January 30, 2005
SUPPLEMENT
Views on Rice and Gonzales Confirmations to Secretary of State and Attorney
General
Views
on Alberto Gonzales, Nominee for Attorney General
• Abu Ghraib Result of Bush / Gonzales Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions -
Jennifer Van Bergen, CounterPunch
• Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights Letter to Congress
• Tortured
Defense -
Dennis Roddy, Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh)
• Senator Russ Feingold
on the Alberto Gonzales Nomination
Views
on Condoleezza Rice, Confirmed as new Secretary of State
• Rice
Arrives Just in Time to Oversee U.S. Decline -
www.blackcommentator.com, January 27, 2005
• Robert
Byrd On the Rice Nomination: “Standing for the Founding Principles
of the Republic”
Abu Ghraib Result of Bush / Gonzales Decision to Ignore Geneva Conventions
- Jennifer Van Bergen, CounterPunch -
A preliminary draft of a soon-to-be published scholarly legal article written by a former military officer who currently presides in a U.S. federal court concludes that the Abu Ghraib prison abuses were the reasonably foreseeable results of a decision by President Bush to ignore the mandates of the Geneva Conventions relating to prisoners of war.
On January 18, 2002, according to the author, Evan J. Wallach, Judge in the U.S. Court of International Trade, President Bush apparently “made a presidential decision that captured members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban were unprotected by the Geneva POW Convention.” This decision has never been released by the White House but was referenced in a January 25, 2002 memo by Alberto Gonzales which is currently the subject of much controversy. Gonzales, presently White House counsel, was nominated by Bush to the position of Attorney General after John Ashcroft submitted his resignation. The Gonzales Memo called the Geneva Conventions outdated and quaint and suggested the means by which the White House could avoid applying them.
The United States signed and ratified the Geneva Conventions in 1956. In 1996, Congress passed the War Crimes Act, criminalizing breaches of the Conventions. A “grave breach” of Geneva is a federal crime, punishable by imprisonment “for life or any term of years,” and Geneva explicitly states that no nation “bound by the Convention can offer any valid pretext, legal or other, for not respecting the Convention in all its parts.”
Bush apparently based his decision not to apply Geneva on an earlier memo written by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and Special Counsel Robert J. Delahunty, which provided the analytical basis for all that followed regarding blanket rejection of the Conventions. The day after Bush’s presidential decision, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued an order stipulating that “Al Quaeda (sic) and Taliban individuals . . . are not entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.” The order, according to Judge Wallach, “gives commanders permission to depart, where they deem it appropriate and a military necessity, from the provisions of the Geneva Convention.”
Following the Yoo/Delahunty memo and Rumsfeld order came the Gonzales memo detailing the legal arguments that could be used to support Bush’s decision and Rumsfeld’s order. Subsequently, Attorney General John Ashcroft wrote a letter to Bush that “strongly indicates the administration’s consideration of conduct which might violate” Geneva, according to Wallach.
Additionally, Wallach concludes that the military tribunals, ordered by Bush on November 13, 2001, “were promulgated and retained with the specific intention of admitting evidence obtained through means which would require their exclusion under the Federal Rules of Evidence and applicable constitutional authority which prohibits or limits the use of illegally obtained evidence.”
Charles B. Gittings, founder of the Project to Enforce the Geneva Conventions (PEGC), has repeatedly stated in remarks on PEGC’s website and in his several court filings, as pro se amicus, that the Bush Administration is engaged in a criminal conspiracy to subvert the Geneva Conventions and violate federal criminal laws. While Judge Wallach does not say so, his important and excruciatingly well-researched and detailed draft article -- although only his preliminary draft -- clearly supports Gittings’ conclusions.
A special prosecutor should be called to investigate this question. If our President has engaged in willful evasion or subversion of the law, impeachment proceedings should be called for.
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Alberto Gonzales' Nomination to Attorney General
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Letter to Congress
Voice of Revolution is reprinting the following November 29, 2004 letter from the Leaderhsip Council on Cvil Rights, sent to both Orrin G. Hatch, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Patrick L. Leahy, Ranking Member of the Committee. Significantly, the letter is signed by individuals representing a diverse group of social, political, legal, religious and labor organizations who are taking their stand to defend civil rights. This reflects the broadening opposition to the elimination of rule of law, with Alberto Gonzales is a chief architect. The message of appointing such a wrecker of rule of law to the position of Attorney General of the U.S. Government is clear, and signals a complete unleashing of government attacks on all democratic norms fought for by the people in their struggle to affirm their rights and the rights of all.
* * *
Dear Chairman Hatch and Ranking Member Leahy:
On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we write to you regarding the nomination of White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to the position of Attorney General of the United States. The Attorney General is the nation's chief law enforcement official, with responsibility for enforcing federal law on behalf of all persons under the Constitution. We strongly believe that this appointment is one of the most important that any president can make, and that your constitutionally mandated review of Mr. Gonzales' nomination is especially important.
