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Nuclear Plans, Libby’s Friend, Scope of War, SOTU

Nuclear Plans, Libby’s Friend, Scope of War, SOTU

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Some recommended reading – do your homework.

Saving the World By Stopping the Pentagon’s Programs
By Alexander Zaitchik, AlterNet

All that work against nuclear proliferation – gone, gone, gone. Another way we make the world a more dangerous place.

Then there is “Complex 2030,” a proposal to consolidate and update the entire nuclear complex, including the opening of a new plutonium “pit” facility capable of producing 125 new bombs a year. Estimated price tag: $150 billion over 25 years. The Bush administration and the Department of Energy argue that the overhaul is necessary to maintain the country’s deterrence and close aged plants, but arms control experts who have read the fine print say otherwise.

“The current nuclear stockpile is not in need of replacement, all of the existing nuclear weapons sites would still be in operation under the new plan, and the fundamental environmental problems of weapons production would not be solved,” states a joint report issued by more than a dozen nuclear watchdog groups, including Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Furthermore, the increased design, production and testing capabilities of Complex 2030 could spark a new nuclear arms race.”

…The major nuclear powers cannot continue to simultaneously refine their arsenals while keeping the rest of the world in 1944 by threat of force; only a madman thinks threats and preemptive strikes constitute a coherent or sustainable nonproliferation strategy. Nor can we continue to allow the production of fissile material and expect it to remain forever out of dangerous hands. We cannot have our yellow cake and eat it, too.

If we don’t come to grips with the dead-end of the nuclear double-standard, and begin soon the brave and historic grapple with the nuclear genie, we race toward a climax as awful as it is certain.

Take a look at Payson’s blog entry (Think Progress)on Chuck Hagel’s claim that the White House originally wanted the 2002 Iraq War Resolution to cover the entire Middle East. No-one else picked this up from the men style column at GQ? It ought to be on the front page.

Scooter Libby and Me
By Nick Bromell, The American Scholar, posted at AlterNet

Childhood friend of Scooter Libby’s shares questions he wants to ask him, and comments on the differences between liberalism and fundamentalism as they affect current US policy. This is worth a read just for the clear explanation of the difference between truth and the Truth (How did I miss Lynne Cheney’s article “The Roots of Today’s Lying Epidemic: The English Department Virus”? ). Oh, on lying?

Keep an eye out for fact checking updates on the State of the Union Address. The discussion on Charlie Rose was pretty good, and ABC has collected some citizen comments. To my ears, all Bush is saying…. is give war a chance.

More than 750

More than 750

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That’s the number of laws that Bush has claimed authority to disobey.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ”whistle-blower” protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush’s assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government.

The President’s job is to faithfully execute the laws. In his (or his advisors’) view, the Supreme Court’s job and the Congress’ job is really his job too.

I think that perhaps he’s spent a little too much time with the Royal Family – no, not his own, but the Saud variety. American boots on the ground in Saudi Arabia, protecting the regime of the royal family, acted as one of the first recruiting points for bin Laden’s terrorist network (despite his own ties) there. Our role in the middle east has been unpopular — supporting dictators, establishing military bases, things like that. Our decades-long protection of this family has been documented to some extent already – but I fully expect to see more revelations of just how deep our complicity has been, and how much it has really cost, as time goes on. Meanwhile, they’re raking it in even faster than ExxonMobil.

In any case, the expansion of executive power in this administration has been striking. They must feel very confident in continuing “Republican” power (They’re not really Republicans, are they…).

Here’s how it’s done, the modus operandi: Signing statements. It’s a form of crossing fingers behind your back, if you remember that children’s “loophole on a promise.”

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill, giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation’s sponsors to signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly files ”signing statements” — official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills — sometimes including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

”He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises — and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing what has happened,” said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio political science professor who studies executive power.

Here are a couple of examples:

Dec. 30, 2005: US interrogators cannot torture prisoners or otherwise subject them to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

Bush’s signing statement: The president, as commander in chief, can waive the torture ban if he decides that harsh interrogation techniques will assist in preventing terrorist attacks.

Oct. 29, 2005: Defense Department personnel are prohibited from interfering with the ability of military lawyers to give independent legal advice to their commanders.

Bush’s signing statement: All military attorneys are bound to follow legal conclusions reached by the administration’s lawyers in the Justice Department and the Pentagon when giving advice to their commanders.

Nov. 6, 2003: US officials in Iraq cannot prevent an inspector general for the Coalition Provisional Authority from carrying out any investigation. The inspector general must tell Congress if officials refuse to cooperate with his inquiries.

