Slow Reactor Reactions

Sometimes a headline says it all, like this one from the BBC.

Japan to Scrap Stricken Nuclear Reactors

OK, it's been nearly 3 weeks since the Fuckyoushima power plant was damaged by the earthquake and tidal wave. Every day has brought worse news of loss of cooling, explosions, reactor vessel breaches, workers fleeing the site, workers being brought back to a control room that doesn't seem to be in control of anything, workers being sent to hospital, environmental contamination.. .. ...

So NOW they announce that they're going to decommission 4 of the 6 reactors at the Fuckyoushima site?!? What this says is that up until now the effort has been to save the plant, not the people or the environment around it. Sure, it's worth $BILLIONS, but hasn't it been evident almost from the start that things were not recoverable? And that's using information that the company TEPCO that runs it has deemed to release - all of it as seen through rose-coloured glasses.

Some day in the future it's going to come to light that the environmental impact of this disaster was made many times worse by TEPCO's lying and managing things as if their efforts could miraculously save their investment. I guess they have to say that to appease the stockholders. But when that information does become available, the lawsuits are going to sink the power corporation. Anybody want to hazard a guess as to how much a twenty mile exclusion zone is worth? Over 600 sq. mi. of real estate in Japan? Holy shit!! I imagine it's way more than even a nuclear power plant is worth. (though with most of the buildings already flattened it's worth a lot less than it was before the tsunami. still..)

I imagine there are executives at TEPCO right now ruing the Japanese tradition of Seppuku - ritual self-disembowelment. If anyone in the history of that nation ever deserved such a punishment, it would be them. You can almost hear the snick snick of little knives being sharpened.

TAGS: Fuckyoushima, Tsunami aftermath, Nuclear disaster, Seppuku

Italy Convicts Kidnappers

Court Sentences 22 CIA Agents, 1 USAF Colonel

From The BBC:

An Italian judge has convicted 23 Americans - all but one of them CIA agents - and two Italian secret agents for the 2003 kidnap of a Muslim cleric.

The agents were accused of abducting Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from Milan and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.

The trial, which began in June 2007, is the first involving the CIA's so-called "extraordinary rendition" programme.

The Obama administration has expressed its disappointment at the convictions. "We are disappointed by the verdicts," state department spokesman Ian Kelly said in Washington. He declined to comment further pending a written opinion from the judge, but said an appeal was likely.

Three Americans and five Italians were acquitted by the court in Milan.
[...]
The CIA's Milan station chief at the time, Robert Lady, was given an eight-year term, while the other 22 Americans convicted - one of them a US air force colonel - were sentenced to five years in prison.

A little more information that the BBC omits is available from this article at Al-Jazeera. For one thing the three Americans who were acquitted actually got a pass for having diplomatic immunity. For another the five Italians were acquitted because they were "protected by State Secrecy rules." Which leads one to wonder why the 2 convicted Italian agents were not covered by that umbrella. Hmmm...

The US State Department may be disappointed by the verdict, but I'm quite frankly delighted. And I'll tell you why. For more than three years now, over several posts, I've been saying that the weasel-word 'rendition' really means kidnapping, and should not be given any distinction any higher than that of an extreme criminal act. It's nice that a judge and jury agree. And as to the disappointment expressed by the US government, I already covered that in that post from Sept. 19, 2006.

In America we see a government that continues to deny their own criminal activity. Then when it becomes undeniable, they deny that there is anything illegal about it. Then, when THAT becomes undeniable, they try to retroactively make legal the most egregiously despicable actions. Sickening. As Glenn Greenwald asks, "How can you be an American citizen and not be completely outraged, embarrassed, and disgusted by this conduct?"

What they're disappointed with, frankly, is that their depraved indifference to the rule of law cannot be forcibly extended to other jurisdictions.

In an e-mail about this story Len Hart expressed the fervent hope, "Perhaps the CIA will --at last --be held accountable for its TERRORIST activities." I wouldn't advise him to hold his breath. Not with the kind of MSM reporting on the story that is exemplified by this exchange on CNN's The Situation Room.

Sorry, I have no transcript so this is paraphrased from memory (I wrote this in comments of the last post just minutes after hearing it however. It's pretty accurate as to the intent of what was said.) Wolf Blitzer is interviewing Jeffery Toobin, whose legal expertise puts him in a class with John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Orly Taitz.

Toobin: "the bad thing about this is that because of Interpol the [convicted criminals] have to avoid travel not only in Italy but most of the rest of Europe as well.

Blitzer: It's part of the job description of the CIA that they go into other countries, and break the law. They break and enter. They engage in bribery, and so forth. Italy is an ally. They're supposed to have an agreement with the US about things like this. The system failed somehow."

The only agreement that any foreign country might have with the US (at least so far as international law is concerned) about spies is this -- if a spy has an official embassy cover, when caught spying they are not charged, but simply declared Persona Non Grata and expelled from the country. As noted above this is what happened to the three CIA criminals who had diplomatic immunity. The others had to have been what is known as NOC's (meaning non-official cover,) and should have known that they were vulnerable to charges if they broke Italian law.

Any argument to the contrary can be boiled down to two words; American Exceptionalism. Which, you may be surprised to find out (assuming you're an American) has no foundation whatsoever in international law. None. And 'legal expert' Toobin had to have known that. So he's either an incredibly incompetent attorney or he's a liar. Or both.

There are other elements to this story that I'll just touch on here. First, what an incredibly ill-conceived and counter-productive operation this was. Kidnapping and torturing a Muslim cleric?! What the FUCK were they thinking?

The thought that comes to my mind is that infamous 9/12/01 quote from the Shrub, "If you're not with us you're with the terrorists." This adds the qualifier, "and if you're not with the terrorists YET, just wait til you see what we're planning."

Second, while I generally agree with the outcome of the case I'm a bit disconcerted about the relative weight of sentencing. It was my understanding that this kidnapping was carried out over the strenuous objections of Robert Seldon Lady, the Milan CIA station chief -- who rightly "saw it as ill-conceived and counter-productive." He was over-ruled by some political authority that one must assume extended right up to the White House, probably the OVP. Why then should he have gotten eight years when the doofuses who actually committed the crime got five? For that matter, if you're trying leaders in absentia anyway, why were Bush the Lesser and Shooter Dick not charged? This was nicely covered at Crooks and Liars last April.

It’s not easy for me to generate a lot of sympathy for a CIA man involved in a kidnapping, but I feel sorry for Bob Lady.
[...]
He and his wife loved Italy so much they bought a house in the foothills of the Alps and retired there in 2004. Months later an urgent call came, warning Lady to get out of Dodge — don’t even pack. The cops were on their way.

Tipped off, the Ladys successfully fled the country. But they left behind a bonanza of evidence in their dream home, not the least of which was a CIA surveillance photo of the kidnap victim, Osama Mustafa Hasan Nasr, known as Abu Omar...

The little guy stuck carrying out the operation (that he objected to) had to flee his home to avoid imprisonment, not to mention lost his wife, and all their property in Italy may go to Omar as restitution for his rendition...And the CIA abandoned Lady, disowning him as an employee and refusing to assist him in any way.

So, as with Abu Ghraib, the accountability begins and ends with the least powerful and never makes it up to the top decision makers.

As with everything the administration of Bush the Lesser touched, in this case loyalty only ever worked in one direction. Some days it just sucks to be Mr. Phelps.

"Good morning, Mr. Phelps. We have a mission for you.
...
...
As always, if you're caught or killed the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ADDENDUM:
With any post that involves torture one feels compelled to remind readers that it is not only despicably inhuman, but is totally ineffective as an intelligence tool. Here's a quote on point from Nineteen Eighty-Four:

He became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed, whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find out what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly, before the bullying started anew. He confessed to the assassination of eminent Party members, the distribution of seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds, sale of military secrets, sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he had been a spy in the pay of the Eastasian government as far back as 1968. He confessed that he was a religious believer, an admirer of capitalism, and a sexual pervert. He confessed that he had murdered his wife, although he knew, and his questioners must have known, that his wife was still alive...It was easier to confess everything and implicate everybody.

