patrickmurfin

        Top Administration figures signed off on water boarding and other torture. 

The establishment press is finally beginning to wake up to just how high and deep the scandal of the U.S. Governement’s enthusiastic commitment to the use of torture became under the Bush maladministration.  The alternative press and blog-o-shere have been sniffing around this story for years.  But when ABC News on Wednesday ran with the story with a new few juicy details it became impossible for the highest echelons of the government to deny detailed knowledge and approval of torture by the CIA.

Truthout today reprinted summaries from the Associated Press (AP) and the Washington Post as well as excerpts from comments by top blogers.

To summarize, shortly after the 9/11 attacks the Principals Committee of the National Security Council, chaired by then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice began a series of meeting to examine, in excruciating detail, exactly what sort of harsh and coercive interrogation the Central Intelligence Committee (CIA) would be allowed to conduct.  In addition to Rice the committee included the highest echelon of administration figures from torture enthusiast and cheerleader Vice President Dick Cheney—who began gushing over the opportunity to torture while the smoke and dust was still rising from the World Trade Center and Pentagon rubble—to supposed moderates like Secretary of State Colin Powel.  Also present were Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and CIA Director George Tenent.

While President Bush was not personally in attendance of any of the meetings, the results of conversations by his most senior cabinet level officials had to be shared with him and he had to sign off on their decisions.

Most of the meetings came at the urging of a very nervous Tenent who clearly understood that the Administration was ghoulishly eager to torture, but worried frantically that he and his agents might subsequently be held liable under U.S. or international law for using interrogation techniques here-to-fore against U.S. domestic law, not approved by the Army’s Field Manual on interrogation, and in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

Cheney operatives and loyalists planted inside the Ashcroft’s Department of Justice, notably John Yoo,  had already drafted opinions that placed “Enemy Combatants” outside the jurisdiction of the Geneva Convention and defined torture so narrowly that "only extreme acts causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure” qualified.  These opinions became the so-called Golden Shield to protect CIA personnel and the basis of the Presidents repeated bald faced claims that the United States “doesn’t torture.”  Later, in March 2003 yet another Justice Department opinion held that it wasn’t torture if “interrogators did not specifically intend to torture their captives.”

Despite all of this Tenent repeatedly asked the committee to explicitly sign off on specific interrogation techniques each time a so called “high value” al Qaida operative was captured.  These techniques, which included hitting, slapping, kicking, sleep deprivation, prolonged subjection to “uncomfortable” positions and water boarding, were laid out in detail.  The committee approved equally detailed authorizations.

In 2004 the Golden Shield opinions leaked to the press resulting in an uproar of public revulsion and outrage.  The Justice Department was forced to rescind the memos, while the Administration continued to insist that harsh interrogation techniques were not torture and were essential to intelligence gathering.

An even jitterier Tenent returned to the Committee when another high profile al Queda figure was captured. to ask for authorization to use “enhanced interrogation techniques.”  Despite alleged queasiness about torture by Powel, an assertive Rice told the CIA Director “This is your baby. Go do it.”

Powel was evidently not the only one to harbor second thoughts.  At one point Ashcroft, whose Justice Department had issued the sweeping opinions in support of abusive interrogation, was heard to say after a meeting, “Why are we talking about this in the White House?  History will not be kind to us.”

Bingo! Ashcroft could not be more right.  He knew, even if the others thought that they could clamp down on the flow of information out of the White House with tight secretly controls, that the story would emerge sooner rather than later.  Having high level officials sign off in such detail—and in the White House no less—stripped them and the President of all important “plausible deniability” as gruesome details became public.  He, and probably other members of the committee, resented Tenent for putting him in this position.

Previous CIA directors would have been satisfied with a wink and a nod.  And if caught, like they were in Central America, they were willing to chalk up abuse to isolated “rogue” elements.  They saw “protecting the President” as part of their job.  Not Tenent, who already knew that he was going to be made the fall guy for the failure to find the predicted “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.  He wanted to make sure that if he went down for torture, they all would.

It looks like  his wish—and Ashcroft’s nightmare—may now come  true.

Some blogers are speculating—and gloating—that these revelations might eventually lead to indictments or impeachment.  Fat chance.  In one of their most disgraceful movements Congressional Democrats caved in to administration threats and passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which protected the big shots from prosecution under the War Crimes Act.

On the other hand, Committee members might want to reconsider any foreign travel plans that they may have without the explicit protection of Diplomatic Immunity.  It is not beyond the realm of possibility that they could be arrested and prosecuted for violation of international law.  Now wouldn’t that be just too bad?

Wednesday the five year anniversary of the War in Iraq slipped by before I had an opportunity to comment.  Believe me, it was not because it does not weigh heavy on my mind and soul.  But I had work to do and I had a lot on my plate getting ready for the McHenry County Democratic Party meeting and preparing press materials (see the post below.)

About mid-afternoon I got a call from Tom Musick, a reporter for the Northwest Herald.   He was working on one of those “round-up” stories in which local folks with strong opinions share their views.  We had a nice conversation for about ten minutes or so.   This is how my portion of the story came out in the paper.  (click here for the full article.)

