A “Wowie” Of An AP Gaffe on Moussaoui

Sarah Palin’s expert fact-checking service gives us a real doozy today (here)…

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – Zacarias Moussaoui was a clown who could not keep his mouth shut, according to his old al-Qaida boss, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. But Moussaoui was surprisingly tame when tried for the 9/11 attacks — never turning the courtroom into the circus of anti-U.S. tirades that some fear Mohammed will create at his trial in New York.

And that wasn’t the only surprise during Moussaoui’s six-week 2006 sentencing trial here — a proceeding that might foreshadow how the upcoming 9/11 trial in New York will go.

Really? This tells us the following (from the conclusion of Moussaoui’s trial in May 2006)…

The twelve anonymous jurors who sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison Wednesday showed that it is possible to reconcile prosecution of terror with the rule of law. Three of the jurors went to the trouble of writing into their report that Moussaoui, despite his fealty to Al Qaeda, had but “limited knowledge” of the September 11 conspiracy. Nine of them agreed that the extraordinary violence of his childhood weighed against a death sentence. Ordinary citizens, in the shadow of a unique and heinous crime, were still capable of telling the difference between justice and blood vengeance.

For defense lawyers Moussaoui was the client from hell, for four years alternatively denouncing the court and his legal team and demanding his own execution. Yet even Moussaoui’s raving could not disguise the fundamental flaw of the government’s execution demand, which defense lawyers emphasized so tirelessly even against the wishes of their megalomanic client: Whatever his malignant intent, Moussaoui was in jail on 9/11, and even before that was peripheral to the plot.

Some jurors clearly understood that the Ashcroft-Gonzales Justice Department’s decision to press for the death penalty against Moussaoui turned a legitimate criminal prosecution into a show trial. Five years and tens of million dollars in prosecution costs were exhausted to make sure that someone would get the needle for September 11– never mind if he was only marginally culpable.

On one level, the Moussaoui trial has been so exceptional in every way that it would be misleading to read into it too many broader implications. Yet if you strip away the extraordinary circumstances represented by 9/11 and the extraordinary challenge represented by Moussaoui himself, there was much in this trial in common with standard capital trials: an emotional but factually sloppy case for execution; a volatile defendant with a family history of mental illness and extreme violence; survivor families divided by the prospect of a death sentence.

And commenting on the events preceding the trial, Dahlia Lithwick of Slate told us the following in March 2003 (before Iraq War II started – hard to remember such a time existed, but it did)…

The Moussaoui trial, a shambles almost from the first bang of the gavel, is on indefinite hold, postponed for the third time now, pending a Justice Department appeal of a ruling by the trial judge. Part of the problem is that in the year and a half since the war on terror began, the Bush administration has been unable to determine how it wants to treat captured terrorists. Legal analysts have struggled to discern a pattern in the government’s inconsistent treatment of suspects, and finally one has begun to emerge: The truly dangerous criminal masterminds are interrogated indefinitely, the insignificant bumblers are tried as dangerous criminal masterminds, and the rest are left to rot in military jails. It’s an interesting approach, but one can hardly call it justice.

And as ABC News told us here in 2007…

An apparent breakdown in communication at the CIA caused its analysts to submit inaccurate declarations in the case against convicted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui, keeping taped interviews with enemy combatants from being reviewed in the case.

That admission came in the form of a highly redacted letter, classified Top Secret, sent from the federal prosecutors to the trial and appeals judges on the case.

The prosecutors noted that a CIA attorney informed them in September that the agency found one tape pertaining to the case, and after the prosecutors requested a more extensive review, the CIA found an additional video tape and one audio tape.

“The fact that audio/video recording of enemy combatant interrogations occurred, and that the United States was in possession of three of those recordings is, as noted, inconsistent with factual assertions in CIA declarations,” the letter noted.

The CIA had submitted declarations from 2003 to the court, stating that no recordings of interrogations existed. “The existence of the video tape however is at odds with statements in two CIA declarations submitted in this case,” the letter states.

Still, though, a trial in Federal court is the way to go against KSM and the other defendants; as Jonathan Alter of Newsweek noted here on Monday, “this will bring a faster conviction than in the military tribunals because the tribunals are uncharted waters. There’s much more room for appeal. Remember, after tribunal, there’s an appeal up to the Supreme Court and those appeals will take longer than the appeals in this case.”

