By: Andy Worthington, 13 March 2010:

It’s now over three weeks since veteran Justice Department (DOJ) lawyer David Margolis dashed the hopes of those seeking accountability for the Bush administration’s torturers, but this is a story of such profound importance that it must not be allowed to slip away.

Margolis decided that an internal report into the conduct of John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, who wrote the notorious memos in August 2002, which attempted to redefine torture so that it could be used by the CIA, was mistaken in concluding that both men were guilty of “professional misconduct,” and should be referred to their bar associations for disciplinary action.

[...]

Read More–> What Torture Is and Why It’s Illegal and Not “Poor Judgment” – truthout.org

Below is an excerpt of Smith’s 2003 Harpers article, retelling the early stages of the Iraq war, composed entirely of public statements from the Bush administration — All of them, FALSE!

[...]

We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. And we found more weapons as time went on. I never believed that we’d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country. But for those who said we hadn’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they were wrong, we found them. We knew where they were.

We changed the regime of Iraq for the good of the Iraqi people. We didn’t want to occupy Iraq. War is a terrible thing. We’ve tried every other means to achieve objectives without a war because we understood what the price of a war can be and what it is. We sought peace. We strove for peace. Nobody, but nobody, was more reluctant to go to war than President Bush…

Read More–> A history of the Iraq war, told entirely in lies by: Sam Smith, Harpers, October 2003

Cold War Ethos, alive and well during 2008 presidential election.

Crossposted from Care2.com’s Political Causes Blog ~ Originally published 16 February 2010

Former Congressman Charles Wilson, the title character of the 2003 book/2007 movie, Charlie Wilson’s War, passed away Feb. 10 of a heart attack.  He was 76 years old.

The Democratic representative from East Texas was one of Washington’s most colorful characters during his tenure.  Wilson was known best for two things:  First was his reputation as a playboy.  “Good Time Charlie” was seldom seen without a young lady on his arm possessive of most of the attributes prized by the superficial male.

Second, and infinitely more significant, was Wilson’s role in the covert effort to support rebel factions in Afghanistan fight against the Soviet army in the 1980s.

Charlie Wilson’s Role & Regrets

From Afghanistan: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1973-1990 , introductory essay by Steve Galster:

In 1984, Wilson used his powerful position on the House Intelligence Committee to tack on an additional $50 million for Afghan covert aid and convinced the CIA to purchase high-quality, Swiss-designed Oerlikon anti-aircraft missiles, which could pierce the heavy armor of the USSR’s most formidable counterinsurgency machine, the Hind Mi-24 helicopter. The CIA went even further in 1985, purchasing the sophisticated British-made Blowpipe anti-aircraft missiles. And in 1986, due to pressure from several congressmen and a number of bureaucrats at the State and Defense departments, the CIA provided the mujahidin with U.S.-made Stinger missiles, the most effective shoulder-held anti-aircraft weapon in the world. It was the first time the CIA had provided U.S.-made weaponry as part of a covert insurgency support operation, and the legislative branch was largely responsible…

Wilson was the toast of Washington following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989.  His efforts in support of the Afghan mujahidin, however, would have tragic unforeseen consequences.  Wilson, himself, admitted as much in 2003 National Public Radio interview.

“I take my full share of the blame, but – and at the time I didn’t realize how serious it was, but the United States, once the Communist government had fallen, once the Russians had left, we sort of lost interest, the United States and other Western countries,”  Wilson lamented to NPR’s Terry Gross.  “And because of that, we created a vacuum.”

Supporting Pakistani interests in fight against Communism

That a power vacuum existed in Afghanistan following the Soviet withdrawal and subsequent American neglect is true but only partially so.  What Wilson failed to mention was that in pursuit of America’s Cold War “triumph,” by allowing Pakistani intelligence (ISI) officials to distribute the American resources, that outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Melissa Roddy noted the consequences of allowing the ISI to select the beneficiaries of “American largesse” in a Dec. 2007 Alternet.org post.  Within it, Roddy scolds the filmmakers behind Charlie Wilson’s War for misrepresenting this historical aspect, particularly their failure to mention the substantial support– up to 40 percent of billions of dollars worth of American aid — given to “…a blood-thirsty, fundamentalist, loudly anti-American bastard named Gulbaddin Hekmatyar.”

Not only is Hekmatyar anti-American, but he and another anti-American fundamentalist, Abdul Rasul Sayaf, received lots of support during the 1980s from the Saudis. That support included cash and thousands of Arab volunteers, including a wealthy young engineer named Osama bin Laden. It was Hekmatyar and Sayaf who, with bin Laden, established terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is why after 9/11, Wilson went on Fox News and said, “This was as much my fault as anybody’s.” He understood the link between U.S. support for these thugs and the events of that terrible day. But Wilson’s mea culpa is not included in Charlie Wilson’s War, nor is there any mention of Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rasul Sayaf or Arab volunteers.