Patrick Murfin

McHenry County Peace Group members gather every Thursday evening near Route 14 and Main Street in Crystal Lake for a vigil.

The group’s size varies, but its mission stays the same: To call for an end to the U.S. war in Iraq and to prevent a future war with Iran from happening.

“Early on, we’d get mixed reviews,” said Patrick Murfin, a member of the group. “The longer this war has passed, the number of supportive honks and waves and peace signs has mounted. It’s really remarkable.”

Yet Murfin worries whether the Bush administration notices such changes.

“I’ve been giving this some considerable thought,” said Murfin, who watched the president’s speech Wednesday, a speech that urged patience and determination in Iraq. “It’s both astounding to me and totally wearisome that we find ourselves in this position after five years.

“To hear the Bush administration talk about no end in sight within a decade or longer ... the American public has long since made it clear that they regard the war as a mistake to begin with and want us to get out now.”

And all of that is fine, as far as it goes.  But understandably this snippet left a lot out.  Also—and I don’t mean to bite the hand the fed me—I was the only person of  those interviewed who was an outright opponent of the war.  The others were a recently returned solder; Rep. Don Manzullo whose own account shows that he gladly drank the Bush Kool-Aid about the war; the father of a soldier who was killed who now regards the war as a “mistake” but doesn’t take a position on getting out; and an Army recruiter.  That left the burden of speaking for the majority of Americans who oppose the war and want a way out sooner than later on my own inadequate shoulders.

This is what I wish I had the time and space to say.

It’s hard, very hard to match the unrelenting drum beat of war and more war propounded by a maladministration that will not allow itself to be fettered by Congress, Courts, or the People and which feels it has a divine right to do what ever it damn well pleases.  In five long years ever mounting casualties are compounded by daily atrocities (committed freely by all sides);  the very soul of the nation is stricken by a cynical embrace of torture;  our civil liberties are silently stripped from us;  our national reputation is sullied beyond repair;  unimaginable debt is saddled on our children, grandchildren, and their progeny;  we are plunged into a “war of civilization” without end;  our very democracy is threatened by an uncrowned king who brooks no limits on his power.  And we in the anti-war movement get tired, bone tired.

We have marched, vigiled, petitioned, organized, written and ranted.  Our ranks have swelled.  But year after year nothing we have done has saved one 19 year old Marine or one Iraqi child.  Small wonder that the spirit sometimes flags, that we get tired, that we are tempted to slip into simple resignation.

Worse, evidence mounts daily the Resident and the Dark Sith Lord Cheney will not rest until the launch another war, this time against Iran.  The recent resignation and retirement of Admiral William Fallon, top commander of American forces in the Mid East and the only high level commander to dare publicly warn about the danger of launching another war, may have been the clearest signal yet that the Neo-Con junta is determined to have another war.  Add the domestic political calculation that launching a war before the election will rally the public “be hind the troops” and put John McCain in the White House.

Peace activists a worn out trying to get us out of one war and now have to keep us out of another.

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that there has been a fall-off of coverage and commentary about the War and the movement to stop it in recent months.  Instead, it has been increasingly concerned with electoral politics, support for Barack Obama for President, and for Democrats in general.  Some might take this as evidence that I have given in to war weariness and like a bored two year old turned my attention to some other toy.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In point of fact my immersion in politics and my support of the Obama campaign in general now represents the most effective way I can work to end one bloodbath and prevent another.

I know there are folks in the Peace Movement who believe that this abandons the demand for immediate withdrawal, and trims sail in against the gale of adversity.  The taunts of “sell out” to others like MoveOn.org, who have advocated the same approach have been loud and raucous on the part of many in the purer-than-thou left.

But like it or not we cannot “Bring Them Home Now!” or throw our bodies in front of Naval launched cruise missiles or snatch possibly nuclear armed B-1 Bombers from the sky to stop an attack on Iran.  There are no prospects, despite our most ardent fantasies, that we can mobilize a Peoples Revolution to surround the White House with pots and pans clanking and bring down this regime as others fell in Moscow, Manila, Kiev, or Beirut.  There will be no General Strike to stop the war cold like the hands of a clock.  Richly deserved impeachment will not happen.

Our only real chance to bring the war to an end is—like it or not—to elect a Democrat President of the United State and large enough Democratic margins in the House and the Senate to prevent disciplined Republicans from ruling in the minority.  And I obviously believe that Senator Obama, a consistent opponent of the war, is our best chance to achieve such a victory.  But make no mistake about it, I will, even if it pains me, support Hillary Clinton if that is the hand we are dealt and then hold her to her promises to end the war.

The inevitable result, even with victory, will be for a phased withdrawal that insures the safety of American troops.  It’s not fast enough for many, but the war will finally end.

Even more critically, there will not be, if one has not already been launched, a war with Iran and the inevitable region-wide conflict that would ensue.

