Our Surrender

The Bush Hangover: Guantanamo Undercuts Our Protests of North Korea -- by Mitchell Bard
George W. Bush has been out of office for more than four months now, but I fear that the damage done during the Bush years has inflicted serious injury to the American psyche and reputation, and it will take years, if not decades, to recover.

I woke up this morning to the chilling news that two American journalists had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor by a North Korean court for the "crimes" of illegally entering the country and committing "hostile acts."
^^^
[T]he international community has to stand against the heinous actions of the North Korean government. Clearly, the United States should be at the head of such international action.

But today, I also read about Lakhdar Boumediene, and the truly disturbing story of what happened to him after the 9/11 attacks. An Algerian man living with his wife and two children in Sarajevo, Bosnia, he was working for the Red Crescent in October 2001 when he was arrested and charged with conspiring to blow up the American and British embassies in the city. An investigation revealed no evidence of his involvement in any plot, so a Bosnian judge ordered him released, but the Bush administration intervened, and in January 2002 he was shackled and flown to Guantanamo Bay.
^^^
In the end, Boumediene was held for 7 1/2 years in Guantanamo, during which time, he says, he was tortured. He says he was kept up for 16 days straight, beaten, "stretched" (pulled up from under his arms while his feet were shackled to a chair) and forced to run while chained to guards, and if he could not keep up, he was dragged until he was bloody and bruised. After he began a hunger strike, he had food tubes put up his nose and, he claims, soldiers would purposely poke IV needles into the wrong parts of his arm, just to induce pain. But the one thing that was not done to him? Nobody asked if he was involved in a plot to blow up the U.S. and British embassies in Sarajevo. Rather, all he was repeatedly asked was about his connections to al-Qaeda and Osama bin-Laden (he insists he had no connection at all to the terrorist group).

But there was one thing in the article that not only amazed me but brilliantly illuminated why the U.S. should never torture, and why it is so important that we repudiate what happened during the Bush years and chart a clear and unequivocal new path forward, one that reflects the country's traditional values. Boumediene said:
"I thought America, the big country, they have CIA, FBI. Maybe one week, two weeks, they know I am innocent. I can go back to my home."

In other words, Boumediene had faith that a country like the United States could not possibly keep an innocent man prisoner with no way to contest his guilt. His view of America is one that many in the world shared before the Bush years . . . .
That is supposed to be the difference between a country like North Korea and a country like the United States.
Click here for the complete article.
xxx
This says it all. The US willingly surrendered what high ground we had had before.

Of course, even before Bush, our 'high ground' had been tenuous at best:
A country founded on genocide and slavery.
Jim Crow and, even now, capital punishment and imprisonment that allows strikingly different statistics depending on race.
The sham of The War On Drugs.
The only western country which does not offer reasonable health care to its citizens [unless they happen to hold high government office].
That has 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' as a very real law and denies marriage to 1.5% of its population.
Whose education is falling apart.
That tolerates children going to bed hungry every night.
That accepts the fact that some of its people still kill in the name of God.
Whose people are urged to take their guns to church——
All this doesn't leave us a lot of room to talk, does it?

Still, before Bush was appointed president, we had slightly more room than we do now.
And Cheney just goes on telling us how right he and his cronies were all that time—spouting the lie that 'torture saved lives' just as if that were the question [which it is not].

But, today, the real issue comes home. Two of our citizens are being illegally and immorally held by another country and we are powerless to even raise our voice in protest—all because we have done the same thing—and right recently.

Oba-blowing-it

Believe it or not, back in 1969, Nixon did something right.
He didn't just launch the fiasco of the ‘War on Drugs,’ he started a treatment-in-lieu-of-prison option for those who were caught using drugs [though not those who sold them]. And he gave the treatment programs wide latitude to develop their own approaches to the ‘problem’.
The fact that he probably added the treatment option because, for the first time, lots of middle-class kids were running into the drug culture doesn’t change the fact that the funding of the treatment option did a lot of good. How much good depended, of course, on the effectiveness of the respective programs.

