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Symbols of Bush-era Lawlessness Flourish Under Obama |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=25035"><span class="small">John Knefel, Rolling Stone</span></a>
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Sunday, 07 April 2013 08:20 |
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Knefel writes: "Guantanamo Bay and the RDI program are both back in the news now, each for their own unsavory reasons, and their reemergence should be a reminder of how fully the Obama administration has embraced the logic underpinning the Bush regime's response to 9/11."
The U.S. flag behind barbed wire at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (photo: unknown)
Symbols of Bush-era Lawlessness Flourish Under Obama
By John Knefel, Rolling Stone
07 April 13
 uring the George W. Bush years, two of the most controversial elements of what was then called the Global War on Terror were the CIA's rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program and the creation of the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay. The RDI program included waterboarding and other forms of torture, as well as so-called black site prisons where detainees were held incommunicado after being abducted by the CIA, and sometimes tortured by members of the host country's security forces.
Guantanamo Bay and the RDI program are both back in the news now, each for their own unsavory reasons, and their reemergence should be a reminder of how fully the Obama administration has embraced the logic underpinning the Bush regime's response to 9/11. The Pentagon is now requesting nearly $200 million for Guantanamo Bay infrastructure upgrades, including $49 million for a new unit for "special" prisoners - likely the so-called high-value detainees currently housed at Camp 7, which include self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Pentagon's reasoning is that neither the president nor Congress have any plans to close the prison anytime soon, so these repairs are necessary.
This massive capital request comes as detainees are engaged in an increasingly dire hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention and to signal their lack of hope for transfer or release. Instead of closing Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration stands poised to do the very opposite - pour more money into what is already the country's most expensive prison.
Meanwhile, participation in the CIA's controversial RDI program has resulted for at least one person not in prosecution or professional sanctions, but rather in a promotion. For the last several weeks, an unnamed woman has been acting director of the National Clandestine Service - the part of the CIA that runs spying and covert operations, including the CIA's drone program - as first reported by the Washington Post. This is the first time a woman has held that position. But this particular woman was a major figure in the RDI program, once ran a black site prison, and has been linked to the destruction of interrogation tapes that almost certainly documented the CIA's use of torture.
In 2005, the unnamed woman was chief of staff for Jose Rodriguez, then the acting director for the clandestine service. Rodriguez ordered the destruction of at least 92 tapes CIA agents made of the interrogations of two high-value detainees, Abu Zubayah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri - at least some of which included waterboarding, which is widely regarded as a form of torture. The New York Times reported that the woman "and Jose were the two main drivers for years for getting the tapes destroyed" - an anonymous quote they attributed to a "former senior CIA officer." In his memoir, Rodriguez said that the woman drafted the cable allowing the destruction of the tapes after meeting with CIA lawyers.
Rodriguez ordered the tapes destroyed despite a 2004 court order to preserve them, an act which led the American Civil Liberties Union to attempt, unsuccessfully, to hold the CIA in contempt of court. In 2007, The New York Times reported that members of the 9/11 Commission were not aware of the existence or destruction of the tapes, despite their requests for exactly that kind of evidence. Neither were the two highest-ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2005. The Department of Justice has twice investigated the destruction of the tapes, but has not brought charges against anyone involved.
So the prison at Guantanamo Bay is likely to get more funding, including a new prison, and a CIA agent tied to one of the most shameful episodes of the last decade will likely be granted a powerful, coveted spot at the CIA. That she'll be promoted by new CIA director John Brennan, himself a high-level CIA official during the worst torture years, is only appropriate in Obama's age of "look forward, not backward." And instead of robust protest from liberals, there is for the most part either silence or acquiescence. What was once controversial is now institutionalized and accepted - a fact which may ultimately be one of the Obama administration's most lasting legacies.
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Mark Sanford Defeats the Bible Thumpers |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=6853"><span class="small">Frank Rich, New York Magazine</span></a>
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Friday, 05 April 2013 09:07 |
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Rich writes: "Conservative hypocrisy about marriage has been and will be a gift that keeps on giving to late-night comedians and the Democrats. Almost as amusing is watching how the political juggernaut of same-sex marriage is driving conservatives on the wrong side of history nuts."