And as Alter also told us, if Rudy 9iu11ani were still a prosecutor instead of a politician, he would be chomping at the proverbial bit to try the suspects in question instead of fear-mongering about why they should be locked up forever without having their day in court (and does it really need to be pointed out that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg supports having the trials in NYC?).

So all that remains is for our intelligence services and our system of justice to work in concert and bring convictions against the alleged 9/11 plotters. And since we now have grownups in charge who are interested in recognizing the rule of law here, as opposed to incompetent grandstanders interested only in political outcomes, I feel much better about our prospects.

Update 11/19/09: In response to this, I have a question for Rudy! – how do you feel about using the words “stupid” and “demagogue” in the same sentence, then?

Sweeping More “Turd Blossom” BS Under The “Afghan Rug”

“Bush’s Brain” opined as follows in the Murdoch Street Journal yesterday…

In an interview with CNN’s John King on Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said President Obama is now asking tough questions about Afghanistan “that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side and the strategic side.” It was a not so subtle dig at Mr. Obama’s predecessor and was meant to distract from the White House’s mishandling of the war.

The Bush administration did in fact conduct a top-to-bottom strategic review of Afghanistan in 2008. That review was provoked by two developments.

The first was that Pakistan’s government wobbled starting in 2006. It cut deals with tribes that created safe havens for the Taliban and al Qaeda and then became distracted from fighting terrorism as President Pervez Musharraf was pressured to leave office and replaced by a new democratic government. The second was al Qaeda’s decision to refocus its efforts on Afghanistan after having been driven from Iraq.

In response, I’d like to provide this link that tells us that, while the threat of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq was quite real, to say nothing of the suicide attacks, “Pentagon documents leaked to the Washington Post (around April 2006) regarding Zarqawi have revealed that Al Qaeda in Iraq is fabricated.” And just to refresh our memories, this McClatchy story tells us the pains the Bushco regime went through to try and fabricate a link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

And as far as the Obama White House’s supposed “mishandling of the war,” Cenk Uygur “keeps his eye on the ball,” so to speak, by telling us the following (here)…

Right now, there is a debate as to what President Obama should do in Afghanistan. As there should be. Should he send in more troops? Does it make sense to escalate the war without a viable partner in the Afghan government? Will this be his Vietnam? Woh, woh, woh … whose Vietnam?

What is not being talked about enough is the disastrous situation George Bush left for Obama in Afghanistan (as he did in just about every aspect of government). What the hell did Bush do in Afghanistan for over seven years? Apparently, not a damn thing.

Do you know how many troops Bush had in Afghanistan in early 2008? He had an unbelievably small contingent of 26,000 troops in the whole country. At the same time, he had 160,000 troops in Iraq. I don’t know if you know this, but Iraq did not attack us. The people who did attack us on 9/11 lived in … Afghanistan.

So Bush had 26K troops in Afghanistan, and we’re debating about whether or not we should have almost four times that amount now.

And before any of this occurred, Afghanistan had been our radar, as it were, since the Soviets were driven out of the country, mainly for the following reason (as noted here)…

The strategic location of Afghanistan can scarcely be overstated. The Caspian Basin contains up to $16 trillion worth of oil and gas resources, and the most direct pipeline route to the richest markets is through Afghanistan.

The Alternet article discusses in length how the American company Unocal (aided by an Arabian company, Delta Oil) fought Bridas, an Argentine energy company, who had leases to drill for oil in the region…

…and by November of 1996 (Bridas) had signed an agreement with General Dostum of the Northern Alliance and with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan.

…

Unocal wanted exclusive control of the trans-Afghan pipeline and hired a number of consultants in its conflict with Bridas: Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage (now Deputy Secretary of State in the Bush Administration), Zalmay Khalilzad (a signer of the PNAC letter to President Clinton) and Hamid Karzai.

Unocal wooed Taliban leaders at its headquarters in Texas, and hosted them in meetings with federal officials in Washington, D.C.

