why so-called "crimes" like this can be overlooked -- just blissfully forgotten like a bad dream. Even worse, with intemperate and shrill language of the type they're throwing around, it's seems clear that the Lithuanian press is sorely in need of some David Broders, Fred Hiatts, and David Ignatiuses to explain to them that subjecting law-breaking political officials to "investigations" and "prosecutions" is quite disruptive and unpleasant when those crimes involve matters other than consensual sex between adults.

Even more alarming, this "rule of law" and "human rights" fetish seems to be spreading: "In neighboring Poland, prosecutors in the capital of Warsaw have opened a criminal probe into reports that the CIA operated a prison for al-Qaeda suspects near a former military air base." Last month, an Italian court convicted 22 CIA agents of the so-called "crime" of kidnapping someone off their street and sending him to Egypt to be tortured. And the British High Court this week released its written Opinion -- over the objections of British and American officials -- ordering the release of details of Binyam Mohamed's torture at the hands of U.S. agents.

Thankfully, the U.S. remains a bastion of pragmatic sanity in this rising sea of accountability extremism. Unlike those strange Eastern Europeans and absolutist Western European purist judges, we know there are far more important priorities than "investigating" war crimes, compelling transparency, and holding political criminals accountable. As the rest of the world gets distracted by all this chatter about The Past, our President gallantly protects us from such divisive unpleasantries by aggressively blocking any war crimes investigations and concealing evidence -- even modifying decades-old transparency laws to do so if necessary. Even more inspiring, our patriotic media enthusiastically plays a crucial helping role; The Washington Post has known since 2005 in exactly which countries the CIA maintained its illegal, secret prisons but still refuses to say, even though they've now been banned by Executive Order and even though Lithuania and Poland are launching investigations which the Post could easily answer, but chooses not to.

When President Obama was in China last week, he proudly boasted of the American commitment to transparency and lamented that China lacked such values. Fortunately, he doesn't get carried away with "principles" the way that these short-sighted Lithuanians and Polish and others do. Unlike those unhinged primitive nations with no democratic traditions, we understand that government crimes should be disclosed, investigated and punished only when they occur during a time other than the Past. It's vital that we maintain our leadership role in teaching this critical value to the world, lest the type of crazed accountability/rule-of-law fetish currently engulfing Lithuania spreads even further like some uncontrollable virus.

UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz notes that in 2005, Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Lithuania and visited a museum in Vilnius which once housed a KGB prison, where the Soviets tortured prisoners. That museum exhibits "solitary confinement rooms which were used to break down the prisoners and make them confess." Shockingly, "the walls are padded and soundproofed, made to absorb the cries and shouts for help," as it was the site of barbaric acts like this:

Prisoners either had to stand in ice-cold water or to balance on a small platform. Every time they got tired they fell down into the water.

After his visit, Rumsfeld released an "Open Letter to the People of Vilnius," in which he solemnly observed that "the museum was a stark reminder of the importance of preserving our liberty at all costs." Schwarz asks: "Did Rumsfeld Tour KGB Torture Museum to Pick Up Useful Tips?"

UPDATE II: Here's a Getty photograph of what Rumsfeld called his "enjoyable and educational" trip to the KGB prison, accompanied by this apparently un-ironic caption: "Rumsfeld tours Lithuania’s KGB Museum, a torture site during the Stalin era, in October 2005" (h/t sysprog).

The Washington establishment suffers a serious defeat

Glenn Greenwald — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 04:21:00 PST

Something quite amazing happened yesterday in Congress: the House Finance Committee -- in a truly bipartisan and even trans-ideological vote -- defied the banking industry, the Federal Reserve, the Democratic leadership, and mainstream Beltway opinion in order to pass an amendment, sponsored by GOP Rep. Ron Paul and Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, mandating a genuine and probing audit of the Fed. The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim has the best account of what took place, noting:

In an unprecedented defeat for the Federal Reserve, an amendment to audit the multi-trillion dollar institution was approved by the House Finance Committee with an overwhelming and bipartisan 43-26 vote on Thursday afternoon despite harried last-minute lobbying from top Fed officials and the surprise opposition of Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who had previously been a supporter.

Grim details how key Committee Democrats such as Frank -- who spent the year claiming to support an audit of the Fed in the face of rising anger over its secret and bank-subservient policies -- suddenly introduced their own amendment (sponsored by Democratic Rep. Melvin Watt) that would have essentially gutted the Paul/Grayson provisions. Banking industry and Fed officials, as well as the Democratic leadership, then got behind that alternative provision as a means of pretending to support transparency while protecting the Fed from any genuine examination. Notwithstanding the pressure exerted on Committee Democrats to support that watered-down "audit" bill, Grayson convinced 15 of his colleagues to join with Republicans to provide overwhelming support for the Paul/Grayson amendment. As Grim notes:

[Frank] urged a no vote, yet 15 Democrats bucked him, voting with Paul. Key to winning Democratic support was a letter posted early Thursday from labor leaders and progressive economists. The letter, organized by the liberal blog FireDogLake.com, called for a rejection of the Watt substitute and support for Paul. Grayson was able to show Democratic colleagues that the liberal base was behind them. "Today was Waterloo for Fed secrecy," a victorious Grayson said afterwards.

The bill still faces substantial hurdles in becoming law, of course, but yesterday's vote has made that outcome quite possible, and it's worth noting several important points highlighted by what happened here:

(1) Our leading media outlets are capable of understanding political debates only by stuffing them into melodramatic, trite and often distracting "right v. left" storylines. While some debates fit comfortably into that framework, many do not. Anger over the Wall Street bailouts, the control by the banking industry of Congress, and the impenetrable secrecy with which the Fed conducts itself resonates across the political spectrum, as the truly bipartisan and trans-ideological vote yesterday reflects. Populist anger over elite-favoring economic policies has long been brewing on both the Right and Left (and in between), but neither political party can capitalize on it because they're both dependent upon and subservient to the same elite interests which benefit from those policies.

For that reason, many of the most consequential political conflicts are shaped far more by an "insider v. outsider" dichotomy than by a "GOP v. Democrat" or "Left v. Right" split. The pillaging of America's economic security by financial elites, with the eager assistance of the government officials who they own and who serve them, is the prime example of such a conflict. The political system as a whole -- both parties' leadership -- is owned and controlled by a handful of key industry interests, and anger over the fact is found across the political spectrum. Yesterday's vote is a very rare example where the true nature of political power was expressed and the petty distractions and artificial fault lines overcome.

(2) As Grim expertly describes, the effort to defeat the Paul/Grayson amendment came from all of the typical Washington power centers using all of the establishment's typical manipulative tools:

The playbook in Washington often goes like this: When a measure that threatens the establishment builds enough momentum that it must be dealt with, it is labeled as "unserious." The Washington Post editorial board, true to the script, called Paul's measure "an unserious answer to a serious question." And it particularly rankles the center that a pair of "wingnuts " [Paul and Grayson] are behind a successful effort to challenge the prevailing order. Step Two is for a "serious" compromise to be offered. In this case, it was Watt's amendment. But by the time the vote was called Thursday afternoon, committee members had seen through his measure, recognizing that it was not a compromise effort to bring real transparency to the Fed but an attempt to further shut the doors.

One can count on one hand the number of times that establishment attacks like this fail, but this time -- at least for now -- it did. And it reveals a winning formula: where there is a strong and principled leader in Congress willing to defy the Party's leadership and the Washington establishment (Grayson), combined with leading experts lending their name to the effort (economists Dean Baker and James Galbraith), organizations standing behind it (labor groups), and a shrewd and driven organizer putting it all together (FDL's Jane Hamsher), even the most powerful forces and opinion-enforcers can be defeated, as they were here. Those progressive advocates' refusal to be distracted by trite partisan considerations, and their reliance on substantial GOP support to pass the bill (as hypocritical as the GOP's position might have been), was particularly crucial -- and smart.

(3) Beyond the specifics, a genuine audit of the Fed would be a major blow to the way Washington typically works. The Fed is one of those permanent power centers in this country that exert great power with very little accountability and almost no transparency (like much of the intelligence and defense community). The power they exert has exploded within the last year as a result of the financial crisis, yet they continue to operate in a completely opaque manner and with virtually no limits. Its officials have been trained to view their unfettered power as an innate entitlement, and they express contempt for any efforts to limit or even monitor what they do.

In other words, the Fed is a typical Washington institution that operates un-democratically and in virtually total secrecy, and a Congressionally-mandated audit that they (and much of the DC establishment) desperately oppose would be a serious step towards changing the dynamic of how things function. At the very least, it would provide an important template for defeating the interests which, in Washington, almost never lose. At least yesterday, those interests did lose -- resoundingly -- and the importance of that should not be overlooked.

The administration guts its own argument for 9/11 trials

Glenn Greenwald — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:20:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

"What I'm absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism" -- Barack Obama, yesterday. "Holder said five other Guantanamo detainees would be tried by military tribunals. The five include Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of masterminding the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen; and Canadian Omar Khadr, accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan" -- NPR, yesterday. "'Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions . . . . and about 75 more have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material' . . . If true, that means that there are 75 so-called 'Fifth Category' detainees who might be subject to indefinite detention without trial" -- The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, yesterday, quoting The Washington Post.