Clarification: One other small point just to be accurate. For anyone hoping that the US government, Justice Department, Obama administration or any combination of the above will eventually step up, do the right thing, and extradite the guilty parties to Italy - fuggedaboudit. The fact is that extradition requests were made long ago, and were refused. Duh-uh, that's why they were all tried in absentia.

TAGS: Extraordinary Rendition, CIA Kidnappers
The Not So Great War on Tur'r
You Can't Make This Shit Up

On Teabags and Bread

On July 4th, teabaggers will once again gather in crowds of ten and even twenty wearing their teabag hats and teabag earrings proclaiming their hatred for all things Obama. If it's anything like the April 15th events, it should be good for a laugh. But why stop there? I say we really piss 'em off and engage in a national act of socialism. And what would be more socialistic then sharing our food with those who have none?

The long summer months mean a drought at our nation's foodbanks and homeless shelters. It means children home from school may no longer have access to breakfast and lunch programs. National statistics about hunger in America are available only through 2007, but we need only look at the record unemployment rates and deduce that food will come in a long second to paying rent and utilities. And as this report notes,

In March 2009, SNAP/Food Stamp participation was 33,156,745 people, the highest participation level on record, and an increase of nearly 600,000 individuals from February 2009, the prior record level. Over the past twelve months, participation has grown by 5.2 million individuals.

I'd like to get a grassroots campaign going throughout the progressive blogosphere to counter the upcoming July 4th teabag protests with a food drive. And I know the Unrulies are just the ones who can make this happen. We have one month to make a plan and put it to action. I'm imagining folks across the blogosphere all giving locally, but let's use this thread to do some brainstorming. It's been my experience that two or more brains are way better than mine alone. Most important, I think, is we need a concerted effort to get the bigger blogs on board ala a blogswarm or like the blogs against theocracy campaign. Okay, maybe most important, is you telling me this is a good idea or a dumb idea. I'm willing to do the work on this, but I need your creativity, your ideas, your blog connections. Tell me what you think.

Let Them Eat Cake.

TAGS: hunger

More About Those Damned CIA Torture Memos

Something just occurred to me.
It could be important.

In all of the discussion over the so-called CIA torture program memos authored by John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury, the attention has been focused on how shocking it is that these attorneys in Bush's Department of Justice would assign such plenary powers to the president as they do. That's got everyone straining at the legal gnat of whether the memos constitute just very sloppy legal practice or an actual conspiracy to subvert the law. And sure, I succumbed to the same lure in my latest post on the subject.

Not that I really believe that to be a gnat; in starkest terms you could say that the DoJ under a succession of Bush-appointed Attorneys General (Ashcroft, Gonzales, then Mukasey) actually mounted a sustained attack on the Constitution of the United States of America. With their partisan Republican machinations they not only enabled numerous crimes, but in doing so they were in defiance of certain core constitutional principals, not the least of which are the separation of powers doctrine and Article V - the one that defines how the Constitution can be amended. Because make no mistake, when you purport to suspend habeas corpus, then the Supreme Court rules against you, and you continue to deny the litigant key habeas rights, you have effectively nullified the entire protection.

The first, fourth, eighth and ninth amendments seem to have been gutted during Bush's term in office as well. I must have missed the part where these changes were "ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the several states, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress." It wasn't in the news.

So -- it's fair to ask; when did mid-level worker bees in the Justice Department acquire the power to amend the Constitution outside of the provisions of Article V? Because I find it hard to see that as anything short of a coup d'etat; a major intrusion on the Congress's exclusive power to pass legislation.

Looking at the Bush administration through the eyes, as it were, of Article V puts a whole new level of appreciation for just how far they went towards shredding the Constitution in toto, and I humbly submit that I've contributed some insight of value into the analysis of recent history on that point. But wait, that's not the important thing that just occurred to me. And thanks for hanging around while I set up for the delivery of this lightbulb moment.

Here it is: All of these memos were dealing with a hypothetical. They discuss whether, IF Bush were to authorize something like the CIA torture program, it would stick. Would he have the authority as Commander in Chief to over-ride the various US statutes against that sort of thing, the Geneva Convention, and whatever other treaties the US has entered into that prohibit torture? (The correct answer, which neither Bybee, Yoo nor Bradbury got, was and remains NO, he does not. The legal supremacy of ratified treaties is in Article VI of the Constitution)

By now you must see where I'm going with this. All of these memos remain hypothetical until one key question is asked and answered. Did president Bush the Lesser actually sign an Executive Order that authorized torture? A secondary question would be; to whom was such an order distributed and through what channels? And the sticky part of it is that neither question can be answered without putting someone, either Bush himself or someone in the chain of command, into serious legal jeopardy.

I can't believe that no-one else has thought of this yet, especially those attorneys with courtroom experience.

I came to this thought while playing a game of 'let's try to think like a lawyer.' If you were preparing a real case which you expected to bring into an actual court of law, you'd want to connect the dots in a very meticulous way. So imagine that a certain CIA operative - call him Mr. X - has been positively identified as having done some of the hands on work of questioning a suspected terrorist, and is trying to defend himself using the dubious claim that he was following, in good faith, the Department of Justice's assurances that he was in the clear legally. (In my opinion this is the Nuremberg Defence, and is not really relevant under the applicable laws, but just for the sake of the argument...)

So, Mr. X can demonstrate that he was in receipt of the __________ (Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury) memo of ______(date) which tells him that the president's plenary powers as Commander in Chief give him the authority to authorize torture. Does that alone take Mr. X off the hook?

Of course it doesn't. Mr. X needs both the DoJ opinion AND an Executive Order from president Bush. Because all the DoJ opinion can possibly do, at the very maximum, is to confirm the validity of the Executive Order. In the absence of the EO, the opinions of Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury, as I noted above, are nothing more than exercises in how to make bad law. And yes, shabby attempts to amend the Constitution of the United States of America at the bureaucratic level.

Consider the absurdity of any defense Mr. X might make that fails to demonstrate the existence of this Executive Order (that everyone seems to assume must exist, but it certainly hasn't yet been publicly acknowledged.) Suppose X's attorney argues that a Deputy or Assistant Attorney General working at OLC had, through the mere writing of a memo;

a) assigned powers to the president which are not described in Article II of the Constitution and have not been created through legislation,

b) delegated those same powers to himself, through some magical and invisible assignation of Power of Attorney, without the president's knowledge, and

c) exercised those powers in a manner hitherto unknown in the history of jurisprudence, within the same memo that created them.

Do you think that would convince a judge? I mean, presuming the judge is not the Ninth Circuit's Jay Bybee? Of course not, but that is the assumption under which all these torture memos have been discussed so far. And at the risk of hammering my point so far into the ground that it disappears, here's some parallel logic; IF I had a deed to your house, I could charge you rent. So pay up.