Is there any guarantee that this strategy will work?  Of course not.  Right now we see how cynically race is being used to divide the American people from their own best interests.  McCain, for the first time, is now polling better nationally than either Clinton or Obama—a direct result of the political strategy of the Clinton campaign, in my opinion.  But there is plenty of time to reverse those numbers and Obama has the persuasive skills to come back strong.

A plausible causa bellum can always be dug up like Hitler’s Polish raid on a border radio instillation post or LBJ’s phantom attack in the Gulf of Tonkin to justify an attack on Iran just before the election.

And there are the twin dangers that if faced with loss the election the Oligarchy will simply and boldly be steal it again or—more drastically—that a “national emergency” might occur that would “force the government to suspend the election.”  Feel free to conjure in you mind your most paranoid fantasies of what that emergency might be and it has probably already been gamed in some dark recess of the Pentagon or the Vice-President’s old secret bunker.

So, no, the electoral strategy is not perfect.  It’s just the last, bet hope we have.

William Rivers Pitt portrait from 
www.americanswhotellthetruth.org/images/portrait

            Easily the biggest buzz the last few days has not been Paris Hilton’s (note: no links here) release from the pokey.  No, the delinquent debutant has been pushed aside by the latest act of jaw-dropping gall by the DARK SITH LORD CHENEY.  His bald faced assertion,  made in order to avoid turning over records of his use of classified materials to those pesky gnats at the NATIONAL ARCHIVES INFORMATION SECURITY OVERSIGHT OFFICE, that he is “not part of the executive branch” and thus not covered by a presidential order may finally convince any one with lingering doubts that he is power mad monster who considers himself above and beyond all law.  This comes on the heels or revelations that the Veep attempted to have the Oversight Office abolished entirely.

            Even the usually cautious REP. RAHM EMANUEL, the centrist chair of the HOUSE DEMOCRATIC CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE and a man allergic to “radical” positions, suggested that if the Vice Resident does not believe his office is part of the Executive Branch, then perhaps CONGRESS should strip that office of its budget.  Instead of dismissing the idea outright leaders in both houses, including our own SENATOR DICK DURBIN seemed to think it might not be such a bad idea. 

            Others contented themselves with threatening subpoenas and court action.  Some are even getting the courage to mutter the “I” word under their breath.

            I was searching for the right words of indignation to comment on this three ring service when I found “How Dick Cheney Broke My Mind” by TRUTHOUT contributing columnist WILLIAM RIVERS PITT:

    I was absolutely savaged by an unexpected emotional detonation on Thursday. Every rough emotion I am capable of experiencing - anger, fear, sorrow, rage, bitterness, despair, loathing, astonishment, woe, regret, horror, fury - erupted within me at the same time that day. I spent hours in the aftermath trying to type an accurate description of what had happened to me and why, but I failed. For the first time in a long, long while, I was completely unable to write.

    What could have been powerful enough to huff and puff and blow my house down? What manner of mind bomb could hurl me so far off kilter that I was incapable of explaining it on paper?

    It was, of course, Dick Cheney…

            Please take time to read the whole article at the link above.  I don’t have to have to write any more on the subject because Pitt has said it perfectly.  He has my vote hands down as one of the finest writers out there on the Net.  Enjoy!

Once again I received one of those requests to send a message to my Congressman in my e-mail. Now I am so backed up with e-mail that this item was posted nearly a week ago.  But it got my attention.

            Actually, I have been meaning for some time to address the issue at hand in conjunction with an AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION campaign.  But it was a request for action from TRUE MAJORITY (see the item under President or King?) that finally stirred me to action.  They asked me to send the following message:

The right of habeas corpus is one of the oldest founding principles of our democracy – the right of someone held by the government to ask why they have been seized. THE MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT cancelled that right, and I insist that Congress restore it. I urge you to support efforts by REP. JERROLD NADLER to add language which does that into the Defense Authorization Bill, and also to back bills such as the Habeas Restoration Act.

            Of course, I felt compelled to sound off at greater length.  So I whipped up the rant below.  It was too long to go into the editable message, so I sent the above and then e-mailed the whole shebang separately to my Congressman, DON MANZULLO (R-16).  Here is what I had to say:

The hallowed writ of HABIAS CORPUS traces its roots in British Common Law into the mists of antiquity and was codified as early at 1679.  The architects of our Constitution viewed it as such a basic cornerstone of individual liberty that it was specifically in Article I, Section 9:  “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.”

                In the entire history of the United States the “Great Writ” was suspended only briefly by Abraham Lincoln in the midst of a full scale armed insurrection against the authority of the Federal Government.  The President now dubiously claims this as a precedent for his own trampling of basic human rights, trying—ridiculously—to wrap himself in Lincoln’s historic mantle as he does so.   Yet we behold no rebellion, no invasion.  What Lincoln employed as a desperate temporary measure to forestall a COPPERHEAD rebellion in support of the South, George W. Bush foresees as a permanent aspect of a vague and never ending “War on Terror.”

                The present administration has shown on-going contempt for both the basic liberties of the American People and for any attempt to constrain its limitless assertion of power by either Courts or Congress and—evidence now suggests—by tampering with the election process itself to thwart the sovereignty of the People.

