Republicans and "elites".

President Bush has stated, "I have zero desire to be in the press"... as he releases his autobiography.

He then states:

"I have written a book. This will come as a shock to some of the elites. They didn't think I could read a book, much less write one," Bush quipped.

What is it with the Republicans and "elites"?

They appear to automatically assume that the term"elite" involves some kind of terrible snobbishness and condescension.

Were I to be going in for an operation, I would hope that an "elite" surgeon was going to carry out the procedure.

Why, in politics, have the Republicans managed to make "elite" such a curse word?

It's such a crude way to imply that they, as a party, have the interests of the ordinary man in the street at the centre of their policies, when a cursory glance at what they actually care about - tax cuts for the rich, putting profit before the environment - shows that nothing could be further from the truth.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Bush, elites

The U.S. searches for war criminals.

This made me laugh out loud.

Apparently, the U.S. Government are aggressively trying to track down war criminals.

"I don't think there's any question that we're going to have a greater number of these cases and that these cases are going to reach (suspects from) more parts of the world," says Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, a child of Holocaust survivors who has pushed the more aggressive efforts to hold war criminals accountable. "It's something we have to do. We owe it to our citizens and we owe it to the world."

Congress passed the laws amid a broader international push after the Cold War to hold war criminals and human rights abusers accountable, says Eli Rosenbaum, who ran the Office of Special Investigations and now is director of strategy and policy in the new Human Rights and Special Prosecutions unit.

"Interest burgeoned all over the world in bringing these people to justice," Rosenbaum says. Among U.S. policymakers, "there was bipartisan support for doing this, and Congress gave us a lot of new tools."

Now, it's going full steam.

"We want to send a message to would-be human rights violators of the future," Rosenbaum says. "Their odds of getting away with it are shrinking rapidly."

As Greenwald points out, if the US wants to prove it's serious about this, it might want to start it's search here.

Tags: Bush, war criminals, war crimes

Americans' Incomes Sank After Bush Tax Cuts.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So, were people better off after the Bush tax cuts? Did the tax cuts provide more jobs and increase people's wages as Bush claimed they would?

It's no surprise that the answer is in the negative.

What is surprising is that there are so many high income earners who want to be taxed more.

Asked "Do you think - raising income taxes on households making more than $250,000 should or should not be a main part of any government approach to the deficit," 64% of respondents whose household income topped $250,000 answered yes. That's the same percentage of affirmative responses from families earning under $50,000.

Not all wealthy people are as greedy as the Republicans it seems.

Tags: Bush tax cuts

State Secrecy and Official Criminality.

Scott Horton looks at the real reason that the Obama administration denied torture victims their day in court:

The Holder Justice Department would have us believe that it is protecting state secrets essential to our security. That posture is risible, and half of the court saw through it. The dilemma faced by the Justice Department was rather that evidence presented in the suit would likely be used in the future (not in the United States, obviously) to prosecute those who participated in the extraordinary renditions process. Twenty-three U.S. agents have already been convicted for their role in a rendition in Milan. Prosecutors in Spain have issued arrest warrants for a further 13 U.S. agents involved in a botched rendition case that touched on Spanish soil. Prosecutors in Germany have opened a criminal investigation into the use of Ramstein AFB in connection with torture and illegal kidnappings. Prosecutors in Poland are pursuing a similar matter. And Prime Minister David Cameron was recently forced to brief President Obama on his decision to direct a formal inquiry which could lead to prosecutions tied directly to the subject matter of the Mohamed case. This is the remarkable background to the case decided by the Ninth Circuit, and remarkably not a single word about this appears anywhere in the opinion—or even in most of the press accounts about it.

The scandal here is that this was done to hinder other nations who are seeking to bring prosecutions against clearly illegal behaviour.

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have called the Department on its acts of constitutional treachery. From the West Coast:

The decision to short-circuit the trial process is more than a misreading of the law; it’s an egregious miscarriage of justice. That’s obvious from a perusal of the plaintiffs’ complaint. One said that while he was imprisoned in Egypt, electrodes were attached to his earlobes, nipples and genitals. A second, held in Morocco, said he was beaten, denied food and threatened with sexual torture and castration. A third claimed that his Moroccan captors broke his bones and cut him with a scalpel all over his body, and poured hot, stinging liquid into his open wounds.

From New York:

The state secrets doctrine is so blinding and powerful that it should be invoked only when the most grave national security matters are at stake — nuclear weapons details, for example, or the identity of covert agents. It should not be used to defend against allegations that if true, as the dissenting judges wrote, would be “gross violations of the norms of international law.” All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known.

Other nations will continue with prosecutions. International law won't go away no matter how much Obama and his administration will it to do so.

The Bush administration committed crimes. All Obama is doing is trying to make it more difficult for other nations to have access to the information they need to secure convictions.

But, three of Britain's most senior judges have already rejected the argument Obama relied upon and ordered the British government to reveal evidence of MI5 complicity in the torture of British resident Binyam Mohamed – unanimously dismissing objections by David Miliband, the foreign secretary. Miliband's argument was very similar to the one Obama used in the United States. And the British court rejected outright the argument which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have accepted by a single vote.

So, this information will come out, even if it has to come from governments which are allied to the United States. David Cameron had this to say when he announced his inquiry into torture:

"The longer these questions remain unanswered, the bigger the stain on our reputation as a country that believes in freedom, fairness and human rights grows," the prime minister told the Commons.

It's a real source of shame that Obama isn't prepared to go as far as Cameron to answer the same questions which plague America's reputation.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Obama, torture, war on terror, Bush, crimes, war crimes

Rove attacks Obama for not offering Bush enough praise.

No matter what Obama does, it seems he can't please anyone here. Rachell Maddow thought that he should never have given any praise to Bush at all.

