Tag Archives: Salon

What Communication Problem?

29 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by in bailout, economy, Financial Crisis, Obama administration, Politics, Wall Street

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I keep reading about the Obama administration’s so-called “communication problem.” The latest being this piece in the LA Times by Richard Wolffe:

“[The] lack of agreement on economic fundamentals is a primary factor behind one of this White House’s most obvious failures: communications. As one senior Obama advisor told me the day after the disastrous midterms: “It was hard to find a single economic message when the economic team couldn’t agree on a single economic policy.”

I don’t get it. To me, the “economic message” has been crystal clear since the president began to name his team of advisors. The message has been and continues to be, save Wall Street by any means necessary. And to that I give a hearty “Mission Accomplished”:

Charles Ferguson, whose documentary about the financial crisis–Inside Job– is a must see, wrote in Salon:

“When Barack Obama was elected, he had an unprecedented opportunity to shape American history by bringing the country’s new financial oligarchy under control. Elected on a platform of change and renewal by a nation in crisis and with strong majorities in both houses of Congress, his election celebrated throughout the world, Obama could have done great things. Instead, he gave us more of the same. America will be paying for his decision for a very long time.

And now, nearly two years later, the Obama administration has established a clear record…It is, in short, overwhelmingly clear that President Obama and his administration decided to side with the oligarchs — or at least not to challenge them.”

Paul Krugman:

“No wonder we’re in such trouble. Obama must gravitate instinctively to people who give him bad economic advice, and who almost surely don’t share the values he was elected to promote. That’s what I’d call a structural problem.”

I’ll take it one fairly obvious (to me anyway) step further, President Obama doesn’t share the values he was elected to promote. (On a related note; if anyone’s looking for a Christmas present for the person who has everything, I’ll make you a good deal on some slightly used snake oil I bought two years ago). He’s the one who put that team in place and who continues to defend them (heckuva job Larry) on their way out the door. I have a difficult time believing that the replacements will be any different. A structural problem indeed.

In Defense of Michael Steele—Sort Of

03 Saturday Jul 2010

Posted by in Afghanistan, Congress, Democrats, George W. Bush, Iraq, Obama, Politics, Republicans, terrorism, war on terror

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I can’t believe this, but I’m going to defend the remarks of RNC Chairman Michael Steele, at least in part. Which is more than I can say for the response from the DNC.

Of course Steele’s accusation that Afghanistan is “a war of Obama’s choosing” is ridiculous. Afghanistan was a war of no one’s choosing, it was a response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. And the reason Afghanistan deteriorated into the situation President Obama inherited was because of the choices of the Bush administration, who neglected Afghanistan for 7 years in the misguided pursuit of the “war of their choosing” in Iraq.

But to be fair, President Obama has made some significant choices in relation to Afghanistan. He chose to increase the number of troops there soon after taking office. He chose to replace Gen. McKiernan with Gen. McChrystal, which included a choice to shift strategy from McKiernan’s more conventional approach to McChrystal’s counterinsurgency plan. Because of this change in strategy the president chose to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan by another 30,000.

When Obama replaced McChrystal recently, the president chose to bring in Gen. Petraeus and stick with counterinsurgency despite a growing number of indications, including the grumblings by McChrystal and his staff included in the Rolling Stone piece, that it isn’t working.

Steele was right on the money with this part of his remarks:

“Well, if he is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? Alright, because everyone who has tried over a thousand years of history has failed, and there are reasons for that.”

That brought this reaction from the DNC:

“Here goes Michael Steele setting policy for the GOP again. The likes of John McCain and Lindsey Graham will be interested to hear that the Republican Party position is that we should walk away from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban without finishing the job. They’d also be interested to hear that the Chairman of the Republican Party thinks we have no business in Afghanistan notwithstanding the fact that we are there because we were attacked by terrorists on 9-11.