Mark Sanford is back on the campaign trail. (photo: Mary Ann Chastain/AP)
Mark Sanford Defeats the Bible Thumpers
By Frank Rich, New York Magazine
05 April 13
 ormer South Carolina governor and famed Appalachian Trail non-hiker Mark Sanford won his GOP primary run-off for a House seat yesterday. He'll compete in the general election against a businesswoman, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who, strange but true, is Stephen Colbert's sister. What do you make of Sanford's reemergence on the political scene?
First, that it's tragic that Stephen Colbert's family connection probably puts this race off-limits for satirical purposes on The Colbert Report. Second, that the GOP's full-speed-ahead support for "traditional marriage" between "one man and one woman" is going to be a continued source of farce. Few states are more conservative than South Carolina, yet Sanford, whose traditional marriage included one man and two women (his wife and his Argentinian mistress, now his fiancée), easily beat a fervent Christian conservative opponent in a Republican primary. Conservative hypocrisy about marriage has been and will be a gift that keeps on giving to late-night comedians and the Democrats. Almost as amusing is watching how the political juggernaut of same-sex marriage is driving conservatives on the wrong side of history nuts. David Brooks and Ross Douthat, sympathetic to marriage equality in the past, are now writing churlish pieces demeaning it; Laura Ingraham and Bill O'Reilly got into a shouting match on Fox News last night because O'Reilly broke ranks and criticized those same-sex marriage opponents who "thump the Bible." Speaking of Bible thumpers, it was particularly touching to watch Mark Sanford, in last night's victory statement, thank "my God" at some length with his lover at his side. Both Rick Santorum and James Dobson, the former deity of Focus on the Family, had endorsed Sanford's opponent. If the religious right can't beat Mark Sanford in a Republican primary in South Carolina, can it win anywhere?
Politico reported yesterday that Kentucky senator Rand Paul was raising money for a conservative group that believes the NRA "is too willing to compromise on gun rights." Among the group's targets is House majority leader Eric Cantor, no one's idea of a gun-control advocate. Paul won a more prominent national spotlight (and some serious 2016 whispers) with his drone filibuster. Will this banish him to the fringes?
Absolutely not. Rand Paul is the hottest politician in the Republican party right now. What remains of the GOP Establishment pooh-poohs him - John McCain, Karl Rove, the former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson - and certainly in his views about most everything, starting with foreign policy, Paul is the un-Bush. Which is why he is beloved by so many Republican voters. That drone filibuster established him as potentially the new Sarah Palin, a gun-totin' Pa Grizzly who gives voice to the passions of his party's radical right base. The Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, who supported Paul's primary opponent in his 2010 Senate race, has gone so far as to hire Paul's campaign manager to run his own 2014 reelection campaign. Don't expect Eric Cantor to fire back at Paul over guns or anything else. It's far more likely that Cantor will at least figuratively lick those cowboy boots Paul wore onstage in his speech at CPAC.
Speaking of the NRA, it released its 225-page school security plan proposing armed guards at all of the nation's schools. (Teachers who undergo training would also be able to pack heat.) Absent from the NRA's press conference was executive director Wayne LaPierre, a lightning rod since the Newtown shootings. Does this plan matter in any way? And does LaPierre's absence signify the NRA is paying some attention to its critics?
What matters is that although the NRA gets nuttier and nuttier, the prospects of tighter gun laws get dimmer and dimmer. Only 37 percent of Republicans favor new restrictions, and that means that the NRA and the GOP, with some significant Democratic help, will win this battle in Congress. Obama is speaking about gun control near the scene of the Aurora massacre in Colorado today; polls show most Americans, Republicans notwithstanding, favor some form of action. But with the possible exception of a bill on background checks for gun purchasers, nothing will go forward. As for LaPierre's absence at this week's press event, it was attributed to a technicality - the speaker was the head of the NRA task force on schools and guns, the former Arkansas congressman and Clinton impeachment zealot Asa Hutchinson. But it's entirely possible La Pierre is being locked in a basement somewhere along with Todd Akin, Dick Morris, Christine ("I'm not a witch") O'Donnell, and other recent public-relations embarrassments to the right. What was more notable about the NRA press conference was the wild amount of security - armed guards, a bomb-sniffing Labrador - enlisted to protect Hutchinson for a routine event at the National Press Club. According to the Times account, press photographers on hand were warned to "remain stationary."
