One Nation Under Investigation

One Nation Under Investigation -- (Emphasis added)

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Senator Patrick Leahy:
The President and Vice President of the United States should not be operating a secret and separate regime in which their official acts and policies cannot be known by the people's elected representatives.

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1.15.2007 "Spoils of War -- Oil, the U.S.-Middle East Free Trade Area and the Bush Agenda" By Antonia Juhasz

Put simply, U.S. oil companies want access to as much of Iraq’s oil as they can get and on the best possible terms. The fact that Iraq is a war-ravaged and occupied nation works to the companies’ benefit. As a result, the companies and the Bush administration are holding U.S. troops hostage in Iraq until they get what they want. Once the companies get their lucrative contracts, they will still need protection to get to work. What better security force is there than 144,000 American troops?
1.12.2007 Scientists Reject Chemical Rules By Rick Weiss, The Washington Post
The research council said it supports the idea of revising current rules. But under the proposed provisions, it concluded, risk assessments would be "more susceptible to being manipulated to achieve a predetermined result."

Among its problems, Ahearne said, the report too narrowly defines an "adverse health effect" as "a fundamental impairment or lesion" - ignoring the public health goal of preventing, not just responding to, injury and sickness. He said it offers few protections for "sensitive populations" such as children or pregnant women, which usually are key to determining acceptable risk levels.

1.15.2007 The collapse of the Bush presidency poses risks Glenn Greenwald
... the weaker and more besieged the administration feels, the more compelled they will feel to make a showing of their power. Lashing out in response to feelings of weakness is a temptation most human beings have, but it is more than a mere temptation for George Bush. It is one of the predominant dynamics that drives his behavior.

His party suffered historic losses in the 2006 midterm elections as a result of profound dissatisfaction with his presidency and with his war, and his reaction was to escalate the war, despite (really, because of) the extreme unpopularity of that option. And as Iraq rapidly unraveled, he issued orders that pose a high risk of the conflict engulfing Iran. When he feels weak and restrained, that is when he acts most extremely.

1.15.2007 "A FEW SMALL POCKETS OF DISCONTENT" Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog

1.15.2007 McClatchy Report: Are Americans Getting Truth on Iraq? By Mark Seibel, McClatchy Newspapers

WASHIGNTON President Bush and his aides, explaining their reasons for sending more American troops to Iraq, are offering an incomplete, oversimplified and possibly untrue version of events there that raises new questions about the accuracy of the administration's statements about Iraq.
1.14.2007 Bush's speech, with comments

1.14.2007 Deletions in Army Manual Raise Wiretapping Concerns By ERIC LICHTBLAU and MARK MAZZETTI via Talk Left

1.14.2007 On Iraq, U.S. Turns to Onetime Dissenters By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post Staff Writer

1.13.2007 Libby Heads to Trial in CIA Leak Case By MATT APUZZO and MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN, AP

Wilson says the information about his wife - Valerie Plame - was leaked on purpose as retaliation and was part of an effort to silence other critics in the intelligence world.
...
Libby's lawyers say Plame's identity was not disclosed because of a grand conspiracy, but rather because of political infighting among the CIA, the White House and the State Department over intelligence failures on Iraq.

See Also: Why "Out" a CIA Officer? By Mark Kleiman, 10.14.2005, which discusses "the Keystone Kops theory and the Horse's Head theory."

1.14.2007 The Imperial Presidency By Dahlia Lithwick, WAPO
... Guantanamo Bay stays open for the same reason that Padilla stays on trial. Having claimed the right to label enemy combatants and detain them indefinitely without charges, the Bush administration cannot retreat from that position without ceding ground. The president is as much a prisoner of Guantanamo Bay as the detainees are. Having gone nose to nose with Congress over his authority to craft stripped-down courts, guaranteed to produce guilty verdicts, Bush cannot call off the trials. The endgame in the war against terrorism isn't holding the line against terrorists. It's holding the line on hard-fought claims to limitless presidential authority.