We believe that every candidate for such an important office must be carefully evaluated on the basis of his or her entire record, including whether he or she has demonstrated a strong commitment to the protection of civil rights and civil liberties. In these areas, we believe that there are aspects of Mr. Gonzales' record that raise concerns and that must be closely scrutinized by the Judiciary Committee before you and the American people can determine his suitability for the position of Attorney General:
• Mr. Gonzales' role in setting the administration's policy on detention, interrogation, and torture. As White House Counsel, Mr. Gonzales oversaw the development of policies that were applied for handling prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. He wrote a memo disparaging the Geneva Conventions and arguing that they do not bind the United States in the war in Afghanistan. He was warned by U.S. military leaders that this decision would undermine respect for the law in the military, but he advised the President to reject that advice, with catastrophic results. He requested and reviewed legal opinions that radically altered the definition of torture and claimed U.S. officials were not bound by laws prohibiting torture. Changes made as a result to long-established U.S. policy and practice paved the way for the horrific torture at Abu Ghraib.
• The administration's failure to disclose a number of critical documents that could show the extent of Mr. Gonzales's involvement in setting policy requiring or encouraging the Defense Department and the CIA to cast aside laws and practices that would have prevented torture. All of these documents should be disclosed and reviewed by the Committee before the confirmation hearing, and the President should waive any purported claims of privilege for these documents. The Committee should seek clear and specific assurances from Mr. Gonzales that as Attorney General he will uphold and enforce across the U.S. government the Geneva Conventions and the absolute legal prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
• Mr. Gonzales' role in the formulation of administration policies that undermine checks and balances safeguarding basic rights. Mr. Gonzales also played a critical role in shaping the administration's core legal theory in the struggle against terrorism, which has been to place individuals beyond the reach of the law by declaring them "enemy combatants" and holding them indefinitely without charge in incommunicado military detention. Rather than respect the vital importance of judicial review in ensuring that the government operates within the bounds of the law, the administration has sought unfettered executive authority to deprive persons of their liberty without due process of law. Mr. Gonzales publicly argued that the authority of the President to detain enemy combatants was constrained not so much by the rule of law but "as a matter of prudence and policy" -- a radical view that was eventually rejected by an 8-1 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court. The administration's quest for expanded powers of detention and surveillance in measures ranging from the Patriot Act to its misuse of immigration laws to eviscerate the basic rights of non-citizens reflects this same effort to eliminate checks and balances. The Judiciary Committee should seek a firm and precise commitment from Mr. Gonzales that, if confirmed, he would respect the time-honored and vital role of courts in our democracy by reversing policies that attempt to undermine judicial review of executive action.
Similarly, Mr. Gonzales should be asked about his role as legal counsel to then-Governor Bush. Published reports indicate that Gonzales drafted legal summaries in clemency cases and briefed the Governor in a manner wholly inadequate to determine fairly whether the death penalty was the appropriate punishment, whether the condemned prisoner had received a fair trial, or even whether the prisoner was actually innocent.
• Mr. Gonzales' involvement in shaping the overall civil rights record of the administration. As many of us have previously stated, this administration's record on civil rights has been weak and ineffective. In limiting both the number and nature of civil rights cases, the Justice Department has failed to use its full enforcement powers to break down existing barriers to equality. Particular areas of concern include, but are not limited to, voting rights, racial profiling, weakened enforcement of sex discrimination laws, and police misconduct issues. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently posted on its website a draft report on the administration's record on civil rights. The 166-page report shows that the administration has done little to advance the civil rights of a number of disadvantaged groups across a host of issue areas. It is vital that the Committee determine Mr. Gonzales' level of involvement in formulating administration policy on the civil rights issues raised in this extremely troubling report and elsewhere. The Committee should ascertain whether, as Attorney General, Mr. Gonzales would ensure that the Department of Justice upholds its vital role as the nation's chief law enforcement entity by fully and vigorously enforcing our nation's civil rights laws. In addition to closely examining Mr. Gonzales' own record, we believe that the Committee must also, given the troubling record of outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft, determine whether and to what extent Mr. Gonzales plans to continue the policies adopted by Mr. Ashcroft on important matters of civil rights and civil liberties. For example, we urge the Committee to carefully consider whether Mr. Gonzales would support the continuation of harsh and ineffective anti-immigrant policies imposed in recent years that deny due process and infringe on the basic rights against detention without charge. The Committee should also determine whether Mr. Gonzales shares Mr. Ashcroft's extremist view -- most recently expressed in comments made before the Federalist Society -- that federal judges "can put at risk the very security of our nation" simply by exercising their responsibility to review the constitutional limits of administrative powers in the campaign against terrorism.
Nowhere is the Senate's "advise and consent" role in the review of a presidential cabinet appointment more important than in the case of Attorney General. As each Senator examines his or her conscience for the appropriate course of action, we strongly urge that you engage in a searching and thorough review of Mr. Gonzales' record, his positions, and his future plans for the Justice Department. We call upon the Judiciary Committee to begin full and fair hearings that must include the voices of individuals who will look to the next Attorney General for equal protection under law for all people.
Thank you for your consideration. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact LCCR Deputy Director Nancy Zirkin at (202) 263-2880, or LCCR Policy Analyst Rob Randhava at (202) 466-6058. We look forward to working with you.