                Surely there are bad people in the world who wish us harm.  And there exists a vast array of tools and weapons with which to combat them.  The current administrations rush to do so by employing the tools and weapons of despotism itself—torture, illegal detention, rigged star chamber courts, indefinite sentences, and the denial of any review by any court anywhere—condemns us in the eyes of the world and in our own shocked consciences.

                The President has claimed that much of this is permissible because most of those so detained are not American citizens subject to the protection to the Constitution or legitimate combatants who can claim protection under the traditional protections of the GENEVA CONVENTIONS.  That these individuals may enjoy any fundamental rights as human beings protected by any species of international law, is contemptuously dismissed.

                But the President’s ambitions to crush the right of habeas corpus do not end with swarthy, alien “ISLAMOFASCISTS” for whom he believes the American people will waste no sympathy, but to American citizens captured abroad either  “in arms” against the United States or suspected of conspiring to assist international terrorists. He also wishes to include citizens, legal alien residents, and aliens of all immigration status arrested in the United States, who would normally be subject to the protection of habeas corpus.

                The vague definitions and broad powers of the PATRIOT ACT make it possible for the Administration to classify as “Terrorists” just about any one they choose on criteria they make up and do not have to disclose to anyone.  Construed loosely any one in opposition to the government could be so designated if they acted in a “conspiracy” which aims to influence policy through “violence.”  A rowdy demonstration, even passive resistance that results in violence by the authorities could result in a group and any one associated with it to be declared “terrorists.”

                That this administration has not yet sunk to such depths is small comfort.  They clearly desire to have at least the ability to do so.

                To be frank, my appeal to you in defense of habeas corpus can be attributed solely to personal cowardice.  I have mocked and ridiculed this administration.  I have done my very best fist to stop an illegal war and then to end it.  I have marched, spoken, written in open opposition.  I have encouraged “resistance” and “rebellion” against a government I consider both illegitimate (by virtue of obtaining power by election fraud and perpetuating itself in a range on illegal, un-Constitutional usurpations of authority.)  I have “associated” through various organizations and in communications others who hold similar views, with some of whom have occasionally broken the law and others who will do so in the future.  I reserve my right as a free citizen to resist oppression, even by my own government as outlined by Thomas Jefferson in the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.

                So, if the day comes that George W. Bush decides (or Dick Cheney decides for him) that descent is sufficiently inconvenient, or that the American People—who have already rejected their war, their policy, and ambitions—may be ready to rise up and hold them accountable for their multiple betrayals of the public trust, then I am as likely to hear the midnight knock on the door and to be dragged off to disappear into indefinite detention as any man or woman in this country.

                I know that the gossamer restraints of habeas corpus may not in the end restrain any determined despot.  But as long as we wish to remain a nation of laws it is some defense.

                Congressman Manzullo, I beg you on behalf of my own fear for my own worthless hide, to fully restore the right of habeas corpus.

            Those of us who touch on politics in our blogs are required by law, under pain of exile to that land where the only communications tools are fat, soft lead pencils and wide ruled Big Chief School Tablets, to expound on the Resident’s State of the Union Address.  I was dutifully on my way to fulfilling this solemn obligation Tuesday night when I was mugged by an unwelcome ad (see my last post.)

            Now, when everyone else has moved on to the condition of Scooter Libby’s toenail fungus which caused such a great distraction that he forgot that high ranking CIA spooks had spilled the beans to him about Joe Wilson’s wife’s job (phew!), I am ready to fulfill my obligation.  Nothing less could be expected from the NUMBER 1 DEMOCRATIC/UU/PEACENIC/PRO-LABOR/POETRY BLOG IN McHENRY COUNTY, ILLINOIS (according to some unsubstantiated rumors.)

            First off, let me come clean.  I did not actually see the State of the Union (SOTU to inside the beltway hipsters.)  I was at work, as usual for a Tuesday night, behind the register of a Crystal Lake gas station.  I had my radio—yes just about the same kind of transistor radio we all had in 1965—tuned in to an appropriate AM news station.  Between customers and chores I strained to hear most of what George W. had to say, fawning commentary by former senator and acting stud Fred Thompson, and Senator Jim Webb’s Democratic Party Response.  So I was out of the game of assessing Nancy Pelosi’s wardrobe, keeping the exact count of  who leapt their feet to applaud at exactly what statements,  trying to catch Congress people snoring in their seats, or counting sneers and smirks on Dick Cheney’s face. 

I admit that I could have gone to any number of online sources when I got home and watched the whole thing unfold in front of my very eyes as if for the fist time.  But, frankly, I hadn’t the stomach for it.  I would rather have volunteered for un-anesthetized fingernail extraction by a drunken hippo vet .

            Listening on the radio, the technological equivalent of a wood burning steam locomotive, I can say for sure that George W. Bush is no Franklin Roosevelt.  Hell, he isn’t even a Senator Beauregard Claghorn.  He might be, on a good day, a passable Mortimer Snerd.  But in this performance he did not, to my memory, utter any of the infamous Bushisms that have become his trade mark or engage in any lying so specific that he is apt to get nailed as Pinocchio (as in the famous 16 words) by some disgruntled Ambassador.  Instead, the lies permeated the whole speech kind of like a low grade fever—you know it’s there, but it isn’t worth the energy to do anything about.