“And, the American people will be interested to hear that the leader of the Republican Party thinks recent events related to the war are ‘comical’ and that he is betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan. It’s simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement. Michael Steele would do well to remember that we are not in Afghanistan by our own choosing, that we were attacked and that his words have consequences.”

As Greg Sargent at Plum Line points out, (and Glenn Greenwald at Salon agrees) these charges are a tactic straight out of Karl Rove’s playbook, and one which the Bush administration often leveled at Democrats over the war in Iraq. That anyone who criticizes any aspect of the war is advocating for “cutting and running” and doesn’t “support the troops.”

Greenwald:

“Two points about this:   (1) there’s nothing “tough” or “rough” about the DNC statement; it’s actually lame, desperate and ineffective.  As I noted above, the 2006 and 2008 GOP-crushing elections both proved that these rhetorical insults do not work any longer.  Beyond that, attacking people for criticizing the War in Afghanistan is as dumb as when the Republicans attacked people who criticized the Iraq War.”

As Dave Dayen at Firedoglake points out, an amendment to the war supplemental in the House which called for a withdrawal timetable in Afghanistan got 162 votes, a majority of the Democratic caucus.

Greenwald concludes:

“I wonder what the DNC has to say about the fact that a majority of their Party’s House caucus are cowardly, solider-hating traitors who are betting against the Troops.”

The Rule of Law Loses Another Round With Johnsen Withdrawal

13 Tuesday Apr 2010

Posted by in George W. Bush, Justice Department, Obama, Politics, terrorism, torture, war on terror

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In what has become SOP for this administration, President Obama has once again capitulated under the slightest pushback from the GOP obstructionists, although without too much of a struggle I might add. After leaving his nominee to head the OLC, Dawn Johnsen to “twist in the wind for more than a year,” Ms. Johnsen withdrew her nomination.

“The struggle between President Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill has claimed a fresh victim — Dawn Johnsen. She was Mr. Obama’s choice to lead the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. Ms. Johnsen withdrew her nomination after more than a year. It was clear that the White House was not going to fight to save her from Republicans who were refusing to allow a vote on her confirmation.

Ms. Johnsen’s problem was not that she lacked strong qualifications to be the legal adviser to the executive branch, informing the White House about what the law requires and what it prohibits.”

Ms. Johnsen’s “problem” was that she is a staunch advocate for the limitation of executive power and an opponent of the president’s “look forward, not back” policy in relation to dealing with abuses of power by the previous administration. In a March, 2008 piece in Slate she wrote:

“The question how we restore our nation’s honor takes on new urgency and promise as we approach the end of this administration. We must resist Bush administration efforts to hide evidence of its wrongdoing through demands for retroactive immunity, assertions of state privilege, and implausible claims that openness will empower terrorists.”

[…]

“Here is a partial answer to my own question of how should we behave, directed especially to the next president and members of his or her administration but also to all of use who will be relieved by the change: We must avoid any temptation simply to move on. We must instead be honest with ourselves and the world as we condemn our nation’s past transgressions and reject Bush’s corruption of our American ideals. Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation’s honor be restored without full disclosure.”

Glenn Greenwald at Salon writes:

“What Johnsen insists must not be done reads like a manual of what Barack Obama ended up doing and continues to do — from supporting retroactive immunity to terminate FISA litigations to endless assertions of “state secrecy” in order to block courts from adjudicating Bush crimes to suppressing torture photos on the ground that “opennees will empower terrorists” to the overarching Obama dictate that we “simply move on.”

Could she have described any more perfectly what Obama would end up doing when she wrote, in March, 2008, what the next President “must not do”?

A rhetorical question, I presume. The answer is painfully obvious.

