Bush's Former Surgeon General

Not very surprising:

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party," Carmona added.

Probably explains why they want to replace him with someone with, um, rather odd ideas...

Another bogus "Clinton did it too" defense

President George W. Bush commuting Scooter Libby's sentence is not comparable to Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, however reprehsible that might have been. The main reason: Rich was not found guilty of obstructing justice in a case that might possibly invove the President who pardoned/commuted his sentence.

Libby was convicted of precisely this: perjury, to obstruct justice, in a case that should have led to Cheney and, possibly, Bush himself. And unlike Rich, who was safely enjoying his money in Switzerland, Libby was facing an imminent prison term either, one that might encourage him to talk.

As some have pointed out, Bush's action would have been more comparable to Clinton commuting Susan McDougal's sentence in the Whitewhater affair before she went to jail - something he never did. (He did pardon her at the end of his term.)

Finally, there's the discrepancy between this commutation, and Bush's previous record of denying such mercy, going back to his Texas days.

US justice?

More serious causes for concern, in the continuing Third-World-ization of US Justice.

Reported by Scoott Horton, federal prosecutorial abuse. And from the NYT editorial page, how the Supreme Court now prefers technicalities to basic fairness.

Not to say anything about Seymour Hersh's The New Yorker's article on General Taguba and his investigation of Abu Ghraib.

They used to call it a "filibuster"

That Liberal bias in the media. From Scott Horton's blog:

Today 53 members of the United States Senate, including seven Republicans, expressed their vote of no confidence in the service of Alberto Gonzales. The vote was procedural, as the Republicans used filibuster rules to block the actual vote–a step they have now invoked repeatedly to hamstring action by the majority in the Senate.

Isn’t this surprising when, only two years ago, when an effort was made to invoke the filibuster to block nominations, Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott and company thought it presented a threat to the Constitutional order of Government? Whereas now they trot it out themselves even on procedural and symbolic votes? To abet them in this remarkable act of hypocrisy, the media now routinely refer to the filibuster merely as a “procedural vote.” When the Democrats use it to block a judicial nomination, it’s called a “filibuster,” but if it’s ever invoked by the Republicans it’s just “procedure.” This is just more evidence of how the Republicans and Democrats interact–like velociraptors and bunny rabbits caged together–and the media lean whichever way the Republicans would have them lean in their characterizations.

I would just add that the front page story in today's New York Times did not mention the F-word either.

Thinking like a Third-World Dictator

From the horse's mouth:

As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.

This is Dick Cheney, at the West Point graduation ceremony.

How many times must it be said? Just because the enemy is inhuman, and abhorrent, does not mean that we should act in the same way.

Commentary at TPM.

Also see Andrew Sullivan's take.

p.s. It has struck me that this would actually be a powerful piece of oratory *if* (1) the US was actually granting these protections to all of its captives, which it is not, thanks to folks like Cheney, and (2) the snarky phrase, "delicate sensibilities," was cut...

Consider these two quotes from Bush's press conference today:

I'm credible because I read the intelligence, David, and make it abundantly clear in plain terms that if we let up, we'll be attacked. And I firmly believe that.

Followed, shortly afterwards, by:

It's better to fight them there than here. And this concept about, well, maybe let's just kind of just leave them alone and maybe they'll be all right is naive. These people attacked us before we were in Iraq. They viciously attacked us before we were in Iraq, and they've been attacking ever since.

So he's saying that 9/11 happened regardless of the Iraq invasion, and at the same time he's saying the Iraq invasion will prevent other attacks. Hmm...

As Juan Cole recently wrote:

And all along the Bushies have invoked al-Qaeda with regard to Iraq. It doesn't matter what the real situation in Iraq is. Is it ruled by secular Sunni Arab nationalist Baathists who are afraid of al-Qaeda according to documents Bush himself captured and released? Nevertheless, Bushies find al-Qaeda in Iraq. Is Iraq dominated by Shiites allied to Iran? Bushies find an alliance with al-Qaeda. Like tax cuts, it is the answer to every problem.

