Busted

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The Associated Press reports that a Swiss lawmaker claims to have evidence that the U.S. is indeed “rendering” detainees outside of any criminal justice system.

A Swiss investigator probing claims of secret CIA prisons in Europe said his committee has evidence that supports allegations that prisoners were transferred between countries and temporarily held “without any judicial involvement.”

“Legal proceedings in progress in certain countries seemed to indicate that individuals had been abducted and transferred to other countries without respect for any legal standards,” lawmaker Dick Marty said in a written report summarizing his investigations so far.

Marty told a news conference he believed the United States was no longer holding prisoners clandestinely in Europe and he believed they were moved to North Africa in early November, when reports about secret U.S. prisons first emerged in The Washington Post. He did not provide any other details.

Stay tuned …

Yellow Weenie Dog Dems

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E.J. Dionne nails it:

The administration’s defenders have enjoyed short-term political success by turning attention away from President Bush’s Iraq policies and toward divisions in the Democratic Party on the subject. The Republicans particularly enjoy assailing Democrats who have called for the rapid withdrawal of American troops. …

… Attacks of this sort on Democrats are effective because Democrats help make them so. Democrats are so obsessed with not looking “weak” on defense that they end up making themselves look weak, period, by the way they respond to Republican attacks on their alleged weakness. Oh my gosh, many Democrats say, we can’t associate ourselves with the likes of Howard Dean or Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader who recently called for a troop withdrawal within six months. Let’s knife them before Karl Rove gets around to knifing us. Talk about a recipe for retreat and defeat.

Especially pathetic when a majority of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is conducted the war.

See also Stephen Pizzo, “Run Away! Run Away!“

Passing Judgment

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Tookie Williams was executed last night, and in the cold dawn light of the next day right-wingers are still dancing around the embers of their victory bonfires. “Shake hands with the devil,” says one. Michelle Malkin, in her role as tribal high priestess, makes righteous note of the names of those Tookie Williams was convicted of murdering. Those who protested the execution are dismissed as “the freak show.”

So Tookie Williams is dead, and the four people he was convicted of murdering remain dead, also. And the world turns, and the seasons change. In the vastness of eternity, big bleeping deal. Whatever path Williams took last night is one we’ll all take eventually. Whether we “deserve” death or not is beside the point.

And this is a point missed by both advocates and protesters of last night’s execution. Opponents of the death penalty make a huge mistake, IMO, by making the issue about what a prisoner might deserve. Will Bunch wrote yesterday about an anti-death penalty “cult of celebrity” that makes poster boys out of “deserving” prisoners like Williams or Mumia Abu-Jamal. These men are considered “deserving” because of their intelligence and accomplishments. Those who argue for sparing them either dismiss their convictions or insist they are better men now and don’t deserve to die for what they did then.

But if we make the argument about who deserves to die, we’re thinking like righties, who arrogantly believe they know who deserves to live or die. Bunch continues,

To truly oppose the death penalty, one must oppose it not just for the innocent or the remorseful, but for the most vile scum among us. The idea of a government taking someone’s life is offensive to our core religious beliefs — and most likely to yours as well. A so-called Christian fundamentalist who supports capital punishment is going through more twists than a South Philly pretzel. Even the Pope — and maybe even Rick Santorum — can get this one right.

From an editorial in today’s Los Angeles Times,

GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER should have granted clemency — to Donald Beardslee, the convicted murderer executed in January. Beardslee didn’t have celebrity advocates making his case, like Stanley Tookie Williams did. But if Schwarzenegger had commuted Beardslee’s sentence to life in prison without parole, he would have made clear that no one would be put to death on his watch. And he could have explained that a civilized society doesn’t kill for retribution and should certainly not continue doing so when it’s become clear that the judicial system’s margin of error is unacceptably high.

Alas, Schwarzenegger failed to stake out that principled position. So Williams, who was scheduled to be executed shortly after midnight, always faced an uphill battle in seeking clemency. The governor turned him down because he does not consider capital punishment to be about our values as a society, but about the merits of the convicted supplicant.

Put another way, executions are not just about what is done to the condemned, but about what is done to us, the executioners.

The death penalty does not deter crime. Nor, I believe, has it been proved reliably to ease the sorrow of those who loved the victim. It only serves to gratify some base instinct that makes us want to cast all aberrations out of the tribe — including the malformed, the odd, the diseased, and anyone else who varies from social and biological norms.

