Tear it down -- protest Guantanamo and torture online and in person

The America I believe in doesn't torture people or use cruel, inhuman treatment; doesn't hold people without charge, without fair trials, without hope, and without end; doesn't kidnap people off the street and ship them to nations known for their brutality; doesn't justify the use of secret prisons; and does not rob people of their basic dignity."

-- tearitdown.org , a project of Amnesty International
("Tear down Guantanamo -- one pixel at a time")

Join Amnesty International's global protest of the detention centers at Guantánamo Bay tomorrow on the National Mall at 11am. Protesters are asked to wear something bright orange (Guantanamo jumpsuit color). If you're so inclined, click through the link and sign up to wear an orange jumpsuit provided by Amnesty International.


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UPDATE, 1/13: I didn't go, but Keith did. He's posted photos of the event on his Flickr site. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |  

 
Great headline
Whackhawk Down? -- Josh Marshall ("Talking Points Memo") on the Stephen Coughlin firing.

That is all. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:43:00 AM -- |  

 
Hillary human! New Hampshire responds
The coronation of Barack Obama has been postponed, while the Clinton restoration showed a pulse after seeming to flatline. Polls had Clinton seven and ten points down in the final days before the election, yet Clinton won by about two.

So if the pollsters did their jobs right, two things are true: (1) a lot of people could change their minds about Obama and Clinton fairly quickly, and (2) a lot of people did.

A CNN exit poll result puts some numbers to that proposition. Respondents were asked when they decided to vote for their candidate. Among those who couldn't decide until Tuesday (about one in six voters), Clinton won -- but just barely: 40% to 36%. Obama won by a similarly narrow margin among another one in five voters deciding earlier this week. Obama's biggest margins were among the relatively small group who decided last week and and a larger one deciding last month (a combined 44% to 31%). Meanwhile, Clinton's biggest margin (48% to 31%) was among the roughly one third of voters who decided before that.

It doesn't take an Einstein to suspect something happened in the last three days that caused a number of true undecideds and perhaps relatively fresh Obama "converts" to move to (or move back to, respectively) the Clinton column. And it also doesn't take an Einstein to suspect it was this:



Different people will read this event differently, and assign different weights to it in any case. I'm pretty cool towards the Clinton campaign, but I found this affecting, and certainly didn't see it as some kind of breakdown. Rather, as this Toles cartoon aptly summarized, it was humanizing -- a simple reminder that Hillary Clinton actually does care about what she's doing. That said, the weight I assign to it is relatively small; Hillary's own judgment -- "some of us are right and some of us are wrong ... some of us are ready and some of us are not" -- is one I tend to see her on the short end of more than Edwards or Obama.

But people looking for permission, as it were, to agree with Hillary "despite" something or other -- she's supposedly too cold and calculating, or not as wow! cool! as Obama -- found it here. So if Obama's surge, his charisma and the excitement around his campaign had rattled you out of supporting Clinton -- who had been running until then on the emotionally sterile premise that she can craft and execute policies better than her opponents -- then a moment like this one may help you settle back down to voting for her.

Particularly if you resented this moment being portrayed as weakness. The same CNN exit poll showed Clinton winning among women by 47% to 34%. Among unmarried women -- a crucial demographic for Democrats in this election, according to repeated persuasive reports by the Greenberg polling group* -- Clinton's margin was even stronger (51% to 32%) -- one of the highest demographics-related margins in the poll.

So what? A few things, I think:

1. "Hillary finding her breaking voice" is at least in part a one-time event that can't really be repeated easily -- genuine moments can't be bottled. If so, Obama's the stronger candidate in the long run.
2. On the other hand, if there's anything the Clinton campaign did right systematically among unmarried women -- policy proposals, speaking softly on TV, whatever -- they'd be crazy not to figure out what it was and keep running that play. Likewise, Obama may need to figure out why he got beat so bad in this group, and whether there's anything he can do to change that.
3. Given the election results in New Hampshire, there's little to say about Edwards. He didn't distinguish himself when the "Hillary tearing up" charge came his way. More ominously for his campaign, though, Clinton won big among his natural constituencies -- union households, lower income households, families financially "falling behind." However...
4. If Iowa and New Hampshire proved anything, it's that allegiances to any of the remaining candidates are volatile. It may be Edwards' turn next.