The Republican Debate

How depressing. Fox News feeds them the ticking time bomb scenario, and the Republican candidates, with the honorable exceptions of Paul and McCain, endorse torture. Sullivan's review here.

This is the terrorists' game, and these candidates are playing it.

They are putting the morality of the United States, and its foreign policy, in the hands of the terrorists.

All the talk about "enhanced interrogation techniques" is Orwellian.
Calling it a "moral freak show" seems accurate. How depressing to see the majority of the party in power in the US talking and thinking like two-bit dictators do all over the world.

Romney talks about making Guantanamo twice as big, without lawyers. Nice.
If a Democratic president were elected who would shut down Guantanamo, it wouldn't surprise me if Al-Qaeda staged another attack (even a smallish, cheap one) to reactivate hysteria and get it reopened. It is what they want.

And then, when Ron Paul (seemingly, the only rational candidate) talks about foreign policy blowback, the Fox News moderators put words in his mouth and accuse him of saying that the US deserved 9-11. Giuliani then gets a perfect chance to grandstand about it.

This use of 9-11 is very dangerous: since grievous harm and injustice has been done to us, we can retaliate in whichever way we see fit, even if it is immoral. Quiz: Who else thinks like that?

Update: From those who know more about these matters than I do: Retired generals.

Movie review: Spider-man III

Well, Spidey has jumped the shark. Not a hard thing for a superhero to do, really. I can even point to the exact moment when the jump was completed: the brief appearance of an American flag at the start of the final battle.

Not that I have anything against American flags; they're a fine, proud symbol. This Sunday afternoon, actually, the flag was a running theme. We saw many fluttering in downtown San Francisco, and I regularly enjoy taking pictures of them framed against a clear blue sky. And then at the SF moma we saw Jasper John's beautiful, intriguing, literalistic-but-not-quite-so painting, American Flag. So we had nothing against it.

But the context in which it was used suggests one of two things: a craven attempt to appeal to the patriotism of the US audience, or a weak and ineffective attempt at satire. I guess it's too much to expect of your multimillion-dollar summer flick to get these things right?

The special effects were quite good - kudos to them. But the script, and the pacing, and the directing, and some of the acting, were not quite up to par. The French maitre'd was the best thing in the movie!

The movie was too long, and had one villian too many. It is also presumably the most expensive movie ever made?

More on how the Banana Republic works

New disclosures: The White House and the Attorney General secretly set up things so that, basically, Karl Rove (an unelected, unconfirmed political operative) can hire and fire at the Justice Department at will, undetected.

Sticking someone else with the bill: Tenet and Politicians in Washington

Regarding George Tenet's upcoming book:

I find it fascinating that Cheney and Rumsfeld, in particular, managed to blame all the bad pre-invasion Iraq intelligence on the CIA, while it was their own cherry-picking, tailor-made, in-house "intelligence" operations that produced the most bogus intelligence to justify the invasion.

(Update: for more on this, see this Blumenthal article at Salon.)

Another example of this Administration's skill at projection, where your own weaknesses and flaws are pinned on someone else.

Take, too, President Bush's mantra about how he does not like "Washington politicians telling Generals how to do their jobs." Last time I checked, President Bush was a politician, in Washington, who's told Generals what to do many times, and who has fired a few who, based on sound military judgement, did not agree with him.

"Follow us home"

I was planning to write something about the idiocy of President Bush's line about the terrorists "following us home" if the US left Iraq, but Richard Clarke, who knows something about terrorism, has now put best in this op-ed. To summarize:

Does the President think terrorists are puppy dogs? He keeps saying that terrorists will "follow us home" like lost dogs. This will only happen, however, he says, if we "lose" in Iraq.

The puppy dog theory is the corollary to earlier sloganeering that proved the President had never studied logic: "We are fighting terrorists in Iraq so that we will not have to face them and fight them in the streets of our own cities."

Remarkably, in his attempt to embrace the failed Iraqi adventure even more than the President, Sen. John McCain is now parroting the line. "We lose this war and come home, they'll follow us home," he says.