In 1972, I voluntarily entered one such program called Renaissance West [Rennis]. It was a ‘year-long’ program [people could graduate successfully anywhere from 6 to 18 months after entering—as assessed by the individual, the staff and the ‘family members’ within the program]. And the focus was not on drug use.
Instead, it concentrated on the fact that the lives of clients involved in the live-in, commune-like program were out of control and they had engaged in a form of self-medication in order to make their lives tolerable.
In-depth therapy was practiced and, in fact, the entire program, from house cleaning to meals to the development of personal support systems to the group therapy sessions themselves were used to address the issue of building more effective lives for ourselves.

A learning center was included and clients who wished to do so could pursue any courses of study they chose. I picked classes on astrology, creative writing and psychology. A student from the University of Missouri at Kansas City taught several pupils in the writing course and a professor taught the psychology class in which I was the only student.
After I graduated from Rennis, I wanted to go back to college. I had flunked out twice before and when I applied, UMKC refused me entry. I solicited letters of recommendation from the directors of the program and that psychology professor who had been teaching me for the last several months. In fact, I wrote the letters and they signed them. Based on those letters, I was accepted on probation.
I was the first graduate from Rennis to enter college and I felt the full weight resting on my shoulders. If I didn’t succeed it would reflect badly on the program and on the people who had helped me get in. I HAD to do well.
xxx
During the course of our history, if a White president did a bad job, he was judged as an individual. The next person we elected was also a White Male—because that’s just what we did.
But, things are different now. For the first time, we have departed from our standard operating procedure. We have elected a type of person who is ‘different’ from our norm. [No, he’s not really different, but he is perceived as different—and that’s what matters.]
Odds are, we wouldn’t have done this if Bush/Cheney had been even remotely competent. They weren’t and, as a result, the people of this country, collectively, made history.

And Obama is in exactly the same position I was in in 1973 when I walked into my first class at UMKC. If I did well, I opened the door for other clients of Renaissance West. If I did poorly, I slammed that door in their faces. It was that simple.

Obama is what? 48 years old? I was only 25 and I recognized the fact people who I might never meet but who might attempt to follow me from Rennis to college could be adversely affected by my actions.
Doesn’t Obama realize the plain reality that, if he keeps flip-flopping, reneging on his promises, alienating the people who elected him, screwing up generally, he will close the door of the Oval Office to any person who follows him who is not a White Male?
xxx
Update:
OK. Maybe it's not so bad.
I know I'm flip-flopping myself—in fact, I'm starting to experience whiplash.

Today I saw a clip of Obama's press release during which he said he will fight the publishing of the torture photos. I hadn't, before, heard the argument that releasing them might hamper future investigations of the torture and the people who instigated it as well as those who carried it out.

OK, then. That's an argument I can understand and believe in. If they might drive the whistle blowers back into the closet—keep the pics close to your vest. So long as the reason for withholding them isn't to keep the torture as secret as it still can be kept, I'm OK with that.

I just wish he had thought this argument through before he made the initial announcement that he would release them. If he keeps doing these switch-backs he'll do neither the nation nor himself any good.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm—
Tonight I received an email from the **ahem** “Change.gov” website asking for my thoughts regarding health care.

I had just finished writing the post below and was sitting here contemplating setting my hair on fire.
And, I had a thought [a dangerous undertaking, I know, but I’m used to working without a net]:
So, I went to the url included in my email, found the contact button and gave them a piece of my mind about the refusal to release the torture photos. I told them that, while health care is an important issue, it pales in comparison to transparent government—especially in light of what Obama promised while on the campaign trail. And I used the “if they’re not likely to listen to reason, give em shame” tactic. I compared his administration to Bush/Cheney.

So—I’m asking anyone who reads this: Please go to this website and yell at them about the torture photos. And urge others to, as well. If O & Co. get enough of these change-the-subject messages, they just might sit up and take notice. It’s worth a shot, anyway.
xxxxx
Rethinking—
It is just slightly possible that this is more of the same scenario I postulated on 4/21:
Back then, Obama stepped on the Justice Department's toes. And roused a protest from Holder.

Today, he stepped on the toes of the 2nd court of appeals that, in fact, just came out with the exact opposite opinion of what Obama was saying today.