* * * * *

Can anyone reconcile Obama's homage to "our legal traditions" and his professed faith in jury trials in the New York federal courts with the reality of what his administration is doing: i.e., denying trials to a large number of detainees, either by putting them before military commissions or simply indefinitely imprisoning them without any process at all?

During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Eric Holder struggled all day to justify his decision to put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial because he has no coherent principle to invoke. He can't possibly defend the sanctity of jury trials in our political system -- the most potent argument justifying what he did -- since he's the same person who is simultaneously denying trials to Guantanamo detainees by sending them to military commissions and even explicitly promising that some of them will be held without charges of any kind.

Once you endorse the notion that the Government has the right to imprison people not captured on any battlefield without giving them trials -- as the Obama administration is doing explicitly and implicitly -- what convincing rationale can anyone offer to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in New York? If you're taking the position that military commissions and even indefinite detention are perfectly legitimate tools to imprison people -- as Holder has done -- then what is the answer to the Right's objections that Mohammed himself belongs in a military commission? If the administration believes Omar Khadr belongs in a military commission, and if they believe others can be held indefinitely without any charges, why isn't that true of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? By denying jury trials to a large number of detainees, Obama officials have completely gutted their own case for why they did the right thing in giving Mohammed a trial in New York.

Even worse, Holder was reduced to admitting -- even boasting -- that this concocted multi-tiered justice system (trials for some, commissions for others, indefinite detention for the rest) enables the Government to pick and choose what level of due process someone gets based on the Government's assessment as to where and how they're most likely to get a conviction:

Courts and commissions are both essential tools in our fight against terrorism . . . On the same day I sent these five defendants to federal court, I referred five others to be tried in military commissions. I am a prosecutor, and as a prosecutor, my top priority was simply to select the venue where the government will have the greatest opportunity to present the strongest case with the best law. . . . At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is a federal court.

Does that remotely sound like a "justice system"? If you're accused of being a Terrorist, there's not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you based on ensuring that it will win. Even worse, Holder repeatedly assured Senators that the administration would continue to imprison 9/11 defendants even in the very unlikely case that they were acquitted, citing what they previously suggested was their Orwellian authority of so-called "post-acquittal detention powers." Is there any better definition of a "show trial" than one in which the defendant has no chance of ever being released even if acquitted, because the Government will simply thereafter assert the power to hold him indefinitely without charges?

I understand that sending even a limited number of Terrorism suspects to federal court is politically difficult and controversial, as the last couple of days have demonstrated. But by refusing to embrace and defend the core principle of justice at stake here -- that a distinguishing feature of our political system is that we don't imprison or kill people without charging them with a crime and proving their guilt in a real court, and that military commissions and indefinite detention are un-American (which Democrats argued under Bush) -- the Obama administration has made it far more difficult for it to defend what it is doing, as well as for those who want to defend their decision to give trials to 9/11 defendants.

To see how that works, here is part of the exchange I had on MSNBC this week with George Pataki, while debating trials for 9/11 defendants:

MR. GREENWALD: If you look at how the British treated the people who did the London subway bombings, the Spanish who treated the people who did the Madrid subway bombings -- even India just put on trial the sole surviving terrorist who perpetrated the Mumbai massacre last year. Even Indonesia gave trials in their real cities to the people who blew up the nightclubs in Bali. It's only the American conservatives who are feeding the terrorist agenda by saying that we're too scared to hold trials -- MR. RATIGAN: Hold on, Glenn. MR. PATAKI: Can I respond to that, Dylan? Only the -- only the -- only the American conservatives? Then tell me why Obama and Holder are using military tribunals against those who blow up Americans in acts of war overseas? They're just picking these particular terrorists for trial in New York because they blew up civilians in New York. So what their logic is, "Kill thousands of civilians and you can get a civilian trial; kill one or two overseas, and we're going to use military tribunals." That makes no sense.

For those wanting to defend the administration, what's the answer to that? The same thing happened when Rep. Nadler, as part of the same segment, tried to defend the Obama administration's decision to try the 9/11 defendants in New York:

REP. NADLER: I think that our tradition is that people accused of heinous crimes get trials, and they get trials in the area in which the crime is committed, which is right here. And I think it's exactly the right thing to do. . . .That's the way it ought to be, and we ought to show the world that we adhere to our traditions of justice and that these terrorists are not going to cause us to abandon the law. MR. PATAKI: ... We are going to use military tribunals. They're saying they're perfectly fine for some terrorists, but these terrorists they're going to try here. What's the justification for that, Jerry? REP. NADLER: Well, I -- well, I don't think there is any justification. MR. PATAKI: I don't either.

The administration should have the courage of its convictions and defend jury trials as a linchpin of American justice, which would entail giving them to all Terrorism suspects not captured on any battlefield. But by refusing to do so -- by exhibiting the very cowardice of which Holder accused Republicans, i.e. denying Terrorism suspects a trial -- the administration has no cogent argument to make in its own defense. It's just another case of the administration wanting to bask in the rhetorical glory of "the rule of law" while simultaneously trampling on it for petty political convenience.

UPDATE: The blogger Patterico -- who, notably, is a prosectuor himself and thus inclined to be empathetic with prosecutorial goals -- nonetheless compiles additional evidence to criticize Holder's decision as follows:

You can see that what we have is an administration that is choosing where to try the detainees, not based on some principle or neutral protocol (as they claim), but based on where they can win. They’re rigging the game. And if they lose, they won’t let him go anyway. This is just further evidence that the KSM trial will be a show trial.

It's worth reading the arguments from a prosecutor about why the administration's conduct is such a breach of basic justice, even as they cynically wrap themselves in the rhetoric of the sanctity of jury trials and the rule of law.

UPDATE II: For a crystal clear refutation of the claim that it's normal to use military commissions for the crimes at issue here, see this comment from the always-enlightening Pow Wow, which is based on this equally enlightening interview by Marcy Wheeler of Lt. Col (and now-Law Professor) David Frakt, highlighting the numerous myths on which the case for military commissions is predicated.

The Weekly Standard's ACLU smear indicts only itself

Glenn Greenwald — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:19:00 PST

Even for The Weekly Standard, this bitter, juvenile McCarthyite attack on the ACLU by Thomas Joscelyn sputters with so much fact-free, impotent, and self-defeating rage that it's hard to believe it was printed. Right in the headline, it oh-so-cleverly smears the ACLU as "Al Qaeda's Civil Liberties Union"; it ends by proclaiming the group to be "al Qaeda's useful idiots"; and it's filled in the middle with all sorts of trite innuendo circa 2002 that anyone who believes in the Constitution -- i.e., radical "far leftist" doctrines such as "trials" and "due process" -- secretly harbors love for the Terrorists and hatred for America ("The ACLU has worked diligently to undermine America's stance in what was formerly known as the 'war on terror,' and has even been willing to disseminate propaganda on behalf of our jihadist enemies"). What the article actually -- and ironically -- reveals is how much contempt The Weekly Standard and much of America's Right has for the nation's core political values and how, in the process, they do more to aid Islamic extremists than even those who directly fund and advocate for them.

The primary piece of incriminating evidence Joscelyn waves around in his little briefcase is this ACLU-produced video featuring five Muslim men who were held at Guantanamo without charges for years and then released. In the video, they recount the torture and abuse to which they were subjected, as well as the impact which prolonged, due-process-free imprisonment by the U.S. has had -- and continues to have -- on their shattered lives.

Joscelyn insists that -- even though they've never been charged with, let alone convicted of, anything -- these men are guilty, evil Terrorists. To make his case against them, he relies on Bush-era documents containing unproven, untested, and uncharged allegations. But what he dishonestly -- though understandably -- fails to note is that each of these individuals are available to appear in the ACLU video because they were released from Guantanamo by the Bush administration [Moazzam Begg (released 2005); Omar Deghayes (released 2007); Bisher al-Rawi (released 2007); Ruhal Ahmed (released 2004); Shafiq Rasul (released 2004)]. If, as Joscelyn claims, the ACLU are Al Qaeda's "useful idiots" for producing a video containing interviews with these individuals, what are Bush officials who released them onto the streets? He also fails to note that time and again, government allegations against Guantanamo detainees -- the source on which he principally relies -- have failed to withstand even the most minimal judicial scrutiny to which the 2008 Supreme Court ruled detainees are constitutionally entitled. The Government has now lost roughly 28 out of 33 habeas corpus hearings brought by detainees since the Supreme Court's ruling, often before some of the most right-wing, executive-branch-deferring judges in the country, who have found there is no credible evidence to support the government's accusations.