Over the last week, we've heard a lot from a new GOP star, Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson, an African-American conservative who likened gays to NAMBLA and bestiality enthusiasts on a Fox News appearance and then called his white liberal critics "the most racist people there are." Will we still be talking about Ben Carson a month from now? Or are we seeing a would-be "star" implode?
What I love about this guy is that he gave one anti-Obamacare speech this winter - at a National Prayer Breakfast, with the president present - and was immediately acclaimed a possible presidential contender by Republican leaders. Conservatives may talk about wanting to end affirmative action, but it is alive and well in the GOP. Carson hasn't even run for office in Maryland, where he lives, but, hell, that shouldn't stop the party for nominating him for the highest office in the land, or maybe vice-president on a Marco Rubio ticket. Carson-Rubio or Rubio-Carson in 2016: The Republicans' problem with minority voters is solved! Carson's incendiary recent statements suggest, however, that he is serious about the television career he has already expressed interest in pursuing once he retires later this year from Hopkins. The question for Fox News is whether its racial quota will allow him to join Herman Cain in its ranks. Whatever happens, I hope Cain holds firm. If there's one thing I miss from the 2012 presidential race, it's "9-9-9."
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FOCUS | The Real Threat Is White Supremacists |
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Thursday, 04 April 2013 10:30 |
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Cole writes: "It is not allowed to say this in the corporate media, but some Republican representatives and their constituents are, if not implicated in white supremacist sentiments, at least a little smelly in that regard. "
Juan Cole; public intellectual, prominent blogger, essayist and professor of history. (photo: Informed Comment)
The Real Threat Is White Supremacists
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
04 April 13
 he shooting of Kaufman, Texas district attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia remains a mystery. But investigators are increasingly looking into a cell of extremist white terrorists as the suspects. Two months ago, a county assistant district attorney, Mark Hasse, was murdered not far from his office at the court. (I used the term extremist white terrorists because that is what they are, but usually the American press only describes foreigners and Muslims as terrorists, while calling whites "extremists.")
Likewise, a gang of white terrorists is suspected in the recent slaying of the head of Colorado's prison system.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and other Islamophobes in Congress, seeking to look good to campaign donors who hate Muslims, has conducted several hearings on the alleged increased radicalization of American Muslims. Sociologists don't find evidence of such a thing; American Muslims on the whole are relatively well-integrated into US society and are disproportionately well off and pillars of the society. The hearings are a form of McCarthyism.
No one was killed or injured in the US in 2012 by terrorists of Muslim heritage, and only 14 Americans of Muslim heritage were even indicted for violent plots. Only one act of violence was traced to such a group, which produced no casualties.
Rep. Peter King is a big supporter of the old 1980s Irish Republican Army, which killed two Americans in a bombing at Harrod's department store in London. The man's feet won't touch the ground when he walks because of the rivers of hypocrisy exuding from between his toes.
In the meantime, Congress not only has held few or no hearings on the danger of white terrorism, it has actually pressured the Department of Homeland Security not to produce studies on the phenomenon.
It is not allowed to say this in the corporate media, but some Republican representatives and their constituents are, if not implicated in white supremacist sentiments, at least a little smelly in that regard.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there has been recent explosive growth in the number and members of white hate groups:
There is also a problem of hate groups in the military, some of whom are responsible for atrocities against innocent Muslims that have harmed the US image and US policy abroad.
But the Tea Party Congress won't investigate this problem.
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North Korea 'Rattles Sabres,' US Pretends to Drop Nuclear Bombs on Them |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=25212"><span class="small">Peter Hart, FAIR</span></a>
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Thursday, 04 April 2013 07:57 |
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Hart writes: "The standard is pretty clear: Statements by North Korea says are threatening provocations, while when the U.S. pretends to drop nuclear bombs just across your border, well, that's just how you 'respond to provocation.'"