Upon the news of Wilson’s death, Roddy – a documentary filmmaker with a focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan, past and present – published a post at ThePublicRecord.org entitled, “I Come Not to Praise Charlie Wilson, But to Bury Him.”  Her more recent condemnation pertains to the less romantic aspects of Wilson’s tireless efforts; namely, the Congressman’s ties to oil companies with regional interests and his lucrative, post-legislative career as a lobbyist for Pakistan.

Be sure to view the clip from Roddy’s documentary on the subject at the bottom of this post.  However, I’m less interested in the condemnation of Wilson than I am the Cold War mindset that facilitated him.

The destructive persistence of America’s Cold War Ethos

Historian H.W. Brands described the evolution of the American Cold War ethos in his 1993 book, “The Devil We Knew:  Americans and the Cold War.”

Within the book (and it should be noted that this pertains to a minuscule segment of Brand’s sweeping Cold War treatment) the author describes how the good vs. evil dichotomy became entrenched in American politics, foreign and domestic.  It was a black and white caricature of a gray-scale conflict, easily digestible for the American electorate.  Perhaps necessary at the time, it allowed Americans to collectively pat themselves on the back for “winning” the Cold War while ignoring the consequences, here described in the above linked National Security Archive essay from Galster:

Six thousand miles away from the celebrations, however, the war in Afghanistan raged on. Washington and Moscow’s clients, using U.S. and Soviet-supplied weapons, continued their internecine struggle for power, adding more civilian casualties to the 1 million who had already died. Although peace had broken out between the superpowers, the legacy of their long and bitter rivalry lived on in the rocket-prone city of Kabul, Pakistan’s crowded refugee camps and the war-ravaged villages in the Hindu Kush mountains.

Similarly, American ignorance of these conditions allowed for simplistic notions of the Cold War to persist in domestic politics.  “Few American voters cared to take the time to educate themselves to the nuances of the possible positions candidates might adopt on issues relating to national security,” Brands wrote.  “For the majority who didn’t, the question of whether an individual was reassuringly hard or suspiciously soft on communism simplified the sorting process.”

Also on the domestic front, this paradigm was exploited by “persons and organizations that had hidden behind the Cold War to oppose social reform…”  Brands notes that these constituencies would have no problem finding another mechanism following the Soviet Union’s collapse, however, “… red-baiting would be hard to match for its capacity to change the subject, and to throw advocates of reform on the defensive.”

There can be no doubt that these Cold War tendencies continue to poison America’s political climate.  The success of Charlie Wilson’s War at the box office is evidence that Americans were, and continue to be, willing to cling to their romantic notions well after the supposed Cold War’s end.

Replace communism with terrorism, the Soviet Union with Al Qaeda, in many of the above paragraphs and the extension of American Cold War sensibilities into the present becomes plain.  To be sure, the death of Charlie Wilson will do nothing to change this state of affairs.  Absent an American awakening to nuance in understanding U.S. foreign and domestic policy, it’s a shame that that we can’t bury the Cold War ethos with him.

See Also:

• Bob Mondello, “’Charlie Wilson’s War’ a Satirical Spin on History.” National Public Radio.  21 December 2007.
• Robert G. Anderson & George Crile, “Charlie Did It.”  60 Minutes Video, CBS News.  Aired 13 March 2001.
• Watch Part One of Melissa Roddy’s Conflict of Interest:  Patterns in Chaos.  (Part 2, Part 3)

By: Jason Leopold, 26 February 2010:

The National Archives and a watchdog group sent letters to the Justice Department Thursday demanding an investigation into the destruction of John Yoo’s emails in the summer of 2002 when he and other government attorneys prepared and finalized legal memoranda for the CIA that redefined torture and authorized interrogators to brutalize “war on terror” detainees.

The Federal Records Act (FRA) requires the preservation of government documents. Records cannot be destroyed unless approved by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). According to the Justice Department’s website, emails fall under FRA if it pertains to government business.

The Federal Records Act (FRA) requires the preservation of government documents. Records cannot be destroyed unless approved by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). According to the DOJ’sweb site, emails fall under FRA if they pertain to government business.

Last week, the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) released a long-awaited report into the legal work former Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) attorneys Yoo and Jay Bybee did for the Bush administration on torture. Yoo currently works as a law professor at UC Berkeley and Bybee received a lifetime appointment as a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Legal opinions written by Yoo in August 2002 and signed by Bybee cleared the way for the Bush administration to subject detainees to the near drowning of waterboarding and other brutal treatment at the hands of CIA interrogators.