But throughout human history, the great moral and spiritual teachers have urged us to renounce this instinct. If Jesus really said what he is quoted as saying in Matthew chapters 5-7, for example, the rightie tribal dancers need to look to their own souls. “Ye have heard that it was said to men of old, Thou shalt not murder; and whosoever shall murder shall be liable to judgement. But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with His brother without good cause shall be liable to judgement. … Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, that ye resist not the evil one: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. … Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

About five centuries earlier, the Tao Teh Ching warned (verse 74)

People fear death because death is an instrument of fate.
When people are killed by execution rather than by fate,
This is like carving wood in the place of a carpenter.
Those who carve wood in place of a carpenter
Often injure their hands.

Capital punishment is a failure of civilization. It legitimizes violence. It gratifies our worse instincts. It diminishes us as a people.

It’s not something to celebrate.

See also: Lawyers, Guns, and Money; Eschaton; The Talking Dog, R.J. Eskow at Huffington Post.

Update: See the Rude One, too.

Cut and Run

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The London Times reports that UK and US troops are fixin’ to begin a pullout of Iraq at the beginning of 2006.

Richard Beeston and Stephen Farrell in Baghdad and Michael Evans in Basra write,

BRITAIN and America are planning a phased withdrawal of their forces from Iraq as soon as a permanent government is installed in Baghdad after this week’s elections.

In a move that has caused alarm in the outgoing Iraqi administration, American and British officials have made clear that they regard the end of Iraq’s two-and-a-half-year transitional period as the green light to begin withdrawing some of their combined force of around 170,000 troops as early as March. …

…The moves appear to run contrary to statements by President Bush and John Reid, the Defence Secretary, who insist that coalition forces will not “cut and run” and will stay until the mission in Iraq is complete.

Indeed, in his speech today, Bush said,

We are pursuing a comprehensive strategy in Iraq. Our goal is victory. And victory will be achieved when the terrorists and Saddamists can no longer threaten Iraq’s democracy, when the Iraqi security forces can provide for the safety of their own citizens, and when Iraq is not a safe haven for terrorists to plot new attacks against our nation.

… or by the end of 2006, whichever comes first.

BTW, I really liked this part of today’s speech:

I’ve come to discuss an issue that’s really important, and that is victory in the war on terror. And that war started on September the 11th, 2001, when our nation awoke to a sudden attack.

Like generations before us, we have accepted new responsibilities. We’re confronting dangers with new resolve. We’re taking the fight to those who attacked us and to those who share their murderous vision for future attacks.

We will fight this war without wavering, and we’ll prevail.

The war on terror will take many turns, and the enemy must be defeated on every battlefield, from the streets of Western cities, to the mountains of Afghanistan, to the tribal regions of Pakistan, to the islands of Southeast Asia and to the Horn of Africa.

Yet the terrorists have made it clear that Iraq is the central front in their war against humanity.

So we must recognize Iraq as the central front in the war on terror.

That boy’s still tying 9/11 to Iraq. He ain’t givin’ up.

He presented a slightly different angle during the question-and-answer session:

QUESTION: Mr. President, I would like to know why it is that you and others in your administration keep linking 9/11 to the invasion of Iraq when no respected journalists or Middle Eastern expert confirmed that such a link existed.

BUSH: What did she – I missed the question. Sorry.

I beg your pardon. I didn’t hear you. Seriously.

QUESTION: I would like to know why you and others in your administration invoke 9/11 as justification for the invasion of Iraq when no respected journalists or other Middle Eastern experts confirm that such a link existed.

BUSH: Oh, I appreciate that.

9/11 changed my look on foreign policy. I mean, it said that oceans no longer protect us; that we can’t take threats for granted; that if we see a threat, we’ve got to deal with it. It doesn’t have to be militarily necessarily but we got to deal with it. We can’t just hope for the best anymore.

So the first decision I made, as you know, was to deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan because they were harboring terrorists. This is where the terrorists plan and plotted.

And the second decision – which was a very difficult decision for me, by the way, and it’s one that I didn’t take lightly – was that Saddam Hussein was a threat. He is a declared enemy of the United States. He had used weapons of mass destruction. The entire world thought he had weapons of mass destruction. The United Nations had declared in more than 10 – I can’t remember the exact number of resolutions – that disclose or disarm or face serious consequences.

I mean, there was a serious international effort to say to Saddam Hussein: `You’re a threat.’ And the 9/11 attacks accentuated that threat, as far as I’m concerned.

And so we gave Saddam Hussein the chance to disclose or disarm. And he refused.

And I made a tough decision. And knowing what I know today, I’d make the decision again. Removing Saddam Hussein makes this world a better place and America a safer country.

Are we making sense yet?