Enter these signing statements. The most recent of the all-but-meaningless postscripts Bush tacks onto legislation gives him the power to "authorize a search of mail in an emergency" to "protect human life and safety" and for "foreign intelligence collection." There is some debate about whether the president has that power already, but it misses the point. The purpose of these signing statements is to plant a flag on the moon -- one more way for the chief executive to stake out the furthest corners in the field of his desired powers.

1.14.2007 David Kurtz:
The suggestion by Charles D. Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, that corporations should consider boycotting law firms who are doing pro bono work representing detainees at Gitmo, came after he received a FOIA request from conservative radio host and former Nixon groupie Monica Crowley seeking a list of all the lawyers and law firms representing detainees.
...
A series of completely unconnected random events, I'm sure.
1.14.2007 Families Of Guardsmen Vent Frustrations Over Extended Tours wnbc.com via No More Mister Nice Blog
One of the biggest complaints from frustrated relatives during the meeting at the West Orange armory was that soldiers in Iraq learned of the extension either through the media or through family members, who were alerted Thursday.
...
One woman relayed how she was communicating via instant messenger with her husband in Iraq when she received a phone call from a group that helps families of guardsmen who are deployed. They informed her of the extension, but when she passed the news along to her husband, he did not believe her.
1.14.2007 Josh Marshall:
In the latest development involving those immigration raids at meat packing plants last month, a federal judge in Denver has gotten his hands on the Colorado case and apparently doesn't like what he sees:
1.14.2007 Iraqi leader goes own way to fill top post By Louise Roug and Peter Spiegel, LATimes Staff Writers
Qanbar, a commander in the navy during Saddam Hussein's reign, has not worked with American military officials, who say they know little about him other than that he hails from Amarah, a city in Iraq's Shiite-dominated south, and that he was taken prisoner by American forces near Kuwait during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
...
To quell the concerns U.S. commanders have about Qanbar, American officials and the Iraqi government have agreed on a complicated system in which another layer would be added to the command structure between Maliki and Qanbar. That layer would include the top U.S. commander, a high-ranking American official said.
1.14.2007 Shock and oil: Iraq's billions & the White House connection The Independent, via Raw Story
The American company appointed to advise the US government on the economic reconstruction of Iraq has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars into Republican Party coffers and has admitted that its own finances are in chaos because of accounting errors and bad management.
...
Last week The Independent on Sunday revealed that a BearingPoint employee, based in the US embassy in Baghdad, had been tasked with advising the Iraqi Ministry of Oil on drawing up a new hydrocarbon law. The legislation, which is due to be presented to Iraq's parliament within days, will give Western oil companies a large slice of profits from the country's oil fields in exchange for investing in new oil infrastructure.
1.13.2007 Hypocrisy Alert: Homeland Security Undocumented! Firedoglake
... Here’s my favorite. It’s a doozy folks. You may want to read it twice: FEMA was unable to fully support the accuracy and completeness of certain unpaid obligations, and accounts payable, and the related effects on net position, if any, prior to the completion of DHS’s 2006 PAR. These unpaid obligations, as reported in the accompanying DHS balance sheet as of September 30, 2006, were $22.3 Billion or 46% of DHS consolidated unexpended appropriations at September 30, 2006. [emphasis mine]

To give some idea of proportionality, in fiscal year 2005 the entire Grants and Training (formerly know as State and Local Government Preparedness, a/k/a grants to get working radios for NYC firemen and protection for bridges, tunnels, chemical plants and nuclear facilities) was only $171 million.

So, follow me here, FEMA has lost and/or failed to account for a sum of money that is almost half of DHS’s entire budget and 130 times greater than the amount of money that the Department of Homeland Security is willing to spend to secure the homeland.

1.13.2007 "Military Expands Intelligence Role in U.S."