Sincerely,
Wade Henderson, Executive Director
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
Mark D. Agrast, Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy
Center for American Progress
Barbara Arnwine, Executive Director
Lawyers' Committee For Civil Rights Under Law
Nan Aron, President
Alliance for Justice
Marsha Atkind, President
National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)
Charles J. Brown, President and CEO
Citizens for Global Solutions
Judith A. Browne, Acting Co-Director
Advancement Project
Rev. Dr. Bob Edgar, General Secretary
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA
Tom Gerety, Executive Director and Brennan Center Professor
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law
Marcia Greenberger, Co-President
National Women's Law Center
Morton H. Halperin, Director
Open Society Policy Center
Todd Howland, Executive Director
RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights
Louise Kantrow, Executive Director
International League for Human Rights
William J. Klinefelter, Assistant to the President, Legislative
and Political Director
United Steelworkers of America
Gay McDougall, Executive Director
Global Rights-Partners for Justice
Karen Narasaki, President and Executive Director
National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC)
Ralph G. Neas, President
People for the American Way
Cesar A. Perales, President and General Counsel
Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund
Hon. Mary Rose Oakar, President
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
Michael Posner, Executive Director
Human Rights First
Kathy Rodgers, President
Legal Momentum (the new name of NOW Legal Defense & Education Fund)
Anthony Romero, Executive Director
American Civil Liberties Union
Kenneth Roth, Executive Director
Human Rights Watch
Leonard S. Rubenstein, Executive Director
Physicians for Human Rights
Diann Rust-Tierney, Executive Director
National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
William Samuel, Legislative Director
AFL-CIO
William Schulz, Executive Director
Amnesty International USA
Hilary Shelton, Washington Bureau Director
NAACP
Rev. William G. Sinkford, President
Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations
Andrew L. Stern, International President
Service Employees International Union (SEIU)
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- Dennis Roddy, Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh) -
The scandal surrounding Abu Ghraib has less to do with soldiers abusing prisoners, or the fact that the higher-ups transparently responsible will get away, than with the astonishing lack of indignation at the defense arguments.
Presented with photographs of Army Spc. Charles Graner giving a thumbs-up over a pile of naked and humiliated Iraqis, and another of Pfc. Lynndie England walking a naked prisoner on a leash, Graner's lawyer, former Marine and onetime deputy federal prosecutor Guy Womack, reached into the sump pump of rhetoric and produced these explanations.
About those pyramids of skin: "Cheerleaders all across America form human pyramids."
About that picture of England walking her pet Iraqi: "You've probably seen parents with their children on a tether in a mall or at the airport so they don't get away. It's a control technique. It's not abuse."
I have attended cheerleading contests and have seen children appended to tethers in shopping malls. In neither case was nudity observable and it's a thin bet that any of the family albums in which these folks were recorded include people giving a thumbs-up next to a corpse on ice, nor would their videotape collections include footage of bound men being forced to masturbate for the entertainment of onlookers.
This sort of evidence was sufficient to convict Graner, who on Friday was found guilty on all counts by a military jury. But the absence of widespread amazement at his defense lawyer's logic, the seeming acceptance that there was some sort of defense to mount, leaves one worried about the moral future of his nation.
Sexual humiliation is a form of entertainment as old as pagan Rome, and dismissing it as an act analogous to cheerleading contests and child-rearing probably reaches about as deeply into the dysfunction of the national psyche as a probe can go without poking out on the far side.
It would have required that these captors dress in the garb of Centurions and their captives to wail in Aramaic for people in this nation to finally understand what we have become: an occupying power whose agents conduct themselves with the arrogance of Imperial Rome, to whom a captive was little more than an available source of labor or, absent that, amusement.
But the airy dismissal Womack offered for these images speaks less to Graner's attitude than what Womack doubtless reads to be the current American capacity for accepting the suffering of others as a matter of course. The day after one prisoner described being forced to consume pork and alcohol -- a sort of assault on the Muslim soul -- a radio talk show host groaned and mocked the idea that the man had been put through anything worse than one might expect from the headwaiter at a particularly snooty restaurant. Americans have reached the point of becoming insensate to what they do to others and, by extension, to themselves.
Consider that the current nominee for attorney general is on record before the Senate Judiciary Committee as personally opposing the use of torture. This assurance, which would have been jarring at best in any other era, was offered because the current nominee has been tied to a memorandum that seemed to allow the use of torture.
When it becomes necessary to get a future attorney general to clarify his position on the use of techniques once thought largely the province of horror movies and obscure dictators, one must wonder if Guy Womack hasn't figured out a plausible defense for his torturing client, or at the very least, shares a level of delusion current with the bulk of his fellow citizens.
Following an especially damning videotaped testimony by a Syrian who crossed into Iraq to fight for the insurgency, Womack professed to be pleased. The prisoner, Ameen Said Al-Sheikh, testified that Graner had beaten him on his legs after both of them had been broken in an armed escape attempt.
"That was very helpful testimony," Womack said. "It's the face of the enemy and it's very clear he hates America."That a man tortured in custody hates the nation of his captors seems to come as a surprise only to Americans.