            I’ll dispose of the second part of the speech first.  It can be summed up thusly:  Everyone knew what he was going to say.  Nobody wanted to hear it.  Not one mind in America changed, save that of 12 year old Chester “Chetster” Dinglebottom of Muncie, Indiana.  He was moved because the X-Box was broken and he had to watch the speech with his parents.  “You mean there is a war or something going on?” he asked.  When told there was, he registered his strong support for the president, “Coooool Dude!”

            Senator Webb later casually demolished the Resident’s feeble appeal for one more do-over as if he were scraping gum off of his shoe. ‘Nuff said on that topic.

            So let’s take a look at the first half of the speech, the one which the op-ed pundits assured us was meant to “reach out to the Democrats now in power,” and “outlined areas of possible cooperation.”  Well, its true that he outlined a short laundry list is issues dear to Democrats—and to the American public, for that matter.  What is not true is that he offered any kind of concrete programs that were either acceptable on their face or were not shams covering his usual corporate smash and grab agenda. 

            Only on immigration is there the remotest chance of reaching an agreement with the Democrats, who generally favor some kind of accommodation for the millions of un-documented immigrants now in residence.  On the last go-around, compromise immigration reform passed in the Senate was shot down by the nativist, mow-‘em-down-with-machine-guns-at-the-boarder House Republicans.  But even here his hopes are dimmed because his interest is in providing a steady stream of cheap labor to his corporate pals, while most Democrats are looking for a humane way to include established, hard working families in the American Dream without giving a free hand to the oligarchs in undermining American wages.

            George W’s approach to health care mirrored the “Blue Sky Initiative” for air pollution—a dodge using right sounding buzz words to cover for a nearly polar opposite policy.  Bush’s sketchily drawn health care plan is based largely—surprise!—on “tax relief” proposals.  He resurrects raising the upper limits on “Health Savings Accounts,” another notorious tax dodge for this favored richest 2%. 

Then he proposes a confusing array of tax deductions to “encourage” un-covered Americans to buy private health coverage.  But to pay for that he (althought not described in the SOTU) would count “gold plated” traditional fee-for service health plans above a certain level and provided by employers as taxable income.  The trouble is that many elderly, sick, and high risk individuals would suddenly find this essential, but expensive benefit taxed.  Many would have no choice but to drop coverage.  And many employers would be encouraged to drop health care benefits. 

Bush also offered assistance to states trying to create their own wider systems of health care coverage—but only to those state who would do so by underwriting purchase of private insurance.  States opting for some sort of single payer plan would get nothing and would probably loose huge chunks of currently available Federal health care funding.  In short, the President is not advocating making health care easily available and affordable.  He wants to create a gigantic boondoggle for the insurance industry. 

As a sop to the doctors, who despise insurance companies but hate malpractice lawyers just a tad more, he trotted out the familiar call for caps on malpractice settlements and shifting to a looser-pays-all system that would bar most folks of modest means from ever daring to sue.

            The President trotted out, as he has done before, the need for energy self-sufficiency.  Generally this has been an excuse to turn over all petroleum assets to the major oil companies as cheaply as possible with the fewest restrictions on one hand, while showering them with massive “tax incentives” to do what they were going to do anyway.  This time he dressed it up with suggestions that he—and he really, really means it this time “cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die”—seriously wants to subsidize research and development of alternative of alternative fuels and—gasp!—even agrees to new higher fuel efficiency requirements for passenger cars.  At the same time, however, he will balm the pain of his old oil buddies buying enough crude from them to double the size of the Strategic Reserves—a purchase sure to keep demand high and prices up.

            As an after thought he allowed that energy conservations measures might also affect “global climate change.”  This sent many commentators into state of rapturous praise.  They believed that he had finally reversed himself and agree that, yes there really is “global warming”, Virginia.  Only the keen of ear and the sharp of intellect picked up that “global climate change” is not the same as “global warming.”  The latter is fraught with implications that is caused by human activity on the planet and that it might be ameliorated or even reversed by concerted action and major life-style changes.  “Global climate change,” on the other hand, infers natural rhythms, perhaps ordained by God himself, over which mere mortals have no control.  Translation:  don’t expect any policy change from this administration.

            I could go on, but you get the picture. 

            My fellow Americans, the State of the Union is bad and sliding to horrible.  It will remain so as long as the current mob of thieves, thugs, and theocrats retains a shred of political authority. Oh-my-God! Save the People and bless the United States of America.

            End of the year news was dominated by two deaths—Gerald R. Ford and Saddam Hussein.  Both could be instructive to the current occupant of the White House, if he were capable of being aware of more than the empty facts of their departures.