Waterboarding and some of the other interrogation techniques sanctioned by the Bush administration, such as slamming detainees against walls and depriving them of sleep, have long been considered acts of torture and have been treated and prosecuted as war crimes. However, Yoo – working closely with Bush administration officials – claimed that the techniques did not violate US criminal laws and international treaties forbidding torture.

Further, Yoo asserted that Bush’s presidential powers were virtually unlimited in wartime, even a conflict as vaguely defined as the war on terror.

But Yoo, the report concluded, was found to have “committed intentional professional misconduct when he violated his duty to exercise independent legal judgment and render thorough, objective, and candid legal advice.”

Bybee was found to have “committed professional misconduct when he acted in reckless disregard of his duty to exercise independent legal judgment and render thorough, objective, and candid legal advice.” OPR investigators deemed this to be a violation of “professional standards” and recommended that Yoo and Bybee be referred to state bar associations where they could have had their law licenses revoked. Career prosecutor David Margolis, however, downgraded the criticism to “poor judgment,” which means the DOJ now won’t make the referral.

The voluminous report noted, however, that while OPR investigtors were initially provided us with a relatively small number of emails, files, and draft documents,” it became “apparent, during the course of our review, that relevant documents were missing…”

OPR “requested and were given direct access to the email and computer records of REDACTED, Yoo, [Deputy Assistant Attorney General Patrick] Philbin, Bybee, and [fomer OLC head Jack] Goldsmith” during the course of the investigation into the creation of the torture memos. But OPR investigators said their probe was “hampered by the loss of Yoo’s and Philbin’s email records.”

OPR investigators said they were told that most of “Yoo’s email records” as well as “Philbin’s email records from July 2002 through August 5, 2002 – the time period in which the Bybee Memo was completed and the Classified Bybee Memo … was created” were deleted and “reportedly” not recoverable. The deleted emails also included other relevant documents the OPR needed to assist its investigation, according to the report.

It is unknown whether any steps were ever taken by DOJ to retrieve the emails before deeming them “unrecoverable.” Curiously, the report says that although OPR investigators “were initially advised that Goldsmith’s records had been deleted, we were later told that they had been recovered and we were given access to them.” The report does not provide further explanation.

In a letter sent Thursday to Jeanette Plante at the DOJ’s Office of Records and Management Policy, Paul Wester, director of the Archives’ modern record program, said, in accordance with federal rules governing the preservation of records, if the “DOJ determines that an unauthorized destruction has occurred, then DOJ needs to submit a report to” NARA.

Wester requested a response within 30 days. A DOJ spokesperson was unavailable for comment.

The destruction of Yoo’s and Philbin’s emails also caught the attention of watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which had waged a years-long legal battle with the Bush administration over its destruction of tens of millions of emails and failed efforts to take steps to recover the documents and  preserve others.

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director, said Thursday, “given the disappearance of millions of Bush White House emails, we shouldn’t be surprised that crucial emails also disappeared from the Bush Justice Department.”

“The question now is what is the Attorney General going to do about it?” she said.

Sloan also sent a letter sent to Attorney General Eric Holder Thursday calling for a criminal investigation into the matter, a request that will likely go unfulfilled given the Justice Department’s and the Obama administration’s unwillingness to further delve into the previous administration’s alleged crimes.

She said such an inquiry is warranted, however, and compared the destruction of emails with the CIA’s destruction of torture tapes, which led to a criminal investigation and the appointment of a special prosecutor by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. That probe is ongoing.

“The destruction of emails from high-ranking officials such as Messrs. Yoo and Philbin related to a subject of critical important to the Department of Justice and the nation as a whole clearly violates FRA,” Sloan’s letter to Holder said.

Indeed, the DOJ’s web site said emails are federal records if it:

1. Documents agreements reached in meetings, telephone conversations, or other E-mail exchanges on substantive matters relating to business processes or activities
2. Provides comments on or objections to the language on drafts of policy statements or action plans
3. Supplements information in official files and/or adds to a complete understanding of office operations and responsibilities

The DOJ rules for preserving records also said ”the unlawful removal or destruction of federal records” can result in “criminal or civil penalties, fines and/or imprisonment.”

Sloan, in her letter to Holder, said, “the apparent failure of the Department of Justice to take any action in the face of knowledge that crucial records had been destroyed reflects a patent disregard of mandatory federal record keeping laws … Even if Mr. Yoo and Mr. Philbin did not violate their professional obligations by writing the torture memos, they – or others seeking to hide the truth – may have broken the law by deleting their emails.”