"To talk about him having a demonstrated commitment to our security, having started this war on the terms on which he started it, -- I mean, it's beyond restraint from President Obama and anyone in the pro-Iraq war, pro-Bush camp who doesn't feel like they've been given the greatest political present they never deserved was not listening to this speech," she concluded.

I found that comment slightly unfair. Obama is doing what president's are supposed to do and is trying to unite the country after a war which he disagreed with.

But Karl Rove heard something else:

Rove: I learned a long time ago, that when a politician says "no one can doubt" they're trying to raise questions and suggest that there was a doubt.

[...]

I thought it was an attempt at graciousness, but it didn't succeed.

It defies belief that Rove can seek to find fault when Obama could have repeated his belief that this was a bad war which should simply never have been fought.

He accuses Obama of "an attempt at graciousness", but Rove makes no attempt at all at being gracious.

But even Rove isn't as offensive as Ari Fleischer who states that, had Churchill been listened to, WWII could have been avoided and with it the Holocaust.

Fleischer: And I thought to myself, if the world had listened to Churchill in '38, people probably would have said, "You exaggerated the threat of Hitler. Who says there is a world war coming?" We'll never know what we averted by getting rid of Saddam and how many lives were saved.

This was a trait of the Bush administration, to demand praise for things which never happened. We saw it in the way Republicans insisted Bush was to be thanked that the US never got attacked again on the mainland since 9-11.

And we now see the most ridiculous example of this mindset. Taking out Saddam might have prevented a Holocaust. According to this "logic" no policy can ever be wrong, as who can say what would have happened had the administration not behaved in the way which it did.

Tags: Obama, Karl Rove, Iraq war

Blair Would take Out Iran.

Blair has given an exclusive interview to the Guardian, the paper whose readers he used to define as all that was wrong with the chattering classes, and has revealed that he would not "take the risk" of allowing Iran to develop a nuclear weapon.

He has, thankfully, decided not to endorse any candidate in the Labour leadership election, but in his only interview for his forthcoming autobiography he certainly drops hints which David Miliband may very well think proves that Blair favours him.

"What people should understand is that I adore the Labour party," he says – a sentiment that will surprise many inexperienced Blair-watchers. Later he says: "As I say in my introduction, I feel the most enormous debt of gratitude to the Labour party and huge loyalty to it. I just want it to win. I want to see it win because I think that a modern progressive Labour party is better for the country than a Tory party."

If that is code for an endorsement of David Miliband in the leadership race, then Blair is not admitting to it. "I decided at the outset that I wasn't going to start endorsing people," he says. He is expected to take the same line when he is interviewed by Andrew Marr on BBC2 tonight.

In the interview he faces up to the charge, which I think is an unfair one, that he donated the proceeds of the book to the troops out of guilt and he addresses the belief that he didn't feel any guilt about the deaths of troops, a charge brought about because he claimed in front of Chilcot to have "no regrets".

"How could you possibly not feel sadness at the lives that had been lost?" Blair said this week. "How could you possibly not? But … when I use the word responsibility, I mean it in a profound way. I say in the book the term responsibility has its future as well as past tense. And that's what I feel. It's not a coincidence I am devoting a large part of my time now to the Middle East or to religious interfaith."

It's somewhat irrelevant whether or not he feels regret. One can assume that as a human being he, of course, feels sad that others died because of decisions which he made. The real question is whether or not he would make those same decisions again; and Blair gives every indication that, not only would he make those decisions again, but that he would go further and take action against Iran.

Asked the classic judge's question — if he would have done anything differently in retrospect — he replies it is "very difficult to answer that". But he wishes he had seen earlier that 9/11 had "far deeper roots" than he thought at the time.

"The reason for that, let me explain it, is that in my view what was shocking about September 11 was that it was 3,000 people killed in one day but it would have been 300,000 if they could have done it. That's the point ... I decided at that point that you cannot take a risk on this. This is why I am afraid, in relation to Iran, that I would not take a risk of them getting nuclear weapons capability. I wouldn't take it.

"Now other people may say, come on, the consequences of taking them on are too great, you've got to be so very careful, you'll simply upset everybody, you'll destabilise it. I understand all of those arguments. But I wouldn't take the risk of Iran with a nuclear weapon."

This is the point about Blair which many miss. It is easy to dismiss Blair as "Bush's poodle", but I think this ignores the fact that, when it came to Saddam and Iraq, Bush was actually pushing against an open door. Blair wanted to take Saddam out.

Blair always believed in humanitarian intervention.

In a scarcely reported speech in his Sedgefield constituency, in the very earliest days of his premiership, Blair argued that we should renegotiate the Treaty Of Westphalia.

As I said at the time:

The Treaty of Westphalia was the first time that we recognised the sovereignty of other nations and our inability to interfere in their affairs.

Blair has long argued for intervention in other nation's affairs when they are said to be mistreating their populace, so when he flies to Bush's side in Washington to reiterate these points, he will be arguing a well versed Blair discourse.

However, when he attempts to fit Iraq into his own interventionist logic, he will circumnavigate why this intervention was unpopular as opposed to his similar ventures into Kosovo and Sierra Leone.

The interventionist arguments that both Bush and Blair presented for going into Iraq were all based on events that had taken place a full decade before their proposed war, events in which both respective countries - the US and Britain - had been very slow to condemn.

Kosovo had an ongoing humanitarian crisis, which is why the world supported something being done.

The argument that Saddam had "gassed his own people" had none of the same immediacy, as this was something he had done a decade earlier, and there was no indication that he was about to do so again.

Likewise, Blair's claims that the UN "shies away from rather than confronts problems" seems to betray a fundamental misunderstanding of what the UN's function is. The UN will always view war as a last resort, that is one of the basic elements of it's Charter. So Blair will attempt, once again, to refashion his political legacy by seeking to portray the Iraq war as a continuation of more noble ventures.