GERALD R. FORD

            Gerald Ford, as we were endlessly reminded by the press, was an accidental president never elected to national office in his own right at all.  In point of fact, despite the glowing obituaries printed about his “decency” and his importance as a calming, uniting force after the criminal turmoil of Nixon’s last days, most of us—including those of us that were politically aware and active in those years—barely recalled him.  Three weeks ago if most of us had suddenly been asked to reel off the names of the last six presidents, a huge majority of us would simply have forgotten Ford.

            Ford was a meat and potato Mid-Western Republican of a now vanished breed representing the values of small town bankers and insurance agents in rimless glasses swathed in acres of gabardine—a no non-sense fiscal conservatism married to the conventional morality of a safe Protestant Sunday morning bromides which was none-the-less not unwilling to use government for goals likely to elevate the community.  This included issues like education, transportation and eventually the environment.  It was a conservatism that broadly valued “fair play” and was thus willing to honor it Lincolnesque heritage with support for civil rights as long as the Negroes in question lived comfortably some where else.  It was staunchly anti-Communist yet no cheerleader for adventuring imperialism.  It loathed “Big Labor” but was capable of queasiness when faced with unchecked corporate power. 

            Nixon and the eye-out-for-the-main-chance sharpies he brought with him from California was of a different  breed.  Nixon had no real objection to a vast expansion of Federal government power no mater what his rhetoric about a “New Federalism” might infer.  He showed this in every aspect of his presidency, including those that won the approval of liberals like the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, strengthening of OSHA and by his willingness to try a wage and price freeze to combat inflation.  He was committed, as no Republican since before the Progressive Era had been, to placing government directly in the service of the most powerful corporations in exchange for minor reforms and regulation, and in the process nearly abandoned the traditional small business base of the party (although they have taken decades to realize that is what happened.)  He was willing to sacrifice traditional Republican support of Civil Rights in order to create a national political re-alignment in which the Solid South would become solidly Republican. He practically invented the idea of a “Super Power” and aimed shamelessly to elevate the US to total global domination by military superiority, diplomatic intrigue, and overwhelming economic power.  And most notoriously of all, Nixon strove to collect all of the reigns of power into an enormously enhanced “Imperial Presidency” that could easily squelch opposition of courts and Congress alike.

            It was this last hubris that finally brought Richard Nixon down.  But not before putting into play a pawn, the blandly affable House Minority Leader, Gerald R. Ford of Michigan.

            In any other administration the forced resignation of the vice president following conviction of corruption charges might have been the defining moment of a presidency.  Sprio Agnew, the administration’s alliteration prone attack dog, succumbed to remarkably petty corruption charges arising from his tenure and a Maryland County Executive and later Governor.  His disgrace became a footnote only because the President and all of the powerful men around him were already being engulfed by their own scandals.  A recent constitutional change allowed Nixon to appoint a new vice president with the advice and consent of the Senate. 

            Ford was not the first choice.  In fact he was pretty far down the initial list.  But the politically wiley Nixon realized that a hard core loyalist could not be confirmed, nor could any of the rising “movement conservatives” who might have shorn up his base on the right.  Ford, on the other hand, coming from the Congress and having no known personal presidential ambitions that might mobilize the opposition of future GOP hopefuls could be confirmed by the Senate with ease.

            Recent releases of transcripts from Nixon’s notorious secret tapes reveal that he also regarded Ford as a possible inoculation against impeachment.  He remarked to staffers that the elevation of the plodding Ford to the presidency might well give Democrats and Republicans alike pause to reflect before voting for impeachment.

            He was wrong, as it turned out.  Evidence of a mounting scandal continued to pile up day after day.  Impeachment by the House became inevitable and a long bloody trial in the Senate likely to result in conviction.  Nixon finally had no options other than resignation or eating a bullet.  If he had been physically competent enough to find and use a handgun, he might well have chosen the latter.  Instead he helicoptered off to California exile and left a shaken, dumbfounded Ford waving from the White House lawn.

            The public welcomed a relief from the hyper melodrama of the long Watergate scandal.  It warmed to Ford and to his vivacious wife Betty, who seemed a world removed from the remote and tortured Pat Nixon.  But the news of his administration, almost none of it the result of his actions, was uniformly bad.  Saigon fell and the bloodbath of Vietnam was shown to be a total waste.  Inflation soared.  The economy stagnated.  Unemployment rose.  The first “energy crisis” created long lines at gasoline pumps and shivering winters in the Northeast.  Ford’s only positive act, pardoning Nixon, only seemed to revive the bitter divisiveness of the previous years.

            Ford became to butt of easy jokes on Saturday Night Live.  Two California women took haphazard pot shots at him, which resulted in more perplexed speculation than outrage—who would even bother to try to kill such a harmless nonentity.

            Ironically Ford nurtured the careers of the men who would become the neo-con nucleolus of the administration of George W.  Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney served successively as Ford’s chief of staff and Rumsfeld got his first crack at reforming the military as Defense Secretary.   In the end both men, but especially Cheney, came to have nothing but contempt for the circumscribed presidential powers exercised by Ford.  They yearned for a return to the robust, unchallenged Imperial Presidency of Richard Nixon.  They would eventually help concoct a new governmental theory, the “Unitary Power of the Executive” restore the crown.