Bush’s signing statement: The inspector general ”shall refrain” from investigating anything involving sensitive plans, intelligence, national security, or anything already being investigated by the Pentagon. The inspector cannot tell Congress anything if the president decides that disclosing the information would impair foreign relations, national security, or executive branch operations.

The method of “no veto, then ignore with signing statement” is deceitful, especially given the way he does it. A Presidential veto can be overturned by Congress, but this cross your fingers behind your back is just plain infantile – not to mention creepy – and more than 750 examples is rather excessive.

“Ha-ha – take it back! Fooled ya again!”

It’s amazing to me that Congress is handing over its powers like this. It’s got to burn even the most rabid right-wingers a little bit.

Casualness and Swagger

Casualness and Swagger

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“What we are living with now is the consequences of successive policy failures. Some of the missteps include: the distortion of intelligence in the buildup to the war, McNamara-like micromanagement that kept our forces from having enough resources to do the job, the failure to retain and reconstitute the Iraqi military in time to help quell civil disorder, the initial denial that an insurgency was the heart of the opposition to occupation, alienation of allies who could have helped in a more robust way to rebuild Iraq, and the continuing failure of the other agencies of our government to commit assets to the same degree as the Defense Department.

My sincere view is that the commitment of our forces to this fight was done with a casualness and swagger that are the special province of those who have never had to execute these missions–or bury the results.

Flaws in our civilians are one thing; the failure of the Pentagon’s military leaders is quite another. Those are men who know the hard consequences of war but, with few exceptions, acted timidly when their voices urgently needed to be heard. When they knew the plan was flawed, saw intelligence distorted to justify a rationale for war, or witnessed arrogant micromanagement that at times crippled the military’s effectiveness, many leaders who wore the uniform chose inaction. A few of the most senior officers actually supported the logic for war. Others were simply intimidated, while still others must have believed that the principle of obedience does not allow for respectful dissent. The consequence of the military’s quiescence was that a fundamentally flawed plan was executed for an invented war, while pursuing the real enemy, al-Qaeda, became a secondary effort.”

– Marine Lt. Gen. Greg Newbold, former director of operations at the Pentagon’s military joint staff, writing in Time magazine.

Newbold resigned four months before the invasion of Iraq, but has now gone public with his criticism of the war.

Thanks to Sojourners – faith, politics, culture

Shelving Inconvenient Evidence

Shelving Inconvenient Evidence

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The Washington Post has reported on another W deceit. Like the Wilson situation, it centers on intelligence the administration didn’t want to hear as it was preparing for war. Like the Wilson situation, it bears the mark of Cheney more than it does of Bush.

“A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq — not made public until now — had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons.” The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped “secret” and shelved.

“There was no connection to anything biological,” said one expert who studied the trailers. Another recalled an epithet that came to be associated with the trailers: “the biggest sand toilets in the world“.

When President Bush declared in 2003 that “We have found the weapons of mass destruction”—referring to two mobile “biological laboratories.” He said this despite the fact that the “evidence” had already been discredited. In fact, the leaders of a Pentagon-sponsored team had determined two days beforehand that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons, a finding they sent to Washington, where it was classified top secret. Meanwhile, for almost a year afterwards, the Bush administration continued to point to the trailers as vindication of its push to invade Iraq.

News of the team’s early impressions leaped across the Atlantic well ahead of the technical report. Over the next two days, a stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.

The reason for the nervousness was soon obvious: In Washington, a CIA analyst had written a draft white paper on the trailers, an official assessment that would also reflect the views of the CIA. The white paper described the trailers as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.” It also explicitly rejected an explanation by Iraqi officials, described in a New York Times article a few days earlier, that the trailers might be mobile units for producing hydrogen.

But the technical team’s preliminary report, written in a tent in Baghdad and approved by each team member, reached a conclusion opposite from that of the white paper.

Team members and other sources intimately familiar with the mission declined to discuss technical details of the team’s findings because the report remains classified. But they cited the Iraqi Survey Group’s nonclassified, final report to Congress in September 2004 as reflecting the same conclusions.

That report said the trailers were “impractical for biological agent production,” lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the trailers were “almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen,” the survey group reported.

The group’s report and members of the technical team also dismissed the notion that the trailers could be easily modified to produce weapons.

The trailers may have been used to produce hydrogen, possibly for weather/surveillance balloons. They still bore the identification plates of the British company that manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq.