He will fail. For he is comparing apples to oranges.

Blair never understood why many of us could agree with his arguments when it came to Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and yet oppose him when it came to Iraq.

This was because the Iraq war did not fit into the principle which he was espousing.

And, from his comments here, we can see that Blair has lost none of his zeal for military intervention. And, astonishingly, he is just as willing to assume that Iran's nuclear intentions are towards a nuclear bomb, as he was to assume that Saddam was building WMD.

But, with Blair's comments that he "wouldn't take the risk" over Iran's intentions, we can see that, deep down, he is a follower of Cheney's 1% doctrine. That's why Blair finds it so hard to apologise for Iraq; he really, really doesn't think he was wrong.

And, as we can see from his comments regarding Iran, Blair really would do it all over again.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Tony Blair, Iraq war, Iran

Beck attacks Obama for saying "we are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers",

Glenn Beck is appalled that Obama has stated that the US is "a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers".

He then wonders aloud if Obama is "sending messages" by hosting Ramadan dinners.

He hosts Ramadan dinners, which a president can do. [...] Is there anything more to this? Are they sending messages? I don't know, I haven't had to look for messages before.

One would be forgiven, listening to this latest rant, for thinking that Obama is the first President ever to host a Ramadan dinner, but that of course would be false. It was president Bush who started this practice. Here Bush speaks of this at his last Ramadan dinner.

THE PRESIDENT: Good evening, and welcome. Over the past eight years, we have made the Iftaar dinner an annual tradition here at the White House. And I'm really glad we did. At this year's gathering, we pay special tribute to the many contribution Muslim Americans have made to our nation. We join in wishing Muslims around the world, "Ramadan Mubarak."

Bush understood that it was important that he held such dinners in an attempt to signal that the US was at war with terrorism, not with Islam.

The American right appear to have lost the subtlety of Bush's message. When Bush did this Beck did not, to my knowledge, make any comment about this. Why, when Obama continues a tradition started by Bush, does Beck suddenly find himself "looking for messages"? And why didn't he have to "look for messages" when Bush held such dinners?

Once again there is this continual, insidious attempt to always portray Obama as "other". Even when he is merely continuing practices started by Bush.

Tags: Glenn Beck, Ramadan, Obama, Bush

Ground Zero mosque plans 'fuelling anti-Muslim protests across US'.

Shortly after Obama's inauguration, this poster started to appear around the US asking people if they missed Bush yet. The implication was supposed to be that Obama was so bad that we would all come to yearn for the return of the Decider.

And yet, when one looks at the rampant Muslim-bashing currently running wild across the Republican party one does find oneself remembering that Bush somehow kept a lid on the worst aspects of this party, by stating things like this:

"Here in the United States our Muslim citizens are making many contributions in business, science and law, medicine and education, and in other fields. Muslim members of our Armed Forces and of my administration are serving their fellow Americans with distinction, upholding our nation's ideals of liberty and justice in a world at peace."

Remarks by the President on Eid Al-Fitr
The Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.
December 5, 2002

"Islam is a faith that brings comfort to people. It inspires them to lead lives based on honesty, and justice, and compassion."

Remarks by President George W. Bush on U.S. Humanitarian Aid to Afghanistan
Presidential Hall, Dwight David Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Washington, D.C.
October 11, 2002

"America rejects bigotry. We reject every act of hatred against people of Arab background or Muslim faith America values and welcomes peaceful people of all faiths -- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and many others. Every faith is practiced and protected here, because we are one country. Every immigrant can be fully and equally American because we're one country. Race and color should not divide us, because America is one country."

President George W. Bush Promotes Compassionate Conservatism
Parkside Hall, San Jose, California
April 30, 2002

With Bush gone, the Republican party - looking for some wedge issue with which to force the American people to reject Obama - have turned to outright Islamophobia, led by Gingrich, Palin, Limbaugh and a bunch of others.

They now define Islam as the enemy and they and their supporters now openly make arguments condemning an entire religion rather than some of it's more extremist members.

It's gone as far as this:

A Florida church, Dove World Outreach Centre, is planning a "burn the Qur'an" day on September 11 and has already outraged Muslims by planting a sign on its front lawn that reads: Islam is the Devil.

The church's senior pastor, Terry Jones, has said he is "exposing Islam for what it is".

"It is a violent and oppressive religion that is trying to masquerade itself as a religion of peace, seeking to deceive our society," the church said. "Islam is a lie based upon lies and deceptions and fear. In Muslim countries, if you preach the gospel or convert to Christianity – you will be killed. That is the type of religion it is."

Of course Palin, Gingrich and the others are careful never to go as far as Terry Jones has gone; they instead speak to "decent" Muslims, by asking them to give up their religious freedoms in order to prove their "decency".

But they are all drinking out of the same well and the Ground Zero mosque is simply giving them cover to push their anti-Muslim message.

John Esposito, director of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, said many Americans shared Jones's views. He said the dispute over the proposed mosque had given cover for more open hostility unleashed after the 9/11 attacks that was evident during the last presidential election when some of Barack Obama's opponents attempted to portray him as a Muslim.

"The World Trade Centre thing has shown that what has been up to now seen as a local issue has gone global and provided an umbrella so that suddenly people feel freer to go public with their objections to Muslims," he said.

"Historically we've had problems in Mississippi or Georgia or New York or wherever when someone wants to establish a mosque.

"The cover for opposition used to be that people will say: we're not really prejudiced but it'll affect the traffic in the area, not facing the fact that it is very common if you have a significant number of Jews or Protestants or Catholics to expect that they're going to want to have a synagogue or a church and chances are the town's going to go along with it."