            George W. roused himself out of his Texas ranch retreat to say all of the proper and expected words about Ford and his service in healing America.  So supremely clueless was he that I doubt he spent a split second contemplating the irony that his own presidency lies as broken and rejected by the public as that of Richard Nixon.

            The public might well yearn for the availability of a relatively harmless place keeper like Gerald Ford to replace the bumbling Decider.  Instead the dark Sith Lord Cheney sits in the wings, surely a better insurance against impeachment  than poor Gerald Ford ever was for Dick Nixon.

SADDAM HUSSEIN

George W. probably awaited the execution of Saddam Hussein with the eagerness of a kid waiting for Santa.  Surely the Baghdad neck tie party would provide one of those save-you-ass moments which would restore public confidence in his failed Iraq policy.  Such moments have come and gone in the past and always bought just a bit a breathing room—the death of Saddam’s sons, the capture of the Ace of Spades himself,  the formation of a shaky “governing authority,” an election or two, the death of an  al-Qaeda  chieftain—and previously sagging ratting have bumped up.

This time the Resident is playing tidily winks to buy time to allow the public to forget that it voted against his policy in November and that his Daddy’s pals issued a report basically telling him that the jig is up.  He is reviewing his option in Iraq.  While just about everyone he consults with tell him that he needs to find some graceful way setting a time table toward withdrawal—including most of the military chiefs tired of seeing their forces wasted—the word is he will instead decide on a “surge” (read escalation) of twenty to fifty thousand and troops to pacify Baghdad.  Surely the execution of Saddam would be seen as “step toward victory” and make the further commitment to troops more palatable.

Unfortunately for George W., Saddam has become largely irrelevant.  The “insurgency” is no longer built around, if it ever was, embittered Baathist party loyalists and Saddam’s clan kinsman.  It long since slipped into a popular resistance, at least in Sunni areas and has been compounded by sectarian Sunni/Shi’a civil war.  The most that can be expected is a slight up-tick in revenge violence, hardly noticeable against the background of general carnage.

Saddam was convicted and executed for crimes against humanity.  The charges had to do with relatively minor instances of terror against Shi’ite rebels.  The much more wide spread atrocities he committed on behalf of the US as its surrogate in its struggle with Iran, with chemical weapons largely supplied by the US, were pointedly not the issue.  Too much embarrassing stuff might come up.

But as much as George W. might relish the image of the man who tried to kill his daddy turning purple at the end of a rope—he always was up for a good execution—some one should whisper in his ear just why most rulers make a point of not offing the enemy chieftain after he is vanquished.   Regicide is a very dangerous prospect.  After all, if Saddam Hussein can be executed for crimes against humanity, so might a deposed American president with his own hands bloodied to the armpits.

Now I’m not much on guilt by association. Particularly in politics. You know the kind. Bill Clinton used to get smeared with it all the time. He would have a picture taken with some mope, one of hundreds and thousands that were taken with citizens at all sorts of events and meetings. Two years later it would pop up when the guy turned out to be a child molester, embezzler, or a one-time Klansman. It’s a dirty game. 

I remember that during one of Representative Jack Frank’s first campaigns he was stalked at an event on Woodstock Square by a Republican staffer hoping to snap a picture of him with Roland Burris. The idea was to put the picture in campaign literature thus wordlessly tying Jack both to evil state Democrats and—gasp—to a Black. 

But some associations, and the enthusiasm with which they are embraced by the candidate, cry out for comment. 

Take, for example David McSweeney, GOP candidate for Congress in the 8th District against Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean. He was proud as a pumpkin to be seen with Vice President Dick Cheney AKA the Prince of Darkness. He was also embarrassingly grateful. 

At a Chicago fundraiser the Vice President helped suck up $200,000 from cheering fat cats for McSweeney’s flagging campaign chest. Those aforementioned fat cats, of course, were motivated only by the highest minded civic virtue when they turned their pockets inside out. They could not possibly have been hoping for an inside track on the Federal goodies that this administration doles out so enthusiastically to its friends. 

See the NORTHWEST HERALD’S account of the fundraiser.
 
I probably don’t need to get into the long list of horribles about Dick Cheney. If you need a refresher, just go by to my recent posting “Hiding the Pea.” 

And Cheney was not shy about reminding us. Brazenly, the former Halliburton chief and petroleum industry shrill par excellence spent much of the speech bragging about administration energy policy and trying to pin high gas prices on Democrats. And it would not have been a Dick Cheney speech if he did not trot out 9/11, cheer for the “War on Terrorism,” and cast his approving vampire gaze over the blood bath in Iraq.
 
So what, you say, just typical Republican politics. We should not expect any different, Why tar McSweeney simply for associating with the leaders of his own party?
 
Well, for one reason, Cheney himself was quick to pull the guilt by association trigger. He reportedly got the partisan crowd to its feet when he said, “The stakes are extremely high. This race may decide who is going to control the United States House of Representatives. If Nancy Pelosi is elected Speaker of the House, we will face higher taxes and she is going to wave the white flag on the war on terror.”
 