So lame and desperate are Joscelyn's smears that his attack ends up indicting himself, his magazine and his political movement far more than his intended target. Here are the profoundly un-American "principles" he implicitly -- and at times explicitly -- embraces:

1. If the Government asserts accusations against Muslims, those accusations shall be deemed true, even if they're made in secret and without being tested by any court. 2. Even if the Government voluntarily releases Muslim detainees from captivity without charges, they should still be assumed to be guilty, dangerous and evil Terrorists. 3. Muslim detainees have no right to counsel, no right to be charged with a crime, no due process rights to contest the accusations against them, and no right to be free of torture. 4. Anyone who works to provide basic due process and legal representation to Muslim detainees, or who publicizes their wrongful detentions and abusive treatment, shall themselves be deemed suspect of harboring allegiances to Al Qaeda.

To see how alien this is to any political values historically understood as "American," compare The Weekly Standard's neoconservative manifesto to what Thomas Paine thought about such matters, as expressed in the final paragraph of his 1790 Dissertations on First Principles of Government:

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

Or compare the neocon mentality to Thomas Jefferson's warning, in a 1789 letter to Paine, that trial by jury -- which the ACLU safeguards and most of America's Right despises -- is "the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution."

Between (a) an organization that works tirelessly for basic due process and Constitutional liberties for everyone and (b) a political movement which demands their rejection, does it really take any effort to see which side is vigorously defending core American principles and which side is waging war on them? And given how due-process-free imprisonment is one of the most potent recruiting tools for Islamic extremists (as reported by David Rohde, Johann Hari, Gen. McChyrstal, and even the Pentagon's own 2004 Task Force) -- to say nothing of the endless aggressive wars cheered on by The Weekly Standard's play-acting warriors -- does it take any effort to see who Al Qaeda's "useful idiots" and stalwart allies truly are?

As Hari recently documented after interviews with ex-Muslim militants, the most effective weapon against Al Qaeda's recruitment efforts is when human rights groups in the West -- such as the ACLU -- demand equal, humane and Constitutional treatment of Muslims:

When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?" asks Hadiya. . . . [Another explained]: "So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them, adopted us, I felt -- maybe these democratic values aren't always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously . . . it was the beginning of my serious doubts."

By stark contrast, the policies cheered on by Joscelyn's right-wing comrades have done more to fuel and enable Al Qaeda than any other single factor:

Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11 -- from Guantanamo to Iraq -- made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. . . . [One ex-militant] started to recruit other students, as he had done so many times before. But it was harder. "Everyone hated the [unelected] government [of Hosni Mubarak], and the US for backing it," he says. But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 -- until the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs. "That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot faster."

The ACLU (with which I consult) not only defends the most elemental American liberties (e.g., the State cannot imprison people without charging and convicting them of a crime), but also renders Al Qaeda's demonization-dependent recruitment efforts against the West far less effective. By stark contast, the Constitution-hating, warmongering and tyrannical template embraced by The Weekly Standard is precisely what Al Qaeda needs -- and desires -- in order to thrive. The more the U.S. is represented by the warmongering and anti-due process face of Bill Kristol, the better it is for Al Qaeda; the more it adheres to the liberties and rights guaranteed by the Constitution and defended by the ACLU, the weaker Al Qaeda becomes. Kristolian neocons want and need a strong Al Qaeda in order to justify the array of wars and civil liberties erosions they crave, and everything they advocate is designed to achieve that goal -- or, at the very least, guarantees that outcome.

The greatest irony of the last decade is that the very people who most despise core American principles and do more than anyone to fuel Islamic extremism have anointed themselves the arbiters of American patriotism and protectors of American security. The reality is that it is this very movement which simultaneously advances definitively un-American political values and strengthens anti-American Islamic radicals -- both by design and by effect. The Weekly Standard's due-process-hating manifesto this morning is a vivid exhibit for how that has worked.

CNN on our new "huge, huge bomb" to use against Iran

Glenn Greenwald — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 03:18:00 PST

Here is Wolf Blitzer and Barbara Starr talking last night on CNN about the Iranians and what the U.S. might to do them; it's really pitch-perfect:

BLITZER: Regarding Iran, a new report raises some disturbing possibilities about its nuclear program, and that's prompting fears from the United States over how to respond. Let's bring in our Pentagon correspondent, Barbara Starr. Barbara, what are you learning? BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency suggests Iran could -- could be hiding more secret nuclear sites, and that is raising the stakes on all sides. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STARR (voice-over): Iran's once secret underground nuclear fuel enrichment plant. The Pentagon is worried Iran is now burying weapons factories so deep, that the current arsenal of bombs can't reach them, leaving the U.S. with no viable military option if a strike was ever ordered. This new Air Force 15-ton bomb may change that calculation. JOHN PIKE, GLOBALSECURITY.ORG: We'd certainly be able to take this out with a massive ordnance penetrator, the 30,000-pound boss. STARR: This is the massive ordnance penetrator, or MOP, now being rushed into development to be carried on B-2 and B-52 bombers. The most likely targets? Iran and North Korea, which are believed to have buried weapons facilities hundreds of feet underground or into the sides of mountains. PIKE: Some of those would probably require this massive ordnance penetrator simply because they are buried so deep and no other bomb would be able to certainly destroy them. STARR: At 30,000 pounds, the MOP, some experts say, will be able to penetrate 650 feet of concrete, a significant boost over current bunker-busting bombs like the 2,000-pound BLU-109, which can penetrate just six feet of concrete, and the 5,000-pound GBU-28 which can go through about 20 feet of concrete. GEOFF MORRELL, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: This has been a capability that we have long believed was missing from our quiver, our arsenal, and we wanted to make sure we've filled in that gap. STARR: No air strikes against North Korea or Iran appear to be in the works, but Iran says it could start enriching uranium here in the next two years, and both the U.S. and Israel want to ensure that Iran cannot manufacture and assemble a nuclear weapon. All of this has now led to more funding for the MOP. The Pentagon plans to have the first bombs available by December 2010, two years earlier than planned. (END VIDEOTAPE) STARR: Now, the Pentagon likes to say it's not helpful to speculate on future military targets, but certainly this weapon gives the Pentagon, Wolf, an option it hasn't had before -- Wolf. BLITZER: It's a huge, huge bomb, Barbara. Thanks very much for that.

Wolf was practically breathless with excitement as he marveled there at the end about what a big, big, powerful bomb that is. He looked like he was in need of CPR or some other type of relief. "It's a huge, huge bomb, Barbara."

What possible reason could those crazy, irrational Iranians have for wanting to hide their nuclear facilities? It's not like anyone's threatening them or anything. And remember: the proof that Iran is a unique, Nazi-like threat is that they allegedly have people in their government that threaten other countries with military attacks. No responsible, civilized country would do that.

Iran's evil intent is also demonstrated by their recent decision to allow IAEA inspectors to examine their Qom facility, which proved that there were no active centrifuges there, just as Iran said. Truly peaceful countries would never allow such inspections. So thankfully, we're about to have "a huge, huge bomb" -- bigger and better than all the ones we had before -- that can take care of the Iranian menace once and for all.

Ex-Islamic radicals on what motivates -- and impedes -- extremism

Glenn Greenwald — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:17:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

The British journalist Johann Hari has written an absolutely vital article for The Independent, examining a growing movement of former hardened Islamic militants who are now devoted to teaching a more moderate and less fundamentalist Islam. Hari focuses on understanding what motivates some Muslims to turn to radicalism and terrorism in the first place, and how that process can be reversed. Though these ex-militants have very diverse backgrounds, they all stress two critical facts: (1) the more the foreign policy of the West is seen as aggressive, violent and oppressive to the Muslim world, the easier it is to convert Muslims to violent radicalism, and (2) the most potent weapon for undermining Islamic extremism is the efforts of Westerners to work against their own governments' belligerent policies:

To my surprise, the ex-jihadis said their rage about Western foreign policy -- which was real, and burning -- emerged only after their identity crises, and as a result of it. They identified with the story of oppressed Muslims abroad because it seemed to mirror the oppressive disorientation they felt in their own minds. . . . But once they had made that leap to identify with the Umma – the global Muslim community -- they got angrier the more abusive our foreign policy came. Every one of them said the Bush administration's response to 9/11 -- from Guantanamo to Iraq -- made jihadism seem more like an accurate description of the world. Hadiya Masieh, a tiny female former HT organiser, tells me: "You'd see Bush on the television building torture camps and bombing Muslims and you think -- anything is justified to stop this. What are we meant to do, just stand still and let him cut our throats?" But the converse was -- they stressed -- also true. When they saw ordinary Westerners trying to uphold human rights, their jihadism began to stutter. Almost all of them said that they doubted their Islamism when they saw a million non-Muslims march in London to oppose the Iraq War: "How could we demonise people who obviously opposed aggression against Muslims?" asks Hadiya.

One of the leaders of Britain's movement of ex-Islamists, Maajid Nawaz, recounts how his hardened militarism began when, as a youth, he read "leaflets saying Muslims were being massacred all over the world, from India to Bosnia to Southend." In 2000, he moved to Egypt and began recruiting students into radicalism. Listen to what he says about what helped and hindered his efforts:

He started to recruit other students, as he had done so many times before. But it was harder. "Everyone hated the [unelected] government [of Hosni Mubarak], and the US for backing it," he says. But there was an inhibiting sympathy for the victims of 9/11 -- until the Bush administration began to respond with Guantanamo Bay and bombs. "That made it much easier. After that, I could persuade people a lot faster."