It is not enough for public officials to state that they oppose torture and are shocked to find it being practiced by men and women they govern. It is necessary to diagnose the flaw in the culture that transformed torture, sexual humiliation and thuggery into administrative tools for American jailers. Two of the men brought before courts-martial for the Abu Ghraib torture, Ivan Frederick and Graner, were employed as prison guards in civilian life.
One witness at Graner's court-martial, Sgt. Joseph Darby, testified about the time Graner showed him a photograph of a naked detainee, handcuffed to a cell with his arms raised and a puddle at his feet.
"The Christian in me says this is wrong," Darby recalled Graner saying. "But the corrections officer in me can't help making a grown man piss himself."
The states of Pennsylvania and Virginia have yet to announce investigations into whether Graner or Frederick might have drawn on anything they learned within their correctional systems. That Graner was a guard at the State Correctional Institution in Greene County, home to the commonwealth's most hardened prisoners, should give rise to a legislative inquiry into whether it is also home to its most hardened correctional officers.
But the truth is that our culture expects our prisons to be horrible places and our impulse is to treat malefactors horribly.
That we object strenuously when our own are treated horribly in return is a prime symptom of the imperial flaw. In a Roman household, when a slave killed a free citizen, all that household's slaves were put to death. But after 240 A.D., some progress was made. They weren't allowed to torture them anymore. The Romans obeyed their own laws. Perhaps progress can be expected here as well.
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Senator Russ Feingold on the Alberto Gonzales Nomination
Below are excerpts from the Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold at the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General of the United States. The full statement can be found at Senator Feingold’s website, www.feingold.senate.gov.
* * *
The Attorney General of the United States is the nation's chief law enforcement officer. The holder of that office must have an abiding respect for the rule of law. A formative experience for me, and for many of my generation, was the Watergate scandal, and particularly the Saturday Night Massacre on October 20, 1973. On that night, Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus both resigned from office rather than carry out President Nixon's order to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox. Those acts of courage remain for me a shining example of the role that the Attorney General plays in our government. They give me the unshakeable conviction that his or her ultimate allegiance must be to the rule of law, not to the President. [...]
The response of the Administration to the September 11th attacks and the launch of the war on terrorism have brought some very difficult legal issues to his desk. Some of these issues touch on the very core of our national identity. What kind of nation are we going to be during times of war? How will we treat those we capture on the battlefield? How will we live up to our international treaty obligations as we wage this war?
Time after time, Judge Gonzales has been a key participant in developing secret legal theories to justify policies that, as they have become public, have tarnished our nation's international reputation and made it harder, not easier, for us to prevail in this struggle. He requested and then disseminated the infamous Office of Legal Counsel ("OLC") memo that for almost two years, until it was revealed and discredited, made it the position of the government of the United States of America that the International Convention Against Torture, and statutes implementing that treaty, prohibit only causing physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Under that standard, the images from Abu Ghraib that revolted the entire world would not be considered torture, nor, according to some, would the shocking interrogation technique called "waterboarding."
Judge Gonzales advised the President that he could declare the entire legal regime of the Geneva Conventions inapplicable to the conflict in Afghanistan. Secretary of State Powell rightly pointed out the danger of this course, but Judge Gonzales persisted. This theory could actually have given greater legal protection to terrorists, by taking away a key part of the legal regime under which war crimes can be prosecuted. The idea that the Geneva Conventions protect terrorists who commit war crimes, which Judge Gonzales repeated in his hearing, is a dramatic misunderstanding of the law, and it was very troubling to hear it from the person who would coordinate our legal strategy in the war on terrorism.
Judge Gonzales was also an architect of the Administration's position on the legal status of those it called "enemy combatants," a position that was soundly rejected by the Supreme Court of the United States last year. [...]
Judge Gonzales's appearance before the Committee was deeply disappointing. When given the opportunity under oath to show that he would be adequately committed to the rule of law as our nation's chief law enforcement officer, he failed to do so. He indicated that the infamous OLC torture memo is no longer operative, but that he does not disagree with the conclusions expressed in it. He reiterated erroneous interpretations of the effect that applying the Geneva Conventions to the war on Afghanistan would have on the treatment of members of Al Qaeda captured in combat. Most disturbingly, he refused time after time to repudiate the most far-reaching and significant conclusion of the OLC memo - that the President has the authority as Commander-in-Chief to immunize those acting at his direction from the application of U.S. law.
This failure goes directly to the question of his commitment to the rule of law. Under our system of government, the Attorney General of the United States may be called upon to investigate and even prosecute the President. We cannot have a person heading the United States Department of Justice who believes that the President is above the law. I and other members of the Committee questioned Judge Gonzales closely about this issue. He hid behind an aversion to hypothetical questions, he conjured up his own hypothetical scenarios of unconstitutional statutes, but he simply refused to say, without equivocation, that the President is not above the law.