Until such time as a Bush Executive Order authorizing torture is made public, the rest of the discussion is moot.
~~~~~~~~
End-note: Before I get called on it, there are all sorts of indications that Bush did indeed authorize torture, but no official acknowledgement as such. It's almost like they're hoping to have their cake and eat it too.

Dan Froomkin reported in the Washington Post last year that Bush authorized the meetings where Cheney, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, Rice et. al. discussed the details of torture, and admitted as much. He did not however admit to attending those meetings himself. Froomkin notes how much media attention this story (which originated at ABC) got: "There was no mention of Bush's admission in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times. There was nothing on the major wire services. And nothing on CNN, CBS or NBC." Way to go, Lamestream Media!

Even before that, you could find indications that the Executive Order in question did indeed exist, such as this story in the New Standard: President Authorized Abu Ghraib Torture, FBI Email Says.

Repeated references in an internal FBI email suggest that the president issued a special order to permit some of the more objectionable torture techniques used at Abu Ghraib and other US-run prison facilities around Iraq. The email was among a new batch of FBI documents revealed by civil rights advocates on Monday. Other documents describe the initiation of investigations into alleged incidents of torture and rape at detention facilities in Iraq.

While this may have had an impact at the time on the dubious 'a few bad apples' meme that was then (Dec. 2004) going around, it was not very widely circulated. Anyway, my point is not whether the EO exists so much as whether it is publicly acknowledged. The story goes on to indicate it was not;

After the ACLU released the documents, White House, Pentagon and FBI officials told reporters that the author of the email was mistaken, and that the order was not an Executive Order, but a Defense Department directive. All sources refused to be identified in news reports.

The White House does not appear to have ever officially denied that President Bush issued an Executive Order specifying interrogation techniques, though none has been made public. The ACLU and other organizations involved in forcing the release of documents regarding prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib as well as prison camps in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba have demanded the White House "confirm or deny the existence of such an order," according to an ACLU press release issued on Monday.

How can any document possibly have any legal weight if;
a) it is never acknowledged and therefore
b) no court ever gets to review it?

The very idea that a single person could make secret laws is abhorrent and in conflict with the basic concepts of democracy. The idea that those secret orders could result in the torture and death of innocent people is doubly so.

Torture Memos, Jay Bybee
Steven Bradbury, John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney and the usual cast of clowns.
Reductio ad Absurdum

Prosecute!!

"Mr. President, You're Wrong."

KO did a good job here, and his historical perspective on the costs of 'going forward' without resolving an issue is exactly the way I would have gone but I have one quibble. It's about this quote from PresBo:

"Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future."

Olbermann incorrectly assumes that the divisive forces that Obama refers to are "the ones lingering with pervasive stench from the previous administration." This is an understandable mistake on Mr. Olbermann's part, for one can certainly identify a number of sources of the stench to which he refers.

There are still dozens if not hundreds of partisan Republican civil servants in the DoJ alone, illegally hired by Monica Goodling and now embedded there like a colony of cockroaches under the sink. Ironically it would now be illegal to fire those illegally hirees, due to civil service regulations. Sad, but true.

There are still many partisan Republican US Attorneys appointed by the Bush administration whom Obama has not bothered to replace, and who have refused to resign as is traditionally done; hacks like Mary Beth Buchanan, who incidentally hired Goodling. In that latter instance, Obama has the option of firing any US Attorney he wishes to and hiring replacements, a relatively light duty task that would have the effect, stench-wise, of Hercules' cleaning out of the Augean Stables, without any of the heavy lifting required.

Or perhaps the stench emanates from the right-wing extremists recently designated a threat by the Department of Homeland Security - the redneck racist core of what's left of GOP electoral support. (Ya gotta love Janeane Garofolo's description of this crowd, "You can tell these type of right-wingers anything and they'll believe it - except the truth. You tell them the truth and it's like showing Frankenstein's monster fire.") An even greater reek rises out of the studios of FOX "news," who are usually the one telling them anything but the truth, and egging them on.

With all these candidates to be the divisive forces I have to conclude from the context that Obama is really talking about those who insist on the continuing rule of law, those who demand that criminals be brought to court and prosecuted. Us. We are, in Obama's reckoning, 'the forces that divide us.'

What really divides 'us' (those who wish for transparency and accountability) at least today, is the question of whether Obama should be praised for the transparency inherent in the release of these documents or condemned for putting yet another item of accountability off the table. Glenn Greenwald argues that we should both praise him on the one hand and condemn him on the other. This would be a very rare instance of my disagreeing with GG on even a small point and even now it's only a matter of degree. Because he's right - Obama does deserve some praise for releasing these memos, just not very much.

For me the balance lies in the duplicity in the first part of the quote above. To talk about, "America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values" while promising to resist all calls to exercise that ability only leaves America on the wrong course, and bereft of core values. The rest of the world will take Obama's pledge with the same seriousness as someone who tells you, "I could benchpress 1,000 lbs., I just don't want to." Yeah, right buddy. Uh huh.

The president and his Attorney General seem to be on the same page on the issue of protecting the guilty. As Glenn Greenwald quoted them,

Barack Obama, yesterday:

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

Eric Holder, yesterday:

It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.

That's pretty unambiguous. Jonathan Turley responded just as unambiguously on the Rachel Maddow Show.

What is really disturbing is that President Obama is obviously referring to criminal investigation and prosecution ... somehow he's equating the enforcement of federal laws -- that he took an oath to enforce to uphold the constitution and our laws -- and he's equating that with an act of retribution, and some sort of hissy fit or blame game. It's not retribution to enforce criminal laws. What it is is obstruction to prevent that enforcement, and that is exactly what he's done thus far.

That sounds like a clarion call to me, "PROSECUTE!!" And it also sounds like a counter-argument to what Greenwald calls "an unhealthy tendency to want to make categorical, absolute judgments about the persona of politicians generally and Obama especially." Well Glenn, he's a politician and until some mechanism comes along where the electorate can vote in a different guy for each issue (or in this case for each action taken on the same issue) you're going to see a lot of that. Someone being selected to make decisions on a wide variety of matters over a period of at least four years must eventually be judged on his overall character.

And bottom line, the release of these memos was required by law. Obama himself acknowledges that. And so are investigations required by law, a law that is so far being broken. So we have a case similar to someone who comes to a full stop at a red light, then makes an illegal left turn and runs over a pedestrian. I don't think the first cop on the scene is expected to heap any praise on that driver.

TAGS: Jay Bybee, Torture Memos
Barack Obama, Bush Light?

Justice Denied

Maher Arar is back in the news.
From CBC.ca:

A U.S. court ruled Monday that a complaint by Maher Arar, a Canadian who accuses U.S. authorities of illegally deporting him to Syria, where he was tortured, cannot be heard in federal court.

Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, was stopped at a New York airport on his way home from vacation in September 2002. U.S. officials accused him of links to al-Qaeda and deported him to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured for months.

He claims those who sent him to Syria recklessly and knowingly intended to subject him to torture. Before he was secretly whisked away to Syria, he was confined for 12 days in New York and alleges he had to endure cruel, inhumane and degrading conditions.

Arar had argued his constitutional rights were violated when he was confined without access to a lawyer or the court system and then forcibly returned to Syria, where U.S. authorities had reason to believe he would be tortured.

But the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, affirming a lower court decision, ruled two to one Monday that Arar's claims that it was a violation of due process to send him to Syria could not be heard in federal court.

"Arar has not adequately established federal subject matter jurisdiction over his request for a judgment declaring that defendants acted illegally by removing him to Syria so that Syrian authorities could interrogate him under torture," Reuters reported the ruling as saying.

The court concluded that adjudicating the claims would interfere with sensitive matters of foreign policy and national security. It also said that Arar, as a foreigner who had not been formally admitted to the U.S., had no constitutional due process rights.

(For more on the history of this case see CBC.ca's In Depth coverage of the story
from the beginning, and all the posts done here at Les Enrages that refer to Arar's case.)