Nawaz was ultimately imprisoned in Egypt and was surrounded by Egyptian prisoners who were being brutally tortured by a government propped up by the U.S. (he was spared only because he was a British citizen). Consider what began to change Nawaz's views on the rightness of his Islamic extremism:

Maajid's Islamist convictions were about to be challenged from two unexpected directions -- the men who murdered Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Amnesty International. HT [the Islamic group which he had headed] abandoned Maajid as a "fallen soldier" and barely spoke of him or his case. But when his family were finally allowed to see him, they told him he had a new defender. Although they abhorred his political views, Amnesty International said he had a right to free speech and to peacefully express his views, and publicised his case. "I was just amazed," Maajid says. "We'd always seen Amnesty as the soft power tools of colonialism. So, when Amnesty, despite knowing that we hated them, adopted us, I felt -- maybe these democratic values aren't always hypocritical. Maybe some people take them seriously ... it was the beginning of my serious doubts."

In other words, the very policies the U.S. has been pursuing in the name of combating Terrorism -- invading, occupying, and bombing Muslim countries; locking them up without trials; torturing them; violating the values we've been preaching to the world -- have been the most potent instruments for fueling Islamic radicalism and terrorism. By contrast, those who have been continuously accused of being "soft on Terrorism" and even being allied with the Terrorists -- those who opposes our various wars, who demanded and provided basic human rights protections and equal liberties to Muslims, who objected to their own governments' oppressive and belligerent policies -- have done more to diffuse and impede Muslim radicalism than virtually anyone else in the world.

These truths are so self-evident that they shouldn't require journalists like Hari to document. If we invade, bomb and attack Muslim countries -- and uniquely deny to them the rights we claim are universal (such as the right to be free of torture and imprisonment without trials) -- then far more Muslims are going to wallow in rage and hatred for the West and be willing and eager to return the treatment. Conversely, seeing Westerners speak out against their countries' attacks on, and oppressive policies towards, Muslims renders far harder to sustain the divisiveness and demonization on which all radicalism feeds. This is all basic cause and effect, as even the Pentagon's own Task Force concluded all the way back in 2004 in explaining how and why our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are severely exacerbating the threat of Terrorism.

Despite how obvious and well-documented these truths are, so many American elites continue to ignore them. Writing in Newsweek this week, Slate's Editor-in-Chief Jacob Weisberg looks at the Fort Hood shootings and various disrupted terrorist plots and concludes that Obama has perhaps been too conciliatory towards Muslims; that "Obama's [so-called] olive-branch strategy" has not made us safer, at least in the short-term; and that "Obama's heritage feeds a broader suspicion that he is too casual about the threat from America's Islamist enemies." In what fantasy world is Jacob Weisberg living?

Obama is presiding over active wars in three separate Muslim countries -- Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. All year long, there has been an abundance of video footage of Muslim villages -- including scores of women and children -- being wiped out by American air raids. Obama has already escalated the war in Afghanistan. His administration is actively demanding the right to abduct people and imprison them at Bagram with no charges and is actively protecting those who spent the last decade torturing Muslims and disppearing them to secret camps. Our steadfast alliance with Israel -- which The New York Times' Mark Mazzetti documented this weekend was a prime motivating factor in the militarism and hatred of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- has been symbolically altered by Obama but otherwise remains fully in place. It's true that Obama has sand-papered some of the roughest rhetorical and policy edges of the Bush/Cheney approach -- explicitly barring torture and CIA black sites, trying to close Guantanamo, sounding a far different tone in how he speaks about and to the Muslim world -- but, at least so far, many of the fundamentals remain largely in place, and it's thus unsurprising that Obama's intense international popularity has not yet translated to much of the Muslim world.

Despite all that, people like Jacob Weisberg fret that Obama "has not taken the radical Islamist threat to American security -- at home or in Afghanistan -- seriously enough," and demand that Obama announce to the world that "America does not face a threat from the perversion of faith in general. We face a threat from the perversion of one faith in particular." Even in the face of mountains of evidence that this sort of heightened aggression and oppression exacerbates the threat of Islamic terrorism, people like Weisberg continue to demand more of it. And even in the face of the most compelling evidence imaginable that accommodation to the Muslim world and treating Muslims equally and respectfully is the greatest threat to the Islamic extremist, people like Weisberg perpetually worry that we're doing too much of that. At some point, a rational person has to wonder whether people like Jacob Weisberg -- who endlessly advocate policies that fuel Islamic extremism and intensify tension between the West and the Muslim world -- aren't desirous of exactly that outcome. After decades of pursuing this blatantly counter-productive approach, what else could explain such moral and intellectual blindness?

* * * * *

I'll be on MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan show this morning at 9:00 a.m. EST discussing the 9/11 trials.

UPDATE: The MSNBC segment I did this morning included George Pataki arguing against 9/11 trials, and Rep. Jerry Nadler who, along with me, argued in their favor. There were several points highlighted by this discussion which I'll write about shortly, once MSNBC makes the video available, but the fear Pataki was spewing about holding real trials in New York, combined with his insistence that we exempt accused Muslim terrorists from our standard institutions of justice, is exactly the fuel that drives Islamic radicals, as documented by Hari. It was almost as though Pataki was intent on providing a textbook example of everything I wrote here this morning.

UPDATE II: The MSNBC segment I did this morning with Pataki and Nadler is here. Note how little faith people like George Pataki have in America and its institutions: he doesn't trust our judiciary to safeguard the nation's secrets; he doesn't trust our courts to mete out justice to accused Terrorists; and he doesn't trust the NYPD or the FBI to keep residents safe if we follow the example of virtually every other civilized democracy by providing trials to accused Terrorists in the place where they did their damage.

With regard to Hari's explanation of what fuels Islamic radicalism, note how completely his explanation tracks what The New York Times' David Rohde told us about what motivated his Taliban captors:

For the next several nights, a stream of Haqqani commanders overflowing with hatred for the United States and Israel visited us, unleashing blistering critiques that would continue throughout our captivity. Some of their comments were factual. They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges. To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law. When I told them I was an innocent civilian who should be released, they responded that the United States had held and tortured Muslims in secret detention centers for years. Commanders said they themselves had been imprisoned, their families ignorant of their fate. Why, they asked, should they treat me differently?

Aren't we, by now, faced with enough conclusive evidence proving this causal connection to no longer be able to ignore it?

The Right's textbook "surrender to terrorists"

Glenn Greenwald — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 02:15:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

Understanding and Combatting Terrorism, USMC Major S.M. Grass, 1989:

Terrorism is a psychological weapon and is directed to create a general climate of fear. As one definition cogently notes, "terror is a natural phenomenon, terrorism is the conscious exploitation of it." Terrorism utilizes violence to coerce governments and their people by inducing fear.

William Josiger, Fear Factor: The Impact of Terrorism on Public Opinion in the United States and Great Britain, 2006:

At its heart terrorism is about fear. While terrorist attacks destroy, maim and kill, the intended audience for these attacks is almost always the whole body politic and the terrorist's goal is to strike fear into their hearts.

GOP House Leader John Boehner, condemning Obama's decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York for trial, yesterday:

The Obama Administration’s irresponsible decision to prosecute the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people.

This is literally true: the Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists." It's the same fear they've been spewing for years. As always, the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it's hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.

People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country's 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.

It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers -- to insist that no regular trials can be held and that "the safety and security of the American people" mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose "leaders" -- people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts -- cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it's hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate -- it's too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists -- is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.

UPDATE: A small town in Illinois that houses an under-used prison is mentioned as a possibility for holding Guantanamo inmates convicted of crimes, and its residents hope they are chosen. The town was first considered when its Mayor raised the possibility as a means of bringing more jobs. The Right could learn a lot about basic "rationality" and courage by reading the reactions of the residents there.

On a different note: I'm unclear why so many commenters are arguing that some of the Right's leaders are merely exploiting fear rather than genuinely fearful themselves, as though that contradicts what I wrote. I made that exact point explicitly: "the Right's tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers" and "It's only America's Right that is too scared of the Terrorists -- or which exploits the fears of their followers --." In any event, I don't think it's worthwhile to try to speculate about the true motives of specific right-wing politicians. Some are scared themselves; some are both scared and eager to exploit fear to justify tyrannical policies; and some are being largely exploitative. Whatever the true motives of each, fear is a driving fuel of their political movement.

UPDATE II: Several family members of 9/11 victims -- including the parents of a police officer and firefighter who died at the World Trade Center -- explain why they believe that real trials are imperative for those accused of perpetuating the attacks.

The new WH counsel and "Scooter Libby justice"

Glenn Greenwald — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:15:00 PST

Barack Obama, November 3, 2007, announcing presidential bid:

Here's the good news - for the first time in a long time, the name George Bush will not appear on the ballot. The name Dick Cheney will not appear on the ballot. The era of Scooter Libby justice . . . will be over.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, yesterday:

Sources in government say that White House Counsel Gregory Craig has decided to resign, and that the president's personal lawyer, Robert Bauer, will take his place. A formal announcement is slated for next week, though word might drop Friday.