But today, Americans increasingly no longer shy away from saying they oppose mosques on the grounds that Muslims are a threat or different.

In New York, a group called the American Freedom Defence Initiative is placing adverts on New York buses showing a plane flying into one of the World Trade Centre towers and what it calls a "Mega Mosque" and asking "Why There?".

Bush was always very careful to emphasise that he was fighting a war on terror, not a war against Islam. The broken Republican party he has left behind are not clever enough to make that distinction.

Opposition to a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, intensified after Republican candidates for Congress and state governor made opposition part of their campaigns.

Sarah Palin, the former vice presidential candidate, has been a vocal opponent of the controversial New York mosque.

Other prominent politicians have cast the net wider. Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives, who is thought likely to make a run for president, has warned that Muslims are attempting to impose sharia law in the US and that it poses a "mortal threat to freedom" in America.

Gingrich said that he would push for legislation to prevent states from adopting sharia law even though none are proposing it and there is no likely prospect of it happening.

The Republican party, masquerading as the defenders of the US after 9-11, are now indulging in rampant Islamophobia. I mean, when Gingrich promises to prevent states adopting Sharia law, a law which no state is even remotely thinking of adopting, then he is simply stoking fears. Fear of the "other". Of people who don't look the way he and Palin do.

George Bush would never have done this. So, it's not us who will miss him, but the Republican party will. For in a country with as large an Hispanic population as the US has, the party who campaigns on fear of the "other" really is heading into very dangerous waters.

"Islamophobia is not just about religion. It's about people who are of colour and a whole set of presuppositions about these people," he said.

"You can see it not only with Muslims but with Mexicans, people who look Hispanic. Now we have hard data from Gallup and Pew that demonstrate in America how integrated the vast majority of Muslims are – economically, politically and religiously. And yet a significant number of Americans can be appealed to in what is nothing less than hate speech, the same hate speech directed against immigrants."

George Bush's party have descended into the kind of hate speech which he was always very careful to avoid. This might play well amongst the insane brigade which now represents the runt of the Republican base, but one can't help feel that the rest of the US will loudly reject this xenophobic nonsense.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Bush, Republican party, Islamophobia, Ground Zero mosque

Addicted To Bush.

Paul Krugman has an interesting article on the Republican party's relationship with George W. Bush.

The truth, however, is that the only problem Republicans ever had with George W. Bush was his low approval rating. They always loved his policies and his governing style — and they want them back.

To that end they have returned to their age old cry for tax cuts for the rich to be kept in place.

Let's forget that the economic collapse happened on his watch, let's forget that he waged two deeply unpopular wars, and let's forget that he took the Clinton surplus and turned it into a huge deficit.

The Republicans want more of the same, despite all the noise they are making about "fiscal conservatism".

To that end they have started trying to resell Bush's policies.

On the economy: Last week Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, declared that “there’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy.” So now the word is that the Bush-era economy was characterized by “vibrancy.”

On the deficit: Republicans are now claiming that the Bush administration was actually a paragon of fiscal responsibility, and that the deficit is Mr. Obama’s fault. “The last year of the Bush administration,” said Mr. McConnell recently, “the deficit as a percentage of gross domestic product was 3.2 percent, well within the range of what most economists think is manageable. A year and a half later, it’s almost 10 percent.”

Finally, on the war: For most Americans, the whole debate about the war is old if painful news — but not for those obsessed with refurbishing the Bush image. Karl Rove now claims that his biggest mistake was letting Democrats get away with the “shameful” claim that the Bush administration hyped the case for invading Iraq. Let the whitewashing begin!

I have always wondered how the party that screams, "deregulate, deregulate, deregulate" would find a political message which got round the fact that deregulation had ended in such catastrophe.

I honestly thought that the wiser minds of that party were quietly taking stock, working out how to sell Republican policies back to the American people and that it was their silence which was enabling the lunatic wing of the party to hold such public sway.

It appears that they have decided the best way forward is to argue that black was white and that George Bush was actually a very successful president.

Good luck selling that...

Click here for full article.

Tags: George W Bush, economy, Republicans

Study: Newspapers stopped describing waterboarding as 'torture' during Bush years.

I'm late to this:

Is waterboarding torture? If you picked up a major U.S. newspaper before 2004, the answer would likely be yes, according to a new Harvard University study.

But in the post-9/11 world, when the practice of immobilizing and virtually drowning detainees became a politically charged issue, that straightforward definition grew murky. The study, conducted by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, examined coverage in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today, and found a noticeable shift in language concerning waterboarding.

“From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture,” the study noted. But the study found that things changed in the years when “war on terror” became part of the American lexicon.

The New York Times defined waterboarding as torture, or effectively implied that it was, 81.5 percent of the time in articles until 2004, the study found. But during 2002-2008 — when the George W. Bush White House made a concerted effort to normalize harsh interrogation methods for use on terror detainees — the Times “called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles." That’s 1.4 percent of the time.

But it's the reason given by editor of The New York Times for this change of stance which fascinates me.

“As the debate over interrogation of terror suspects grew post-9/11, defenders of the practice (including senior officials of the Bush administration) insisted that it did not constitute torture,” a Times spokesman said in a statement. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves.

The editor who wrote that is utterly missing the point here. If waterboarding was considered torture for over a hundred years, then there is no debate on the subject.

By pretending that there is a debate on the subject is to take sides. And, sadly, the side chosen is the side of the torturer.

Throughout history, torturers like Saddam would have loved to claim that there was "a debate" as to whether what they did constituted torture, but I am sure that the New York Times would not have accorded it to them.

Likewise, the Bush administration, of course, claimed that waterboarding was not torture for no better reason than the fact that they were the ones doing it.

To paraphrase Mandy Rice-Davies, "Well, they would say that wouldn't they?