Unocal and the Clinton Administration hoped to have the Taliban cancel the Bridas contract, but were getting nowhere. Finally, Mr. John J. Maresca, a Unocal Vice President, testified to a House Committee of International Relations on February 12, 1998, asking politely to have the Taliban removed and a stable government inserted. His discomfort was well placed.

Six months later terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and two weeks after that President Clinton launched a cruise missile attack into Afghanistan. Clinton issued an executive order on July 4, 1999, freezing the Taliban’s U.S.-held assets and prohibiting further trade transactions with the Taliban.

Mr. Maresca could count that as progress. More would follow.

Immediately upon taking office, the new Bush Administration actively took up negotiating with the Taliban once more, seeking still to have the Bridas contract vacated, in exchange for a tidy package of foreign aid. The parties met three times, in Washington, Berlin, and Islamablad, but the Taliban wouldn’t budge.

Behind the negotiations, however, planning was underway to take military action if necessary. In the spring of 2001 the State Department sought and gained concurrence from both India and Pakistan to do so, and in July of 2001, American officials met with Pakistani and Russian intelligence agents to inform them of planned military strikes against Afghanistan the following October. A British newspaper told of the U.S. threatening both the Taliban and Osama bin Laden — two months before 9/11 — with military strikes.

According to an article in the UK Guardian, State Department official Christina Rocca told the Taliban at their last pipeline negotiation in August of 2001, just five weeks before 9/11, “Accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.”

And Think Progress tells us of the following from here, as the Iraq war and the neglected Afghanistan war dragged on…

JANUARY 24, 2006: Army has become “thin green line”
Stretched by frequent troop rotations to Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has become a “thin green line” that could snap unless relief comes soon, according to a study for the Pentagon. [AP, 1/24/06]

OCTOBER 4, 2006: Iraq and Afghanistan war vets say military is overstretched, underequipped. 63 percent of all Iraq and Afghanistan veterans believe the Army and Marine Corps are overextended. 67 percent of Army and Marine veterans believe their forces are overextended. [VoteVets Action Fund, 10/4/2006]

OCTOBER 19, 2006: Staff on the House Veterans Affairs Committee report that the “number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) doubled — from nearly 4,500 to more than 9,000 — from October 2005 through June 2006.” [McClatchy, 10/18/2006]

And Bush’s “boy genius” tells us more…

There is also the heavy whiff of politics in the administration’s war deliberations. The president’s senior political adviser, David Axelrod, apparently attends war cabinet meetings—something I did not do as President Bush’s senior political adviser.

For Rove to imply that he separated the wars from politics is laughable in the extreme; here is another reminder…

Implying that Democratic Party liberals were little better than traitors, Rove continued, “Conservatives saw what happened to us on 9/11 and said: we will defeat our enemies. Liberals saw what happened to us and said: we must understand our enemies. Conservatives see the United States as a great nation engaged in a noble cause; liberals see the United States and they see … Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and the killing fields of Cambodia.”

Yep, I would call that an example of the “heavy whiff” of something, but not politics (certainly befitting of Rove’s nickname, though).

“Decisive support” of a new Afghan strategy is certainly required, though (one to help remedy the failures of the old strategy, or what passed for one, by Rove and the rest of the disreputable Bushco bunch).

Update 10/25/09: I guess it shouldn’t at this point any more, but it continually astonishes me how much our lapdog press seems to crave pro-Bushco BS like this (a “secret plan,” huh?).

Update 10/27/09: And silly me for thinking that Rove was telling the truth about supposedly not participating in “war cabinet meetings”; maybe he didn’t, but he’s a liar for saying that he never participated in high-level national security meetings, as noted here.

A Silver Sendoff Full Of Barone-y Baloney

I guess people are judged to some degree by the company they keep, and if so, then I don’t think Ron Silver should be celebrated too much for that (not trying to impugn the man, just making an observation).

What makes me say this is the following tribute of sorts from Michael Barone in U.S. News and World Report yesterday, in which he tells us that…

(Silver) had made after 9/11, as I had made more slowly some years earlier, the political journey from left to right, but he seemed entirely lacking in the hard edge of hate that (is) so evident in some liberals and some conservatives.

