Richard Clarke to Bush: Stop Fear-Monger to Take Away Civil Liberties
This article, from the man whose warnings about 9/11 Bush refused to believe, ought to be sent to every Senator.
For this president, fear is an easier political tactic than compromise. With FISA, he is attempting to rattle Congress into hastily expanding his own executive powers at the expense of civil liberties and constitutional protections.
I spent most of my career in government fighting to protect this country in order to defend these very rights. And I know every member of Congress – whether Democrat or Republican – holds public office in the same pursuit.
That is why in 2001, I presented this president with a comprehensive analysis regarding the threat from al-Qaeda. It was obvious to me then – and remains a fateful reality now – that this enemy sought to attack our country. Then, the president ignored the warnings and played down the threats. Ironically, it is the fear from these extremely real threats that the president today uses as a wedge in a vast and partisan political game. This is – and has been – a very reckless way to pursue the very ominous dangers our country faces. And once again, during the current debate over FISA, he continues to place political objectives above the practical steps needed to defeat this threat.
In these still treacherous times, we can’t afford to have a president who leads by manipulating emotions with fear, flaunting the law, or abusing the very inalienable rights endowed to us by the Constitution. Though 9/11 changed the prism through which we view surveillance and intelligence, it did not in any way change the effectiveness of FISA to allow us to track and monitor our enemies. FISA has and still works as the most valuable mechanism for monitoring our enemies.
In order to defeat the violent Islamist extremists who do not believe in human rights, we need not give up the civil liberties, constitutional rights and protections that generations of Americans fought to achieve. We do not need to create Big Brother. With the administration’s attempts to erode FISA’s legal standing as the exclusive means by which our government can conduct electronic surveillance of U.S. persons on U.S. soil, this is unfortunately the path the president is taking us down.
Click through for the rest–and then send copies to your Senators.
You think maybe Clarke is getting fed up with this false debate?
Very timely. It still boggles the mind that this late in the W game, it still bears repeating that he is a fear-monger. It seems like it’s been so obvious from day 1. He was saber rattling over China before 9/11 gave him the bogey-du-jour.
Hey, I’d send this along with a transcript of KO’s special comment. Get Clarke and KO together on a national forum and beat this drum until every Senator hears the “drum of freedom”. DC in 1963 and in 1969 seem to be in my mind’s eye as I read Clarke and listen to KO…
Clarke’s battles with Cheney on the inside give enhanced understanding
of the true intent of these scare tactics… like a fundie preacher,
Junya must escalate the rhetoric just to stay even, people just get tired
of it even if they believe it, advertising concept of overexposure hard
to notice if you are so drunk or doped up as the dynamic duo seem to be.
OT and not really the thrust of this blog…..but this really bugs me:
Is it just me or does Chimpy look and act like he’s back at it in half his appearances? For those who don’t have the early years experiences that I do, the sloppy, inane speech, coupled with undeserved emotional emphasis, was always the sign of someone using coke (or meth) to keep from being obviously drunk. Is that what those record breaking vacations are all about? (Would someone please steal a urine sample from some of the potted plants in the WH so we can drug test Chimpy?)
Ok, sorry, back to serious stuff.
Mary, if you combine this recent statement from Richard Clark with the lastest news on Philip Zelikow at http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4218157 you really can see the picture of the incompetence of this administration come into true focus. All we need to melt this ball of wax is to light a small fire under all of us to keep digging. I would love to ask Richard Clarke what he knows about Zelikow’s slanting of the truth in the 9/11 report and the fact that he was directly involved with restructuring the NSA for Condi that resulted in his change of positions.
Great work there Condi and Philip.
I think Clarke was fed up years ago. This guy actually apologized to the American public for the failings of our government.
Thanks EW. Will send and spread this one through out the blogosphere. Thanks for all you do.
O/T What is the grand jury who has subpoenaed Risen over at NYTimes for his source on a chapter in his book State of War, investigating? The chapter has to do with the US trying to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program?
Dunno, but the GJ is in ED VA, so it’s almost certainly a CIA-initiated suit.
Sorry for the OT (and EPU), but this is just too funny to pass up:
”Specter Asks Why NFL Destroyed Tapes”
http://firedoglake.com/2008/02…..yed-tapes/
”I am very concerned about the underlying facts on the taping, the reasons for the judgment on the limited penalties and, most of all, on the inexplicable destruction of the tapes,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., in a Thursday letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
Now, if we could just get him that worked up about the destruction of the CIA Torture Tapes…
Um, check out the Trashtalk…
Obviously Richard Clarke is not sufficiently afraid. Dick Cheney will just have to try harder. In any case, Clarke is wrong that this is being done in some misguided attempt to combat the “terrorists”. These totalitarian clowns just use the War on Terror as a convenient pretext. If it had not been the War on Terror, they would have used the War on Something Else instead.
from clark:
While this sounds great, it is simply not true. By and large, members of congress, democrat and republican, senate and house, no longer care very much about the constitution, including the Bill of Rights. This is not an overly pessimistic or romanticized view. It is simply the truth.
If Congress truly valued the rights Clarke mentions, we would not be where we are. This is simply self evident.
Go get your tin-foil hats.
No orange alert from The Homeland?
May well be the homeland that did this.
was thinking the same thing when I saw this a while ago. Lots of talk about the first two cuts in a thread yesterday. And then there were three.
Go SEALS!!! (Or do the Israelis have SEALS, too?) Is this being done just to collar the traffic as it passes through the U.S.? Or does it have a military significance, as e.g., preparation for a move against Iran?
Just happened on comment 13 as I was making my way down the thread — didn’t realize that the topic had received such attention farther along.