Military Expands Intelligence Role in U.S. NYT

“There’s a strong tradition of not using our military for domestic law enforcement,” said Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, a former general counsel at both the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. who is the dean at the McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific. “They’re moving into territory where historically they have not been authorized or presumed to be operating.”
...
Mr. Fidell said he found the practice “disturbing,” in part because the military does not have the same checks and balances when it comes to Americans’ civil rights as does the F.B.I. “Where is the accountability?” he asked. “That’s the evil of it — it doesn’t leave fingerprints.”
1.12.2007 "CIA Leak Probe: Inside The Grand Jury", by Murray Waas

1.12.2007 Michael Froomkin:

I'm sorry, but this is just disgusting. Now that there's a real chance that they might lose in the courts, the White House is trying to put the economic screws on lawyers representing Guantanamo detainees.
This radio interview with Cully Stimson, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, heralds the start of an organized campaign by the White House to encourage major law firm clients to pressure those firms to drop their pro-bono representation of Guantanamo detainees.

Atrios: "These people really just don't believe in the American system of justice.
What the hell do they believe in?"

1.11.2007 "Bush Admin: What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Us" (With new additions]

1.11.2007 "Dead birds rain down on towns half a world apart"

1.11.2007 Senator Carl Levin: "America supplying more troops while Iraqi leaders simply supply more promises is not a recipe for success in Iraq."

1.10.2007 New Pentagon chief is expected to oust the U.S. general involved in the Somalia strikes.By Michael Hirsh and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek

Boykin has long been a divisive figure. A devout evangelical Christian, he achieved notoriety in October 2003 when he was videotaped telling a church audience that the god of a Muslim warlord was "an idol" and that "my God was a real God." Boykin and Cambone have also generated controversy by allegedly seeking to wrest control of intelligence-gathering from the CIA.
...
A U.S. intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity owing to the sensitivity of the subject, said that Boykin currently was still on the job. But word around the Pentagon was that Gates would ask Boykin to go, this official said. Consultants who work with the intelligence and Special Operations community said it was all but certain that Boykin was following Cambone out the door. "If you're getting rid of Cambone, you almost certainly have to get rid of Boykin," says Philip Giraldi, a former CIA counterterrorism official who stays in touch with the community. "They're hand in glove. Gates feels it all went out of control, that they're doing too many things in too many places."
...
intelligence officials said U.S. forces were hoping that at least one of the three of the figures involved in the planning of the 1998 embassy attacks was among the dozens reported killed by the strikes.

On 10 November 2006, the German Federal Government announced that it had decided to permit the war crimes prosecution of Stephen A. Cambone for his alleged role in condoning the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison during his tenure from 2001 to 2003 as U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General, under the legal framework of universal jurisdiction. (Wikipedia]

1.10.2007 Bob Cesca:
Right around the time when new brigades will be hitting the ground (should the president get his way) this March, the new and underreported Iraqi "hydrocarbon law" will likely be passed. According to The Independent, the law, written in conjunction with the Bush administration and brokered by a firm in McLean, Virginia, allows Western oil companies specifically including Shell, Exxon-Mobile and BP to hork (sic) Iraqi oil and pocket 75-percent of the profits. That's 75-percent of the profits from the source of 95-percent of the Iraqi economy. The Independent:
"[The law] would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972."
You remember Shell, Exxon-Mobile and BP: three of the principles in Vice President Cheney's energy task force. And now, with security a major issue, they could be granted by the president an American military "surge" to protect their trafficking lanes and dampen any resistance from the Iraqi people who surely won't dig the idea of their only commodity ripped out from under their feet.

(Maybe this helps to explain the selection of a US Navy admiral to head US Central Command, the buildup of aircraft carriers in the Persian gulf and nuclear sub in the Strait of Hormuz)

1.9.2007 "Bush lifts Alaska oil, gas drilling ban"

1.9.2007 "Bush judicial nominees ask to withdraw"