Well, I’ll giver Barone a bit of credit for holding his own ideological kinsmen to account. However, I think it’s truly amusing for him to cast moral aspersions on anyone, given the following:

Barone said here that “liberals didn’t like Sarah Palin because she didn’t abort her Down’s baby” (nice).

He also basically lied here, saying that former Dem presidential candidate John Kerry “called for military strength at the ’04 convention and everyone was ‘silent’.”

He also said here that “Democrats want to ‘hang up the phone and go to court’ rather than intercept terrorist phone calls.”

He also misrepresented a Senate report here to allege an al Qaeda-Iraq connection (God, that is so old).

He also repeated a popular lie here about the 2000 presidential election (namely, that had the Florida recount been allowed to proceed, George W. Bush would have still won).

And yes, I could go on with this, but you get the idea.

I don’t want to stain the image of Silver by associating him to an idiot like Barone, but I really don’t have a choice here. And I wasn’t really planning on saying anything about Silver, but this post came along and I felt I had to respond.

As an actor, I always felt he was basically playing the same, intense guy who could go one way or the other (good in “Reversal of Fortune,” bad in “Blue Steel,” and halfway more or less in “The Entity,” a film I definitely don’t recommend…I don’t know what Barbara Hershey was paid for that role, but I’m sure it wasn’t enough).

As an activist, yeah, I think he was a dupe, but the Bushies fooled a lot of people for varying lengths of time (sorry to sound like I’m patting myself on the back, but I never fell for any of their nonsense, not because I’m so smart, but because I’d read “Bushwhacked” when it started to look more and more certain that Dubya was going to be president a little over eight years ago, and I was duly warned by The Eternal Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose). And Silver was entitled to his opinion – even though I disagreed with him, I don’t have evidence that he was openly hostile to liberals in general (the transcript of his ’04 Repug convention speech doesn’t reflect any of the frothing animosity of, say, Zell Miller – so yes, shockingly enough, I agree with Barone on that).

But it is a shame that Silver ended up in a position where he could be “celebrated” by someone like Michael Barone. Had he not found a way to make common cause with those life forms, I think it would have cast a much more favorable light on his achievements.

An Obama Advisory For Spineless Steny

This CNN story tells us that, though Obama will sign the omnibus spending bill that recently passed the Senate with about 9,000 earmarks…

…the president will lay out the new guidelines on earmarks as a not-so-subtle threat that he could veto future spending bills that do not comply with his objectives.

Obama may sign the bill into law behind closed doors rather than make a public show of it, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

“Although it’s not perfect, the president will sign the legislation but demonstrate for all involved rules moving forward that he thinks can make this process work a little bit better,” Gibbs said at his daily briefing with reporters.

White House officials have tried to dismiss the pork-laden legislation as “last year’s business” that Obama is dealing with reluctantly.

Gibbs added that “over the course of the president’s tenure in Washington, dozens of those bills will come to his desk” and Obama wants to make clear “that there will be some new rules of the road” for lawmakers to follow.

As I’ve said before, I really don’t have a problem with earmarks provided that they’re disclosed (and the Bucks County Courier Times tells us here that Reps. Patrick Murphy and Allyson Schwartz will bring about $30 million of earmarked funding back to their respective congressional districts).

However, Obama has clearly signaled that he wants the guidelines on obtaining earmarked funding to change, which is his right as far as I’m concerned.

Of course, that’s not going to quell the umbrage in the ranks (back to the CNN story)…

Top Democrats, including House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, have suggested lawmakers do not appreciate being dictated to on an issue that is a congressional prerogative.

Asked last week about the administration’s plan to put forth guidelines to overhaul earmarks, Hoyer said flatly, “I don’t think the White House has the ability to tell us what to do.”

He paused and quipped to reporters, “I hope you all got that down.”

(And of course, the story contains the typical “Repugs trying to make an issue out of nothing because they have no clue” whining about Obama supposedly going back on his earmark pledge, with Eric Cantor and John Boehner passing out the crying towels, as it were.)

I realize that Hoyer, a fixture in the House for 28 years now and a prolific fundraiser (how do you think he’s been able to last for so long?) isn’t going to care about what I have to say (also because he’s not my rep – Patrick Murphy is), but I’m going to say it anyway.