Please note the section in bold above. To attach the correct language to it, Maher Arar was kidnapped by the FBI on September 26, 2002. That's right, kidnapped. To characterize the event as an arrest lends it a dignity it simply doesn't deserve. No arrest warrant was issued or applied for. No formal charges were laid. No habeas corpus hearing was ever held. That Arar was denied his constitutional rights seems to be a given, or in legal terms he has a prima facie case.

I'd like to make a point that I think is simple but important and often ignored. The distinction between kidnap and arrest is NOT that the latter is carried out by a government and the former by a criminal. It is that an arrest is conducted under the scrutiny of the court system and follows due process. That badges may have been flashed and so forth only adds the phrase "under color of authority" to the crime.

In fact in every detail we see that the US government and its agencies has scrupulously avoided any judicial review of these acts. That smacks of a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Bush Department of Justice. Arar should seek criminal charges against anyone involved in this sordid episode, up to and including the Attorney General at the time (John Ashcroft) and the subsequent AG (Alberto Gonzales) for not charging the kidnappers. That might just send a powerful message to Michael Mukasey, the current AG. He must know that his tenure will not last beyond the installation of a Democratic government next January.

---

But the sad truth of it is, the Maher Arar case is just a tiny element of a much bigger story. Much, much bigger. As Station Agent says in this post,

If ever a subject needed a definitive book written about it, the U.S. Attorneys Purge is it. The problem is coming up with a thesis for the book because the sheer evil genius of the purge is that it works for the Bush administration on so many levels that to take just one motive and run with it would leave so many other wings of the scandal behind.

Yes, the Prosecutors' Purge Scandal would by itself provide material for a major book, a tome, nay an encyclopedia - the author of which would be confronted with an overwhelming amount of evidence of criminal obstruction of justice by Bu$hCo™. But even that is only a small element in the much larger story of the perversion of justice on every level in BushMerika.

Think for instance of the $BILLIONs that have gone missing in Iraq ‡, on top of the $BILLIONS that have been distributed to crony organizations with little or no actual work having been done. Consider the various gang rapes that Blackwater and KBR employees have gotten away with scot free in a lawless environment that Paul Bremer set up to help enable Bush crimes there. (‡= TPM Muckraker posted this story on just how the administration has dodged investigation of corruption in Iraq while I was writing this piece. Instant update.)

It's as if the Bush administration wants to strip Lady Justice herself and subject her to various humiliating stress positions. Perverts!

Behind it all we see the same theme applied over and over and over - the appointment of people into key positions who will ignore the plain language of the law in order to get a result that is politically expedient to the GOP and their corporate masters. They are not looking for officers of the court, they're looking for accessories after the fact at every level up to and especially including seats on the Supreme Court, and the office of Attorney General. This is croniest at the worst imaginable, the wholesale appointment of partisan hacks into the very positions that are meant to monitor and prevent government abuses.

And in every case another theme is the connecting thread. The GOP, government agents and their corporate partners in crime ALWAYS avoid responsibility. Examples include Scooter Libby, Blackwater, KBR, the telecoms, and of course the FBI agents who kidnapped Maher Arar. The principle in play is that you are innocent even after having been proven guilty. And there are plenty of victims like Maher Arar and Jamie Leigh Jones who will continue to be denied justice in both civil and criminal courts because that's how Bu$hCo™ set it up.

On the other side of the coin are those who have been persecuted without proper cause by the Bush Department of Injustice. Examples include Don Siegelman, Dr. Cyril Wecht, Dr. Bernard Rottschaefer, plus hundreds of Iraqis, Afghanis, Uyghurs, and an assortment of suspicious-looking brown people who have been subjected to unbelievably dehumanizing abuse up to and including murder. Of whom Maher Arar is just one.

And all of them prosecuted persecuted under the guiding principle of the Bush DOJ: Forget about being assumed innocent until proven guilty. If you're not one of us, you're guilty until proven otherwise, maybe even long after proven otherwise. Most astonishingly, even if the Bushlicking Supreme Court rules that you are being denied your rights, the Bushlicking Department of Justice (or in the case of Military Commissions the Department of Defense) will continue to hold you in confinement.

That's how Bu$hCo™ set it up. They have in fact committed one huge horrific crime in order to enable the commission of a multitude of other crimes. It is an obstruction of justice case the scope of which the world has never known, and which the very mechanisms of justice are unprepared to correct.

For a blogger to merely list all of the perversions of justice that the Bush administration has perpetrated would be a monumental task. It would take the resources of an entire government department (such as DOJ if it wasn't itself a major part of the problem) years, maybe decades just to sort it all out. Something on the order of the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa.

Simply put, the entire Bush regime could be accurately described as the crime of the millennium - unlikely to be surpassed before the year 3001. The case of Maher Arar will be seen as a mere speck of shit in the great stinking pile that has been created by The Bush Department of Injustice.

“There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration
has committed war crimes.
The only question that remains to be answered is whether those
who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
-- Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba --

TAGS: Maher Arar, Police State, Injustice, High Crimes and Misdemeanors

Slow Burn of the USA Purge Continues

SadButTrue had a magnificent post last week about Mary Beth Buchanan. Who's that, you ask? She's the one who hired Monica Goodling. Currently Buchanan is serving as U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, more on her later.

If ever a subject needed a definitive book written about it, the U.S. Attorneys Purge is it. The problem is coming up with a thesis for the book because the sheer evil genius of the purge is that it works for the Bush administration on so many levels that to take just one motive and run with it would leave so many other wings of the scandal behind.

Off the top of my head, the purge served the following ends:

1. Removed a cluster of effective, impartial prosecutors. These guys were putting away Republicans right and left.
2. Sent a message to the remaining U.S. Attorneys that their job security depended strictly on their compliance (or in the case of Patrick Fitzgerald, his status as untouchable).
3. It totally negated the subpoena power of the incoming Democratic majority. They have investigated now for a year and a half and have not found a single prosecutor that can convert evidence into jail time.
4. Voter supression. The new stooges are there to serve as the Katherine Harrises and Ken Blackwells of the 2008 election cycle.

By the way something, Mary Beth Buchanan has her own Don Siegelman case on her hands. Today the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Justice Department for documents related to the Siegelman prosecution as well as the odious prosecution of Cyril Wecht, which was run by Buchanan. Looks like SbT was onto something. If only there were anyone left to prosecute.

TAGS: Mary Beth Buchanan, U.S. Attorneys Purge, Scandals, House Judiciary Committee

Introducing...

Mary Beth Buchanan

OK, I have a prediction, totally out of left field. A name you probably haven't heard of at all, but soon will be hearing A LOT in connection with the DoJ politicization/prosecutors' purge scandal. Mary Beth Buchanan. Mark my words. And I'll tell you why.

TPM Muckraker has this profile of Esther Slater McDonald, one of the two DOJ operatives fingered for winnowing through job applicants to exclude anyone with a liberal background or affiliations. The other one is Michael Elston, the former chief of staff for then deputy attorney general Paul McNulty. Muckraker contributor Kate Klonick mentions that Ms. McDonald was "ushered into the hallowed halls of Gonzales' DOJ by none other than the Monica Goodling herself."

So that brings up the question, "who hired Monica Goodling?" And the answer is: Mary Beth Buchanan. Buchanan herself is the current US Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, appointed by George Bush the Lesser in 2001. As such she is one of the USAs referred to by Paul Krugman when he said last year,

"...In the last few days we’ve also learned that Republican members of Congress called prosecutors to pressure them on politically charged cases, even though doing so seems unethical and possibly illegal.

The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn’t go along with the Bush administration’s politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance."

So, we have:

• Esther Slater McDonald, implicated (with over 100 references to her in the IG's report) in the politicization of the DOJ.
• Monica Goodling, who has already admitted under oath to having 'crossed the line' in her involvement in the politicization of the DOJ, hired McDonald.
• Mary Beth Buchanan, one of the 'many other prosecutors [who] decided to protect their jobs...by doing what the administration wanted them to do,' hired Goodling.
• Buchanan was an appointee of pResident George W. Bush, the ultimate 'loyal Bushie'.
  

And my prediction is that Buchanan will emerge as a key component in the DoJ prosecutors' purge scandal. She is already up to her neck in harassing Democrats: from her Wikipedia entry, read about her involvement in the prosecution persecution of Dr. Cyril Wecht in Pennsylvania:

Dr. Cyril Wecht, a former Allegheny County, Pennsylvania coroner and medical examiner, is a prominent Democrat in the Pittsburgh area. In January 2006, Dr. Wecht was indicted by U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan on 84 counts of fraud and theft relating to using his public office for private gain. Dr. Wecht's lawyers claimed that some of these charges involved $3.96 worth of faxes, and $1,778.55 worth of gasoline and mileage bills charged to the state.[15][16] Buchanan was known for her high-profile prosecutions and investigations of prominent Democrats such as Sheriff Pete DeFazio, the mayor Tom Murphy, and a County Judge, Joseph Jaffe.