Related quotations from Think Progress:

BUSH: We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. [Bush on Polish TV, 5/29/03]

POWELL: We have already discovered mobile biological factories of the kind that I described to the Security Council on the 5th of February. We have now found them. There is no question in our mind that that’s what their purpose was. Nobody has come up with an alternate purpose that makes sense. [Powell, 6/2/03]

WOLFOWITZ: We — as the whole world knows — have in fact found some significant evidence to confirm exactly what Secretary Powell said when he spoke to the United Nations about the development of mobile biological weapons production facilities that would seem to confirm fairly precisely the information we received from several defectors, one in particular who described the program in some detail. [Wolfowitz, 6/3/03]

RICE: But let’s remember what we’ve already found. Secretary Powell on February 5th talked about a mobile, biological weapons capability. That has now been found and this is a weapons laboratory trailers capable of making a lot of agent that–dry agent, dry biological agent that can kill a lot of people. So we are finding these pieces that were described. … This was a program that was built for deceit and concealment. [CNBC, 6/3/03]

JOHN BOLTON: And I think the presentation that Secretary Powell made to the Security Council some months ago, which he worked on day and night for four or five days before going up to New York, is actually standing up very well to the test of reality as we learn more about what was going on inside Iraq. He explained to the Security Council and, indeed, showed diagrams of mobile biological weapons production facilities. We have already found two such laboratories. [Testimony before House International Relations Committee, 6/4/03]

BUSH: We recently found two mobile biological weapons facilities which were capable of producing biological agents. [Bush, 6/5/03]

POWELL: And I would put before you exhibit A, the mobile biological labs that we have found. Now, people are saying, well, are they truly mobile biological labs? Yes, they are. [Fox News Sunday, 6/8/03]

POWELL: I believe that they did have them and still have them, and I am confident that as we continue our efforts we will find these weapons, as well as the programs that supported these weapons. The mobile biological laboratories that were found and presented to the world, I think, is a further evidence of this. [Powell on al-Arabiyya, 6/23/03]

POWELL: [The State Department’s intelligence analysts’] confidence level is increasing. … And so we have been in complete open analysis with, you know, having a complete open analysis with the CIA, and the Director of Central Intelligence remains confident of his judgment. And frankly, I haven’t seen anything to suggest that that judgment is wrong. [Powell, 6/26/03]

POWELL: I reviewed that presentation that I made on the 5th of February a number of times, as you might imagine, over recent weeks, and it holds up very well. It was the solid, coordinated judgment of the intelligence community. Some of the things that I talked about that day we have now seen in reality. We have found the mobile biological weapons labs that I could only show cartoons of that day. We now have them. [NBC Today Show, 6/30/03]

CHENEY: We had intelligence reporting before the war that there were at least seven of these mobile labs that he had gone out and acquired. We’ve, since the war, found two of them. They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack. [Meet the Press, 9/14/03]

POWELL: And even though there are differences within the overall intelligence community, the Director of Central Intelligence, examining all of the material with respect to that van and examining counter-arguments as to what it might be, stands behind the judgment that what we found was positive evidence of a mobile biological weapons lab, and it has not been discounted sufficiently. [ABC This Week, 9/28/03]

The Matriarch King is Dead

The Matriarch King is Dead

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“Women, if the soul of the nation is to be saved, I believe that you must become its soul.”
— Coretta Scott King

Coretta Scott King is dead.

A woman of grace and strength and courage and dignity is gone.

Equality. Human Rights. Non-violence. Peace.

She worked hard to keep these ideas out front and center as solid goals for our country. She fought alongside many others for a national holiday in honor of her husband’s birthday. She opened the King Center (Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change-the site of his tomb and of good works to support the dream) here in Atlanta. She spoke out on a wide range of issues (every last one of which is completely disregarded if not actively opposed by the current administration). She raised four children, too – and I hope they can learn to resolve their differences about where their parents’ legacy should take them as a family. The Kings belong to us all.

I am stuck here today with no transportation. I feel a deep urge to go to the King Center. I wish that I could. I am sending out my deep support and caring for everyone in America who feels this emptiness like I do today. The Matriarch King Coretta is gone, another good strong voice gone. May her memory inspire others.

On local news, I heard Rev. Joseph Lowery (former president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, among other things). He was asked if he thought there were young people rising up to replace the likes of these heroes of our nation.

He said no. Then he explained in a clear, gentle way (that I can’t duplicate) that no-one can replace King, or anyone. It’s not a matter of replacing. They walked in their own shoes, they had their own history, they thought what they thought, they did what they did.

Young people can’t replace anyone.

They can, however, be inspired and motivated by them – to be fully themselves and find their own work.