Hoyer embodies much of what I truly detest about politics, including the Democratic Party (yes, I support them on balance, but that doesn’t mean I like everything they do, which I most certainly don’t).

As noted here, Hoyer flipped out at fellow Dem House Rep Jim Moran for the latter’s statements against AIPAC, including the entirely accurate observation by Moran that “AIPAC has not represented mainstream American Jewish opinion and…the organization’s Middle East policies, while in direct alignment with the Bush administration, have been counterproductive to Israel’s long-term security” (and by the way, no one solicited Hoyer’s opinion – he slammed Moran on his own).

Hoyer also helped the Repugs here with their little faux outrage party about Rep. Pete Stark’s criticism over the Republicans’ blockage of the SCHIP bill in October 2007 (making Stark the issue instead of pointing out that Stark was correct in noting that nonstop funding of Dubya’s Not-So-Excellent Iraq Adventure was somehow “off the table” but SCHIP was something for the chopping block…Stark used indelicate language, sure, but he made a good point).

And just for good measure, Hoyer ensured retroactive telco immunity in the FISA sellout from last June (here).

So what does Hoyer have to say about the Repugs? Well, as noted here…

Outgoing President George W. Bush’s greatest success in eight years was protecting America from any further terrorist attacks since 9/11, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) told CNSNews.com on Monday.

Uh, Steny, I have a question – is Rush Holt apparently the only member of Congress who remembers the GODDAMN ANTHRAX ATTACK, which took place about four weeks after 9/11? Perhaps this will refresh your memory.

Oh, and did you know that Hoyer’s AmeriPAC actually donated $10,000 to Republican Kay Granger of Texas, in the course of helping many Dems including Patrick Murphy, as noted here (h/t Down With Tyranny)? Anybody have any idea of how that happened?

Though I’m sure Hoyer will never read this, I would like to remind him anyway that the voters of this country didn’t elect him to the Presidency last November; they elected Barack Obama (who, last I checked, still enjoyed a favorability rating in the high 60s, more than twice that of Congressional democrats). Maybe Hoyer doesn’t think Obama can “tell him what to do” (interesting to see Steny’s display of fortitude now that a Dem is finally running the executive branch), but the voters tell every politician what to do (or should anyway), including him (something Hoyer seems to have forgotten, which I guess will happen considering that Hoyer was sent to D.C. along with The Sainted Ronnie R way back when). And what I believe the voters are telling Hoyer, along with the rest of Congress, is to shut up and toe the line for the new president, who deserves the same chance to be successful as the one you gave his predecessor, who ended up being hopelessly overmatched because he was never equipped for the job to begin with.

And I hope Hoyer got that down.

Trying To Restore Our Good Name

This AP story today tells us that…

Plans to close Guantanamo are not sitting well with the Sept. 11 victims’ relatives who sat stunned while two alleged terrorists declared they were proud of their role in the plot.

The U.S. military brought relatives of three Sept. 11 victims to Guantanamo to observe pretrial hearings in the case of five men charged in the plot who could get the death penalty if convicted.

It is a potentially momentous time for the military detention center. President-elect Barack Obama – whose inauguration is Tuesday – has said he will close it, and many observers and some officials here expect him to suspend the war crimes tribunals for accused terrorists and move the trials to the U.S.

The five invited relatives of 9/11 victims oppose such a move.

I realize that I don’t have the right to tell the relatives of those who died on September 11th how they should feel and think and what they should believe, but I would like to merely point out the following.

This story from last month tells us that…

…Two dozen family members of Sept. 11 victims signed a letter Wednesday saying they don’t believe in the fairness of the military trials of five men charged with orchestrating the terrorist attacks, and some suggested their opinions cost them attendance at the proceedings.

While the family members who attended this week’s proceedings at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba expressed support for the tribunals, they also said “that many of us do not believe these military commissions to be fair, in accordance with American values, or capable of achieving the justice that 9/11 family members and all Americans deserve,” according to the letter released by the American Civil Liberties Union.

And from here, we learn that…

In advance of Thursday’s arraignment of alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (pictured) and others at Guantanamo Bay, the relatives of seven victims of the 9/11 attacks are charging that the military tribunals are “tainted by political influence.”