President Obama to Indonesians: Look Backward, Not Forward

26 Friday Mar 2010

Posted by in Obama, Politics, torture, war on terror

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From the Department of ‘Do As I Say, Not As I Do’ comes this from Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

“President Obama gave an interview earlier this week to an Indonesian television station in lieu of the scheduled trip to that country which was canceled due to the health care vote.  In 2008, Indonesia empowered a national commission to investigate human rights abuses committed by its own government under the U.S.-backed Suharto regime “in an attempt to finally bring the perpetrators to justice,” and Obama was asked in this interview:  “Is your administration satisfied with the resolution of the past human rights abuses in Indonesia?”  He replied:

We have to acknowledge that those past human rights abuses existed.  We can’t go forward without looking backwards . . . .

Did I miss something or isn’t that the polar opposite of Obama’s policy toward officials in the Bush administration accused of human rights violations by way of “enhanced interrogation techniques” (aka torture) in pursuit of the “war on terror?”

Greenwald:

“Why, as Obama sermonized, must Indonesians first look backward before being able to move forward, whereas exactly the opposite is true of Americans?  If a leader is going to demand that other countries adhere to the very “principles” which he insists on violating himself, it’s probably best not to use antithetical clichés when issuing decrees, for the sake of appearances if nothing else.

[…]

Nothing enables the glorification of crimes, and nothing ensures their future re-occurrence, more than shielding the criminals from all accountability.  It’s nice that Barack Obama is willing to dispense that lecture to other countries, but it’s not so nice that he does exactly the opposite in his own.”

Waterboarding Just “A Dunk in the Water?” New Documents Say Otherwise

10 Wednesday Mar 2010

Posted by in Dick Cheney, Obama, Politics, terrorism, torture, war on terror

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See if this sounds like what the Marquis de Cheney referred to as “ a dunk in the water,” and a “well done” technique that if he “had it to do all over again,..would do exactly the same thing.” Judge for yourself if those whose memos authorized and legitimized the following methods are guilty of nothing more than using “poor judgment.” I have a question for President Obama as well. Still think we need to “look forward, not back?” From Mark Benjamin at Salon:

…[R]ecently released internal documents reveal the controversial “enhanced interrogation” practice was far more brutal on detainees than Cheney’s description sounds, and was administered with meticulous cruelty.

…The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth.

They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.”

And for those defenders of waterboarding who say it can’t be torture because our soldiers go through it in SERE training:

“…the documents show that the agency’s methods went far beyond anything ever done to a soldier during training. U.S. soldiers, for example, were generally waterboarded with a cloth over their face one time, never more than twice, for about 20 seconds, the CIA admits in its own documents.

“The difference was in the manner in which the detainee’s breathing was obstructed,” the document notes. In soldier training, “The interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth (on a soldier’s face) in a controlled manner,” DOJ wrote. “By contrast, the agency interrogator … continuously applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee’s mouth and nose.”

These memos show the CIA went much further than that with terror suspects, using huge and dangerous quantities of liquid over long periods of time. The CIA’s waterboarding was “different” from training for elite soldiers, according to the Justice Department document released last month.

But, the defenders also say, no matter the tactics, waterboarding worked.  It provided intelligence which “kept us safe” from future attacks, right? Wrong.

“When torture supporters would tout the value of the information Abu Zubaydah provided, they somehow failed to mention that the actionable intelligence he provided was admitted prior to his waterboarding.  After President Bush bragged about the information obtained by torturing Abu Zubaydah, the Washington Post, after reviewing case files, concluded that absolutely no credible intelligence came from Zubaydah’s interrogations that utilized torture.”

But despite all the gruesome and sadistic details contained in the documents, this is perhaps the most disturbing:

“NOTE: In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process (realizing that much splashes off), how exactly the water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment.”

Paging Dr. Mengele, Dr. Josef Mengele.

“Villain Rotation” in the Senate

24 Wednesday Feb 2010

Posted by in Congress, Democrats, health care, Obama, Politics, special interests

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I hesitate to even comment on the health care reform charade any more because that’s exactly what it is and has been from the get-go, a charade. But Glenn Greenwald had a piece in Salon yesterday which nailed the situation perfectly. The bottom line is this–there will be no real reform for one reason–those in power don’t want it. Sure they, meaning the president and Democrats in the Senate, want to give the appearance of being for substantial reform, but the fact is they all benefit too much from the status quo. They aren’t about to kill the corporate goose that lays the golden campaign contribution eggs, and especially now that the Supreme Court has allowed corporations, like the insurance industry, to spend unlimited amounts on advertising for and against candidates.