Nancy Pelosi—translation: “homo coddling, baby murdering, surrender monkey, tree hugging, class war advocating, pinko San Francisco LIBERAL!! For God’s sake deliver us from that evil!” 

If Dick Cheney wants to play that game, I don’t feel too guilty about turning the tables on him.
 
Now I know a lot of the folks who read this blog are less than enthusiastic supporters of Melissa Bean. I have been sharply critical of many of her votes. But as Dastardly Dick himself points out, her race is critical to Democratic hopes of recapturing the House of Representatives, one of the slender hopes we have yet of averting a complete slide in open dictatorship. 

So I’m all for letting David McSweeney take the heat for the company he keeps.

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You probably remember the big story of a few days ago.  Al Qaeda operatives planned a hydrogen cyanide attack on the New York City subway system in 2003.  Apparently preparations for the attack were well under way when Osama bin Laden’s main operational deputy, Ayaman al-Zawahiri scrubbed the mission.  Although the reason for the cancellation was unclear, speculation was that al-Zawahiri considered it an insufficiently spectacular follow-up to the 9/11 attacks.

How could you have missed the story?  It was front page stuff, the lead on all of the broadcast and cable news programs.  It set off a second round of stories on how prepared the nation is for such attacks and how secure Big Apple strap hangers feel now that they know they had a virtual brush with death.  It was a little jolt of fear and adrenalin in the public consciousness.

What you probably missed in all of the hoopla was that this story was revealed in a book by Ron Suskind, THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE.  In the book it was hardly more than a passing anecdote.  The main focus was on meticulously documenting what might be just as easily called “The Cheney Doctrine” and on the role of the Vice President as the de facto Commander in Chief behind the pathetic stooge front of George W. Bush.

Oh, you say that you haven’t heard about that part?  I wonder why.

The frenzy was led off with the publication of a book excerpt in TIME outlining the plot.  As is customary the magazine and the book publisher both undoubtedly buried newspapers, columnists, TV talking heads, radio ravers, and the now semi-respectable top flight bloggers in press releases on the account.  As if on cue, all of the above began vibrating in unison, sending out the great harmonic to cover the nation.

It’s just good business.  One sensational story, hyped to perfection, sells a lot of books and a lot of magazines.

But it also misrepresents the book, and ironically, plays right into the hands of Dirty Dick himself.  Cheney, the man behind the curtain, is delighted that the message that got out was one of fear.  He can even add a little swagger to his repeated claims that the lack of follow up attacks on America was “no accident” but the result of the administration’s tough minded and relentless pursuit of the “War on Terror.”

Cheney doesn’t care that the book itself is a scathing indictment of his assumption of virtual dictatorial powers.  He knows that only a relative handful of “intellectual posers and pinheads” will actually read the whole book.  And virtually all of them already hate him and the administration.  A few more will read comprehensive reviews in places like the NEW YORK TIMES.  They don’t count either.  Neither do the mouth frothers who read the left blogs (that us, folks.) 

All that counts is that Norman, stuck in traffic with his AM radio on, will hear just enough to tighten is gut in fear and maybe fuel a moment or two of rage.  Or that Melanie will catch a headline over cappuccino at Starbucks and slip back into security mom mode.

And thus even an enemy of the regime is turned into an unwitting tool.

*********************

I have not yet read the book, but according to reviews there are a lot more frightening things in it than an aborted plot.  Let’s start with the Vice President himself.  Shortly after the 9/11 attacks he laid out, in Suskind’s words, the basis for all administration policy to follow, “If there was even 1 one percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction…the United States must now act as if it were a certainty.”  In other words, the merest whiff of suspicion will bring down the full military might of this country on the hapless suspect.

Sadam Hussein and Iraq became the perfect test case, selected as much simply to “create a demonstration model to guide the behavior of anyone with the temerity to acquire destructive weapons, or in any way, flout the authority of the United State.”

            Statesmen, politicians, and the media were slow to grasp this new reality. They were acustomed to policy analysis, the careful weighing of options and the projection of likely outcomes.  What happened in Iraq defied all of that.  Observers knew it, but had no frame of reference for the new, secret, paradigm.

            To accomplish his goals, Cheney, assumed from the compliant, indolent, and dim witted President almost complete authority over the war and foreign policy.  The traditional avenues of alternative information and intelligence were stifled or replaced by compliant shams like the Defense Department’s end run around the CIA.  Documents and policy were funneled through the VP’s office before the President ever saw them—if Cheney allowed him to see them at all.

            An observant Secret Service noted the balance of power and for a while used the code word “Edgar” as in Edgar Bergen for the Veep in open acknowledgement that George W. was no more than his Charlie McCarthy—or more likely his Mortimer Snerd.

            The book outlines many instances of how Cheney exercised his authority over maters ranging from domestic spying to the detention and torture of “illegal combatants.”

            I look forward to getting the book and reading all of those lurid and frightening details.  Details certainly more frightening because they are continuing to this day unchecked, than any long past Al Qaeda fizzle.

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