Everyone accepts that this is torture and the place for Saddam, Bush and the other torturers to have their "debate" is in front of a judge and jury.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Bush, Cheney, torture, New York Times

British army's alleged torture of Iraqis goes to judicial review.

There has been a substantial High Court victory for lawyers representing 102 men detained after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The high court today gave permission for a judicial review of the government's failure to hold a public inquiry into the British army's detention policies in Iraq amid allegations that large numbers of civilians were tortured.

The court said it could be argued that "the alleged ill-treatment was systemic, and not just at the whim of individual soldiers". It went on to criticise the effectiveness of Ministry of Defence proposals to investigate the claims.

If a full inquiry is now ordered, it is likely to run alongside the judicial review David Cameron announced last week into the UK's role in rendition and torture in the so-called war on terror.

The notion that torture could be "systemic" was one of the first things I argued on here when talking about the stories of mistreatment coming from prisoners held by the Americans.

I was struck at the time by the uniformity of the allegations; nudity, stress positions, use of loud noise, freezing temperatures, use of dogs.

It didn't appear to matter whether the prisoners were held in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the stories all had a creepily familiar ring. It occurred to me then that either all of these "bad apples" had a singular lack of imagination, or they were working to a set of instructions.

Now we, of course, know that the Bush administration received a memo from the Justice Department in August 2002 which set out to justify the use of torture.

If a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, "he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al Qaeda terrorist network," said the memo, from the Justice Department's office of legal counsel, written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance. It added that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later.

We also know that the Bush administration approved certain "enhanced interrogation techniques", which is why the torture we heard of was always so uniform.

They were actually following a script.

Now, the High Court is implying that torture may also have been systemic on the British side of the war on terror.

One of the lawyers, Phil Shiner, said: "There are now hundreds of Iraqi civilians making thousands of allegations of being subjected to repeated sexual, physical and psychological abuse. The MoD's claim that this is the result of the actions of a few bad apples has been shown by the high court to be untenable.

"The court has today sent a clear signal that they expect the truth to be uncovered and these matters efficiently and fully investigated. This must take place in a public forum, not behind closed doors at the MoD."

The MoD has conceded that there needs to be an investigation, but does not wish to see a full public inquiry.

I bet the MOD would like any inquiry to be held behind closed doors, but they have no right to be granted such privacy.

If we have had a torture policy then we have the right to know about it. And, the people who put such a policy into place should be prosecuted. Perhaps, only by us doing that, will Obama's administration ever get serious about looking into the crimes which were committed by Bush and Co.

There have now been changes of administration on both sides of the Atlantic, so there really is no excuse for this not to be vigorously examined.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Bush, Cameron, Brown, Blair, Torture, war on terror

Classified documents reveal UK's role in abuse of its own citizens.

A number of highly classified documents, disclosed during high court proceedings, appear to show that the British government colluded in the torture of British citizens. And that the British government had decided that British prisoners being flown to Guantanamo Bay was its "preferred option".

Among the most damning documents are a series of interrogation reports from MI5 officers that betray their disregard for the suffering of a British resident whom they were questioning at a US airbase in Afghanistan. The documents also show that the officers were content to see the mistreatment continue.

One of the most startling documents is chapter 32 of MI6's general procedural manual, entitled "Detainees and Detention Operations", which advises officers that among the "particular sensitivities" they need to consider before becoming directly involved in an operation to detain a terrorism suspect is the question of whether "detention, rather than killing, is the objective of the operation".

Other disclosed documents show how:

• The Foreign Office decided in January 2002 that the transfer of British citizens from Afghanistan to Guantánamo was its "preferred option".

• Jack Straw asked for that rendition to be delayed until MI5 had been able to interrogate those citizens.

• Downing Street was said to have overruled FO attempts to provide a British citizen detained in Zambia with consular support in an attempt to prevent his return to the UK, with the result that he too was "rendered" to Guantánamo.

Blair's reputation will finally be shot be pieces when the extent to which the British government acquiesced in the treatment handed out to it's citizens is revealed, I suspect.

What is undeniable at the moment is the government's almost casual indifference to the fact that it was taking part in criminal activity:

At this time, the fact that "rendition" – abducting an individual and moving them against their will from one country to another – was illegal appears not to have been a concern. A document disclosed by the Foreign Office, dated 10 January 2002 and entitled Afghanistan UK Detainees, expresses the government's "preferred options". It states: "Transfer of United Kingdom nationals held by US forces in Afghanistan to a United States base in Guantánamo is the best way to meet our counter-terrorism objectives, to ensure they are securely held." The "only alternative", the document adds, would be to place these individuals in the custody of British forces in Afghanistan, or to return them to the UK.

At around the same time Jack Straw, then foreign secretary, was sending a telegram to several British diplomatic missions around the world in which he signalled his agreement with this policy, but made clear that he did not wish to see the British nationals moved from Afghanistan before they could be interrogated.

"A specialist team is currently in Afghanistan seeking to interview any detainees with a UK connection to obtain information on their terrorist activities and connections," Straw wrote.

"We therefore hope that all those detainees they wish to interview will remain in Afghanistan and will not be among the first groups to be transferred to Guantánamo. A week's delay should suffice. UK nationals should be transferred as soon as possible thereafter."

The notion that one is innocent until proven guilty was clearly dispensed with as Blair made a priority out of making sure that there was not a sliver of light between his administration and that of George W. Bush.

So far just 900 papers have been disclosed, and these have included batches of press cuttings and copies of government reports that were published several years ago. However, a number of highly revealing documents are among the released papers, as well as fragments of heavily censored emails, memos and policy documents.

Some are difficult to decipher, but together they paint a picture of a government that was determined not only to stand shoulder to shoulder with the United States as it embarked upon its programme of "extraordinary rendition" and torture of terrorism suspects in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but to actively participate in that programme.