How is this odd terrorist puppy dog behavior supposed to work? The President must believe that terrorists are playing by some odd rules of chivalry. Would this be the "only one slaughter ground at a time" rule of terrorism?

Of course, nothing about our being "over there" in any way prevents terrorists from coming here. Quite the opposite, the evidence is overwhelming that our presence provides motivation for people throughout the Arab world to become anti-American terrorists.

The White House at its Word

President Bush today:

"The attorney general went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer _ honestly answer _ in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job," Bush said.

Oh, indeed, indeed. This is probably literally true.

And there's this:

Acknowledging Gonzales' lack of support in Congress, [White House Spokeswoman] Perino said the Justice Department has "a huge amount of responsibility outside of any dealings with Capitol Hill."

"I think that it was good to get the hearing over with," she said. "People can take a step back and then either ask follow-up questions or move on."

Hmmm, I think Congress has follow-up questions for Goodling, Myers and Rove. The first has taken the fifth, and the White House will not let the other two testify...

Gonzales: The Big Picture

At Harper's, Scott Horton reminds us of the big picture:

This was never about Alberto Gonzales. His role has been a simple one from the start: enabler. He was the loyal Bush consigliere who could be counted upon to provide a legalistic blessing for any scheme, no matter how putrid: torture, renditions, kangaroo courts, Orwellian surveillance, and now a political manipulation of the machinery of the criminal justice administration. Remember, only weeks ago, Gonzales was the man who stood at Cheney's side arguing against shutting down Guantánamo. It's hard to say which of these offenses is the most shocking or the worse. But even keeping the focus just on the last—the immediate cause of the Senate hearings—then it's clear that the trail leads to the White House, and specifically to Karl Rove.

"War", or "Occupation"?

Words certainly matter, a lot. Consider the name we give to the current US involvement in Iraq.

If we call it a "War", then, surely, it is something we don't want to "lose". Who wants to lose a war? However, if one calls it an "Occupation", then suddently bringing it to an end does not sound that bad. Consider this AP report:

WASHINGTON Apr 19, 2007 (AP)— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday the war in Iraq is "lost," triggering an angry backlash by Republicans who said the top Democrat had turned his back on the troops.

The headline at the Drudge Report screams:

DEM LEADER DELARES (sic): "WAR IS LOST"

Wouldn't sound so bad if he had said that the occupation was futile, right?

Now, which term is more accurate? I'll leave that as an excercise for the reader...

From Gonzales' testimony

My favorite exchange, as highlighted by Salon:

Durbin: And I think that we have heard here, about some of the political considerations, comments about "loyal Bushies" by Kyle Sampson, the involvement of Mr. Rove in decisions about the fate of some of these U.S. attorneys, raises a serious question as to whether or not your continued service is going to make it difficult for professional prosecutors in the Department of Justice to do their job effectively.

Gonzales: Senator, if I could respond, I think, again, it's absolutely true that this is not about Alberto Gonzales. It's about what's best for the department and whether or not I can continue to be effective in leading this department. I believe that I can be ... Clearly, there are issues that I have to deal with. And I'm going to work as hard as I can to reestablish trust and confidence with this committee and members of Congress and, of course, with the career professionals at our department. And all the credit, everything that we do, the credit goes to them. And so, when there are attacks against the department, you're attacking the career professionals.

Durbin: Now, Mr. Gonzales, that is like saying if I disagree with the president's policy on the war, I'm attacking the soldiers.

It takes a lot of gall for Gonzales to make that claim --- the charge is precisely that he's politicizing the department, in detriment of the career professionals!

Speaking of which, the top career professionals in the Minessotta office have stepped backwards, in protest for the performance of the newly appointed, 33-year old, Christianist loyal Bushie Rachel Paulose. Looks like she's lost the confidence of her staff, and quite quickly. Now this seems like a better reason to ask for a resignation, than most of the rationales used for the firing of the Gonzales 8.

Karl Rove concedes a point

This exchange reportedly happened yesterday:

In a question-and-answer period after his speech, Rove was asked whose idea it was to start a pre-emptive war in Iraq.