Before Wecht's trial, the prosecution moved to dismiss 43 of the 84 counts without prejudice. The judge rejected the motion and dismissed the 43 charges with prejudice, which permanently bars the revival of the charges. Wecht's defense counsel claimed that his prosecution was politically motivated. The initial indictment was announced in early 2006, before the November 2006 elections. During the trial, the judge barred the defense from arguing that the case was politically motivated. Even though no discussions about possible political motivations were allowed during the trial, the jury foreman told reporters after the trial that some jurors began to see the prosecution as "political". In an interview post trial with a local news station, one juror expressed her concern about that case when she stated "I don't know if politically motivated or not, but it seemed to me that the motivations were certainly less than pure. There was something behind it other than seeking justice."

So this might be the second most prominent political hatchet job to come out of the Bush Department of Injustice, eclipsed only by the railroading of Alabama's true governor, Don Siegelman.

Wikipedia also notes that, "critics of Mary Beth Buchanan have claimed that she has embarked on several high profile public corruption cases that have exclusively targeted Democratic politicians such as former Sheriff Pete DeFazio, [and] former Mayor Tom Murphy."

She was also the force behind the prosecution persecution of actor/comedian Tommy Chong in 2003 for selling bongs over the internet. Chong spent 9 months in jail over this. When he got out, he made a documentary about his case, The United States of America vs. Tommy Chong - which resulted in a raid and confiscation of 10,000 DVD copies of the movie, in violation of Chong's First Amendment rights. Nice.

The other side of Krugman's observation holds too. Along with the harassment of Democrats, Buchanan was turning a blind eye towards Republican malfeasance.

One critic, Allegheny County Democratic Chairman Jim Burn stated that ”Her record speaks for itself. I've seen a long line of Democrats and mistakes aren't made based on party affiliation but I haven't seen anybody from the other side going though that system." Mr. Burns pointed to the fact that Mary Beth Buchanan’s Office refused to investigate former Republican Senator Rick Santorum who got a tuition reimbursement for his kids by claiming a Penn Hills residency when his family spends most of its time in Virginia as an example of an alleged double standard. "You have to ask yourself the misrepresentations of a Republican such as Rick Santorum made about his alleged residency in Penn Hills were significant," said Burn.

This brings us around to the main event: her involvement in the Prosecutors' Purge scandal at DOJ. More from her Wikipedia entry:

In April of 2007, Kyle Sampson, the former Gonzales aide, raised Ms. Buchanan's name to judiciary committee investigators during his April testimony. Mr. Sampson said that Ms. Buchanan was among the DOJ officials he consulted about which of the U.S. attorneys should be asked to resign. ^[36]

In May of 2007, Monica Goodling told committee members that she knew Ms. Buchanan had discussed the firings with Mr. Sampson.
[...]
After learning this information, the House Judiciary Committee requested an interview with Mary Beth Buchanan in June of 2006. Committee staff members privately questioned Buchanan. She had served as director of the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys in 2004 and 2005 when discussions were held within the Justice Department concerning which of the country's 93 top federal prosecutors should be dismissed. Buchanan has denied any involvement in the firings. After the interviews, it was reported that Mary Beth Buchanan used another exit to leave the federal building where the interviews were conducted and headed directly to the airport for a flight back to Pittsburgh without providing statements on the proceedings. Buchanan has denied any involvement in the firings of the US Attorneys and has denied that the prosecutions of key Democratic politicians in the Western PA area was driven by political factors.

I must be the suspicious type, because I find Buchanan's denial that politics played a part in the prosecution persecution of Democrats somewhat hard to believe, especially in light of this piece from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. "

Motive of Wecht deal talks questioned

Thursday, June 07, 2007
By Paula Reed Ward, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Federal prosecutors approached defense lawyers for forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril H. Wecht last week to talk about resolving his criminal case, just days before U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan's scheduled closed-door interview with House Judiciary Committee investigators.

Dr. Wecht's attorneys allege that Ms. Buchanan, in the spotlight for her role in the expanding investigation into the firings of U.S. attorneys and vetting of candidates, is trying to quell what they have all along characterized as a political prosecution.

"None of this is coincidence," said defense attorney Jerry McDevitt, of the timing of the prosecution's request to meet. "She wants to make sure we keep our mouths shut while she's down there before Congress."

Making sure that certain people keep their mouths shut seems to be a constant in the pursuit of truth in this affair. Government employees seem always to be either pleading ignorance, pleading the fifth or pleading amnesia when asked why these particular prosecutors were fired at the time they were (Dec. 7, 2006.) Again, I'm the suspicious type, so it sounds more like Omerta than amnesia to me.

So this leads to my final question. With the sworn testimony of two witnesses against her, and her own denial of involvement having NOT been made under oath, but in a private interview, why has the House Judiciary Committee NOT put Mary Beth Buchanan under oath and asked these questions again? I'm curious to see if we have another victim of contagious amnesia here. If not, and we could get some straight answers out of Ms. Buchanan, I think it would blow this case wide open.

TAGS: Prosecutors' Purge Scandal, Department of ¿Justice?
Mary Beth Buchanan, Queen of the Loyal Bushies

Setting the Record Straight

Lies, Damned Lies, and the WSJ's Lies

"The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power."
-- Henry A. Wallace, Vice President to FDR, 1944 --
The Danger of American Fascism

Glenn Greenwald has a good post up this morning, about how the Wall Street Journal is fudging the facts in support of telecom immunity. Most blatantly they are trying to present it as though immunity already exists and the Democrats are trying to change the law. Nothing could be further from the truth. The laws have been on the books for some time, and it's the White House that wants to change them retroactively, as GG shows:

Just marvel at this paragraph, incoherent and false in equal parts:

By far the worst threat is an amendment from Senator Chris Dodd (D., Conn.) to deny legal immunity to telephone companies that cooperated with the government on these wiretaps after 9/11. The companies face multiple lawsuits, so a denial of even retrospective immunity would certainly lead to less such cooperation in the future.

This is precisely the goal of the left, which has failed to get Congress to ban such wiretaps directly but wants to use lawsuits to do so via the backdoor.

The assertion that Congress has failed "to ban such wiretaps directly" is an absolute lie and there is no other way to phrase that. The reason there are lawsuits brought against telecoms isn't because of some cliched liberal-judicial-activist effort to impose on telecoms obligations which don't exist in law. The opposite is true: the lawsuits were brought precisely because telecoms violated multiple clear, long-standing laws that make it illegal to do exactly what they did: namely, allow government spying on Americans and access to their customer data without judicial warrants.
[...]
To claim, as the WSJ does today, that "the left" is using lawsuits as a "backdoor" because it "failed to get Congress to ban such wiretaps directly" literally could not be more false and misleading. And, as always, the falsehoods are bolstered by Bush-following lawyers who are single-mindedly devoted to the authoritarian goal of increasing unchecked government power, such as former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy, who hails the WSJ Editorial as "superb" despite what he must know are its undebatable falsehoods about the law.

Welcome to the Orwellian world of Bu$hCo™ doublespeak, a dialect apparently not far from the corporate language of buzzwords. Greenwald goes on to dissect further lies told in this same editorial, most prominently the idea that the telecoms are not already protected for actions in compliance with legal government requests for co-operation. IOW, even when the government may have been acting illegally, the telecoms are protected if they can demonstrate a 'good faith' argument that they believed otherwise.

Greenwald underlines the mendacity of the anonymous WSJ editorialist
in a single beautifully written paragraph.

The persuasiveness of an argument can often be determined by the willingness of its advocates to confine themselves to the truth when making it. That telecom amnesty advocates resort to demonstrable falsehoods -- literally pretending that telecoms did not violate multiple laws when allowing warrantless spying -- is a powerful testament not only to their lack of integrity but also to the deceit and corruption that forms the crux of their efforts.

Nor do I believe for a moment that the editorialist's anonymity was an accidental slip. The persuasiveness of an argument can also be determined by one's willingness to put one's name to it. Another way to put this: "A man who does not know the truth is just an idiot but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a crook." -- Bertolt Brecht
~~~~~~~~~~~
Perhaps the most frightening thing about the fascist shift that is going on in America is the takeover of what was once a free and independent press. I say this not just because control of the press is point #8 on Naomi Wolf's list of 10 steps that fascists take to shut down a democracy, or point #6 in Laurence Britt's 14 Characteristics of Fascist Regimes. I find this frightening because of why this is a common point.