The extent to which Blair's government participated in illegal torture activities will eventually trickle out. Cameron will do his best to limit this, especially as he is anxious to preserve the UK's intelligence links with the US, but one gets the feeling that the people who were tortured are determined to have their story told and there are strong indications that the courts are inclined to agree with them.

Today the government failed in an attempt to bring a temporary halt to the proceedings that have resulted in the disclosure of the documents. Its lawyers argued that the case should be delayed while attempts were made to mediate with the six men, in the hope that their claims could be withdrawn in advance of the judicial inquiry. Lawyers for the former Guantánamo inmates said it was far from certain that mediation would succeed, and insisted the disclosure process continue.

Cameron appears determined to try to buy the silence of these men before the inquiry starts, but I don't get the feeling that these guys are up for sale.

They want the truth to come out. Cameron appears to want an inquiry which doesn't put any pressure on our relationship with the United States. But, as it was the United States, in collusion it appears with Blair's government, who were doing the torturing, I can't see how Cameron can have an honest inquiry and avoid embarrassing our American ally.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Omar Deghayes, Binyam Mohamed, Martin Mubanga, Guantanamo Bay, torture, rendition, Blair, Bush, war on terror

Andrew Napolitano: Bush and Cheney Should Have Been Indicted for Torturing, for Spying and Arresting Without Warrants.

It astounds me that these words are being spoken by a regular contributor to Fox News.

Napolitano: So what President Bush did with the suspension of habeas corpus, with the whole concept of Guantanamo Bay, with the whole idea that he could avoid and evade federal laws, treaties, federal judges and the Constitution was blatantly unconstitutional and is some cases criminal.

Nader: What's the sanction for President Bush and Vice President Cheney?

Napolitano: There's been no sanction except what history will say about them.

Nader: What should be the sanctions?

Napolitano: They should have been indicted. They absolutely should have been indicted for torturing, for spying, for arresting without warrants. I'd like to say they should be indicted for lying but believe it or not, unless you're under oath, lying is not a crime. At least not an indictable crime. It's a moral crime.

Nader: So you think George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should even though they've left office, they haven't escaped the criminal laws, they should be indicted and prosecuted?

Napolitano: The evidence in this book and in others, our colleague the great Vincent Bugliosi has amassed an incredible amount of evidence. The purpose of this book was not to amass that evidence but I do discuss it, is overwhelming when you compare it to the level of evidence required for a normal indictment that George W. Bush as President and Dick Cheney as Vice President participated in criminal conspiracies to violate the federal law and the guaranteed civil liberties of hundreds, maybe thousands of human beings.

But I am in complete agreement with him that the evidence that Bush and Cheney committed crimes is simply overwhelming. Indeed, they are both on the record admitting that they authorised war crimes.

UPDATE:

It's well worth watching the whole thing. You can do that here.

Tags: Napolitano, Bush, Cheney, war crimes, torture

Income Gap Between Rich and Poor Is Highest in Decades, Data Show .

The Bush administration's tax cuts have led to the gap between the richest and poorest Americans tripling to the highest point it has been in over eighty years.

New data show that the gaps in after-tax income between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the middle and poorest parts of the population in 2007 was the highest it's been in 80 years, while the share of income going to the middle one-fifth of Americans shrank to its lowest level ever.

The CBPP report attributes the widening of this gap partly to Bush Administration tax cuts, which primarily benefited the wealthy. Of the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts taxpayers received through 2008, high-income households received by far the largest -- not only in amount but also as a percentage of income -- which shifted the concentration of after-tax income toward the top of the spectrum.

Some people used to argue on here at the time of the tax cuts that these were not tax cuts for the rich. The proof is in the pudding.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And Bush did this whilst turning Clinton's surplus into his deficit. Passing the cost of his tax cuts, and both of his wars, on to the shoulders of children further down the line.

The very thing which Republicans claim to be outraged over by Obama's current deficit.

I didn't hear them screaming when Bush was creating a deficit in order to give the rich tax cuts.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Bush, income gap, rich, poor, tax cuts, deficit

How Goldsmith changed advice on legality of war.

There has never been any secret of the fact that Lord Goldsmith changed his mind in the lead up to the Iraq war concerning what would be legal and illegal regarding the invasion. However, the Chilcot Inquiry have now got hold of - and allowed to be made public - the advice Goldsmith was giving to Blair at the time.

What's startling about this is that the change in his advice is starkly different just before the invasion from what it was a year earlier. And, as none of the legal requirements which Goldsmith had insisted upon to guarantee legality had been met, one must consider seriously the fact that political pressure was probably brought to bear on the Attorney General.

For instance, on 30th July 2002, Goldsmith laid out what was needed to ensure legality:

"The key issue here is whether an attack is imminent. The development of WMD is not in itself sufficient to indicate such imminence. On the basis of the material which I have been shown – and I appreciate that there may be other documentation which I have not seen – there would not be any grounds for regarding an Iraqi use of WMD as imminent.

"My view therefore is that in the absence of a fresh resolution by the Security Council which would at least involve a new determination of a material and flagrant breach, military action would be unlawful. Even if there were such a resolution, but one which did not explicitly authorise the use of force, it would remain highly debatable whether it legitimised military action – but without it the position is, in my view, clear."

So, he is making it quite clear that not only is a UN resolution needed, but that it must "explicitly authorise the use of force". And, when Bush and Blair manage to obtain UN Resolution 1441, Goldsmith makes it crystal clear that this resolution is not enough to justify war.

"It is clear that Resolution 1441 contains no express authorisation by the Security Council for the use of force.

"However, the authorisation to use force contained in Resolution 678 (1990) may revive where the Security Council has stated that there has been a breach of the ceasefire conditions imposed on Iraq by Resolution 687 (1991).