On the torture issue in particular, Judge Gonzales repeatedly told us that he opposes torture and that the President has never authorized torture. Thus, he indicated, the question of whether the President acting as Commander in Chief can authorize torture has never and will never come up. I certainly hope that we can rely on those assurances, but the Founders of this nation designed a system where even the President is bound by our laws - precisely so that we wouldn't have to rely on trust alone that the President will act in accordance with them. I think this Committee, and the American people, deserved to hear whether the next Attorney General agrees that the President has the power to disobey laws as fundamental to our national character as the prohibition on torture. Judge Gonzales refused to address this question unequivocally, and that left me deeply troubled.
Mr. Chairman, Judge Gonzales has a compelling personal story, and many fine qualities as a lawyer. If he is confirmed by the Senate, there are many issues on which I hope we can work together for the good of the country. But I cannot support his nomination. Not because he is too conservative, or because I disagree with a specific policy position he has taken, but because I am not convinced that he possesses the abiding respect for the rule of law that our country needs in these difficult times in its Attorney General. I will vote No.
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Rice Arrives Just in Time to Oversee U.S. Decline
- www.blackcommentator.com, January 27, 2005 -
The first Black female U.S. Secretary of State will inevitably preside over a general and dramatic decline in American influence in the world, a process that accelerates with each passing week. So bizarre is American behavior -- so disconnected from objective facts and from international conversation and evolving human standards of conduct--that Condoleezza Rice cannot escape becoming a caricature of diplomacy.
The Bush Pirates rolled their dice in Iraq in the Spring of 2003 -- and came up snake eyes. Even elements of the U.S. corporate media see the handwriting on the historical wall: utter defeat for the neo-con project in Iraq, and descent into terminal isolation for the superpower. The war is all but lost, according to a study released by Knight Ridder Newspapers on January 23:
"The United States is steadily losing ground to the Iraqi insurgency, according to every key military yardstick. …
"The analysis suggests that unless something dramatic changes -- such as a newfound will by Iraqis to reject the insurgency or a large escalation of U.S. troop strength -- the United States won't win the war."
The Americans never wanted to hold elections in Iraq, but ran out of political wiggle room when Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani last year threatened to bring a million of the faithful into the streets of Baghdad and Basra. However, as the excellent Pepe Escobar, of AsiaTimes, reported on January 27, this weekend's "elections" are possibly the most farcical held in human history. Bush "has introduced to the world the concept of election at gunpoint":
"Of 1 million eligible expatriate voters, only 10% will actually vote. There are no Sunni Arab candidates (in part because the US military killed -- or jailed -- many Sunni party and tribal leaders). For any Iraqi in Jordan, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Turkey, it will be impossible to cross the border and vote: borders will be closed for three days. Inside Iraq there will be curfews - and even traffic will be blocked. Half of all candidates have already withdrawn. And there will be no international monitors. As the names of the roughly 7,700 candidates on 80 party coalition lists are still unknown on the eve of polling day, no wonder the word on Baghdad's streets is that `the Americans gave us the first secret elections in history.'"
Elect, then eject U.S.
The Americans dare not deny the Shi'ites their victory. But, as Escobar reported in December, and has been consistently misrepresented by U.S. corporate media, the Ayatollah is no friend of the occupation:
"The United Iraqi Alliance -- the Shi'ite, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani-supervised electoral list (228 candidates) -- has a detailed, 23-point platform. According to its main negotiator, Hussein Shahristani, the platform insists on the `sovereignty, unity and Islamic identity' of Iraq, and most crucially includes a plan with a precise date for the end of the military occupation."
Thus, the Americans have been painted into a corner. Bush insists that U.S. forces will remain in Iraq "as long as it takes," but has been forced to invest every ounce of political capital on elections that, in Escobar's words, may result in the verdict: "First we vote, then we kick you out."
Meanwhile, the world watches as armed-to-the-teeth U.S. troops stand on street corners, handing out election literature in someone else's country, after having flattened Fallujah, a city roughly the size of Newark, New Jersey. Imagine if machinegun-toting Germans had performed similar electoral duties in occupied France, in 1942. Would any civilized observer have considered such a process legitimate? Yet Bush bets that his atrocity will be seen as a light unto the nations -- an amazing measure of the chasm that separates the Pirates from civilization.
Aijaz Ahmad, in a piece for the political journal Frontline, published by The Hindu of India, describes an American mindset that is, in a word, savage:
"The mentality that the Americans brought into their attack on the people of Falluja was well indicated by the marine commanders who said on record that Falluja was a `house of Satan' and those other commanders who told their soldiers to `shoot everything that moves and everything that does not move'; to fire `two bullets in every body'; and to spray every home with machine-gun and tank fire before entering them."
Yet, for all the blood shed by both Iraqis and Americans, the U.S. has suffered a huge net loss in world public opinion, and in the resources that it has sought to steal. The Americans are now more ill-positioned than two years ago, said Mr. Ahmad:
"By contrast, none of the gains the U.S. had sought in Iraq and in the region as a whole has been realized, almost two years after Baghdad fell, seemingly so easily: not the capturing of the Iraqi oil, not the ability to use Iraq as the main military base in the region so as to begin an orderly withdrawal from Saudi Arabia, not the dream of using Iraq as a base for launching attacks against Syria, Iran, Lebanon or whatever. A demonstration of the invincibility of American power has come together with the overwhelming evidence of the limits of American power of the ground. We can now witness an imperial overreach even before they have reached very far."