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* "A New America: Unmarrieds Drive Political and Social Change", Stan Greenberg, Andrew Baumann, and Dave Walker, 11/1/2007. Nutshell version: unmarried women are a growing part of the population. They break for a generic Democratic president over a generic Republican by 70-24 percent, and favor "an active government that will give all Americans a chance to get ahead, not just the affluent... fundamental reform to provide universal coverage that can never be taken away... reduction of troops in Iraq." The authors sum up: "Unmarried women may play the same role for Democrats in 2008 that white evangelicals played for George Bush and the Republicans in 2004."


UPDATE, 1/10: Varying opinions about this theory, which of course occurred to others beside myself. Greg Sargent ("TPM Election Central") posted an item making more or less the same point. However, tristero ("Hullabaloo") is scathing about Gail Collins' (admittedly somewhat breezy) version of the idea, describing it as "boilerplate stupidity" and "pseudo-psychoanalytic horse***t,". Tristero writes that "voters weighed what Clinton proposed and concluded they were pretty good ideas, and that she made a better case than her rivals." Seems like a big turn-around in a few days to attribute to policy differences.
UPDATE, 1/10: Karl Rove, of all people, makes some good points: "But more interesting than dissecting the pollsters is dissecting the election returns, precinct by precinct. Sen. Hillary Clinton won working-class neighborhoods and less-affluent rural areas. Sen. Barack Obama won the college towns and the gentrified neighborhoods of more affluent communities. Put another way, Mrs. Clinton won the beer drinkers, Mr. Obama the white wine crowd. And there are more beer drinkers than wine swillers in the Democratic Party." However, bear in mind Rove may have political goals of his own in play here; are there points for Obama he short-shrifted for reasons of his own? Via Kevin Hayden at American Street.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:13:00 AM -- |  

 
Dems win New Hampshire on change -- not more of the same
Mark Schmitt, writing at TPM Cafe, has said the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign is more about "theories of change" than about policy differences: Edwards' populism and fighting stance, Clinton's technocratic mastery of detail and process, Obama's charismatic style, centrist rhetoric, and community organizer tactics.

But the main thing about all the Democratic candidates is that they stand for, or profess to stand for, change from the failed and dishonored Bush administration. And that continues to be a winning formula: given that about 55% of votes cast were in the Democratic primary -- in a state where registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats -- the headlines about New Hampshire today might just as well read "Dems Win."

With 96% of precincts reporting, CNN reports that both Clinton and Obama decisively outpolled McCain -- both gathered over 100,000 votes, while McCain's supporters numbered about 87,000. What's more, there's at least anecdotal evidence suggesting many New Hampshire independents (who outnumber both Democrats and Republicans) considered voting for Obama but wound up voting for McCain -- arguably in order to restore some order to the "Wrinkles, Beagle Eyes, Carrot Face, Oily" GOP freak show.

But the Washington Post and Fred Hiatt see it differently, with a silly op-ed about "Comeback Grownups." And -- of course -- what's "grown up" about the two New Hampshire winners is their position on Iraq:

His deep knowledge of foreign affairs, clearheaded approach to the threat of Islamic extremism and unwillingness to abandon his support for the war in Iraq, even when it threatened to cost him his bid for the presidency, are admirable [...]

[Ms. Clinton's] policy positions overlap with Mr. Obama's more than they differ, but the differences aren't inconsequential, especially in foreign affairs, where Ms. Clinton has had the more sophisticated approach to how to deal with Iraq and other danger zones.