So maybe, just maybe, this is all a political game. Maybe, if he steps on enough toes and gooses enough departments and branches of government, someone somewhere will grab the ball and run with it and Obama can look like the helpless bystander.

I know. I'm reaching again.
But, he gave me hope last year and I'm loath to let go of it—at least, not yet.

Turley Said It Best

Today, Obama repealed his own policy.
No more transparency—even if it has to do with crimes committed by the previous administration.
Obama has flip-flopped on releasing the pictures of torture. You know, the pictures he promised to make public on May 28? Those pictures.

There is speculation that Obama’s administration fears the pictures will be associated with it instead of the people who actually authorized the torture. WTF? Do they truly think that?
I can tell them right now—just in case they’re wondering: The people who already hate them. The ones who call him a socialist. The ones who are still demanding to see his birth certificate. The ones who hope he [and thereby, the country] fails. Those people will say, “See? We knew Obama tortured! We knew everybody does it!” But, no one else will.

On the other hand, those of us who used to think he was on the right track, those of us who believed him when he talked about transparency, those of us who are not among the 12% of the population who identify as Republicans, are deeply, deeply disappointed. And we’re heading toward rage.

So, here we go yet further down the slippery slope:
He asked Rick Warren, a gay-bashing-bigot, to pray at his inauguration.
He has maintained Bush’s policies in regard to “Faith Based Initiatives”—even down to allowing discriminatory hiring and proselytizing before dishing out the soup and handing over the cot.
He hasn’t repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, as he had promised. Gays continue to have their military careers ruined.
And he talks out of both sides of his neck when it comes to torture.

Tonight, on Rachel Maddow, Jonathon Turley, a law professor at George Washington University said, “It’s perfectly Orwellian.”
And, “What the president said today is diametrically against the Federal law.”
And, “If he succeeds, instead of having a transparent government, he would create this opaque government where you could virtually see nothing. The government could say, ‘This is going to be embarrassing. So, whatever is embarrassing to us injures national security.’”
And, “It’s just more evidence that this administration is becoming the greatest bait-and-switch in history. He is morphing into his predecessor.”

Rachel asked if these hundreds of new pictures suggest that there was an overall pattern that obviously reaches much higher than the ‘few rogue operators’ as both administrations have labeled them—and if that is the case, the whole thing will have to be investigated. And THAT is what Obama does not want to do. Turley agreed that that is exactly how this whole charade is beginning to appear.

The ACLU said it for me: When these photos come to light, “the outrage will focus not only on the Bush administration but on the Obama administration’s complicity in covering them up.”

Remember how much worse Watergate became after the cover-up started? Apparently, Obama doesn’t remember that little history lesson. And we all know what they say about those who forget history.
xxx
There is one [as Rachel would say] “teeny, tiny, tinee, teeeeeneee” little sliver of hope here.

Turley came up with virtually the same idea that I wrote about on April 21: that Obama is secretly hoping that he will be forced to release the photos—but that, for political reasons, he can’t just do it.

That COULD be the case, of course, but the more he plays these political games, the worse he looks to us hicks out in the sticks. To my mind, he’s choosing to mollify the wrong people.
Really, Obama, Cheney and Rush can't be any nastier to you than they're already being. Remember who put you where you are. Quit appeasing the criminals and start paying attention to the rest of us—or risk losing your head three-and-a-half years from now.

WTF???
As I’ve moaned about before, I’m appalled that Obama wants to “move on” from torture.

I watched McSame last Sunday—on Face the Nation, I think—saying, “We shouldn’t do it again. We won’t do it again.”
Then he accused Democrats of playing politics with torture.

I saw Newt on some other show saying, “I think this is something we shouldn’t do,” while saying he doesn’t know if waterboarding is torture or not.

I’ve listened to Pelosi when she said: “I didn’t know about the waterboarding.”

And, Monday night, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who is on the Select Committee on Intelligence, kept telling Rachel, “As soon as I found out what happened. . . ,” “We don’t yet have all the facts. . . ,” and, “The memos were offensive.”
+++
Other than Pelosi [how could she not have known? _I_ knew!] the Democrats are being somewhat more skilled in their dancing around the issue.