Robert Bauer, The Huffington Post, June 13, 2007:

The Progressive Case for a Libby Pardon Bush's opposition has braced for a pardon and its rage at the prospect is building. To Bush's antagonists on left, a pardon would be only another act in the conspiracy -- a further cover-up, a way of getting away with it. But this is the entirely wrong way of seeing things. A pardon is just what Bush's opponents should want. . . . Nothing in the nature of the pardon renders it inappropriate to these purposes. The issuance of a presidential pardon, not reserved for miscarriages of justice, has historically also served political functions -- to redirect policy, to send a message, to associate the president with a cause or position. . . . Libby is said to be unpardonable because the act of lying, a subversion of the legal process, cannot go unpunished. Yet this is mere glibness. . . .

When he vowed to end it, Obama never really defined what he meant by "Scooter Libby justice," but whatever it meant, surely a pardon of Lewis Libby -- expressly advocated by Obama's new White House counsel -- would have been a pure example of it. Bauer based his argument for a pardon of his fellow Washington-insider lawyer on the political ground that a pardon would be politically beneficial because it would involve George Bush and thus force him to accept some personal responsibility for the Plame case, but as Jane Hamsher wrote at the time:

This is about the rule of law, not political posturing. . . . Libby did not just "lie," he obstructed justice. He’s not some poor patsy, some innocent scapegoat, a good soldier just doing his job. But that’s how the clubbish DC elite seem to see him, and in his willingness to ignore Libby’s culpability in the situation and the penalty he should most assuredly pay having been found guilty by a jury of his peers Bauer shows himself to be yet another DC lawyer with little regard for the judicial process that has managed to be successfully carried out despite tremendous opposition from those it threatens. There isn’t all that much daylight between himself and the Libby apologists currently screeching in horror because "things like this just don’t happen to people like us."

Former prosecutor Christy Hardin Smith, who had spent years covering the Plame investigation, wrote this about Bauer's call for a Libby pardon:

This isn’t some political machination point -- this is a conviction on multiple felony counts by a duly constituted jury which reviewed copious evidence and reached a unanimous verdict after weeks and weeks of trial. And a defendant who was just given an enhanced sentence by a federal judge who pointed out that the rule of law must apply equally to every person — including public officials, whose conduct ought to take into account their fiduciary obligation to the public. If Obama’s chief counsel wants to throw that out to score some political points, then Obama ought to clarify what his commitment is to the rule of law and upholding the constitution before he should even be considered a viable candidate for President of the United States.

A restoration of the rule of law -- meaning an end to immunity for high-level political officials who commit crimes -- was a central prong of the Obama campaign. Those who called for a pardon of Lewis Libby -- even on the oh-so-clever "progressive" political grounds concocted by Bauer -- were as antithetical to that pledge could be. Yet here is that pro-pardon Washington lawyer now being named as White House counsel. Then again, one of the few positions more expressive of "Scooter Libby justice" than calling for a pardon of Libby himself is the view that all high-level Bush officials should be immunized from prosecution -- even those who committed grievous war crimes and other serious felonies -- because it's more important that we "look to the future" than it is to apply the rule of law equally. If immunity for high-level war criminals -- and for lawbreakinng telecoms -- isn't "Scooter Libby justice," what is? Viewed that way, Bauer would seem to fit in well in his new position.

Detainees to get the "state-always-wins" system of "justice"

Glenn Greenwald — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:14:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

According to The Associated Press, Eric Holder will announce later today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants will be brought from Guantanamo to New York to stand trial, in a real criminal court, for the crimes they are accused of committing. This is a decision I really wish I could praise, as it's clearly both politically risky and the right thing to do.

An open criminal trial under our standard system of justice, accompanied by basic precepts of due process, is exactly the just and smart means for punishing those responsible for terrorist attacks. It announces to the world, including the Muslim world, that we have enough faith in our rules of justice to apply them equally to everyone, including to Muslim radicals accused of one of the worst crimes in American history. Numerous family members of the 9/11 victims have long argued that real trials for the accused perpetrators are vital to providing real justice for what was done -- I expect to have an interview later today with one of those family members -- and holding the trial in New York, the place where 3,000 Americans died, provides particularly compelling symbolism. So this component of the Obama administration's decision, standing alone, is praiseworthy indeed.

The problem is that this decision does not stand alone. Instead, it is accompanied by this:

Holder will also announce that a major suspect in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, will face justice before a military commission, as will a handful of other detainees to be identified at the same announcement, the official said. It was not immediately clear where commission-bound detainees like al-Nashiri might be sent, but a military brig in South Carolina has been high on the list of considered sites.

So what we have here is not an announcement that all terrorism suspects are entitled to real trials in a real American court. Instead, what we have is a multi-tiered justice system, where only certain individuals are entitled to real trials: namely, those whom the Government is convinced ahead of time it can convict. Others for whom conviction is less certain will be accorded lesser due process: put in military commissions, to which most leading Democrats vehemently objected when created under Bush. Presumably, others still -- those who the Government believes cannot be convicted in either forum, will simply be held indefinitely with no charges, a power the administration recently announced it intends to preserve based on the same theories used by Bush/Cheney to claim that power.

A system of justice which accords you varying levels of due process based on the certainty that you'll get just enough to be convicted isn't a justice system at all. It's a rigged game of show trials. This is a point I've been emphasizing since May, when Obama gave his speech in front of the Constitution at the National Archives and explained how there were five different "categories" of terrorism suspects who would be treated differently based on the category into which they fell:

If you really think about the argument Obama made yesterday -- when he described the five categories of detainees and the procedures to which each will be subjected -- it becomes manifest just how profound a violation of Western conceptions of justice this is. What Obama is saying is this: we'll give real trials only to those detainees we know in advance we will convict. For those we don't think we can convict in a real court, we'll get convictions in the military commissions I'm creating. For those we can't convict even in my military commissions, we'll just imprison them anyway with no charges ("preventively detain" them). Giving trials to people only when you know for sure, in advance, that you'll get convictions is not due process. Those are called "show trials." In a healthy system of justice, the Government gives everyone it wants to imprison a trial and then imprisons only those whom it can convict. The process is constant (trials), and the outcome varies (convictions or acquittals). Obama is saying the opposite: in his scheme, it is the outcome that is constant (everyone ends up imprisoned), while the process varies and is determined by the Government (trials for some; military commissions for others; indefinite detention for the rest). The Government picks and chooses which process you get in order to ensure that it always wins. A more warped "system of justice" is hard to imagine.

That the Obama DOJ is now explicitly picking and choosing different levels of due process in the very same announcement -- we can give that defendant a trial because we know we'll win, but that one over there needs to go to a military commission because we're less sure -- highlights how manipulative this "justice system" is.

Former Air Force lawyer Morris Davis was the Chief Prosecutor of the Guantanamo Military Commissions system during the Bush years and resigned in 2008 to become one of its leading critics. Although he still believes that military commissions are a viable option for detainees captured on an actual battlefield -- and even believes the President has the right to detain terrorism suspects indefinitely with no trial -- he made the same point last week in a Wall St. Journal Op-Ed about the practice of picking and choosing the system of justice one receives based on how likely the state is to win:

In a preliminary report submitted to Mr. Obama in July, the Detention Policy Task Force recommended the approval of evaluation criteria developed by the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice. The task force stated its preference for trials in the federal courts, but added the decision would be based in part on "evidentiary issues" and "the extent to which the forum would permit a full presentation of the accused's wrongful conduct." A Washington Post editorial endorsed the proposal, arguing that there should be an alternative forum when a trial in federal court is "not an option because the evidence against the accused is strong but not admissible." Stop and think about that for a moment. In effect, it means that the standard of justice for each detainee will depend in large part upon the government's assessment of how high the prosecution's evidence can jump and which evidentiary bar it can clear. The evidence likely to clear the high bar gets gold medal justice: a traditional trial in our federal courts. The evidence unable to clear the federal court standard is forced to settle for a military commission trial, a specially created forum that has faltered repeatedly for more than seven years. That is a double standard I suspect we would condemn if it was applied to us. . . . The problem is trying to have it both ways: the credibility that comes from using federal courts with admissible evidence under the very strict rules of civilian tribunals, and military commissions for cases that are often comparable except for the fact that they depend on evidence (such as hearsay testimony) that is not normally admissible in civilian courts. What if Iran proposed the same for the three American hikers it is currently holding? We would surely condemn what we now stand ready to condone. . . . Double standards don't play well in Peoria. They won't play well in Peshawar or Palembang either. We need to work to change the negative perceptions that exist about Guantanamo and our commitment to the law. Formally establishing a legal double standard will only reinforce them.