To most of us, this election isn't about "sophistication" or stubbornness, it's about change -- whether it's "change we can believe in", someone who's "ready for change", or a "campaign to change America." But real change will have to take on voices and powers like Fred Hiatt and the Washington Post. In December, they wrote:

The keenest Democratic disappointment -- failing to force the president to rapidly withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq -- is no disappointment to us. Although unhappiness with the war in Iraq helped propel Democrats to victory, in the end President Bush was able to secure continuing funding for the war with no strings attached.

And last week they smirked again about the stupid American people:

Likewise, the Democratic debate ought to advance from its current crowd-pleasing rhetoric... about "ending" the war in Iraq ... to grapple more seriously with the challenges that will face the next president.

So inside the Beltway, the 2008 election is apparently more about how to stay the same, "grapple seriously," and just talk about change for the rubes. That's why I'll continue to judge the candidates in large part by whether I detect that in their records and their rhetoric (and that's why I continue to favor John Edwards). Harold Meyerson was right to warn last fall ("Silenced Majority"):

If Democrats are to win in 2008, it will be because they represent a decisive break, not a partially veiled continuity, with George Bush's policies, and with his war policies most of all. The Democratic candidates, Clinton especially, need to assure voters that their voice matters more than those of the Beltway theorists who supported the war at the outset and still can't contemplate ending the occupation. They need to assure voters, in short, that they take democracy in America seriously.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 PM -- |  

 
Good for a grin

Kenneth Pollack -- Incredibly Enough, He's Even Stupider Than You Thought (Jonathan Schwarz, "A Tiny Revolution") --- Schwarz reviews Pollack's book "Persian Puzzle", in which Pollack thinks it odd and irrational that Iranians were stocking up on naval equipment, which implied to Mr. "Threatening Storm" that they were spoiling for a fight with the good old U.S.A. Turns out they had a pretty decent reason for doing so -- the US was sinking Iranian ships. Schwarz:

...it's standard in government bureaucracies for people to become blithering idiots who have no idea what's going on right in front of their face. So Pollack isn't unusual in that regard. But it takes a special man to use his own blithering idiocy about his own country as justification to believe another country is mysterious and incomprehensible. Kenneth Pollack is that special man."

This is the way, step inside (Spencer Ackerman, "toohotfortnr") --- Ackerman wades into Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" book and finds its definition of fascism overbroad, not applicable to Goldberg's "exhibit A" -- the Wilson era -- even by Goldberg's own definition. Ackerman concludes:

I'm starting to think Jonah Goldberg is not an intelligent man.

Bad News for Mike Gravel (Jim MacDonald, "Making Light") --- New Hampshire citizen gets a two question phone call from a pollster:

“Are you planning to vote in the Democratic primary?”
“Sure am.”
“Who are you planning to vote for?”
“Mike Gravel.”
“Oh, you mean you’re going to vote in the Republican primary.”
“No, Mike Gravel is a Democrat. Two-term Democratic senator from Alaska.”
“Are you sure?
“Yes.”

I can press when there needs to be pressed (WIIIAI, "Whatever it is, I'm against it") --- WIIIAI observes today's Bush interviews with Israeli television, Al Hurra, and Al Arabiya, featuring several gem-quality Bushisms:

"I can press when there needs to be pressed; I can hold hands when there needs to be -- hold hands. [...]

And what ends up happening in this process is that the leaders will commit, and then they’ll get their committees to work, and it gets stuck. And that’s when I’ll have to work with Condi Rice to unstick it.

Ahem. Does Laura know about this? Does she help? WIIIAI: "I’d put a joke in here, but each version of “Like the time I got my () stuck in ()” I come up with is more disturbing than the one before."