“I think it was Osama bin Laden’s,” Rove replied.

The problem is, he might be exactly right. As Richard Clarke and others have pointed out, deciding to invade Iraq was a great gift from President Bush to Al-Qaeda. (Clarke imagined Osama in a cave, trying to control the President by telepathic means: "You must... invade... Iraq".)

The attacks of 9/11 were probably designed, precisely, to elicit this kind of reaction - a bad, bad move on part of the US. It was a trap, and it worked.

p.s. As for Rove's comments that he never wanted the war to happen, words fail me. But it is a reminder of how grave a moral failure it really is, to choose war/occupation, when other options were available, and then to run it incompetently.

Gun Control in the US

A good article by T. Noah at Slate:

The political reality is that, for the various reasons outlined by Slate editor Jacob Weisberg, gun control is a dead letter, even though polls consistently show that a majority of American voters support it. (Blame the anti-majoritarian Senate and Electoral College. A plurality of American voters chose Al Gore to be their president in 2000, but that didn't happen, either.)

And then:

We value the lives of Mary Read, Ryan Clark, Leslie Sherman, and all the rest, but we value more their killer -------'s untrammeled right to purchase not only a Glock 19 and a Walther P22, but also the ammunition clips that, according to the April 18 Washington Post, would have been impossible to obtain legally had Congress not allowed President Clinton's assault-weapon ban to expire three years ago.

I am censoring the killer's name: he does not deserve the publicity.

Rewarding the psychos

One of the (possibly many) things that terrorists and deranged lone killers have in common is their thirst for one thing: PUBLICITY.

So, shame on all the web pages, newspapers, TV shows and other media that have had a field day with the images that the Va. Tech killer manufactured himself, for posterity. Not only are his wishes being fulfilled, but it can only help encourage the next nutcase. Well done, media!

(And it applies to publications both on the "left" and the "right": I guess the sales and ratings are too tempting to give up, uh?)

Update: A psychiatrist states that showing the videos is a "Social Catastrophe." And continues:

"It's not an issue of blame. It's an appeal. Please stop now. That's all," he said. "If you can take [talk show host Don] Imus off the air, you can certainly keep [Cho] from having his own morning show."

His reference to the movie, "Natural Born Killers," is an apt one. The movie is meant to satirize the symbiotic relationship between psychos and the press---but it's a fine line between that and a product that actually reproduces and validates that relationship.

"I promise you the disaffected will watch him the way they watched 'Natural Born Killers.' I know. I examine these people," he said. "I've examined mass shooters who have told me they've watched it 20 times. You cannot saturate the American public with this kind of message."

The Virginia Tech Tragedy

What can one say?

Interesting how the bloggers are adding politics to the analysis:

Some argue that lack of gun control is the problem. Others, the exact opposite. My own take: while letting more people carry guns might be a good thing in exceptional circumstances such as this one --- who would not want one of the victims to be able to shoot back? --- it is likely that, in the long run, more people would die if more people were allowed to buy and carry guns.

(The fallacy is reminiscent of the justifications for torture: Sure, if we knew that torture was the only way to prevent a nuclear explosion in a city, we would approve of it. But how often would that actually be the case? And why would that mean that it is justified in general?)

Other bloggers have pointed out that while 32 dead in a single incident is horrifying in the US, and worthy of extensive media coverage, it has been an almost daily par for the course for Iraq (with less than 1/10 of the population). And yet Bush complains that the Iraq violence is covered too much.

Andrew Sullivan makes the point particularly well in this post.

p.s. An update: Surely enough, the next day we have 171 dead in Iraq, mostly civilians, including children.

It all depends on what the definition of "Improper" is

From AG Gonzales' second Washington Post op-ed piece about the "overblown personell matter":

I have nevertheless asked the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility to further investigate this matter. Working with the department's Office of Inspector General, these nonpartisan professionals will complete their own independent investigation so that Congress and the American people can be 100 percent assured of what I believe and what the investigation thus far has shown: that nothing improper occurred.

So, the DOJ will investigate itself. But the boss has already reached a conclusion.