In a June 3 letter to Susan Crawford, the judge who serves as the convening authority over the commissions, the family members claim that the latest example of the system’s “politicization” was a secret invitation to attend the proceedings that allegedly was extended only to Deborah Burlingame, who lost her brother in 9/11 and has supported the Bush administration’s position on the military tribunals.

Burlingame was also a featured speaker at the last Republican National Convention.

Though I don’t know for certain (and, God willing, I never will) I would suspect that, if I were a friend or family member of a victim of a terrorist attack, I would want to see the perpetrators prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law through entirely legal means that respected international treaties, conventions and protocols. To do anything less, in my opinion, would dishonor the memory of the victims (which is how I feel about Dubya’s “kangaroo courts” at GITMO).

Because They’re Not Going Away Soon Enough…

More Bushco scandals (from “Countdown” on Monday)…

Some Brief Wednesday Wingnuttia

The New York Times got a bunch of “experts” together here to figure out what questions they would ask Secretary of State Designate Hillary Clinton in her confirmation hearing yesterday (seemed to go well based on this, though, since we are talking about the Clintons, after all, our political-media-industrial complex must be allowed some brief hysterics).

And one of the writers appearing in the Times was the neocon simpatico Fouad Ajami, who wondered as follows…

1. In 1913, Woodrow Wilson appointed William Jennings Bryan secretary of state for solely domestic political reasons. He needed but distrusted him, and thus relied on other advisers to conduct diplomacy. Have you read up on Wilson’s relationship with Bryan, and will it be relevant to your own situation?

Uh…sorry – too much work to try and answer that question, and somehow I don’t think anybody cares.

3. You speak about the 1990s, President Bill Clinton’s era, as a time of peace and prosperity. Yet the ‘90s witnessed a steady trail of anti-American terrorism that emboldened Al Qaeda’s leaders. In the Clinton era, terrorism was generally viewed as a law enforcement problem. Did we really do so well in handling terrorism in the 1990s?

Uh…yep, considering this.

Monday Rendition Revisionism

Yesterday’s New York Times brought us the opinion of Reuel Marc Gerecht (pictured) on the matter of “extraordinary rendition”of terrorist suspects…

Mr. Obama will soon face the same awful choices that confronted George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and he could well be forced to accept a central feature of their anti-terrorist methods: extraordinary rendition. If the choice is between non-deniable aggressive questioning conducted by Americans and deniable torturous interrogations by foreigners acting on behalf of the United States, it is almost certain that as president Mr. Obama will choose the latter.

Of course, he and his senior officials seem to believe now that they don’t have to make this choice. For them there is a better way to combat terrorism, by using physically non-coercive questioning of suspects and civilian courts or military courts-martial to try and punish jihadists.

But this third way, which is essentially where America was before the Clinton administration embraced rendition, is plausible only if Mr. Obama is lucky.

Gerecht repeated the same lie (or half-truth at the very least) twice that I’d better refute right now; as noted here…

Although the practice of “extraordinary rendition” did not originate under Bush, after Sept 11 “the program expanded beyond recognition—becoming, according to a former C.I.A. official, “an abomination.” What began as a program aimed at a small, discrete set of suspects—people against whom there were outstanding foreign arrest warrants—came to include a wide and ill-defined population that the Administration terms “illegal enemy combatants.”

And as Jane Mayer of The New Yorker tells us here…

“It was begun in desperation” (Michael Scheuer, a former C.I.A. counter-terrorism expert who began the process of rendition) told me. At the time, he was the head of the C.I.A.’s Islamic-militant unit, whose job was to “detect, disrupt, and dismantle” terrorist operations. His unit spent much of 1996 studying how Al Qaeda operated; by the next year, Scheuer said, its mission was to try to capture bin Laden and his associates. He recalled, “We went to the White House”—which was then occupied by the Clinton Administration—“and they said, ‘Do it.’ ” He added that Richard Clarke, who was in charge of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council, offered no advice. “He told me, ‘Figure it out by yourselves,’ ” Scheuer said. (Clarke did not respond to a request for comment.)

Here’s some more interesting fiction from Gerecht in his column, by the way…

…if we’d gotten our hands on a senior member of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?