The Republican debates according to a 9-year old (DailyKos diarist 8ackgr0und N015e) --- This guy gave his 9 year old the job of following the GOP debate on Saturday: "Follow me below the fold for the 9-year old's rendition of a fight between Sarge, Wrinkles, Bunny Ears, Oily, Beagle Eyes and Carrot Face..." From the resulting transcript:

They are rude
Interrupt alot!

Beagle Eyes
Arrogant foreign policy
We need 400,000 troops
Don't let politicians get involved
Leave it to military with blood on their boots. [...]

Sarge
John Micane never supported amnesty
Charge $5,000 to stay
attack ads

Wrinkles
Immigrants should not be rewarded

Fight.Fight. Interrupt. Fight

Oily
Do not sent 12,000,000
Ronald Reagan on some commercial. [...]

Sarge
Obama doesn't have the background to lead.

No candidate likes Obama.
Republicans don't think he'll be a good president.
Obama gonna win.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:45:00 PM -- |  

 
McGovern for impeachment
In "Why I Believe Bush Must Go, former Senator and 1972 presidential nominee George McGovern begins:

As we enter the eighth year of the Bush-Cheney administration, I have belatedly and painfully concluded that the only honorable course for me is to urge the impeachment of the president and the vice president.

Subtitled "Nixon was bad. These guys are worse," McGovern's Sunday Washington Post lead op-ed piece rehearses points familiar to impeachment advocates -- that is, over half the country, if the question is simply "have impeachable acts been committed?" McGovern:

Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their conduct and their barbaric policies have reduced our beloved country to a historic low in the eyes of people around the world. These are truly "high crimes and misdemeanors," to use the constitutional standard. [...]

I have not been heavily involved in singing the praises of the Nixon administration. But the case for impeaching Bush and Cheney is far stronger than was the case against Nixon and Vice President Spiro T. Agnew after the 1972 election. The nation would be much more secure and productive under a Nixon presidency than with Bush. Indeed, has any administration in our national history been so damaging as the Bush-Cheney era?

He continues:

The dominant commitment of the administration has been a murderous, illegal, nonsensical war against Iraq. That irresponsible venture has killed almost 4,000 Americans, left many times that number mentally or physically crippled, claimed the lives of an estimated 600,000 Iraqis (according to a careful October 2006 study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health) and laid waste their country. The financial cost to the United States is now $250 million a day and is expected to exceed a total of $1 trillion, most of which we have borrowed from the Chinese and others as our national debt has now climbed above $9 trillion -- by far the highest in our national history.

All of this has been done without the declaration of war from Congress that the Constitution clearly requires, in defiance of the U.N. Charter and in violation of international law. This reckless disregard for life and property, as well as constitutional law, has been accompanied by the abuse of prisoners, including systematic torture, in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

McGovern also lists illegal wiretaps, the Katrina debacle, and lies about Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions as worthy of impeachment investigation. His attitude about the prospects for impeachment is clear-eyed -- and not any kinder to Democrats or Republicans than they deserve:

Of course, there seems to be little bipartisan support for impeachment. The political scene is marked by narrow and sometimes superficial partisanship, especially among Republicans, and a lack of courage and statesmanship on the part of too many Democratic politicians. So the chances of a bipartisan impeachment and conviction are not promising.

But promising or not, it must be tried, McGovern concludes:

Impeachment is unlikely, of course. But we must still urge Congress to act. Impeachment, quite simply, is the procedure written into the Constitution to deal with presidents who violate the Constitution and the laws of the land. It is also a way to signal to the American people and the world that some of us feel strongly enough about the present drift of our country to support the impeachment of the false prophets who have led us astray. This, I believe, is the rightful course for an American patriot.

Thank you, Senator McGovern.

I'd like to know when he wrote and submitted it, and whether the Washington Post sat on it until the primaries were underway. I have no doubt many will consider McGovern's seal of approval just another strike against impeachment.