If there is every to be an awakening from the nightmare Bush has imposed on America, it will be through a groundswell of public opinion that overwhelms even the will of the military industrial complex and the emerging feudal state of multinational corporate capitalism. How is that groundswell going to take place if the fascists control the media, and the media control people's opinions and attitude?

As popular as Greenwald may be in the pristine wooded hills of Greater Left Blogsylvania, that doesn't necessarily translate to that great a readership in the world at large, certainly not approaching the circulation of the Wall Street Journal. These falsehoods will doubtlessly be widely circulated in the corporate owned media and trumpeted through the malarial swamps of Lower Left Blogistan as well. As Churchill said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

I leave you with a further sampling of quotes on the media, the truth, and the power of lies.

"Both by definition and practice, Laws Of Media deny commercial networks any sort of neutral or unbiased role."
-- Prof. H. Marshall McLuhan --
"All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."
-- Marshall McLuhan --
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
-- A.J. Liebling--
"Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
-- George Orwell--
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."
-- Socrates--

---

UPDATE: From today's post at The Existentialist Cowboy: Alexandra Robbins recalls her 'encounter' with a bonesman.

Certainly, Skull and Bones does cross boundaries in order to attempt to stay out of the public spotlight. When I wrote an article about the society for the Atlantic Monthly in May 2000, an older Bonesman said to me, “If it’s not portrayed positively, I’m sending a couple of my friends after you.” After the article was published, I received a telephone call at my office from a fellow journalist, who is a member of Skull and Bones. He scolded me for writing the article—”writing that article was not an ethical or honorable way to make a decent living in journalism,” he condescended —and then asked me how much I had been paid for the story. When I refused to answer, he hung up. Fifteen minutes later, he called back.

“I have just gotten off the phone with our people.” “Your people?” I snickered.
“Yes. Our people.” He told me that the society demanded to know where I got my information.

“I’ve never been in the tomb and I did nothing illegal in the process of reporting this article,” I replied.

“Then you must have gotten something from one of us. Tell me whom you spoke to. We just want to talk to them,” he wheedled. “I don’t reveal my sources.”
Then he got angry. He screamed at me for a while about how dishonorable I was for writing the article.

“A lot of people are very despondent over this!” he yelled. “Fifteen Yale juniors are very, very upset!” I thanked him for telling me his concerns.
“There are a lot of us at newspapers and at political journalism institutions,” he coldly hissed. “Good luck with your career”—and he slammed down the phone. --Alexandra Robbins, Secrets of the Tomb

Also Posted at Ice Station Tango. A recommended place to chill out.

TAGS: Glenn Greenwald, Telecom Immunity, Media Bias, Fourth Amendment

See this guy?

See this guy? He's your Attorney General.

And he sucks.

Sucks.

Sucks.

Sucks.

Sucks.

The big reason, which I never actually came face to face to, until today, is that his refusal to actually act like an Attorney General, means that cases of Gitmo, Waterboarding, and nasty activity in the Department of Justice, are now NOT ACTIONABLE by the Courts.

There is no check and balance on the Unitary Executive.

Who'd have thunk it?

TAGS: Dickheads, Erosion of Liberty, Insert Execrable Tag Here

The Tide Continues To Swell

The calls for impeachment are growing. Here's some excerpts of what George McGovern wrote today in the Washington Post:

How could a once-admired, great nation fall into such a quagmire of killing, immorality and lawlessness?

It happened in part because the Bush-Cheney team repeatedly deceived Congress, the press and the public into believing that Saddam Hussein had nuclear arms and other horrifying banned weapons that were an "imminent threat" to the United States. The administration also led the public to believe that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- another blatant falsehood. Many times in recent years, I have recalled Jefferson's observation: "Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

[...]

Although the president was advised by the intelligence agencies last August that Iran had no program to develop nuclear weapons, he continued to lie to the country and the world. This is the same strategy of deception that brought us into war in the Arabian Desert and could lead us into an unjustified invasion of Iran. I can say with some professional knowledge and experience that if Bush invades yet another Muslim oil state, it would mark the end of U.S. influence in the crucial Middle East for decades.

Ironically, while Bush and Cheney made counterterrorism the battle cry of their administration, their policies -- especially the war in Iraq -- have increased the terrorist threat and reduced the security of the United States. Consider the difference between the policies of the first President Bush and those of his son. When the Iraqi army marched into Kuwait in August 1990, President George H.W. Bush gathered the support of the entire world, including the United Nations, the European Union and most of the Arab League, to quickly expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The Saudis and Japanese paid most of the cost. Instead of getting bogged down in a costly occupation, the administration established a policy of containing the Baathist regime with international arms inspectors, no-fly zones and economic sanctions. Iraq was left as a stable country with little or no capacity to threaten others.

Today, after five years of clumsy, mistaken policies and U.S. military occupation, Iraq has become a breeding ground of terrorism and bloody civil strife. It is no secret that former president Bush, his secretary of state, James A. Baker III, and his national security adviser, Gen. Brent Scowcroft, all opposed the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In addition to the shocking breakdown of presidential legal and moral responsibility, there is the scandalous neglect and mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe. The veteran CNN commentator Jack Cafferty condenses it to a sentence: "I have never ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans." Any impeachment proceeding must include a careful and critical look at the collapse of presidential leadership in response to perhaps the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.

Can you believe that Fred Hiatt actually let this one through? I am heartened by this.

By the way at the time of this posting, 181,472 people have signed Wexler's hearing petition.


TAGS: Impeachment, Activism

The Spoliation of America

The What!? !?

Spoliation. OK, I'll admit I've never heard the word before either until Jonathan Turley brought it up in passing on this segment of COUNTDOWN with Keith Olbermann. The subject: the opening of a criminal probe into "Waterboarding-Gate" - the destruction of interrogation tapes by the CIA. The quote:

"There's a compelling basis for at least six [criminal charges.] You've got obstruction of congress, obstruction of justice, you have perjury, conspiracy, a thing called spoliation... There is also a chance that you might have false statements, so the list gets longer, but the original one is torture.

You know, many people in Congress, and in the White House, and at Justice Department are framing this as an obstruction investigation as if what's on those tapes is an episode of Barney. What's on those tapes is the original crime in the scandal, and that's the crime of torturing people."

There's a lot of good stuff on this video. Please watch the whole thing. As usual Olbermann and Turley explore issues in a way that is lamentably unique on network news these days. I was especially interested to hear Turley announce once again that the Bush administration has gone far beyond the Nixon Watergate era in malfeasance. And lamentably they are getting away with it because of the execrable performance of what passes these days for a free press.

What I'm going to concentrate on here is this obscure (to me anyway) legal term 'spoliation of evidence.' Obviously it's a form of obstruction of justice, and maybe Turley could have given a better explanation of its impact. Here's some relevant material from Wikipedia:

"Lawyers and courts use the term spoliation to refer to the withholding, hiding, or destruction of evidence relevant to a legal proceeding and is a criminal act in the United States under Federal and most State law.