Obama is certain to be bombarded with all sorts of right-wing idiocy and fear-mongering as a result of his decision to bring 9/11 defendants into the U.S. in order to give them trials. Doing that is clearly the right thing to do: trials and due process is how civilized countries treat people who are accused of engaging in terrorism. Given how Democrats and Republicans will talk about this decision, media coverage will almost certainly fixate on the narrow question of whether (a) 9/11 defendants should be given trials in the U.S. or (b) we're all now Endangered because these Omnipotent Monsters are being brought into our communities (in handcuffs, shackles, and maximum-security prisons). The AP article already includes this preview of the inane attacks on Obama certain to come:

It is also a major legal and political test of Obama's overall approach to terrorism. If the case suffers legal setbacks, the administration will face second-guessing from those who never wanted it in a civilian courtroom. And if lawmakers get upset about notorious terrorists being brought to their home regions, they may fight back against other parts of Obama's agenda.

In a just-posted New York Times article, Charlie Savage also notes that bringing an accused terrorist of Mohammed's notoriety to the U.S. for trial is unprecedented and likely to provoke intense political controversy. In that "debate," I'm squarely on Obama's side, as is any person who believes in the most basic Constitutional precepts.

But the more consequential impact of Obama's decision is likely to be overlooked: we're now formally creating a multi-tiered justice system for accused Muslim terrorists where they only get the level of due process consistent with the State's certainty that it will win. Mohammed gets a real trial because he confessed and we're thus certain we can win in court; since we're less certain about al-Nashiri, he'll be denied a trial and will only get a military commission; others will be denied any process entirely and imprisoned indefinitely. The outcome is pre-determined and the process then shaped to assure it ahead of time, thus perfectly adhering to this exchange from Chapter 12 of Alice in Wonderland:

"Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time that day. "No, no!” said the Queen. "Sentence first -- verdict afterward." "Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the sentence first!" "Hold your tongue!" said the Queen, turning purple. "I won’t!" said Alice. "Off with her head!" the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.

How is that remotely just or fair under any definition of those terms? As Davis wrote: "We need to work to change the negative perceptions that exist about Guantanamo and our commitment to the law. Formally establishing a legal double standard will only reinforce them." There's nothing "pragmatic" or "moderate" about creating a multi-tiered justice system where only some people get trials; it's both counter-productive and profoundly unjust.

UPDATE: Omar Khadr -- the Canadian "child soldier" imprisoned at Guantanamo for the last seven years, since he was 15 years old, for allegedly throwing a grenade at an American soldier in Afghanistan (that's apparently "terrorism") and the subject of a difficult-to-watch video of him weeping like the child he is while being interrogated -- will reportedly be one of those denied a trial and instead allowed only a military commission, according to Canada's Canwest News Service (h/t sysprog):

Canadian-born terror suspect Omar Khadr faces continued prosecution in the U.S. military tribunal established in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. . . . The federal system offers the full panoply of defendant rights available to U.S. citizens under the U.S. Constitution, while civil rights groups have argued the military commissions at the U.S. naval base in Cuba do not meet that standard.

The decision regarding Khadr means that the Obama administration has, for now at least, rejected calls by his U.S. and Canadian defence teams for the repatriation of the Canadian-born terror suspect" . . . My view is, he should be prosecuted," said navy Capt. John Murphy, chief prosecutor in the military commissions system.

So even for 15-year-olds who we imprison for seven years with no charges, we refuse to give them a trial. And note how the Canadian press account stresses our multi-tiered system of justice and how their citizen is receiving second-tier due process -- an observation that one can be sure will repeat itself worldwide.

UPDATE II: In his Press Release, Eric Holder says his decisions today were "based on a protocol that the Departments of Justice and Defense developed" whereby he "looked at all the relevant factors and made case by case decisions for each detainee." In other words, there's no categorical determination driving the process (e.g., all those who attack military targets get commissions and all those who attack civilian targets get trials). To the contrary, federal prosecutors choose, in their sole discretion, the level of due process each defendant gets (including "none" -- as in: indefinite detention with no trial), and Holder himself emphasized that "it is important that we be able to use every forum possible to hold terrorists accountable for their actions."

There's supposed to be one justice system for everyone -- not multiple ones from which prosecutors can pick and choose based on assurances of ongoing imprisonment. Highlighting how dangerous this is, the DOJ's investigation of al-Nashiri was originally classified as a standard criminal case, but -- as his counsel pointed out today -- he was assigned to a military commission because there simply isn't sufficient evidence to convict him in a real court.

Vividly illustrating the perverse mentality behind all of this, here's a question asked today of President Obama by AP's Jennifer Loven:

President Obama, how can you assure the American people that a trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now that your administration has now decided will take place in a civilian court in New York, will be safe and secure, but also not result in an innocent verdict for him?

Apparently, we're only supposed to give trials to people if we can assure in advance that it won't "result in an innocent verdict." Jennifer Loven -- and many of her media colleagues -- seems to yearn for the U.S. to be a lot more like North Korea.

And for those of you who favor what Obama did today, I have two questions: (1) are you in favor of allowing serial murderers and child rapists to go free if the evidence against them is "tainted," or should special commissions be created to ensure their conviction, too; and (2) did you defend the Bush administration's use of military commissions on the same grounds that you're defending Obama today?

The sleazy advocacy of a leading "liberal hawk"

Glenn Greenwald — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:13:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

The New York Times today details the unbelievably sleazy story of Peter Galbraith, one of the Democratic Party's leading so-called "liberal hawks" and a generally revered Wise Man of America's Foreign Policy Community. He was Ambassador to Croatia under the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s and, in March, 2009, the Obama administration (specifically, Richard Holbrooke, Galbraith's mentor) successfully pressured the U.N. to name Galbraith as the second-in-command in Afghanistan. The NYT does a good job today of adding some important details to the story, but it was actually uncovered by Norwegian investigative journalists and reported at length a month ago in pieces such as this one by Helena Cobban. In essence, this highly Serious man has corruptly concealed vast financial stakes in the very policies and positions he has spent years advocating while pretending to be an independent expert.

Galbraith was one of the most vocal Democratic supporters of the attack on Iraq, having signed a March 19, 2003 public letter (.pdf) -- along with the standard cast of neocon war-lovers such as Bill Kristol, Max Boot, Danielle Pletka, and Robert Kagan -- stating that "we all join in supporting the military intervention in Iraq" and "it is now time to act to remove Saddam Hussein and his regime from power." As intended, that letter was then praised by outlets such as The Washington Post Editorial Page, gushing that "it is both significant and encouraging that a bipartisan group of influential foreign policy thinkers, veterans of both Democratic and Republican administrations, has signed on to a statement of policy on Iraq that makes sense on the war." Throughout 2002 and 2003, Galbraith appeared in numerous outlets -- including repeatedly on Fox News and with Bill O'Reilly -- presenting himself as a loyal Democrat firmly behind the invasion of Iraq. In 2002, he was an adviser to Paul Wolfowitz on Kurdistan.

After playing a key role in enabling the invasion of Iraq, Galbraith first became one of a handful of U.S. officials who worked on writing the Iraqi Constitution, and after he resigned from the government, he then continuously posed as an independent expert on the region and, specifically, an "unpaid" adviser to the Kurds on the Constitution. Galbraith was an ardent and vocal advocate for Kurdish autonomy, arguing tirelessly in numerous venues for such proposals -- including in multiple Op-Eds for The New York Times -- and insisting that Kurds must have the right to control oil resources located in Northern Iraq. Throughout the years of writing those Op-Eds, he was identified as nothing more than "a former United States ambassador to Croatia," except in one 2007 Op-Ed which vaguely stated that he "is a principal in a company that does consulting in Iraq and elsewhere." When he participated in a New York Times forum in October, 2008 -- regarding what the next President should be required to answer -- he unsurprisingly posed questions that advocated for regional autonomy for Iraqis generally and Kurds specifically, and he was identified as nothing more than the author of a book about the region.

What Galbraith kept completely concealed all these years was that a company he formed in 2004 came to acquire a large stake in a Kurdish oil field whereby, as the NYT put it, he "stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars." In other words, he had a direct -- and vast -- financial stake in the very policies which he was publicly advocating in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and countless other American media outlets, where he was presented as an independent expert on the region. As Cobban wrote:

For the preceding four years, while Galbraith was an influential participant in Iraq-related constitutional and political discussions, he also had an undisclosed financial interest in a KRG-authorised oil development venture. . . . Here in the U.S., Galbraith has long been associated with the "liberal hawk" wing of the Democratic Party . . . Many members of this group have been liberal idealists - though some of those who, on "liberal" grounds, gave early support to Pres. George W. Bush's decision to invade Iraq later expressed their regret for adopting that position. Galbraith has never expressed any such regrets, and last November, he was openly scornful of Bush's late-term agreement to withdraw from Iraq completely. The revelation that for many years Galbraith had a quite undisclosed financial interest in the political breakup of Iraq may now further reduce the clout, and the ranks, of the remaining liberal hawks.

Unfortunately, that last sentence is likely wishful thinking. What Galbraith has done, as sleazy and dishonest as it is, is simply par for the course in accountability-free Washington.