But, the fact remains, they’re dancing. In some ways they remind me of the “danse macabre” of the middle ages. And the denials throughout Europe [and here] after World War II.

Keep dancing, politicos. I’ll keep taking notes and keeping score. And, come November, 2012, I’ll remember. So will lots and lots of other people. You remember that.

Our Wiley President

Rachel made my day, tonight.
She led off her show with an update about the torture and Obama’s statements that he would not prosecute the CIA operatives who “were just following orders.” Does that ring a bell? Remember Nuremberg?
But I digress.
Rachel actually brought us some good news.
Obama may SAY he doesn’t intend to go after the CIA agents. Rahm Emmanuel may go on This Week With George Stephanopoulos and say the White House has no plans to pursue the people who wrote the memos or the people who told the lawyers to find them some legal loopholes so they could play schoolyard bully with people who were tied up and tied down and couldn’t fight back.
Obama and Emmanuel can say whatever they want to say and they can say it till they turn blue. It makes no nevermind. It’s not their decision to make.

**sssshhhhhhhhh!** Don’t tell Obama, but it’s the Department of Justice that determines what laws were broken and who to prosecute and who not to prosecute.
xxx
So, do you want my take on all of this? Well, want it or not, you’re gonna get it. =)
1] Obama, unlike his predecessor, is a very smart man.
2] I’ll bet money he knows all about the separation of powers within our government. I betcha he knows full well he doesn’t get to decide what crimes were committed and what will be done about them.
3] I’ll also bet he knows politics well enough to know that nothing will get the supervisor of any department running up a full head of steam faster than somebody else daring to tread on his turf.
4] AND I’ll bet that this is one hell of a sticky wicket for Obama.
He was just about 11 years old when the news was All Watergate All The Time—so he probably didn’t pay a lot of attention while it was going on. But, I’m sure it was dissected in every civics and American history class he took in high school and college.
And he certainly knows that every Democratic President has had hell to pay ever since. Nixon/Watergate was the reason why Ken Starr spent 6 years and $40 million investigating Bill Clinton and finally had to settle for impeaching him for sleeping around. But he HAD to prove the old Republican talking point that, “Everybody does it.”

So, try this on for size:
Obama wants to prosecute. But he can’t SAY he wants to prosecute or he will bring down all kinds of hell on his head and the heads of every Democratic president who follows him for at least the next 40 years.

In fact, if he makes a point of saying he DOESN’T want to prosecute, he might get the Republicans to back off the constant attempts to find dirt in the backgrounds of every Democrat they come in contact with. [fwiw, Clinton wasn’t the first. They tried with Carter. They hounded Tom Eagleton off Mondale’s ticket. And, during his presidential campaign, they hunted for something, anything, on Gore. Not to mention the 'birth certificate' insanity that still haunts Obama himself—although he's smart enough to just ignore it.] It’s enough to convince any viable candidates that they can find lots better stuff to do with their time.

So, Obama, being the smart guy he is, just might have found a way out of the waters that were rising above his head:
By taking prosecution off the table, he steps on the Justice Department’s toes. And Eric Holder rises to the bait saying that HE hasn’t taken prosecution off the table by any means, thankyouverymuch.
Obama is forced to back down and apologize to Holder and his department. [He hasn’t done it yet, but—given the stink Holder is making—I’ll bet he does soon.]
Now, he’s on record as being against the prosecutions. He, and all the Dem presidents of the next half century, are off the hook.
And the prosecutions are more likely to move forward than they were before Obama stepped on Holder’s toes.
xxx
OK, yes, I’m reaching just a bit, here.
I WANT this nefarious scenario to be true. I want an excuse to vote for Obama four years from now.
Still, given the convoluted state of Washington, it COULD be true, couldn’t it?

Now We Know
It’s official. We now know what the torturers did in our name. I, for one, can’t live with what I know. I just can’t.

I’m not sure where to go from here with this post. What can I say?

People were deprived of sleep.

People were slapped.

People had their heads banged into walls.