"But the revival argument will not be defensible if the Council has made it clear either that action short of the use of force should be taken to ensure compliance with the terms of the ceasefire. In conclusion therefore, my opinion is that Resolution 1441 does not revive the authorisation to use of force contained in Resolution 678 in the absence of a further decision of the Security Council."

So, the argument put forward by many hawks who supported the war - that 1441 revived Res 687 - was clearly not one which the British Attorney General accepted on 14th January 2003.

Blair was clearly becoming impatient with Goldsmith as he send off a note stating, "I just do not understand this" and, after Goldsmith sent advice on 30th January 2003 - the day before Blair met with President Bush - an aide to Blair wrote on top of Goldsmith's advice, "Specifically said we did not need further advice this week." It really does seem as if Goldsmith's advice was starting to annoy Number Ten.

Goldsmith then famously changed his advice after consulting with Bush's lawyers in Washington, stating on the 12th January 2003:

"Since our meeting on 14 January I have had the benefit of discussions with the Foreign Secretary and Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who have given me valuable background information on the negotiating history of Resolution 1441. In addition, I have also had the opportunity to hear the views of the US Administration from their perspective as co-sponsors of the resolution.

"Having regard to the arguments of our co-sponsors which I heard in Washington, I am prepared to accept that a reasonable case can be made that Resolution 1441 revives the authorisation to use force in Resolution 678."

It is the change of tone which I find most startling. In his initial pieces of advice, Goldsmith states quite clearly what is legal and what is illegal. "If we do X, this would be illegal, unless we obtain Y".

But, after consulting with Bush lawyer's he stops talking about what is legal and what is illegal and starts to argue "that a reasonable case can be made".

That's very different from saying that something is legal or illegal, that's saying that one could make an argument to back one's case, but it falls way, way short of saying that your argument would be accepted if it ever went in front of a court of law.

The more that comes to light, the more we can be assured that Goldsmith stopped telling Blair what was legal and illegal, and started to argue reasonable cases which could be put forward to support an invasion.

And the clearer it becomes that Elizabeth Wilmshurst was telling the truth when she stated that Goldsmith was performing a U-turn and that many of the other lawyers at the office of the Attorney General did not share Goldsmith's reading of international law.

"People shouldn't be focusing on Elizabeth so much as the others who will be giving evidence on Tuesday – in particular, Sir Michael Wood," a source said last night. "He advised clearly that the war was unlawful.

"Elizabeth was one in a team – she wasn't a voice in the wilderness. They worked closely together and spoke about this a lot. The invasion ran counter to international law."

I find it hard to accept Goldsmith's insistence that no pressure was ever brought to bear on him politically. It is quite clear that there was a marked change in his advice the nearer the war became and the less likely it appeared that the US and the UK would obtain the kind of legal cover which Goldsmith initially insisted upon.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Iraq war, Goldsmith, Blair, Bush, United Nations

Cameron to launch inquiry into MI5 torture allegations.

It's so rare that Cameron and Clegg's coalition do anything which I agree with that it's nice to note that they are doing something with which I am in complete concurrence.

Victims of torture carried out with the knowledge of British agents could receive compensation, the Government has decided.

David Cameron is expected to announce a judge-led inquiry shortly into the long-running allegations that British intelligence officers were complicit in British residents being tortured by the security services of other countries.

Before the general election, both the Conservative and Liberal Democrats called for an investigation. Ministers from both parties hope the decision will clear the air after the repeated allegations and limit the spate of civil cases now being pursued in the courts. Compensation will be payable in cases where the inquiry finds someone was tortured and that British agents were aware of it.

It will be interesting to see how Labour react to this news. I am quite certain that they won't put forward the idiotic defence mounted by some Republicans in the United States that the Con-Dem coalition are attempting to "politicize policy differences" with the previous administration or voice the defence often used by Dick and Liz Cheney that "enhanced interrogation techniques" save lives.

Any Labour MP or minister who tried either of those tactics would face public condemnation, as it is widely understood here that torture is morally reprehensible and is justified under no circumstances.

I also wonder what effect it will have on Obama's "look forward, not backwards" policy if a British judge finds that the British government did facilitate torture of prisoners held in American custody. How long can you go on looking forward when another country's legal systems are saying that the techniques employed by the previous administration amounted to torture and were, therefore, war crimes?

This is the thing which I find most disappointing about the Obama administration. He came to power promising that he would restore the United States as a country of laws, and yet he seems reluctant to have any of those laws applied to the previous President and Vice President, when both are on public record admitting having authorised torture.

I don't see how he can say he is restoring the US as a country of laws whilst this anomaly exists.

Last night human rights groups welcomed the Government's move. Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "Only this kind of inquiry can end the slow bleed of embarrassing revelation and expensive litigation and draw a line under this shameful business once and for all."

Clare Algar, executive director of the legal action charity Reprieve, said the inquiry should be as open and transparent as possible. "Torture, and complicity in torture, is morally repulsive, counterproductive, and illegal under both national and international law, and these allegations are, sadly, too numerous to ignore. We cannot learn from history and avoid repeating our mistakes if we do not know what that history is," she said.

Cameron and Clegg are doing what Obama appears afraid to do. They are going to shine a bright light into the shadows and ask what exactly Tony Blair and the Labour government did during the War on Terror.

And they are going to allow the victims of that torture to receive compensation.

That is the very least that the UK can do for these men. And that is the flip side of Obama's refusal to examine what Bush and Cheney did on a much larger scale.

I thought it shameful that Obama's government behaved the way it did in the recent case of Maher Arar. But, more importantly, Obama's refusal to ever examine the criminal behaviour of the Bush regime man that the victims of that criminality can never be compensated.