1.9.2007 The Congress As Surge Protector By Neil Kinkopf

The Supreme Court has been clear and unambiguous. When Congress, acting in the vast areas of overlapping power, tells the President “no,” the President must comply. Thus, Congress may limit the scope of the present Iraq War by either of two mechanisms. First, it may directly define limits on the scope of that war—and forbid the President from exceeding these limits—such as by imposing a ceiling on the number of troops assigned to that conflict. Second, it may achieve the same objective by enacting appropriations riders that limit the use of appropriated funds. Indeed, the reason that the Constitution limits military appropriations to two years is to prevent Congress from abdicating its responsibility to oversee ongoing military engagements.
...
Before embarking on any escalation, the President should seek the assent of Congress and the American people. If he will not, the American people should understand that Congress has the power to stop him. Via Balkinization
1.9.2007 Josh Marshall:
And yet, with all this, the president has ignored the Congress, not consulted the 110th Congress in any real way, has ignored the now longstanding views of the majority of the country's citizens and wants to plow ahead with an expansion of his own failed and overwhelmingly repudiated policy. The need for Congress to assert itself in such a case transcends the particulars of Iraq policy. It's important to confirm the democratic character of the state itself. The president is not a king. He is not a Stuart. And one more Hail Mary pass for George W. Bush's legacy just isn't a good enough reason for losing more American lives, treasure and prestige.
1.9.2007 Halliburton, Your Time Has Almost Expired
Leahy wasted no time on the very first day of the 110th Congress last week in proposing both S.118, the Effective Corruption Prosecutions Act of 2007 and S. 119, the War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007.
1.8.2007 "NRA Pressured To Resist Bush Energy Policies -- Hunters Wary of Limited Land Access.

1.7.2007 NYT Editorial: The Imperial Presidency 2.0

Just before the Christmas break, the Justice Department served notice to Senator Patrick Leahy — the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee — that it intended to keep stonewalling Congressional inquiries into Mr. Bush’s inhumane and unconstitutional treatment of prisoners taken in anti-terrorist campaigns. It refused to hand over two documents, including one in which Mr. Bush authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to establish secret prisons beyond the reach of American law or international treaties. The other set forth the interrogation methods authorized in these prisons — which we now know ranged from abuse to outright torture.
See also: "Start Preparing Now for the Coming "Cataclysmic Fight to the Death""

1.5.2007 Digby:

The Dems ran on a platform to stop the Republican insanity, not to "work with them" and I think those of us in the Democratic base might have noticed if they did that. The only person in the country who ran explicitly on his bipartisan credentials was Joe Lieberman and he was running against a Democrat.
1.5.2007 "Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has created a new subcommittee that will tackle decisions made by the Bush administration regarding which government records should be made available to the public." (Here)

1.4.2007 "Contractors Are Cited in Abuses at Guantanamo"

See also " Torture, Lies, and Videotape" By Arlen Parsa

1.4.2007 W pushes envelope on U.S. spying

Most of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval.

Yet in his (signing) statement Bush said he will "construe" an exception, "which provides for opening of an item of a class of mail otherwise sealed against inspection in a manner consistent ... with the need to conduct searches in exigent circumstances.""

1.2.2007 ACLU: Government Documents on Torture

Talk Left, regarding the recently disclosed FBI reports of governmental torture:

And here's the kicker:
The FBI reports do not say whether any laws were broken. They said nothing employees observed rose to the level of abuse seen at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
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Minimum Daily Requirement
  • Glenn Greenwald

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    Investigations
    Senate Judiciary Committee
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    Documents
    Fact Checker Center for American Progress

    The Library of Congress -- Legislative information, pending bills, etc.

    January 25, 2001 Richard Clarke Memo: "We urgently need . . . a Principals level review on the al Qida network." (Here)

    Transcript of Powell's U.N. presentation

    The Scalito, Mafia PDF

    Alphabet Soup

    The Project for the New American Century's Statement of Principles, and its pre-2000 writings about Iraq.

    The U.S. Constitution
    See also

    Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau

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    Bush Count-down clock -- The Yellowcake Road and other Scandals -- Strategies for the Future -- Spying on America -- Bad Writing -- The Conservatives Get It

    Red and Blue maps
    (Senate Races) (Gubernatorial Races)

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