The Black Commentator said much the same thing on March 20, 2003, as Shock and Awe broke over Iraq. "War is the great and terrible engine of history," we wrote. "Bush and his Pirates hope to employ that engine to harness Time and cheat the laws of political economy, to leapfrog over the contradictions of their parasitical existence into a new epoch of their own imagining. Instead, they have lunged into the abyss, from which no one will extricate them, for they will be hated much more than feared.
"In attempting to break humanity's will to resist, the Bush pirates have reached too far."
Handmaiden to evil
George Bush and his handmaiden, Condoleezza Rice, speak a strange language that is understood only by the denizens of the American bubble. It is a language of aggression, pure and simple -- an American Manifest Destiny that threatens the sovereignty of every other nation on the planet, but pretends to be a liberating force. Bush also delivered an implicit threat to those Americans who resist involvement in his savage crusade: "We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands," said Bush in his inaugural address. "The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Bush men (and woman) are prepared to declare domestic opponents of his imperial policies to be threats to internal American liberties.
In her confirmation hearings, Condoleezza Rice showed herself to be as bellicose as her master. In addition to Syria and Iran, writes Patrick Sale, of the Lebanon-based Daily Star, Rice placed Muslims in general in the cross-hairs. "America and the free world," she declared, "are once again engaged in a long-term struggle against an ideology of hatred and tyranny and terror and hopelessness. And we must confront these challenges ..."
Confrontation, everywhere, including in the south of our own hemisphere. Rice made a special effort to signal aggressive U.S. intentions against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for his "close association" with Fidel Castro. Democratic Connecticut Senator Christopher Dodd reminded Rice that Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva, President of the southern colossus, Brazil, is also on good terms with Castro. He might have also told her that Brazil and other Latin American nations are working furiously to sever their dependency on strangulating U.S. terms of trade, most notably by concluding massive new deals with China; that Venezuela, Brazil, Cuba and Uruguay may soon launch a cooperative news service, so that CNN and other American agencies will no longer pollute their national dialogues; that Brazil, South Africa and India are busily establishing strategic alliances designed to circumvent the North -- especially the United States; that India, China and Russia are struggling to create new poles of power in the world, circles of influence in which the U.S. would be absent.
A bad poker hand
The U.S. invasion and ongoing torture of Iraq put the planet on notice that Washington is a danger to global stability. Not just progressives, but the conservative elites of Europe and Asia, were shocked and awed in ways that the insular Americans did not contemplate. The Financial Times, a spokes-publication for Britain's elite, warns: "Central banks are shifting reserves away from the US and towards the eurozone in a move that looks set to deepen the Bush administration's difficulties in financing its ballooning current account deficit." These financial managers are careful to move away from the dollar incrementally, so as not to plunge the global system into panic -- but the direction is inexorably away from the U.S. currency. As a nation, we are being set up for a deep fall, but the fault lies with the Bush men (and woman), who are playing a kind of poker with the rest of the planet -- one in which the only cards in their hands are military.
The military fiasco in Iraq has shown that these are weak cards, yet the only response from the Bush Pirates is to threaten further aggression in Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba. Ironically, the corporate class that Bush serves is the least "patriotic" of all, ready and eager to abandon the homeland to its economic fate in favor of greener pastures in Asia. Bernie Sanders, the socialist congressman from Vermont, exposed these rich traitors for what they are, in a recent issue of In These Times:
"Amazingly, while the U.S. middle class declines, corporate America is helping make China the economic superpower of the 21st century. Not only is China rapidly becoming the manufacturing center of the world, it is quickly becoming the information technology hub as well. Andy Grove, the founder of Intel, predicted last year that the United States will lose the bulk of its information technology jobs to China and India over the next decade. These are some of the best-paying jobs available.
"And John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, is typical of many corporate leaders when he said: `China will become the IT center of the world, and we can have a healthy discussion about whether that's in 2020 or 2040. What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company.'"
The Bush men (and woman) loot the American treasury and threaten world order in the service of corporations that have already abandoned their U.S. nationality, and now seek to destroy the sovereignty of all other nations. They have initiated a war against…everyone.
Civility cannot long exist where savages rule. In questioning the perennial prevaricator Condoleezza Rice, Minnesota Senator Mark Dayton found it impossible to keep up the pretensions of the upper chamber. "I don't like impugning anyone's integrity, but I really don't like being lied to," Dayton said. "Repeatedly, flagrantly, intentionally."
The entire planet is rejecting blatant American lies and aggression, and actively conspiring to undermine United States military, economic and political domination. This aggression now has a new face -- that of a Black woman. We are saddened at the historical irony, but so be it. Evil comes in all colors.
[TOP]
Robert Byrd On the Rice Nomination: “Standing for the Founding Principles of the Republic”
Below are excerpts of the statement by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia on the Senate floor, opposing the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State. The statement was made Tuesday, January 26, 2005. The Senate confirmed Rice on Wednesday, January 27th on a vote of 85-13. The full statement is available at Senator Byrd’s website, byrd.senate.gov.