Ugh – as noted here…

A (2002) Senate report on intelligence failures before Sept. 11 has concluded that ignorance and ineptitude of F.B.I. supervisors and lawyers in Washington blocked field agents around the country from pursuing evidence that might have helped provide the bureau with what one of the authors of the report called a ”veritable blueprint for 9/11.”

The report by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is expected to be made public next month and is the result of an investigation that began shortly after the terrorist attacks, focuses on the mishandling of the case against Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged with involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report suggests that while the Moussaoui case was particularly egregious, it may be indicative of the bureau’s bungling of other sensitive counterterrorism cases before Sept. 11.

By the way, Moussaoui pled guilty to conspiracy charges and is currently serving at a maximum security prison in Florence, CO.

And as noted here…

A group of 15 former U.S. interrogation and intelligence officers repudiated the use of torture as a way to extract information from detained terrorists in a statement of principles yesterday.

“Torture and other inhumane and abusive interview techniques are unlawful, ineffective and counterproductive,” said the document signed by each officer. “We reject them unconditionally.”

Of course, I don’t expect a typical neocon suspect like Gerecht (PNAC, AEI, The Weekly Standard, etc., etc.) to separate fact from fiction; as noted here, he asked (in response to the abuses at Abu Ghraib), “Have the chances of democracy in the Middle East really been set back because sexually sensitive Muslims are so revolted that they won’t embrace representative government?”

However, I DO expect the New York Times to know not to give a wingnut a platform from which he can spew his bilious garbage in the guise of informed editorial commentary.

Of Mice And Men (And Soda Bottles)

This New York Times story from yesterday tells us about Javaid Iqbal, a Muslim man from Pakistan who used to be a cable television installer on Long Island, who…

…was among thousands of Muslim men rounded up after the Sept. 11 attacks. Some of them were considered to be “of high interest,” and they were held in a special housing unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

While there, Mr. Iqbal said, he was subjected to daily body-cavity searches, beatings and extreme temperatures. He said he was kept in solitary confinement with the lights in his cell constantly on, that he was called a terrorist and a “Muslim killer,” and that he lost 40 pounds during six months in the special unit.

He eventually pleaded guilty to identity fraud and was deported to Pakistan.

As a result, he sued former Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller on the grounds that they “implemented the policies that led to the abuse and condoned it,” and the case is now being argued in front of The Supremes (with the predictable denials from Ashcroft and Mueller)…

The two officials say that they are immune from suit, a contention rejected by the federal appeals court in Manhattan last year, at least at the most preliminary stage of the case. In the Supreme Court, the officials argued that Mr. Iqbal’s assertions that they were responsible for any abuses he suffered were speculative and lacked supporting factual allegations.

…

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested that a 2003 report from the Justice Department’s inspector general may “lend some plausibility” to Mr. Iqbal’s claims. The report found serious abuses by the (detention center’s) personnel.

(Solicitor General Gregory G. Garre, representing Ashcroft and Mueller) urged the justices to ignore the report, saying it was outside the scope of the litigation. But he said the report had made findings helpful to his clients’ contention that their own actions, at least, were lawful.

So…ignore the bad stuff in the report, but remember the good stuff that helps my clients, huh? Typical Bushco…

But not to worry – this is the high court of Hangin’ Judge J.R., let’s not forget (we hear from Justice Breyer first, though)…

Justice Stephen G. Breyer asked a hypothetical question: would a plaintiff be allowed to pursue a lawsuit against the president of Coca-Cola on the bare accusation that the president had personally put mice in soda bottles?

Uhh….come again?

Other justices engaged the question, considering whether such a lawsuit would be subject to sanctions on the grounds that it was frivolous and whether the company’s president would have to submit to questioning under oath at a deposition.

“How are we supposed to judge whether we think it’s more unlikely that the president of Coca-Cola would take certain actions,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. asked Mr. Iqbal’s lawyer, Alexander A. Reinert, “as opposed to the attorney general of the United States?”

WHAAA???????

I don’t recall that the president of Coca-Cola has ever authorized “extraordinary rendition” or full body cavity searches of his competitors and then depositing them in a holding cell before they were eventually flown halfway around the world for God knows what kind of treatment.