Greenwald cites Sen. Jay Rockefeller as the latest example of what he calls “Villain Rotation.”

“They always have a handful of Democratic Senators announce that they will be the ones to deviate this time from the ostensible party position and impede success, but the designated Villain constantly shifts, so the Party itself can claim it supports these measures while an always-changing handful of their members invariably prevent it.”

From Politics Daily on October 4, 2009:

“Jay Rockefeller has waited a long time for this moment. . . . He’s a longtime advocate of health care for children and the poor — and, as Congress moves toward its moment of truth on health care, perhaps the most earnest, dogged Senate champion of a nationwide public health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies.

“I will not relent on that. That’s the only way to go,” Rockefeller told me in an interview. “There’s got to be a safe harbor.”

Jay Rockefeller Monday:

“Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) threw a wrench into Democratic efforts to get a public option passed through reconciliation, saying that he thought the maneuver was overly partisan and that he was inclined to oppose it. . .

“I don’t think the timing of it is very good,” the West Virginia Democrat said on Monday. “I’m probably not going to vote for that.”

Greenwald:

“In other words, Rockefeller was willing to be a righteous champion for the public option as long as it had no chance of passing (sadly, we just can’t do it, because although it has 50 votes in favor it doesn’t have 60) But now that Democrats are strongly considering the reconciliation process — which will allow passage with only 50 rather than 60 votes and thus enable them to enact a public option — Rockefeller is suddenly “inclined to oppose it” because he doesn’t “think the timing of it is very good” and it’s “too partisan.”  What strange excuses for someone to make with regard to a provision that he claimed, a mere five months ago (when he knew it couldn’t pass), was such a moral and policy imperative that he “would not relent” in ensuring its enactment.

The Obama White House did the same thing…[B]ack in August the evidence was clear that while the President was publicly claiming that he supported the public option, the White House, in private, was doing everything possible to ensure its exclusion from the final bill (in order not to alienate the health insurance industry by providing competition for it).  Yesterday, Obama — while having his aides signal that they would use reconciliation if necessary–finally unveiled his first-ever health care plan as President, and guess what it did not include?  The public option, which he spent all year insisting that he favored oh-so-much but sadly could not get enacted:  Gosh, I really want the public option, but we just don’t have 60 votes for it; what can I do?.”

The problem was, and is, that the president and the Democrats in Congress are getting exactly what they wanted to start with. The backroom deal with PhRMA is intact. The individual mandate remains, forcing people to buy from private insurance companies. The president’s plan also raises the subsidies, which shovels taxpayers dollars to the same private companies, which in turn keeps the corporate contributions flowing and away from the Republicans.

If this plan passes, I would suggest buying stock in Aetna, WellPoint, United Health Care, et al. Maybe the dividends will help cover the cost of the premiums.

Are We No More The Home of the Brave?

18 Thursday Feb 2010

Posted by in Justice Department, Obama, Politics, terrorism, war on terror

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Glenn Greenwald has an interesting contrast in Tuesday’s Salon. How the rest of the world deals with accused terrorists as compared with the United States. A few cases in point:

May 12, 2003:
“DENPASAR, Indonesia — The first suspect charged with the October 12 [2002] Bali bombings, which killed over 200 people, has gone on trial in an Indonesian court.”

February 15, 2007:
“The trial of 29 people accused of involvement in train bombings that killed 191 people in March 2004 has opened in the Spanish capital, Madrid.”

April 11, 2008:
“LONDON — Three British Muslims accused of helping the suicide bombers who carried out the attacks on London’s transportation system in July 2005 went on trial on Thursday, in the first case against people accused of helping plan the attacks.”