I watched film footage of the Kings and others, and the tears rolled down my face. What a woman she was.

They call her “the widow of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.” (note that they don’t use the word “assassinated” much anymore), but she worked strongly for the same goals he did. She didn’t suddenly care about freedom and justice – only just in support of her husband’s memory – but was an strong voice of activism in her own right.

Freedom. Justice.

I don’t remember anytime in my life before when these two words have been so stripped and twisted and misshapen as now. Freedom? Justice? We’ve degraded these words into meaninglessness. I do hope that there are those among the young who will rise up.

I can’t really explain how I felt when I went to CNN and saw the top two headlines:

Coretta Scott King dies
Alito confirmation expected today

The juxtaposition gave me a chill. Today our Senators will show how little they value King’s work – Alito cometh.

I think our dear leader would be wise to keep the hypocrisy to a minimum if he tries to say anything about her death in the State of the Union Speech tonight. His policies haven’t shown much concern for what she stood for and worked for.

I’m going to force myself to watch this speech, although it will be painful. It’s my civic duty.
And I have a feeling about it, which I need to verify or disregard.

Today:
1865: The 13th Amendment to the Constitution passes, abolishing slavery in the United States.

More words from Coretta Scott King:

“If American women would increase their voting turnout by ten percent, I think we would see an end to all of the budget cuts in programs benefiting women and children.”

“My mother always told me that I was going to go to college, even if she didn’t have but one dress to put on.”

“Struggle is a never ending process. Freedom is never really won you earn it and win it in every generation.”

“Every person is a child of god and every human being is entitled to full human rights.”

“We have got to stand firm for a more compassionate health care system, which leaves no person behind — a system that takes responsibility to insure that no citizen be denied medical care because they lack adequate insurance. There is something wrong with a system that requires telethons for sick people, but always has a blank check ready for the Pentagon. The Cold War is over, but we still have a Cold War military budget, which is draining needed financial and human resources that should be invested in the health security of the American people. ”

“The gay bashers and homophobic people are the best allies AIDS could have. By preaching hatred and fear of gay people, they are creating a climate that discourages openness and education about AIDS which can help prevent its spread. They spread shame and guilt where their should be compassion and healing.”

“Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder.”

“The King Holiday celebrates Dr. King’s global vision of the world house, a world whose people and nations had triumphed over poverty, racism, war and violence. The holiday celebrates his vision of ecumenical solidarity, his insistence that all faiths had something meaningful to contribute to building the beloved community.”

“Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood. This sets the stage for further repression and violence that spread all too easily to victimize the next minority group.”

“I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people.”

“I think that nonviolence allows you and empowers you to do what is necessary, because what you do is build coalitions. You can’t do all of it by yourself, but you can put together a coalition and get other people involved, or join organizations that are already involved and continue to work to eradicate poverty, of course, since poverty is still with us, very much so. My husband — it was one of the triple evils that he talked about — poverty, racism and war. And of course, they all are forms of violence, and we have to continue to work to make sure that people everywhere have a decent livelihood, that they have jobs, they have housing, they have health care, they have quality education. All of these areas that we still have to work on and to improve, so that the quality of life for all people is improved, and we can achieve indeed the “beloved community” that Martin talked about, that I believe in.”

Expanding Prison Camps and Adding Troops

Expanding Prison Camps and Adding Troops

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BBC News Aug 18

Rolling in more troops for prison security, taking in more prisoners, building yet another prison camp.

As the insurgency continues, there are now nearly 11,000 prisoners in major US-run detention centres – twice as many as last September. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last month he would like to give Iraq’s government full responsibility for detainees as soon as was feasible. But the US has offered no timetable for such a handover.

A Pentagon spokesman, Air Force Lt-Col John Skinner, said detention operations in Iraq were expanding. The battalion, from the division’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, will be deployed to Iraq over the next two months, Pentagon officials said on Wednesday. It has already served once in Iraq, from September 2003 to April 2004, and before that in Afghanistan. The troops are being prepared to perform duties such as providing security around prison compounds and for transportation of prisoners.

PRISON CAPACITY

Abu Ghraib – expanded to house 4,000
Camp Bucca – 6,000, to take an extra 1,400
Camp Cropper – 100, to take 2,000 more
Fort Suse – to take 2,000

A fourth facility at Fort Suse in the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya, 330km (205 miles) north of Baghdad, is expected to be completed next month. The three older prisons are being expanded.

The $50m (£28m) construction programme, announced in June, will eventually allow the US to hold 16,000 prisoners.