Galbraith's relationship with the Kurds goes back many years. He undoubtedly knew that overthrowing Saddam would empower his Kurdish friends and their ability to dole out oil contracts. Indeed, in his own 2006 book, he recounts that he began working on Kurdish autonomy and independence "two weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein." Less than a year later, having helped convince the public -- and many Democrats -- to invade Iraq, he formed a company that then acquired a huge stake in Kurdish oil. And he then spent years running around trying to use his status as Foreign Policy Community expert to exploit the war he cheered on for his own massive personal gain, while keeping completely concealed those glaring conflicts of interests.

Reider Visser, a historian of southern Iraq, told The Boston Globe last month: "Galbraith has been such a central person to the shaping of the Iraqi Constitution, far more than I think most Americans realize. All those beautiful ideas about principles of federalism and local communities having control are really cast in a different light when the community has an oil field in its midst and Mr. Galbraith has a financial stake." So here's a leading advocate of the war on Iraq who used his influence in the U.S. Government and the Foreign Policy Community -- as well as the break-up of Saddam's regime -- to enrich himself on Iraqi oil. As the NYT put it:

As the scope of Mr. Galbraith’s financial interests in Kurdistan become clear, they have the potential to inflame some of Iraqis’ deepest fears, including conspiracy theories that the true reason for the American invasion of their country was to take its oil. It may not help that outside Kurdistan, Mr. Galbraith’s influential view that Iraq should be broken up along ethnic lines is considered offensive to many Iraqis’ nationalism. Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry, who have been influenced by Mr. Galbraith’s thinking but do not advocate such a partitioning of the country, were not aware of Mr. Galbraith’s oil dealings in Iraq, aides to both politicians say. Some officials say that his financial ties could raise serious questions about the integrity of the constitutional negotiations themselves. "The idea that an oil company was participating in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution leaves me speechless," said Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, a principal drafter of the law that governed Iraq after the United States ceded control to an Iraqi government on June 28, 2004. In effect, he said, the company "has a representative in the room, drafting."

Remember how all those freakish and paranoid people -- on the crazed "Arab street" and in American-hating leftist circles -- actually believed in "conspiracy" theories such as the wacky notion that one of the motives for invading Iraq was a desire to exploit its oil resources?

Here we have yet another example of one of America's most Serious and respected "experts" advocating various policies while maintaining huge, undisclosed financial and personal interests in his advocacy. He was given access to every major media outlet virtually on demand to do so -- the NYT, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, Fox -- all while those interests remained concealed. His uniting with the country's most extreme neocons to support the Bush administration's attack on Iraq didn't prevent the Obama administration from pushing him to be hired as the U.N.'s number two official in Afghanistan. He continued to be revered by leading establishment Democrats as an important and respected expert. In other words, Peter Galbraith is a perfect face showing how America's Foreign Policy Community and our political debates function.

UPDATE: Jonathan Schwarz recalls what was done to those who suggested that part of the motive in invading Iraq might have something to do with that country's oil reserves.

UPDATE II: The New York Times is forced to publish an Editor's Note today in light of this story, noting that "Mr. Galbraith signed a contract that obligated him to disclose his financial interests in the subjects of his articles"; he "should have disclosed to readers that Mr. Galbraith could benefit financially" from the policies he was advocating in his Op-Eds; and "had editors been aware of Mr. Galbraith's financial stake, the Op-Ed page would have insisted on disclosure or not published his articles."

What do these religiously motivated terrorist acts tell us?

Glenn Greenwald — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 02:13:00 PST

(updated below)

From Haaretz, today:

Alleged Jewish terrorist: I know God is pleased The Jerusalem District Prosecutor's Office on Thursday charged alleged Jewish terrorist Yaakov (Jack) Teitel with two murders, three attempted murders and other acts of violence. "It was a pleasure and an honor to serve my God," said Teitel at the Jerusalem courthouse. "I have no regret and no doubt that God is pleased." Teitel also denied recent reports that he had operated as an undercover Shin Bet agent. .. . The indictment also lists Teitel's efforts for more than a decade to harm Arabs, gays and lesbians, leftists, police officers and messianic Jews.

From Terror in the mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence:

Are there any broad lessons to be drawn from these acts of religion-inspired terrorism? Do they tell us anything about Judaism or Christianity itself? How about other similar examples from both religions?

Joe Lieberman and others have called for investigations into why an Islamic extremist was allowed to remain in the U.S. military. Earlier this year at Salon, Matt Kennard documented how white supremacists and Neo-Nazis were being allowed to openly serve in the U.S. military, likely due to recruitment shortages for our various wars. A former Blackwater employee alleges that CEO Erik Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's company -- responsible for horrific massacres of civilians -- "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." Numerous reports have documented that Christian fanaticism is rampant in the U.S. military, including high-pressure evangelizing both within the military and in Muslim countries we occupy, and even violence justified by religious doctrine. As Harper's Jeff Sharlet documented, organized groups within the military have emerged that view allegiance to Christianity as superior to allegiance to the Constitution or orders from superiors. [The Israeli military is burdened by the same problem: "Recent reports of atrocities committed by Israeli soldiers in the course of the intervention in Gaza have described the incitement of conscripts and reservists by military rabbis who characterized the battle as a holy war for the expulsion of non-Jews from Jewish land" and religious soldiers who refuse to follow orders to evict settlers because they perceive their religious duties as paramount.] Will Joe Lieberman's "investigations" include these problems? Should they?

UPDATE: Also from Haaretz this week:

Just weeks after the arrest of alleged Jewish terrorist, Yaakov Teitel, a West Bank rabbi on Monday released a book giving Jews permission to kill Gentiles who threaten Israel. Rabbi Yitzhak Shapiro, who heads the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva in the Yitzhar settlement, wrote in his book "The King's Torah" that even babies and children can be killed if they pose a threat to the nation. Shapiro based the majority of his teachings on passages quoted from the Bible, to which he adds his opinions and beliefs. "It is permissable to kill the Righteous among Nations even if they are not responsible for the threatening situation," he wrote, adding: "If we kill a Gentile who has sinned or has violated one of the seven commandments - because we care about the commandments - there is nothing wrong with the murder." Several prominent rabbis, including Rabbi Yithak Ginzburg and Rabbi Yaakov Yosef, have recommended the book to their students and followers.

As indicated above, there are Christian religious leaders who preach much the same thing. All are small minorities within their religion -- just as is true for those who kill civilians in the name of Islam -- but if we're so eager to launch investigations and draw broad conclusions from episodes like the Fort Hood shootings, we ought to be asking the same questions about episodes and people like this.

Newspaper punished for criticizing Iraqi leader

Glenn Greenwald — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:12:00 PST

(updated below)

In April of this year, the British daily, The Guardian, published an article by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, an Iraqi citizen, documenting the increasingly autocratic practices of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The article quoted an Iraqi intelligence official claiming that "Maliki is running a dictatorship." As if to prove their point, the reaction of the Maliki government was to sue The Guardian under a law that does "not allow foreigners to publish articles critical of the prime minister or president," and yesterday, an Iraqi court ordered the newspaper to pay Maliki the equivalent of £52,000. Iraq's leading journalism organization says the court order "is part of a wider crackdown against media outlets designed to discourage scrutiny of public officials" and that "the Iraqi media have been inundated by writs from officials in recent months and have lost official access and status to state-backed organisations." Both The New York Times and AP in Iraq have received such writs.

Two months ago, The Economist published a far more damning account of the Maliki government, detailing numerous government policies of torture, media attacks and other forms of censorship:

Human-rights violations are becoming more common. In private many Iraqis, especially educated ones, are asking if their country may go back to being a police state. Old habits from Saddam Hussein’s era are becoming familiar again. Torture is routine in government detention centres. "Things are bad and getting worse, even by regional standards," says Samer Muscati, who works for Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby.

Yesterday, The New York Times reported that former Blackwater officials claim the company plotted to bribe Iraqi government officials to withhold criticisms of the American contractor for its wanton slaughter of Iraqi civilians and other crimes (here is leading Blackwater expert Jeremy Scahill discussing with Rachel Maddow the potential criminal implications of the story -- as well as the U.S. Government's ongoing use of Blackwater for multiple functions).

All of this underscores the painful folly of those who continue to justify American wars with the claim that we're going to magnanimously spread freedom, democracy and human rights to the countries we invade, bomb and occupy. That so plainly isn't our motive -- or anyone else's -- for fighting wars, notwithstanding whatever good intentions individual soldiers may have. And even if it were our motive, trying to re-shape other countries and cultures with military invasions is a task that, while not impossible, is close to it (I discussed that topic at length in the Bill Moyers interview I did last week in the context of reports that we have Afghan "drug kingpin" Ahmed Karzai on our payroll).

In Iraq, here we are almost seven years after the invasion -- hundreds of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and more than 4,000 American lives later -- and the primary remaining "justification" is that we're bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq. Yet the government we helped install and which we empower is becoming increasingly tyrannical, oppressive and brutal. We at least ought to take that strongly into account as we hear government claims that we need to remain, and escalate, in Afghanistan for the good of the people there.

* * * * *

This website, compiled for Veterans' Day, contains numerous videos of American soldiers returning home and being greeted by their dogs (h/t John Cole). Particularly for dog owners, but really for anyone, there is something quite affecting and even illuminating about these videos.