As The New York Times said at the time:

There is no excuse for the Obama administration’s conduct. It should demonstrate some moral authority by helping Canada’s investigation, apologizing to Mr. Arar and writing him a check.

Hopefully, Cameron and Clegg's inquiry will reveal enough to shame Obama into doing what he should have done long ago.

You can't turn the page without reading what is on that page. And yet that is what Obama is trying to do.

Click here for full article.

Tags: Cameron, Clegg, Obama, torture, war on terror, war crimes

Zuckerman Imagines He Knows How the World Sees Obama.

Mort Zuckerman launches a typical right wing assault on Obama in the US News, but it's his determination to state how the rest of the world sees Obama which I find so distasteful.

The global community was puzzled over the pictures of Obama bowing to some of the world's leaders and surprised by his gratuitous criticisms of and apologies for America's foreign policy under the previous administration of George W. Bush.

Wrong on both counts. We were not remotely surprised that Obama observed the customs and cultures of other countries, that is simply what we expect leaders to do. Neither were we "surprised" by his criticisms of George Bush, indeed, we wildly welcomed his change of policies.

But Zuckerman doesn't stop there.

One Middle East authority, Fouad Ajami, pointed out that Obama seems unaware that it is bad form and even a great moral lapse to speak ill of one's own tribe while in the lands of others.

I well remember George Bush standing in the Israeli Knesset and comparing Obama to the Nazi appeasers, did Zuckerman object to that at the time? I doubt it.

He urges that things "must be done" and "should be done" and that "it is time" to do them. As the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, put it, there is "the impression that Obama might confuse speeches with policy." Another journalist put it differently when he described Obama as an "NPR [National Public Radio] president who gives wonderful speeches." In other words, he talks the talk but doesn't know how to walk the walk.

Well, when it came to health reform and reducing the US and Russia's nuclear missile capabilities, he certainly knew how to walk the walk.

These are historic things which Obama has achieved. But right wingers are going to continue with this insistence that all Obama does is talk rather than lead.

America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies.

This is such cliched right wing nonsense. Zuckerman is, with this trite sentence, saying that Obama is being too hard on the Israelis and hasn't yet bombed Iran. And he imagines that the rest of the world is disappointed that Obama has not continued the discredited and failed policies of George W. Bush.

Zuckerman has every right to think what he thinks, I just wish he would stop telling us that his views - or those of the few people he can find who agree with him - somehow represents a global opinion of Obama's presidency. Because nothing could be further from the truth.

Struggling at home, President Obama has maintained much of his high popularity abroad after more than a year in office, a new global survey has found, receiving high marks for his handling of the economic crisis and the lowest for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“People around the world are starting to realize that not everything is going to change under Obama,” said Johannes Thimm, an expert on American foreign policy at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. “But it’s remarkable that the general bounce back from the Bush administration in the negative standing of the United States has held up.”

“Now the big challenge is for Obama to meet the expectations that he’s created around the world,” Mr. Thimm said.

So, it is utterly wrong for Zuckerman to imply that the world is disappointed that Obama is not behaving more like George Bush, we are actually delighted that he is not doing so.

I notice that right wing blogs are all enthusiastically linking to this garbage, which is further proof that the US's right wing really are talking to themselves a lot of the time and hearing only what they want to hear.

Click here for Zuckerman's article.

Tags: Zuckerman, Obama, George Bush, world view

No Price to Pay for Torture.

I can't be the only person disappointed with the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider the claims of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen sent to Syria to be tortured under the orders of the George Bush administration.

Now, we can easily condemn the Bush administration for it's role in all of this, but it is increasingly harder not to also feel disgust at the Obama administration's insistence that torture cases such as this must not be brought before American courts.

Amazingly, Mr. Obama’s acting solicitor general, Neal Katyal, urged the Supreme Court not to take the case, arguing in part that the court should not investigate the communications between the United States and other countries because it might damage diplomatic relations and affect national security. It might even raise questions, Mr. Katyal wrote, about “the motives and sincerity of the United States officials who concluded that petitioner could be removed to Syria.”

Wouldn't it be simply awful to question “the motives and sincerity of the United States officials who concluded that petitioner could be removed to Syria”?

I mean there is already enough in the public record for us to question the motives of those who sent him there.

“The American authorities who handled Mr. Arar’s case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion,” Justice O’Connor wrote in a three-volume report, not all of which was made public. “They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar’s case in a less than forthcoming manner.”

The Syrian-born Mr. Arar was seized on Sept. 26, 2002, after he landed at Kennedy Airport in New York on his way home from a holiday in Tunisia. On Oct. 8, he was flown to Jordan in an American government plane and taken overland to Syria, where he says he was held for 10 months in a tiny cell and beaten repeatedly with a metal cable.

Contrast the difference between the reaction of the Canadians to this case and the utter inaction from the Americans.

In Canada, the government conducted an investigation and found that Mr. Arar had been tortured because of its false information. The commissioner of the police resigned. Canada cleared Mr. Arar of all terror connections, formally apologized and paid him nearly $9.8 million.

In the US, Arar can't even get his case heard in court, and he can't get it heard because the Obama administration are the ones making the arguments insisting that his case should not be heard.

I am with the New York Times editorial board on this.

There is no excuse for the Obama administration’s conduct. It should demonstrate some moral authority by helping Canada’s investigation, apologizing to Mr. Arar and writing him a check.

Rather than helping to keep the crimes of the Bush administration away from American courts, Obama should be doing the opposite. They certainly should be acknowledging that this man has been wronged and making sure that they compensate him for the dreadful things which were done to him.



Here, Senator Leahy takes apart Gonzales for the way the Bush administration enabled torture. What was done to this man is no less outrageous now that Obama is in the White House.

Click here for full article.