Spoliation has two consequences: first the act is criminal by statute and may result in fines and incarceration for the parties who engaged in the spoliation, secondly case law has established that proceedings which might have been altered by the spoliation may be interpreted under a spoliation inference. The spoliation inference is a negative evidentiary inference that a finder of fact can draw from a party's destruction of a document or thing that is relevant to an ongoing or reasonably foreseeable civil or criminal proceeding: The finder of fact can review all evidence uncovered in as strong a light as possible against the spoliator and in favor of the opposing party. The theory of the spoliation inference is that when a party destroys evidence, it may be reasonable to infer that the party had consciousness of guilt or other motivation to avoid the evidence. Therefore, the factfinder may conclude that the evidence would have been unfavorable to the spoliator."

The underlines are mine, and point out what I think is key to Turley's use of this term. The implication is that evidence against the spoliator that has not been destroyed is for lack of a better term amplified in its impact on the case. And the way I see it that could be very bad for this administration in any legal proceedings against them in the future. Very, very bad. Why? Because their whole strategy has been one of obfuscation, stonewalling, and destruction of evidence.

Remember the story last year about the shredding trucks spotted outside of Dick Cheney's official residence? Looks like we got us some bigtime spoliation goin' on here. Or how about the story about the loss of millions of White House emails from an RNC server that they shouldn't even have been on in the first place? That's right, my friends. Spoliation, plain and simple.

Clearly the purpose of Extraordinary Rendition of 'suspected terrorists' to black sites in countries where the US has no jurisdiction can be none other than, you guessed it - spoliation. Perhaps the worst kind of spoliation occurs when these suspects turn out to be innocent after the most vigorous interrogation. There is a terrible but Inescapable Logic which suggests the interrogator must practice the most extreme act of spoliation imaginable in those instances - murder of the torture victim/potential witness.

And the infamous Prosecutors Purge scandal? Wow, with all the witnesses in the White House and Department of Justice claiming amnesia over that one, it looks like they all got some serious spoliation IN THEIR BRAINS! Not only does it sound like a communicable disease, apparently it actually is. I think Alberto Gonzales is a carrier, like typhoid Mary or something.

I think the most significant and far-reaching spoliation of all is the proliferation of electronic paperless voting systems throughout the country. This almost certainly resulted in persons unknown tampering with perhaps hundreds of thousands, even millions of votes in the last two general elections, and perhaps the 2006 midterms as well. Effectively allowing the retroactive 'caging' of votes that the powers that be don't like and the simultaneous destruction of any evidence of the crime. The spoliation of democracy. The spoliation of America to serve a criminal regime.

Spoliation.
It's the word of the day.
With any luck it might become the word of 2008.
I already like it better than truthiness.

---

Note: image at top of article is the painting "The spoliation of Christ" by el Greco. In that context spoliation means when the Centurions stripped his clothes off. It has nothing to do with the content of my post, but it's what I came up with in an image search, and hey - a little unruly culture never hurt anybody. Click for link to the online art museum where I found it.

TAGS: Spoliation, Justice, Bush Administration, Malfeasance

Calling All Unrulies!

CALL TO ACTION:

Chris Dodd is ditching his Iowa campaign efforts in order to filibuster the odious FISA Immunity bill that the execrable Harry Reid is not only permitting, but actually sheparding to the floor of the Senate. The preposterousness of this latest asshattery can be found all over the blogosphere.

There's a particularly well written letter I saw at Greenwald's place, which I'll post in full:

I thank Senator Dodd for the opportunity to participate in this debate. For the Senate’s edification: I’m twenty-three years old and a new voter who isn’t going away any time soon.

The United States of America is founded upon the rule of law. Senators and representatives swear to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” According to the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution—a document for which centuries’ of blood and tears have been shed—“the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Yet here the Senate stands, poised to grant immunity to telecommunications companies for profiting from the warrantless and lawless spying perpetrated upon the law-abiding citizenry; here the Senate stands, poised to usurp the judiciary, the branch of government responsible for determining whether the laws of the land have been broken and meting out punishment where appropriate; and here the Senate stands, poised to usher in its own irrevelancy—and, worst of all, in exchange for nothing: no promises that this flagrant lawbreaking will cease, no testimony to be offered in the course of real and rigorous investigation.

“Give me liberty or give me death,” said Patrick Henry. “Those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither,” said Benjamin Franklin. Now the telecommunications companies lobby the lot of you, saying, “Give us immunity, or we’ll suffer the consequences of our lawbreaking.” Now the President comes before you, saying, “Give my partners in crime immunity, or there’ll be investigations and findings that taint my legacy.”

Never mind the judiciary. Never mind that it’s the job of the courts to ascertain whether any laws have been broken. So Congress rushes in to save the day! Immunity for profit-driven corporations, amnesty for lawbreakers!

I submit to this body that the Founders are rolling in their graves.

Voters could be forgiven for not realizing the Democratic Party won control of both houses of Congress in the 2006 mid-term elections, for there’s so little evidence of any checks being brought against President Bush, whose polling to date is both abysmal and deserved. Yet now Democrats brandish the majority and usher in much of the same: more war, more lives lost, more of our tax dollars pouring into places I’ve never even heard of, and here we’ve got next to nothing to show for it. I hear citizens of other countries get something for paying their taxes; I can’t even imagine what that’s like.

And what are Americans to think, except that they’ve been betrayed by both parties? I congratulate Democrats and Republicans for their breathtaking cynicism, for how well they’ve worked together to engender so much apathy among voters that millions of Americans stay home on election day. What choices we have!

The legislature abdicates oversight, puts blind faith in the executive, and extends immunity to lawbreaking telecommunications companies. Are those companies to be pitied for going along with the President’s plan in direct contravention of the law and raking in cash? Are they, along with the President, to be congratulated for their foresight, considering that this warrantless spying upon Americans is reported to have gone on well before 9/11? (And mind you how well all of that illegal surveillance served to protect us on that awful day.) Are these companies to be respected more than voters? Are they to be granted immunity for lawbreaking, in return for nothing? Congress doesn’t even appear to be interested in leveraging immunity in return for testimony.

What will I tell my children? It’s fine to break the law if the president says so? It’s fine to break the law if you can lobby Congress to grant you immunity? It’s fine to break the law if you can stuff cash into the coffers of senators and representatives? What country is this? I say again: the Founders are rolling in their graves. For the past fifteen years, I’ve watched the news and felt disgust for the whole sorry lot of you.

You who purport to lead, yet cower like beaten dogs before the President, as if he were king. You who vote upon legislation you likely don’t even read. You who coif your hair into absurd, unmoving helmets and whiten your teeth and don designers suits and appear on TV, daring to tell me you represent my interests. You who pass pointless, meaningless resolutions condemning commercials and congratulating professional sports teams for winning while Americans go hungry, while Americans go without healthcare, while Americans work two jobs to make ends meet, while Americans die in Iraq and Afghanistan. You who swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution and flatter yourselves by conflating your re-election with the interests of your country and constituency. You who fret about keeping your powder dry until the are barracks overrun.

You who tell me to live in a constant state of fear, but to keep on shopping; do keep shopping. How proud my children should be to be born American! They’ll shop in the face of constant fear with fists full of credit cards. And I’ll say to them, “What shall we buy tomorrow, children?” But, of course, I have my own ideas: our very own Senator, our very own Representative, our very own President. I should buy the whole sorry lot of you to be heeded at all.

And so here is the Senate in all its majesty. Where are the Patrick Henrys, the Benjamin Franklins? God save America from her greatest enemy: a pack of pathetic, self-serving cowards.

Here's how you can help. Dodd's staff are scouring the blogs for comments to read in his filibuster effort. Go here to Firedoglake and comment, as we know that Dodd and staff regularly read there. Or, you can comment directly at the Dodd blog here.