But it's heartening to see a good man like McGovern on my side, and able to command a platform to speak out so forcefully about Bush and Cheney's crimes. We can't let these two hardened authoritarians, torturers, and scofflaws set an example to the future. Nor can we let dithering fools like Pelosi, Hoyer, Conyers, and (sad to say) my own Congressman, Chris Van Hollen, set the example of how to fail to oppose them.

When Bush and Cheney's term is up, let it not be said that we failed to oppose them, that we failed to try to bring them to political justice in the way our Constitution provides.

And let it not be said that you failed to do so. Call your Congressman today, and urge him or her to support Congressman Wexler's call for immediate impeachment hearings about Vice President Cheney, and urge him or her to call for the same for President Bush: for their lies leading to the war in Iraq, for the lies that threatened and threaten to lead to war with Iran, for their illegal warrantless surveillance, for failing utterly to provide for the common defense of the citizens of New Orleans, for the habeas rights they've abrogated, for the treaties they've violated, for the self-dealing obstructions of justice they've committed, for the vile sins of torture that they've authorized and encouraged.

Stand with McGovern. Stand against Bush and Cheney and everything those two traitors to American democracy stand for. Call for impeachment; call for it today. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:43:00 AM -- |  

 
You'd think this would get more attention
The Sunday Times Online reported today that...

...foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions. [...]

...one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan...

“He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

-- For Sale: West's deadly nuclear secrets Sunday Times Online, 1/6/08

The source is Sibel Edmonds, an FBI translator fluent in Farsi and Turkish, who was assigned to a backlog of untranslated documents and wiretaps in 2002. Following what she saw as an unsuccessful effort in late 2001 to enlist her in espionage similar to that reported above, Edmonds reported the Americans involved to the FBI -- and was fired for her trouble in March 2002.* In his 2005 Vanity Fair piece "An Inconvenient Patriot," David Rose described what came next:

But being fired is one thing. Edmonds has also been prevented from proceeding with her court challenge or even speaking with complete freedom about the case.

On top of the usual prohibition against disclosing classified information, the Bush administration has smothered her case beneath the all-encompassing blanket of the “state-secrets privilege”—a Draconian and rarely used legal weapon that allows the government, merely by asserting a risk to national security, to prevent the lawsuits Edmonds has filed contesting her treatment from being heard in court at all. According to the Department of Justice, to allow Edmonds her day in court, even at a closed hearing attended only by personnel with full security clearance, “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to the foreign policy and national security of the United States.”

Using the state-secrets privilege in this fashion is unusual, says Edmonds’s attorney Ann Beeson, of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It also begs the question: Just what in the world is the government trying to hide?”

Now we have a better idea.

Remarkably, Ms. Edmonds couldn't get any major American news organization to agree to publish her allegations naming names. It's really a bit of a shame the story is getting crushed by ObamaNewHampshireIowaEdwardsClintonHuckabeeRomney, and one may wonder why Ms. Edmonds took so long to go to foreign media with her story, which even as reported in outline form before now seemed like a huge scandal. The answer may have to do with libel laws abroad, or at least in the U.K., that are more protective of public figures than they are in the United States. Certainly no names were named in the Times Article.

However, Ms. Edmonds has now published a "State Secrets Privilege Gallery" on her own web site ("Just A Citizen") with unlabeled photographs of well known Defense Department and intelligence figures like Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Brent Scowcroft, and Congressmen Dennis Hastert, Richard Livingston, Stephen Solarz, and Art Lantos, to name a few -- the full list is spelled out by lukery ("Let Sibel Edmonds Speak"). The intent appears to be to imply names to put to the allegations in the Times story, without taking the legally fraught step of connecting every dot in writing.

Whoever the weak links in the American chain turn out to be, the nexus of espionage that Edmonds' story describes is unsettling indeed:

The Turks and Israelis had planted “moles” in military and academic institutions which handled nuclear technology. Edmonds says there were several transactions of nuclear material every month, with the Pakistanis being among the eventual buyers. “The network appeared to be obtaining information from every nuclear agency in the United States,” she said.