Last December, CREW and the historical group the National Security Archive announced that they entered into a settlement with the Obama administration over the loss of Bush administration emails.

Under the terms of the agreement, 22 million previously “missing” emails covering 94 days will be restored. That includes emails from the Office of the Vice President that were previously lost and unrecoverable and were subpoenaed by Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to probe the unauthorized leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson. This time frame also coincided with litigation surrounding the release of documents related to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force meetings.

The emails will be sent to NARA. But whether they contain answers to lingering questions about the CIA leak or Cheney’s energy task force meetings will not be known for years, as the documents will not be immediately available for public view.

Congressional Hearing

The destruction of Yoo’s and Philbin’s email was one of the first issues raised Friday during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, where Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler is currently testifying about the OPR report.

“Have [the emails] disappeared? If they have, and if they have been destroyed,  either the Yoo emails, the Philbin emails, will the [Justice Department] make ultimate determination whether the destruction was criminal, in violation of the criminal statutes, which seem fairly clear?” Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) asked Grindler.

Grindler testified that he still needs to gather information from the “information technology experts, including all of the questions of what occurred, what the policies are, and what the archive system is. And at that point I’ll be in a position to evaluate whether anything additional needs to be done.”

Grindler said the report does not “suggest there was anything nefarious” about the fact that Yoo and Philbin’s emails were not turned over to OPR investigatiors and he noted that the report “does include a review of some of Mr. Yoo’s emails.”

But Leahy said the episode was cause for concern given that other Bush administration officials were found to have destroyed emails in violation of the Presidential Records Act during time frames that coincided with the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the leak of Plame’s covert status and other scandals that engulfed the Bush White House.

“All I’m saying is that the report doesn’t have a complete lack of his e-mails,” Grindler said. But as soon as I learn the facts regarding this, I will provide appropriate information back to this committee…If they are retrievable, I will direct [technical staff] to retrieve them.”

After the hearing, CREW filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Justice Department “seeking documents that would shed light on the destruction” of Yoo’s and Philbin’s emails.

Specifically, CREW wants “copies of record keeping guidance issued to staff of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) from January 2000 to the present concerning how electronic records, including email, are to be treated for purposes of federal record keeping laws.”

CREW “also seeks records indicating, reflecting, or commenting on any problems with the storage or retention of emails of OLC staff, including but not limited to” Yoo and Philbin, “from January 2000 to July 2009.”

In a blog post published last Sunday, Marcy Wheeler, who has spent the past week painstakingly dissecting the OPR report, wrote that emails OPR did obtain “provide a key piece of evidence that the White House was responsible for the way in which the Bybee One memo served as a blank check, as well as the pressure the White House put on the lawyers as they were drafting the memos.”

“The emails put the White House squarely in the drafting process” of the torture memos, Wheeler wrote on her blog emptywheel. “But that’s all, with most emails from John Yoo and Patrick Philbin still disappeared. It sort of makes you all the more curious about what was in the Yoo and Philbin emails that got deleted, huh?”

Read Leopold’s report @ truthout –>  National Archives, Watchdog Demand DOJ Probe Destruction if John Yoo’s Emails ~ Digg it HERE

I caught Rep. Anthony Weiner’s — “Republicans are a wholly owned subsidiary of the health care industry” — remarks from the House floor, Feb. 24, and immediately knew I wanted to share it here.  But, when I saw Rachel Maddow’s analysis that evening, my inclination became obligatory.

Weiner is awesome, of course, but Maddow concludes the below clip stating America’s health care reform dilemma in manner so rational that, in my opinion, it should give the staunchest reform cynic pause.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

*Sigh*  I really wish the Democrats would have let Weiner attend today’s health care reform “summit.”

Feb. 21 clip from CBS’ Face the Nation, by way of MediaMatters:

Rush Limbaugh declaring Powell’s assessment to be racially motivated in 3…  2… Oh, wait.  It’s Sunday?  On Monday, then.

Digg the MMFA post –> HERE

Crossposted from Care2.com’s Political Causes Blog ~ Originally Published 13 December 2009:

On Dec. 11, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 4173: The Wall Street Reform and American Consumer Protection Act.  The House legislation is intended to address the systemic risk in the financial services industry.  It specifically includes language strengthening government oversight of the financial derivatives market, and creates the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

The bill must survive the Senate before becoming law, but getting it out of the House was a significant accomplishment.  If not for the legislation, itself, but the fact that not a single Republican voted for a bill intended to get a grip on Wall Street could prove politically useful for Democrats down the line.