UPDATE: In yesterday's Mercury News, Malalai Joya -- as Afghan woman elected to her country's Parliament -- says that she is now "in the United States to ask President Barack Obama to immediately end the occupation of [her] country," and specifically takes to task those claiming that ongoing American occupation is justified because it will help Afghan women:

Eight years ago, women's rights were used as one of the excuses to start this war. But today, Afghanistan is still facing a women's rights catastrophe. Life for most Afghan women resembles a type of hell that is never reflected in the Western mainstream media. In 2001, the U.S. helped return to power the worst misogynist criminals, such as the Northern Alliance warlords and druglords. These men ought to be considered a photocopy of the Taliban. The only difference is that the Northern Alliance warlords wear suits and ties and cover their faces with the mask of democracy while they occupy government positions. But they are responsible for much of the disaster today in Afghanistan, thanks to the U.S. support they enjoy.

She details the many reasons why ongoing occupation, and especially escalation, will do nothing to improve the lives of Afghan women, a principal "justification" offered by many pro-war Americans -- especially pro-war Democrats -- for why the American occupation should continue. The relationship between what she says and what is happening in Iraq is self-evident.

Denying responsibility for the wars one cheers on

Glenn Greenwald — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 04:11:00 PST

(updated below - Update II)

David Brooks' column today perfectly illustrates what lies at the core of our political discourse: namely, self-loving tribalistic blindness laced with a pathological refusal to accept responsibility for one's actions. Brooks claims there is a unique evil that one finds in the "fringes of the Muslim world":

Most people select stories that lead toward cooperation and goodness. But over the past few decades a malevolent narrative has emerged. That narrative has emerged on the fringes of the Muslim world. It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern. They don’t see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so. This narrative is embraced by a small minority. But it has caused incredible amounts of suffering within the Muslim world, in Israel, in the U.S. and elsewhere. With their suicide bombings and terrorist acts, adherents to this narrative have made themselves central to global politics. They are the ones who go into crowded rooms, shout “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” and then start murdering.

But Brooks himself was a vehement, vicious advocate for the attack on Iraq, which caused this:

The 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq has resulted in the deaths of many Iraqi civilians . . . Many international organizations, governments and non-governmental organizations have counted excess civilian casualties using such methods; however all have reported different numbers. Reports range from 128,000 to 1,033,000.

That's at least 128,000 innocent human beings -- at least -- whose lives were eradicated by the war Brooks repeatedly cheered on. It also resulted in this: "More than 4 million Iraqis have now been displaced by violence in the country." But Brooks accuses Islamic fanatics -- but not himself -- of "causing incredible amounts of suffering."

Brooks also justified the Israeli attack on Gaza, including its worst excesses -- a war that wiped out the lives of 1,400 Palestinians (including 252 children under the age of 16) and that entailed "the shooting of [Gazan] civilians with white flags, the firing of white phosphorus shells and charges that Israeli soldiers used Palestinian men as human shields," all of which, according to a U.N. investigation, were "the result of deliberate guidance issued to soldiers." He also cheered on the Israeli bombing campaign of Lebanon and derided those calling for a cease-fire, even as the war wiped out more than 1,000 Lebanese people, at least 300 of whom were women and children, during which "Israeli warplanes also targeted many moving vehicles that turned out to be carrying only civilians trying to flee the conflict." And Brooks is now demanding escalation of the war in yet another Muslim country, this one in Afghanistan -- making it the fourth separate war on Muslims he's cheered on in the last six years alone.

So here's a person who is constantly advocating and justifying the killing, bombing, and slaughtering of Muslims, including well over 100,000 innocent civilians. And yet today he writes a column saying: Look over there at those radical Muslims; can you believe how degraded and inhumane they are? In fact, he says, "they" -- those Muslims over there -- "don’t see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so." That's from the same person who cheerleads for the endless deaths of Muslims and destruction of the Muslim world while thinking that it makes him strong, resolute, Churchillian, righteous and noble -- exactly that which he accuses "fringe Muslims" of doing. And even as he blames the U.S. for "absolving" radical Muslims for the "evil" of their choices, Brooks will never make the connection between what he does and its results because he believes he is free from accountability and that his righteousness justifies the killings he desires -- again, exactly that which he says today is the hallmark of Islamic monsters ("They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so").

The tribalistic narcissism and depraved refusal to accept responsibility for the consequences of one's actions on vivid display here is hardly unique to Brooks. The very same people who express such moral outrage and self-righteous horror over events like the Fort Hood shootings themselves have immense amounts of innocent human blood on their hands, but they simply avert their eyes from what they have caused or believe that they are too inherently Good to be responsible, let alone culpable, for what they unleash.

UPDATE: Ramesh Ponnuru reads this and claims to believe that the point I was making is this: "If you didn't oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, you have no standing to object to the Ft. Hood murders." That has nothing to do with what I wrote.

If one needs to reduce my point to a single sentence, one can try this: "if you constantly cheer on one war after the next that results in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings and the extreme suffering of millions more (as Brooks has done -- beyond Iraq and Afghanistan -- and continues to do), then you can't coherently claim that the targets of your wars have a unique disregard for human life; that they -- but not you -- "don’t see others as fully human"; that they -- but not you -- "cause incredible amounts of suffering"; and that they -- but not you -- "come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so."

Brooks advocates exactly that which he condemns -- and he does so over and over again. That doesn't mean his condemnations are wrong (criminals can coherently condemn other crimes). But it does mean that his claim that such sentiments are unique to Muslim radicals is plainly false.

UPDATE II: Brooks' claim here recalls the statement of Gen. William Westmoreland that "the Oriental doesn't put the same high price on life as does a Westerner; life is plentiful, life is cheap in the Orient, and as the philosophy of the Orient expresses it, life is not important." The willingness of Gen. Westmoreland -- of all people -- to make that claim of superiority about "the Orientals" versus Westerners strikes me as quite similar to neocon David Brooks' similar claims about those Muslims over there versus people like him (h/t reader cl).

Salon Radio: Rep. Jerry Nadler on State Secrets Act

Glenn Greenwald — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 02:11:00 PST

Last Friday, the House Judiciary Committee, by a vote of 18-12, approved a bill entitled The State Secret Protection Act of 2009, which, if enacted, would be the first law ever to regulate and limit the President's ability to use the "state secrets privilege" to compel the dismissal of lawsuits that allege lawbreaking by executive branch officials. The bill was first introduced in 2007 in response to the Bush administration's radical abuse and expansion of the privilege, and was re-introduced earlier this year in response to the Obama administration's identical abuses.

The lead House sponsor of the bill is Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York, the Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. He's my guest today on Salon Radio to discuss why these limits are so imperative, how the Obama DOJ has been abusing the privilege, and why internal, voluntary DOJ safeguards are inadequate. When the Judiciary Committee approved the bill on Friday, Nadler said: "The state secrets doctrine, as it has been reinvented in the last few years, is the greatest threat to liberty in this country. It must be limited and controlled." In the interview, he explains his rationale behind that striking claim, and he also explained this about the dangerous reinvention of the privilege over the last several years:

JN: The Bush administration made two changes, both of which have been embraced by the Obama administration. One, it started using this doctrine, which was used very sparingly before, all the time. And secondly, it invented, not only to say, you can't see a document, but it invented the use of saying, you can't have a lawsuit, of coming into court right on the pleadings, right after the initial filing of the initial complaint, to say, stop the lawsuit, because, not that you can't see a document, but the very consideration of the lawsuit, the very consideration of the case, will endanger state secrets, and dismiss the case right off the bat.

And that hides everything. If you dismiss the case right off the bat, then you can't use the case to find out what's going on, to prove that the government is violating rights, is engaging in torture, or is wiretapping without a warrant or whatever. That's what I meant by reinventing. It was never used until the Bush administration to dismiss a case right upfront. GG: And you feel that it's fair to say, as I think you just did say, that in cases involving rendition, brought by victims of torture, people alleging they were subjected to illegal warrantless eavesdropping, that the Obama administration has been using this privilege in exactly the same way, meaning in this way that's reinvented, by saying not just these specific documents are subject to the state secrets privilege, but the subject matter itself is? JN: Yes. They said that in court on a number of occasions, and they've in a number of cases, the al-Haramain case, in another case the Jeppesen case, they've taken exactly the same position, saying that you can't consider the case, as the Bush administration did, and they've argued in courts, in appellate courts, they've sought review, to defend that position.

Indeed they have. And that's why this legislation is as imperative as ever. Nadler characterizes the threats posed by these abuses as far more odious even than those posed by the excesses of the Patriot Act. But as he put it in the interview: "One of the basic problems is that I have to think that the administration is not going to support the bill, and it's going to be very difficult to pass it." I'll be writing much more about ways to apply pressure to induce enactment of this legislation. If nothing else, it's refreshing to see Democratic members of the House fulfilling their duty to act independently of the executive branch and try to impose limits to curb presidential abuses of power, even when the President is a member of their political party.

The discussion is roughly 10 minutes in length and can be heard by clicking PLAY on the recorder below (as always, the podcast can be downloaded as an MP3 here, or iTunes here). A transcript is here.