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The position of Secretary of State is among the most important offices for which the Constitution requires the advice and consent of the Senate. It is the Secretary of State that sits at the right hand of the President during meetings of the Cabinet. The Secretary of State is all the more important today, considering the enormous diplomatic challenges our country will face in the next four years. [...]
“ I have stood on this Senate floor more times than I can count to defend the prerogatives of this institution and the separate but equal -- with emphasis on the word “equal” -- powers of the three branches of government. A unique power of the Legislative Branch is the Senate’s role in providing advice and consent on the matter of nominations. That power is not vested in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or any other committee; nor does it repose in a handful of Senate leaders. It is not a function of pomp and circumstance, and it was never intended by the Framers to be used to burnish the image of a President on inauguration day.
And yet that is exactly what Senators were
being pressured to do last week -- to
acquiesce mutely to the nomination of one of the most important members of
the President’s Cabinet without the merest hiccup of debate or the smallest
inconvenience of a roll call vote.
And so we are here today to fulfill our constitutional duty to consider the
nomination of Dr. Rice to be Secretary of State. Mr. President, I have carefully
considered Dr. Rice’s record as
National Security Advisor in the two months that have passed since the President announced her nomination to be Secretary of State. That record, I am afraid, is one of intimate involvement in a number of Administration foreign policies which I strongly oppose. These policies have fostered enormous opposition -- both at home and abroad -- to the White House’s view of America’s place in the world.
That view of America is one which encourages our Nation to flex its muscles without being bound by any calls for restraint. The most forceful explanation of this idea can be found in "The National Security Strategy of the United States," a report which was issued by the White House in September 2002. Under this strategy, the President lays claim to an expansive power to use our military to strike other nations first, even if we have not been threatened or provoked.
There is no question that the President has the inherent authority to repel attacks against our country, but this National Security Strategy is unconstitutional on its face. It takes the checks and balances established in the Constitution that limit the President’s ability to use our military at his pleasure, and throws them out the window.
This doctrine of preemptive strikes places the sole decision of war and peace in the hands of the President and undermines the Constitutional power of Congress to declare war. The Founding Fathers required that such an important issue of war be debated by the elected representatives of the people in the Legislative Branch precisely because no single man could be trusted with such an awesome power as bringing a nation to war by his decision alone. And yet, that it exactly what the National Security Strategy proposes.
Not only does this pernicious doctrine of preemptive war contradict the Constitution, it barely acknowledges its existence. The National Security Strategy makes only one passing reference to the Constitution: it states that "America’s constitution" -- that is "constitution" with a small C -- "has served us well." As if the Constitution does not still serve this country well! One might ask if that reference to the Constitution was intended to be a compliment or an obituary?
As National Security Advisor, Dr. Rice was in charge of developing the National Security Strategy. She also spoke out forcefully in support of the dangerous doctrine of preemptive war. In one speech, she argues that there need not be an imminent threat before the United States attacks another nation: "So as a matter of common sense," said Dr. Rice on October 1, 2002, "the United States must be prepared to take action, when necessary, before threats have fully materialized."
But that "matter of common sense" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution. For that matter, isn’t it possible to disagree with this “matter of common sense?” What is common sense to one might not be shared by another. What’s more, matters of common sense can lead people to the wrong conclusions. John Dickinson, the chief author of the Articles of Confederation, said in 1787, “Experience must be our only guide; reason may mislead us.” As for me, I will heed the experience of Founding Fathers, as enshrined in the Constitution, over the reason and “common sense” of the Administration’s National Security Strategy.
We can all agree that the President, any President, has the inherent duty and power to repel an attack on the United States. But where in the Constitution can the President claim the right to strike at another nation before it has even threatened our country, as Dr. Rice asserted in that speech? To put it plainly, Dr. Rice has asserted that the President holds far more of the war power than the Constitution grants him.
This doctrine of attacking countries before a threat has “fully materialized” was put into motion as soon as the National Security Strategy was released. Beginning in September 2002, Dr. Rice also took a position on the front lines of the Administration’s effort to hype the danger of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.
Dr. Rice is responsible for some of the most overblown rhetoric that the Administration used to scare the American people into believing that there was an imminent threat from Iraq. On September 8, 2002, Dr. Rice conjured visions of American cities being consumed by mushroom clouds. On an appearance on CNN, she warned: “The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he [Saddam] can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Dr. Rice also claimed that she had conclusive evidence about Iraq’s alleged nuclear weapons program. During that same interview, she also said: “We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that are really only suited for nuclear weapons programs.”
We now know that Iraq’s nuclear program was a fiction. Charles Duelfer, the chief arms inspector of the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group, reported on September 30, 2004: ‘Saddam Hussein ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf war. [The Iraq Survey Group] found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.’ [...]