If the Israeli angle is true as well, it seems plausible that they were trying to get information about how to build "better" nukes of their own, though I suppose there are Israelis who'd sell nuclear plans to Pakistan. The Times provides a timeline of Pakistan's nuclear weapons development at the end of the story, and most reactions understandably focus on that country.* Jim Henley ("Unqualified Offerings") writes, "The thing that most struck me is how much, over the decades, Pakistan has acted not at all like a client state of the US."


The Turkish Connection
True. I'd add, though, that most of the article tends to point our good friend Turkey's way in that respect. The Congressional involvement implied by Ms. Edmonds' photo gallery is certainly all connected to Turkey; sometimes the worthy Congressmen involved were impressed that Turkey has been willing to work with Israel diplomatically and militarily, sometimes they've been impressed with Turkish money (Livingston's lobbying firm is on an annual $1.8M retainer by the Turkish government), and sometimes both. Edmonds says Mr. Hastert may not have been willing to wait to get out of office before pocketing his payoffs. Rose:

[Edmonds] reported hearing Turkish wiretap targets boast that they had a covert relationship with a very senior politician indeed—Dennis Hastert, Republican congressman from Illinois and Speaker of the House since 1999. The targets reportedly discussed giving Hastert tens of thousands of dollars in surreptitious payments in exchange for political favors and information.

What sort of political favors? In an interview with Amy Goodman, Rose says that in secret testimony, Edmonds told Congressional investigators that Speaker Hastert may have sold out his support for the Armenian Genocide Resolution in 2000, withdrawing it just before a final vote:

One of the Turkish targets of these wiretaps claimed that the price for getting Dennis Hastert to withdraw the resolution would be $500,000. Now, I do emphasize there’s no evidence at all that he received such a payment, but that is what is said to have been recorded in one of the wiretaps.

Thus, it's not all about nukes; denial of the Armenian Genocide is a centerpiece of Turkish policy, since acknowledging it would invite reparations claims -- and might undermine the political legitimacy of a Turkish republic that has long and strenuously denied many of its founders' responsibility for that genocide.

But it is likely very much about money in any case. Since 9/11, Turkey is the 7th largest recipient of military "aid" from the United States,** and Turkish military officials -- who wield constitutional power in that country as designated arbiters of the secular tradition in that country -- are both well placed and not reluctant to profit from sidelines, or recycle some of that largesse in ambitious ways. Entrepreneurism being universal, and absolute power notoriously corrupting absolutely, it would be little wonder if Turkish military and intelligence might go into all kinds of unexpected business sidelines.

We'll just have to hope that responsible, upstanding people in Islamabad -- and not Al Qaeda -- were the final destination for any nuclear secrets said entrepreneurs got their hands on.


CROSSPOSTED TO "American Street"

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* Indeed, I wonder if Benazir Bhutto's assassination was an additional reason Edmonds went to the Times. The stated reason, however, was that she "approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey." Joseph Cannon ("Cannonfire") writes the story was probably this one about Louai Sakka (or Sakra), an Al Qaeda operative now jailed in Turkey. The "hall of mirrors" feeling about the story deepens in that Sakka is apparently linked to many Western intelligence services, according to a CooperativeResearch.org article citing the 9/11 Commission and media reports.
** $1.325 billion from 2002-04, according to PublicIntegrity.org. Countries receiving more aid -- or "aid" -- were Israel, Egypt, Pakistan, Jordan, Afghanistan, and Colombia, with figures ranging from $9 billion to $2 billion over the same time period.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I'd be remiss not to mention that I've often written often about the Armenian Genocide and the struggle to have it acknowledged as such. (See, e.g., 90 years ago: Armenian Genocide Begins and Another Day, Another Turkish New Lira for the Washington Post) While I like to think I'd feel this way in any case, I'm married to an Armenian American.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:26:00 PM -- |