People were manacled in body-cramping positions for hours on end.

People had their faces “walled”. I’m not sure what “walling” is—but I can guess.

People were locked in boxes filled with insects.

People were deprived of food. Physicians were on tap to advise the torturers about how few calories people could be given for extended periods before they starved to death.

People were kept in very cold conditions. If they covered themselves with their prayer rugs, the rugs were taken away. The justification? They were being ‘uncooperative’.

Waterboarding was justified by saying that we didn’t mean to harm people. We proved it by having a doctor in attendance while it was going on. Scratch that. We had medical personnel available.
What does ‘medical personnel’ mean?
What does ‘available’ mean?
And why does that matter?

If you watched Rachel last night you were treated to a demonstration of just what waterboarding is.
I wanted to turn away. I forced myself to watch. After all, this was done in my name. It was done to ‘make me safe.’

I don't feel safe.
xxx
And, yesterday, Obama said, "We must move forward."

What he is really saying is this:
We must not prosecute the people who did this in our names.
We must set a precedent so that any future president or CIA director can, without fear, disappear anyone s/he wishes to take off the street. Any president can lock people up indefinitely without access to counsel. Any president can dispense with Habeas Corpus whenever it becomes inconvenient to uphold. Any future president can order the torture of human beings without fear of prosecution.
Any president [including this one] can choose not to 'preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States' if it is inconvenient to do so.
Any president can simply refuse to honor his oath of office as it benefits him personally or politically.

So, I ask you: Do you feel safe?

Today, I sent an email to President Obama. I hope enough of these are sent so as to catch the attention of his staff and they get brought to his attention.

Since a groundswell of small donations got him into office—I hope a groundswell of angry voices will wake him up to the disastrous mistake he is making.
xxx
The defense, 'I was just following orders' didn't work in Nuremberg. Why should it be allowed here?
And, what about holding accountable the people who gave the orders? And the people who drafted the memos giving the people who authorized torture the justification for their orders?

If the President refuses to take action against torture-- thereby giving precedent to the presidents who follow him --I will find it necessary to donate as much money as I can to any Democrat who challenges him in his next primary. I will campaign for him or her, as well.

If Mr. Obama secures the nomination, I will be compelled to vote for a Republican president for the first time in my life.
After all, if Mr. Obama does not appoint a special prosecutor and throw his full weight behind this matter---- what is the difference?

Heard on Rachel Maddow:
Susan Crawford, the convening authority for the U.S. military commissions and a life-long Republican, said that Mohammed al-Qahtani was tortured. Al-Qahtani was hospitalized twice. On at least one occasion, his heart rate dropped to 35 beats per minute.
Judge Crawford further stated that this situation has "tainted everything going forward."

So now, IF this man is guilty, well, it's just too bad. He cannot be prosecuted.

Even a lawyer whose job it was to prosecute one of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has stated that the evidence against many if not all of them is so disorganized that fair prosecutions may be impossible. He is now calling for the release of the man he was scheduled to prosecute.

Of course, we've been hearing for years that many, many of these prisoners were not guilty and our government knew it.

Sen. Jim Webb [Va-DINO] came out as an apologist for the White House saying things like, "We need to look forward" and quoted McCain [of all people] on the matter. He also used the same words the White House spin-doctor-- excuse me --press secretary did, "These techniques were not used as a matter of policy."

Then he dropped off-thread and started talking about Pakistan instead.
^^^
So, a Republican judge called the White House out on the matter of torture.
And a Democratic [?] senator gave them a pass.

A couple of Sites to check out.

Go here and check out June 10's post [especially the 2nd pic] for your morning laugh.
xxx
Dan Froomkin of The Washington Post weighs in on such matters as the White House's "Self Examination" [yeah, right]; the relationship between Rove and Abramoff [remember him?] and the White House's relationship with Abramoff, as well; torture matters; the rush to war; the refusal of Iraq to accept certain conditions demanded by BushCo due to, as Iraqi officials put it, the fact that the biggest obstacle to Iraq's progress being those US policies; the Senate's latest inquiry into illegalities in the White House and the economy.
Here's the link.