Dr. Rice made other statements that helped to build a case for war by implying a link between Iraq and September 11. On multiple occasions, Dr. Rice spoke about the supposed evidence that Saddam and Al Qaida were in league with each other. For example, on September 25, 2002, Dr. Rice said on the PBS NewsHour:
“No one is trying to make an argument at this point that Saddam Hussein somehow had operational control of what happened on September 11, so we don’t want to push this too far, but this is a story that is unfolding, and it is getting clear, and we’re learning more . But yes, there clearly are contact[s] between Al Qaida and Iraq that can be documented; there clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there is a relationship there.”
What Dr. Rice did not say was that some of those supposed links were being called into question by our intelligence agencies, such as the alleged meeting between a 9-11 ringleader and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague that has now been debunked. These attempts to connect Iraq and Al Qaida appear to be a prime example of cherry-picking intelligence to hype the supposed threat of Iraq, while keeping contrary evidence away from the American people, wrapped up in the red tape of top secret reports. [...]
Dr. Rice’s role in the war against Iraq was not limited to building the case for an unprecedented, preemptive invasion of a country that had not attacked us first. Her role also extends to the Administration’s failed efforts to establish peace in Iraq. In October 2003, five months after he declared "Mission Accomplished," the President created the Iraq Stabilization Group, headed by Dr. Rice. The task of the Iraq Stabilization Group was to coordinate efforts to speed reconstruction aid to help bring the violence in Iraq to an end.
But what has the Iraq Stabilization Group accomplished under the leadership of Dr. Rice? When she took the helm of the stabilization efforts, 319 U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq. That number now stands at 1,368 as of today (Tuesday 1/25). More than 10,600 troops have been wounded. The cost of the war has spiraled to $149 billion, and the White House is on the verge of asking Congress for another $80 billion. Despite the mandate of the Iraq Stabilization Group, the situation in Iraq has gone from bad to worse. More ominously, the level of violence only keeps growing, week after week, month after month, and no Administration official, whether from the White House, the Pentagon, or Foggy Bottom, has made any predictions about when the violence will finally subside.
Furthermore, of the $18.4 billion in Iraqi reconstruction aid appropriated by Congress in October 2003, the Administration has spent only $2.7 billion. With these funds moving so slowly, it is hard to believe that the Iraq Stabilization Group has had any success at all in speeding the reconstruction efforts in Iraq. For all the hue and cry about the need to speed up aid to Iraq, one wonders if there should be more tough questions asked of Dr. Rice about what she has accomplished as the head of this group. [...]
Accountability has become an old-fashioned notion in some circles these days, but accountability is not a negotiable commodity when it comes to the highest circles of our nation’s government. The accountability of government officials is an obligation, not a luxury. And yet, accountability is an obligation that this President and his administration appear loath to fulfill.
Instead of being held to account for their actions, the architects of the policies that led our nation into war with Iraq, policies based on faulty intelligence and phantom weapons of mass destruction, have been rewarded by the President with accolades and promotions. Instead of admitting to mistakes in the war on Iraq and its disastrous aftermath, the President and his inner circle of advisers continue to cling to myths and misconceptions. The only notion of accountability that this President is willing to acknowledge is the November elections, which he has described as a moment of accountability and an endorsement of his policies. Unfortunately, after-the-fact validation of victory is hardly the standard of accountability that the American people have the right to expect from their elected officials. It is one thing to accept responsibility for success; it is quite another to accept accountability for failure.
Sadly, failure has tainted far too many aspects of our nation’s international policies over the past four years, culminating in the deadly insurgency that has resulted from the invasion of Iraq. With respect to this particular nomination, I believe that there needs to be accountability for the mistakes and missteps that have led the United States into the dilemma in which it finds itself today, besieged by increasing violence in Iraq, battling an unprecedented decline in world opinion, and increasingly isolated from our allies due to our provocative, belligerent, bellicose, and unilateralist foreign policy.
Whether the Administration will continue to pursue these policies cannot be known to Senators today, as we prepare to cast our votes. At her confirmation hearing on January 18, Dr. Rice proclaimed that “Our interaction with the rest of the world must be a conversation, not a monologue.” But two days later, President Bush gave an inaugural address that seemed to rattle sabers at any nation that he does not consider to be free. Before Senators cast their vote, we must wonder whether we are casting our lot for more diplomacy or more belligerence? Reconciliation or more confrontation? Which face of this Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde foreign policy will be revealed in the next four years?
Although I do not question her credentials, I do oppose many of the critical decisions that Dr. Rice has made during her four years as National Security Advisor. She has a record, and the record is there for us to judge. There remain too many unanswered questions about Dr. Rice’s failure to protect our country before the tragic attacks of September 11, her public efforts to politicize intelligence, and her often stated allegiance to the doctrine of preemption.
To confirm Dr. Rice to be the next Secretary of State is to say to the American people, and the world, that the answers to those questions are no longer important. Her confirmation will most certainly be viewed as another endorsement of the Administration’s unconstitutional doctrine of preemptive war, its bullying policies of unilateralism, and its callous rejection of our long-standing allies.
The stakes for the United States are too high. I cannot endorse higher responsibilities for those who helped set our great country down the path of increasing isolation, enmity in the world, and a war that has no end. For these reasons, I shall cast my vote in opposition to the confirmation of Condoleezza Rice to be the next Secretary of State.