July 21, 2009:
“The sole surviving gunman from last year’s Mumbai attacks, a Pakistani national, on Monday pleaded guilty at his trial, admitting for the first time his part in the atrocity that killed 166 people.”

Monday:
“SYDNEY – Five Muslims were sentenced Monday to 23 to 28 years in prison in Australia for stockpiling explosive chemicals and firearms for terrorist attacks on unspecified targets…The men, aged 25 to 44, were found guilty last October on charges linked to preparing a terrorist act between July 2004 and November 2005.”

In contrast, January 22, 2010:
“WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.”

And February 1, 2010:
“WASHINGTON — Sen. Lindsey Graham plans to introduce a bipartisan bill Tuesday to block funding for civilian trials of five alleged plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks who are now being held at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a military lawyer, said that eight other GOP senators had signed onto his legislation, along with Democrats Jim Webb of Virginia and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.”

Home of the brave?

Continuing the Bush / Cheney "War on Terror" Policies

01 Monday Feb 2010

Posted by in Justice Department, Obama, terrorism, torture, war on terror

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As someone who voted for Barack Obama in 2008,  I’ve been disappointed in many of the actions of the Obama administration. None more so than their continuation of the Bush/Cheney policies of dealing with those accused of terrorist activities. I expected much better from a president who professed to be something of a Constitutional scholar, and the administration bowing to pressure over the weekend from those who are against trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 4 others in New York City has only renewed that disappointment.

It also didn’t help that, in a Newsweek article on Friday, the Obama Justice Department has, what Newsweek called “downgraded” but a better term would be “whitewashed,” a Bush DOJ recommendation that Jay Bybee and John Yoo should be investigated for committing ethical violations in connection with authoring the 2002 torture memos. The Obama DOJ now calls their actions simply “poor judgment.”

In light of that, Glenn Greenwald has an excellent piece in Salon which is a must-read for anyone who shares my concerns, and which compares the Bush/Cheney policies with those of the current administration. The sad fact being that there isn’t much difference. Greenwald writes:

“From indefinite detention and renditions to denial of habeas rights, from military commissions and secrecy obsessions to state secrets abuses, many of the defining Bush/Cheney policies continue unabated under its successor administration.

...it’s now crystal clear that the country, especially its ruling elite, is either too petrified of Terrorism and/or too enamored of the powers which that fear enables to accept any real changes from the policies that were supposedly such a profound violation “of our values.”  One can only marvel at the consensus outrage generated by the mere notion that we charge people with crimes and give them trials if we want to lock them in a cage for life. Indeed, what was once the most basic and defining American principle — the State must charge someone with a crime and give them a fair trial in order to imprison them — has been magically transformed into Leftist extremism.”

…there is clearly a bipartisan and institutional craving for a revival (more accurately:  ongoing preservation)  of the core premise of Bush/Cheney radicalism:  that because we’re “at war” with Terrorists, our standard precepts of justice and due process do not apply and, indeed, must be violated.

That “Leftist extremism” would by today’s standards include that noted leftist, Ronald Reagan, whose policy on dealing with terrorists, as stated by L. Paul Bremer, the top Reagan State Department official in charge of  Terrorism policies, was this:

“Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are — criminals — and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law against them.”

Greenwald also has the just-released policy of another country in dealing with al-Qaeda, along with some quotes from that country’s leader. See who this sounds like:

“_____ will hold up to 300 al Qaeda members in jail indefinitely after they have completed their prison terms to stop them staging fresh attacks.

“These people are heretics. They are followers of (Osama) Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. They killed a number of civilians and police…It is a necessity to keep them in prison. They are very dangerous as they are ready to resume killing people in our streets here or travel…elsewhere to stage attacks…These people constitute a danger even when the court had pronounced its verdict. Security authorities are the ones who are responsible for this matter to say whether they are dangerous or not. The court verdict is void of reason in such cases.”

The country is Libya. The speaker is Muammar Gaddafi.