Is this time any different than the last 60 years? (photo: Sky News)
North Korea 'Rattles Sabres,' US Pretends to Drop Nuclear Bombs on Them
By Peter Hart, Fair
04 April 13
 t's not easy to figure out what's going on with North Korea. We hear that new leader Kim Jong-Un is making threats to attack the United States, South Korea or both - and that's leading to some rather alarming, and alarmist, coverage.
As ABC World News reporter Martha Raddatz put it (3/31/13): "The threats have been coming almost every day, and each day become more menacing, the threat of missile strikes on the U.S., invading armies into South Korea and nuclear attacks."
The dominant narrative would have you believe that the United States was basically minding its own business when North Korea began lashing out. On CBS Evening News (3/29/13), Major Garrett explained:
North Korean saber-rattling is common every spring when the United States and South Korea engage in military exercises.
So there are "exercises" right next door, conducted by the world's most powerful military, which possesses thousands of nuclear weapons; and then there's menacing saber-rattling.
While North Korea's apparent threats are obviously troubling, one doesn't have to be paranoid to take offense at those military drills. As Christine Hong and Hyun Lee wrote (Foreign Policy in Focus, 2/15/13):
The drama unfolding on the other side of the 38th parallel attests to an underreported escalation of military force on the part of the United States and South Korea. In fact, on the very day that Kim visited Mu Island, 80,000 U.S. and South Korean troops were gearing up for the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian. For the first time in its history, this war exercise included a simulation of a pre-emptive attack by South Korean artillery units in an all-out war scenario against North Korea. Ostensibly a defensive exercise in preparation for an attack by the north, the joint U.S./South Korea war games have taken on a decidedly offensive characteristic since Kim Jong Il's death. What's more, a South Korean military official discussing the exercise raised red flags by mentioning the possibility of responding to potential North Korean provocation with asymmetric retaliation, a direct violation of UN rules of engagement in warfare.
In other words, there are some real world events that might bother North Korea's leadership - no matter what one might think about the level of North Korean paranoia. On much of the U.S. television coverage, the threats are virtually all coming from one side, without any explanation, and the United States is merely on the scene to bring down the level of tension. As ABC's Raddatz (3/31/13) explained:
The U.S., which launched two nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers last week to carry out a practice bombing run less than 50 miles from North Korea, says it will continue to respond to provocation.
blockquote>The U.S. will not say specifically what those counter-provocation measures may be. But an indication of how serious they are, the Pentagon says they hope they never have to put them into effect.
Again, the standard is pretty clear: Statements by North Korea says are threatening provocations, while when the U.S. pretends to drop nuclear bombs just across your border, well, that's just how you "respond to provocation."
While it is certainly difficult to get a sense of what exactly the North Koreans are actually saying, one of the most interesting takes came from B.R. Myers, a professor at Dongseo University in South Korea. He was quoted by a New York Times blog (Lede, 3/29/13):
We need to keep in mind that North and South Korea are not so much trading outright threats as trading blustering vows of how they would retaliate if attacked. The North says, "If the U.S. or South Korea dare infringe on our territory, we will reduce their territory to ashes," and Seoul responds by saying it will retaliate by bombing Kim Il-sung statues. And so it goes.
I think the international press is distorting the reality somewhat by simply publishing the second half of all these conditional sentences. And I have to say from watching North Korea's evening news broadcasts for the past week or so, the North Korean media are not quite as wrapped up in this war mood as one might think. The announcers spend the first 10 minutes or so reporting on peaceful matters before they start ranting about the enemy.
That's important context.
Meanwhile, NBC reporter Richard Engel (NBC Nightly News, 4/1/13) told viewers that "if you watch North Korean state TV, the country looks like it's at war." And he closed:
The world's last Stalinist state talking war to stay in power. Pyongyang's secrecy makes the old Soviet Kremlin look transparent. North Korea appears to want to pick a fight and the U.S. says if it comes to that, it is ready.
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resident Obama reportedly is 