One would think that this would be cause for celebration on the left.  However, as Nate Silver posted Dec. 12, the response from the left, “particularly the online left,” was surprisingly lacking of enthusiasm.

Nate Silver, FiveThirtyEight.com, posed the question, Dec 12:

If An Economy Recovers and No One Cheers It, Does It Make a Sound?

Silver finds it curious that those on the political-left are having trouble recognizing positive economic news when it occurs:

…there seems to be extreme reluctance among the left, and particularly the online left, to praise any economic successes achieved by the Congressional Democrats and the White House.

I do not expect Democrats, certainly, to be cheering the roughly 35 percent run-up in stock prices that has been achieved since Obama took the Oath of Office (we can pose an interesting counterfactual about whether Republicans would be touting the bull market if the roles were reversed). There have, however, been some other successes…

Careful not to appear too optimistic, Silver offers his objective analysis of the lowly state of present economic affairs and finds that the Democrats haven’t performed perfectly, but that their performance has been “pretty good.”

Be sure to read Silver’s post for his grading of the Democrats on “three policy imperatives that emerged from the economic crises of last year.”

For our purposes, let’s return to the original question: why the pessimism from the left?  Is it health care reform battle fatigue?  Or, rather, is it something less specific; for instance, have some on the left been persisting under a set of unrealistic expectations?  I’m hardly qualified to answer such questions, but since progressive positions are the ones I find most agreeable, I’ll venture a guess that its the latter.

The 2008 campaign season and the hard fight to get Barack Obama elected, in which the disparate progressive movement played a significant part, has left us with a hangover of sorts.  For me, what was most frustrating about advocating for Obama was refuting the accusations of idol worship from opposition on the political right.

When I think about it now, it seems silly.  Obama was merely a secondary target of the meme, his supporters were the primary focus.  But the notion that Obama walked on water was ephemeral; I, honestly, know of no one who actually viewed candidate Obama in this manner. Now, it appears some progressive factions want the president, not only to walk on water, but to do so while juggling chainsaws left by his predecessor.

I don’t wish to overstate the matter.  For many on the left, optimism is still exists.  But, for those who’ve abandoned it, here’s a few random thoughts on managing expectations:

1. We shouldn’t suffer under the delusion that, because the Democrats enjoy majorities in both houses of congress, there exists a rubber stamp for progressive initiatives.  Remember that in order to achieve those majorities the Democrats ran conservative candidates; additionally, even if the entirety of congress were Democrats, passing laws of any consequence would still look like herding cats.
2. All of the time and effort that went into ensuring Obama’s victory was not misspent in any way, shape, or form.  Keep in mind, though, that for our efforts what we got was a pragmatist.  But this is not a bad thing.  Pragmatists are uniquely suited for cat herding.
3. Don’t forget that our political opposition fights dirty and is incredibly well resourced.  Their skill in crafting perception is very effective among low information voters.  If you need a reminder of how effective they can be, read Joe Conason’s Oct. 5 Salon post, “The vast right-wing conspiracy is back.”
4. Our fight is about swaying the political center, and it’s a marathon, not a sprint.  The two party system is the present reality of the American political landscape.  That reality dictates that whomever is able to sway the vast political center will retain the reins of government.  But, controlling the reins can be a frustrating task (recall #1 on cat herding), and it can also be fleeting.  Should progressives be inclined to overreach beyond the comfort zone of the center, they’ll likely have to forfeit those reins at the behest of a center-dominated electorate, drifting to the right.
5. Every bit as frustrating is the speed at which Washington moves.  Pardon the cliche, but it truly is a marathon, not a sprint.  Even if the Democrats are able to maintain their majorities for years to come.  Just undoing the damage done by the Bush administration will be ongoing long after Obama completes his second term.

This list could go on, but you get the point.  If progressives wish to continue to have a positive impact, they’ll have to manage their expectations; a measure of acceptance that what they believe to be politically righteous is not always politically achievable… yet.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not suggesting that those on the left should refrain from vociferously advocating for their numerous causes.  The voicing of opposition to escalating the war in Afghanistan, and advocating for health care reform, to name just two, go beyond advocacy, existing as moral imperatives for today’s progressives.  What I am suggesting is that when progress is made — like the passage of HR 4173 — it shouldn’t be ignored.

As Nate Silver concludes, “…you may have a robust recovery by the middle of next year, but with neither the White House’s conservative nor liberal critics willing to give them much credit for it. Voters may stay away from Democrats as a result, pushing the country toward more conservative economic policy and ensuring that liberal critics of the economy aren’t lacking for greivances any time soon.”

*shiver*