Follow the Money

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I said even before the invasion that the Iraq War was the mother of all money laundering schemes. Here’s a blog dedicated to proving me right. Cannonfire doesn’t just track down corruption in Iraq; the blogger (Joe Cannon) is pulling together threads like BCCI, Iran-Contra, the CIA, and Duke Cunningham. See this post, for example. Fascinating stuff.

Capital Punishment

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Breaking news: Gov. Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Tookie Williams, which means it’s nearly certain Williams will be executed after midnight.

The ACLU has a useful death penalty FAQ.

According to Amnesty International, “In 2004, 97 per cent of all known executions took place in China, Iran, Viet Nam and the USA.”

Also according to Amnesty International, homicide rates in death penalty states tend to be higher than in non-death penalty states.

I have read arguments that the death penalty encourages violence, because it legitimizes a violent “solution” to problems. I suspect there’s something to that.

See also: Attywood.

Today’s Speech by President Bush

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I missed it. Didn’t know he was giving one today. The li’l booger just snuck right past me and gave a speech without my knowing about it. Well, eventually somebody will post a transcript.

Update: Word is that the theme of today’s Iraq speech was spreading democracy over there so we don’t have to spread it here …

Update: Here’s a transcript of the questions-and-answers section of the speech, which is slightly more interesting than the speech itself.

Also: Dan Froomkin has a follow-up to the Bubble story.

Looking for Love

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Karen Tumulty and Mike Allen write in Time that President Bush is looking for a new groove.

White House strategists believe they have ended the slide in Bush’s approval ratings, which lately have been topping 40% again. “It’s time for the Bush comeback story!” one coached TIME for this article. “The perfect storm has receded. We have better news in Iraq, oil prices are down, and Katrina has kind of fallen off the radar screen in terms of public concern.”

With that last sentence in mind, let’s crash ahead to the next paragraph:

The plan is to make January a critical month in what the President’s aides hope will be a turning-point year. The White House expects a quick victory on Bush’s Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and the State of the Union speech will nod to big goals. But when it comes to fresh and concrete ideas, the list of what Bush will actually try to accomplish in 2006 is so modest that one bewildered Republican adviser calls it “an insult to incrementalism.”

He needs big goals? How about getting out of Iraq, finding alternative fuel sources, and rebuilding New Orleans?

White House advisers tell TIME that the agenda for 2006 is in flux and that senior aide Karl Rove is still cooking up ideas. But the initiatives they have settled on sound more like Clinton’s brand of small-bore governance: computerizing medical records; making it easier for workers to take their health benefits with them when they leave a job and–an idea that captured Bush’s imagination in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina–giving a boost to Catholic and other private schools as an alternative for inner-city children. While Bush still hopes to sign an immigration bill by summer and plans to talk a lot about the subject next year, his program to offer temporary legal status to illegal immigrant workers remains a tough sell with the conservatives in Congress.

I guess a manned Mars landing is off the table.

However improbable the odds at this point or modest his short-term goals, aides say, Bush still subscribes to Rove’s long-held dream that his will be the transformational presidency that lays the groundwork for a Republican majority that can endure, as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition did, for a half-century or more. Once he gets past the midterm elections, Bush plans to introduce a concept that, if anything, is even more ambitious than his failed Social Security plan: a grand overhaul that would include not only that program but Medicare and Medicaid as well.

Well, let’s see — FDR left behind a legacy of programs and accomplishments that enormously improved the standard of living of most Americans. GWB will leave behind a legacy of devastation that will enormously undermine the standard of living of most Americans. Yeah, I see the connection.

If Bush is truly looking for a challenge, I say cleaning up his own messes ought to be Job One. It’s going to be Job One for the next several administrations; might as well get started now.

Bush is not the only politician in America looking for a raison d’être. Ron Fournier writes for the Associated Press that Democrats are trying out campaign themes for ’06 and ’08.

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean has commissioned confidential polling and analysis that suggest candidates in 2006 and 2008 should frame their policies — and attacks on Republicans — around the context of community.

It seems to be the emerging message from a party that has been bereft of one.

Yet “this is not a new theme,” writes Fournier, who needs to make up his mind.

Fournier provides quotes from prominent Democrats. John Edwards:

“There is a hunger in America, a hunger for a sense of national community, a hunger for something big and important and inspirational that they all can be involved in,” Edwards, the party’s 2004 vice presidential nominee, told delegates at a weekend convention of Florida Democrats.