Aside from that, if you're so inclined, a call or two wouldn't be bad either:


Name Fax Phone
Feingold (202) 224-2725 (202) 224-5323
Dodd (202) 224-1083 (202) 224-2823
Obama (202) 228-4260 (202) 224-2854
Sanders (202) 228-0776 (202) 224-5141
Menendez (202) 228-2197 (202) 224-4744
Biden (202) 224-0139 (202) 224-5042
Brown (202) 228-6321 (202) 224-2315
Harkin (202) 224-9369 (202) 224-3254
Cardin (202) 224-1651 (202) 224-4524
Clinton (202) 228-0282 (202) 224-4451
Akaka (202) 224-2126 (202) 224-6361
Webb (202) 228-6363 (202) 224-4024
Kennedy (202) 224-2417 (202) 224-4543
Boxer (415) 956-6701 (202) 224-3553

UPDATE: Our intrepid Antarctic correspondent the Station Agent has more, and more. You can also watch this historic day in the Senate here at C-SPAN2.

Note to my dear mob mates: please don't post over this for a good couple hours, or if you wish, reinforce the topic. Today is a major tipping point for our Constitution and the Rule of Law, and it needs all the help we can give it.

TAGS: FISA, Chris Dodd, Activism

Lawless Thugs

...Paid With YOUR Tax Dollars

Perhaps you've heard the horrifying story of Jamie Leigh Jones. Here's an excerpt from ABC news:

A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
[...]
According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by "several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally." Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped "both vaginally and anally," but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers.

Outrageous as that first appeared, some new details emerge in this video from Countdown:

"Barbarian Invaders"

(h/t Fernando @ Rancho La Luna)

There is so much to be outraged about here, it's hard to know where to begin. First, how did this story escape the attention of the Corporate Owned Media (COM) FOR TWO YEARS?!? After all, it involves a young attractive white girl in distress in a foreign land. Doesn't that make it a top story? But wait, such stories only take precedent when they serve to bury a bigger story embarrassing to the government. This story only embarrasses the government further.

Seder's remarks should cause embarrassment to the COM as well. "In fact, that's the story of the entire occupation and invasion of Iraq. Complete lack of informed consent from the American public." And it is the COM who have assiduously avoided informing the public.

The main focus is and should be the question of jurisdiction. In trying to pursue justice, Mrs. Jones has found herself in a legal limbo created quite deliberately to shield KBR and its employees.

Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

"It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice.

That enormous loophole is of course the infamous (or it would be infamous if only more Americans knew it even existed - thanks again COM) Rule 17, put in place by Paul Bremer, neocon extraordinaire.

(From Smirking Chimp):

On June 27 2004, the day before the United States was to grant sovereignty to a new Iraqi government and disband the coalition provisional authority, Paul Bremer, the US proconsul, issued a stunning new order. One of the final acts of the CPA, Order 17, declared that foreign contractors within Iraq, including private military firms, would not be subject to any Iraqi laws - "all International Consultants shall be immune from Iraqi legal process," it read. "Congratulations to the new Iraq!" Bremer said moments before flying out. His memoir, My Year in Iraq, neglects to mention Order 17.
[...]
Order 17's grant of immunity to contractors guaranteed that more than half of the foreign presence on the ground - for US-paid contractors outnumber US military personnel - would operate for all intents and purposes beyond the law. Order 17 also undercut the authority of the US military, frustrating command and control of the battlefield and upsetting sensitive counterinsurgency strategies. Order 17 meant that the monopoly of violence was fractured and outsourced to those not subject to the law. By unilateral fiat Order 17 uniquely created a red zone of impunity covering the entire country.

A radical break with US policy, such an order had never been promulgated before. Order 17 should not be confused with a status of force agreement negotiated with sovereign nations such as South Korea. Those agreements are subject to complex bargaining and mutual assurance. Nor are contractors subject to the uniform code of military justice because, after all, they are not in the US military. Nor has the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act of 2000 been brought to bear on contractors in Iraq.

The result of all this legal legerdemain, as reported by Raw Story, is a near certainty that the guilty will go free.

A brave and savvy undergraduate questioned pResident Bush about this very same red zone of impunity on April 10, 2006. His response tells the tale.

"I don't mean to be dodging the question."

"..although it'd be kinda convenient in this case."

I can't believe he actually said that! In public! That and the nervous tics, smirking and giggling indicate that he knows EXACTLY what jurisdiction applies to his hired thugs - none whatsoever, by design. Notice that the unidentified questioner has already queried SecDef Rumsfeld about this and gotten a similar runaround.

This is of course of a piece with the Bush vision of law and order - the laws simply don't apply to them or their enablers, because they run the DoJ as if it was a wholly owned proprietary interest, not a function of the people's government.

If that hasn't got you fuming fit to blow your stack, Jon Swift (a self-described 'reasonable conservative') blogs about the response from less reasonable neo-conservatives - "Jamie Leigh Jones Undermines the War Effort." Seriously, this is one of those occasions where I've wished I believed that there was an especially hot corner of hell for people like this to spend eternity. The players referred to are "Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report, Curt at Flopping Aces and former humor blogger Ace of Spades." (Standard warning: Don't Click on Wingnuts. (DCOW)

Ace, quoting his doppelganger the Church Lady, says Jones' story is "too convenient." Curt, who supports actor Fred Thompson for President, says it sounds "too movie like." Shackleford, no doubt wrinkling his brow and rubbing his beard thoughtfully as the wheels spin in his brain, if he has one (a beard, that is), writes, "It's perfect. Too perfect.
[...]
Update: Bob Owens, a.k.a. Confederate Yankee, the blogosphere's Miss Marple, is on the case. If anyone can find a link between Jones and the terrorists, he can."

With thinking like that governing the reight wing, one must ask; how the hell are they doing such a good job of tearing down democracy in America? The uncomfortable answer must be that people on the left are doing such a piss poor job of opposing them. There seems to be an assumption that, "this is America. The problem will correct itself."

Well, let me remind you - Richard Nixon went unpunished. The Iran/Contra traitors were mostly pardoned by Bush Sr., and some of them now have successful careers on right-wing talk radio for cryin' out loud. Many of those involved in Iran/Contra went on to serve in the current government, despite their criminal records. The system has failed monumentally to self-correct in the past.

Your options are limited. You can resolve to actively do everything in your power to stop this lawlessness (even if that means a loss of income or lowering of lifestyle expectations), or you can prepare to spend the rest of your days weeping over the demise of democracy. Your choice.

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Addendum: Also from the Jon Swift post, an indication that this is far from being an isolated case.

Although there was a rape kit that confirmed she was sexually assaulted, it was lost and found again and the doctor who performed it doesn't remember doing it. "I have no idea which rape victim you are," the doctor told Jones, "because so many young contractor girls were raped after drinking with the guys…. I performed so many rape kits in the six months that I was stationed there that there would be no way to recall whom (sic) yours was."

Geez, Louise! Am I the only one who thinks that, I don't know, maybe something ought to be done about this?!?

"With every new revelation, I think, 'Is this it?
Will this finally shake people out of their complacency?' "
-- RevPhat --

I certainly hope so.

Read More at The Jamie Leigh Foundation

UPDATE: From Think Progress - Rep Poe (R. - TX), Ms. Leigh Jones' congressman, and Sen. Ben Nelson (D. - FL) are both looking into allegations that this is not an isolated incident. Considering the quote above from the doctor who performed the rape kit, I would think they will find the allegations to be substantiated.

UPDATE II: From ABC News: The House Judiciary Committee will be hearing testimony on this matter starting next Wednesday. Given past performance, don't hold your breath waiting for any substantial result.

Cross-posted at Ice Station Tango and The Unconventional Conventionist

TAGS: Jamie Leigh Jones, Kellog Brown Root (KBR), Iraq OCCUPATION, Bush Lawlessness