And apparently, the fog spread elsewhere in the court…

Justice John Paul Stevens suggested that he was uneasy about lightly letting claims against high officials proceed, mentioning his majority opinion in Clinton v. Jones, the 1997 decision that allowed Paula Jones’s sexual harassment case against President Bill Clinton to go forward. A prediction in that decision about the burden the suit would place on the president — “it appears to us highly unlikely to occupy any substantial amount of petitioner’s time” — turned out to be incorrect.

Ugh…so Stevens thinks that siding with the appeals court would entail “occupy(ing) (a) substantial amount of (Ashcroft and Mueller’s) time,” and that is the issue at hand, as opposed what could possibly represent a violation of Javaid Iqbal’s rights?

Excuse me, but I hardly see the equivalency, particularly when you have stories such as this where the FBI has settled with a Muslim man accused in an attack in Spain to the tune of $2 million, and a German national sued the CIA for rendition and torture here (unpleasantly surprised that I have to point this out to someone like Stevens).

Actually, I think Ashcroft and Mueller could help move this case to some kind of settlement (as opposed to the cost of arguing before the high court) and thus save valuable tax dollars if they made a simple gesture (particularly given the fact that the defendant’s name is apparently a common one, hence this mixup).

How about an apology for starters?

A “Clarion Call” Of Intolerance

A few weeks ago, we received a DVD in the Bucks County Courier Times, which was kind of odd given the overall belt-tightening going on throughout our economy, in particular mass circulation daily newspapers (can’t remember the last time we got a free bar of soap, fabric softener, or anything like that).

The DVD packaging said that the production was called “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West, with photos of hooded jihadists, a child holding a rifle, the World Trade Center site after the attacks…you get the idea (and with a ringing endorsement from Michael Medved, of course, saying it merits an Academy Award nomination for Best Feature Documentary…oooohh, spooky stuff, kids!).

I put it aside and didn’t think much more about it, though I figured I would post about it at some point. And considering that I came across this story in the LA Times a few days ago, I guess this is as good a time as any…

The campaign by Clarion Fund — a nonprofit organization founded by filmmaker Raphael Shore “to educate Americans about issues of national security,” its website says — has prompted criticism of the newspapers for distributing what some describe as Muslim-bashing propaganda.

There are also accusations that the group is trying to influence the election in favor of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, cast by some as tougher on terrorism. One Islamic advocacy group recently filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, alleging that Clarion is abusing its tax-exempt status by engaging in politics.

“Any neutral observer would say this is a biased, one-sided, inflammatory portrayal that seeks to portray Muslims and Islam as Nazi-like,” said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council for American-Islamic Relations, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.
Hooper claims the DVD campaign aims to steer voters toward McCain.

“If you’re able to raise the level of fear in the public about terrorism or national security, those people are more likely to skew toward John McCain,” he said.

Hooper said he heard reports that some DVD recipients in Ohio also had received automated phone calls referencing the film and saying, “We hope you take it into consideration when you go into the voting booth.”

Clarion spokesman Gregory Ross said the group had no involvement in such calls.

Of course they didn’t. And how dare you imply that they did, you terra-lovin’ luburuul! Why else do you think the movie criticizes Michael Moore and Moveon.org unless they were trying to be “fair and balanced”?

And who exactly is The Clarion Fund anyway, I hear you ask.

Well, this post tells us the following…

CLARION FUND, created in November 2006, is a non-profit, non-partisan organization whose mission is to educate Americans about issues of national security.

This Wikipedia article tells us that the group was founded by Raphael Shore, an Israeli-Canadian film writer and producer employed full time by Aish HaTorah, which is “an Orthodox group devoted to promoting Jewish learning,” and he regularly criticizes newspaper reporting in this country for what he perceives as an anti-Israel bias.

And of course, as the L.A.Times story tells us, the release of the DVD was supposed to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11 and not the election.

If you believe that, then I’ve got a bridge in Abu Dhabi to sell to you.

I hate the break the news to Clarion and their ideological brethren, but their fear-and-smear tactics aren’t going to work on November 4th. Given the incessant parade of bad headline stories, the real world minus their fear mongering is scary enough.