Gov. Tom Vilsack:

“What’s happening in this country is we’re losing our sense of common purpose,” Vilsack told Florida Democrats. “We’re losing a sense of community.” …

… “When we work together, when rely on one another, when we care about one another we remove the fear of sharing,” Vilsack said. “I believe the current administration and its polices is eroding the sense of community. This country’s two great things — the self-reliant individual supported by community — is what made the American dream … possible.”

Sen. Barack Obama:

Equating the GOP agenda for Social Security, public school vouchers and Medicare with “social Darwinsim,” Obama said the key to the nation’s success is striking a balance between individual and collective responsibility.

“It has to do with individuals,” he said, “but it also has to do with community.”

Not bad, but I’d like to see a little more old-time, fire-in-the-belly populism. I think people have grown weary of slogans and empty rhetoric, and they’re going to want to hear specifically and concretely how a Democratic approach to governance will differ from the Republican one.

Meanwhile, the original it-takes-a-village girl, Hillary Clinton, is attempting to tip-toe to the nomination so as not to be caught actually taking a stand anywhere. Dan Balz writes in the Washington Post,

At a time when politicians in both parties have eagerly sought public forums to debate the war in Iraq, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) has kept in the shadows.

Clinton has stayed steadfastly on a centrist path, criticizing President Bush but refusing to embrace the early troop withdrawal options that are gaining rapid favor in her party. …

… Faced with rising pressure to join the intensifying debate over an exit strategy and Bush’s policies, the politician many think will seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2008 chose as her medium a 1,600-word letter outlining her views, recently e-mailed to constituents and supporters.

In the e-mail, Clinton took responsibility for her vote for the 2002 resolution authorizing Bush to go to war, while leaving open whether she would have opposed it, given what is now known about faulty intelligence and mismanagement by the administration. She pummeled Bush for his conduct of the war itself but left murky how long she believes U.S. forces should stay in Iraq. As she told Kentucky Democrats earlier this month, “I reject a rigid timetable that the terrorists can exploit, and I reject an open timetable that has no ending attached to it.”

Pathetic. And pretty much why Democrats lost control of government, in a nutshell.

Bedfellows

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Viveca Novak’s account of what she told Bob Luskin about the Plamegate investigation is up at Time. And it reveals much about why what passes for “jounalism” is clueless.

Washington “journalists” and Washington “government officials” and their “attorneys” are all one big happy family. They have drinks together. They meet for dinner. They go to the same parties. They bump into each other at posh vacation spots. And loyalty to one’s source-buddies comes first — before employer, nation, or truth itself.

This has been apparent of the television “punditocracy” — Cokie et al. — for years. But after the Judy Miller, Bob Woodward, and now Viveca Novak episode, it is apparent more humble print reporters have crawled into the same compromised bed.

As Jeralyn, Kevin, and Jane point out, the impact of Novak’s testimony on Karl Rove’s future depends a lot on what other information Patrick Fitzgerald might have. But the corruption of journalism is crystal clear. I sincerely hope that every working reporter covering Washington politics — and politics elsewhere — is doing some heavy-duty soul searching right now.

Greg Mitchell writes at Editor & Publisher:

Where will it end, and when will reporters pay with their jobs? First we learn that Bob Woodward failed to tell his editor for years about his role in the Plame/CIA leak case. Today, we find out that Time reporter Viveca Novak not only kept her editors in the dark about her own involvement, but even had a two-hour chat with the special prosecutor about it well before telling her superiors.

At the end of her first-person account at Time online today, we are told in a brief editor’s note that she is by ”mutual agreement” now on a “leave of absence.” Has she been taken to the woodshed and, if not, why not?

Swopa writes,

… as it turns out, just for the sake of stalling Rove’s indictment for a month or two, Luskin has torched Novak’s career with Time (which notes as the end of her article that she is on a mutually agreed “leave of absence”). It seems that Viveca didn’t tell her bosses about her chats with Luskin to begin with, nor even when she first was interviewed by Fitzgerald — and when she did admit her involvement after being asked to testify under oath, they weren’t happy.

There should be an object lesson there for Washington, D.C. reporters playing the “access journalism” game … the sources who you’re covering up for even as they give you lies and personal smears will burn you in the blink of an eye if it helps them in the slightest.

Then again, that seems to be a larger message that the Bushites are all too happy to send to the media. What the latter thought was merely an occasionally distasteful exchange of information was really a blackmail ring. In the Corleone administration, reporters aren’t expected to keep quiet out of duty to the First Amendment — they’re expected to do so because they’ll be destroyed by any means possible if they don’t.

Reporters, please note: “Sources” are not “buddies.” And sources who try to use you to manipulate news, by feeding you lies and smears, are not worthy of protection. Got that?