It must be said, and it appears to be up to me to say it:
George Bush is not flaunting the law. He is flouting the law. If anyone is flaunting the law, it’s Feingold, Dodd, emptywheel, and Glenn Greenwald.
I will urge Clinton or Obama not to appoint Richard Clarke as national grammarian. Other aptitudes of his may, however, serve us well.
I caught that, too, but bit my tongue. Clarke can mangle the language all he wants in my book, so long as he gets through to the knuckleheads on the Hill.
And I agree with CO, there is no evidence at all that the majority of Congress critters give a damn about the Constitution. Still, it was a friendly gesture, before Clarke lit into them, so again, fine by me, if it works.
Phew.
I thought it was me–it’s the kind of mistake I make not infrequently. But then I don’t have the credentials that allow me to just ignore it whereas Clarke does, so we’re all good.
They flout the law by flaunting their disregard for it.
So, his usage and syntax are no better than Eisenhower’s
BFD
It’s been so long since we’ve had a public servant, we don’t recognize the real thing any more.
Bingo!
ANother @ 13 (the reply function is not working on my end…)
A third ME cable cut? Running for the tin-foil now!
There really was an unusual storm yesterday:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/Di…..middleeast
Per KagroX (although he’s relying on truthout, which never makes me comfy)
http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..172/447326
Rockefeller has been working with a telecom “think tank” to get his ‘messaging’ in immunity right.
The reason I think some days I hate the Democrats worse than the Republicans is that traitors are just more repugnant than an open enemy. Kind of like why the lawyers at DOJ make me far more upset that Rove being a political nightmare.
Bingo.
It is bad enough to have to battle the Republicans on every Constitutional front, but to have to turn and battle our hypothetical allies in Congress is all the more galling.
I will readily admit that the Constitutional issues that are so important to me, do not appear to have any traction whatsoever in the MSM or the various political campaigns. The Heinrich ad (NM-01) Greenwald had the other day being the rare exception. Still, I am left to wonder why Reid and Pelosi are so sure that their own actions won’t damage the electoral prospects of the Dems?
I also find it infuriating that after only a handful of contests representing less than 10% of the country, my choices for President have been reduced to 2. Is it any wonder so many voters feel disenfranchised? My vote not only doesn’t count, I never even have a chance to have any influence on party planks at the convention.
I’ll send my emails, and I will make my calls, but is it so much to ask for even the tiniest bit of assistance from the Demn Leadersheep? Evidently.
All this is such BS. Bush knows he’s lying. Congress knows he’s lying. 70% of America knows he’s lying. There is simply no way to stop him from acting on his lies. The Democrats in congress, notably Schumer, DiFi, Leahy, Reid, Pelosi, just to name a few, CHOOSE not to confront him on his lies. They back slowly away when he opens his mouth. Face it, we will be extremely lucky if Bush decides to leave office. My real fear is that he will initiate a terrorist attack in say Jersy City or Elton or Waxahatchie or whereever. He will then declare martial law and call out the Nat’l Guard. When the guard reports that they do not have enough men to do what Bush asks, then Blackwater, of cours, will be hired to fill in the gaps. During this period, Bush will ‘postpone’ the elections and graciously agree to the request by Republican leaders in congress to ’stay on the job’ until things ’settle down’. But strangely, things will never ’settle down’ and Bush will remain in office indefinately. Congress, having been effectivly nuetered, will scream bloody murder until he dissolves it. At that point, Bush will appoint Jeb to take over for him and dance into the sunset through the puddles of the blood of American soldiers, cash and immunity in hand to live out the rest of his days cycling back and forth between his mansion in Highland Park and his $500 million SMU library. We’re all caught in that Twilight Zone episode with Billy Mumy as the child monster who sends people who displease him ‘into the corn field’. And we, like that family, have no defense against the ‘terrible infant’ Bush.
”Then, the president ignored the warnings and played down the threats. Ironically, it is the fear from these extremely real threats that the president today uses as a wedge in a vast and partisan political game.”
LIHOP or MIHOP
It is so obvious either way.
Little OT,
Rove will be an anal-yst for Fox.
Didn’t he say he was leaving so he can could spend “more” time with his honey & son?.
That fucking twit.
And don’t be suprised if, like hannity & colmes, it’s Rove and Reid.
Over at TPM, Russ is quoted as saying
Do you think there is an implied filibuster threat, or simply a “no” vote on cloture?
Based on what I read at TPM, this is in essence a filibuster threat. Since the Senate, per TPM, has agreed that 60 votes are needed for cloture (to shut off debate and vote), Russ needs 41 votes to “continue to debate” and “not to vote”.
Strange rules, but in keeping with the strange place the Senate is.
Actually, I think it speaks only of his vote–not others. The big question is whether Dodd would filibuster at that point.
I took it to mean the “final result – amended or not”, but I can see your view too.
From what I understand, they are voting on each amendment (per your and cboldt’s earlier post), and then voting on the original SJC package.
And that final cloture vote seems to be for then voting on the SJC package.
The SJC package is dead.
They’ll vote on the amendments. We’ll end up with a few improvements–maybe exclusivity and maybe minimization; if we get immunity at all (which I doubt) it’ll be DiFi’s immunity.
Then we’ll vote for cloture on THAT bill, with the amendments. What Feingold said, I think, is that he’ll vote against cloture on it if more of his amnedments aren’t passed, which they’re unlikely to be. But that’s not the same as filibustering it.
Yeah, I meant the SSCI version. Just coming back from being under the weather, and the brain is still fogged up. *g*
That’s why I said in essence wrt to the cloture vote. It is not a filibuster in the strictest sense, but more like a kissin’ cousin.
60 votes for cloture, and if 41 oppose, then it appears that they don’t vote on the SSCI (amended or not) version.
I’m not sure what follows if cloture is not approved, but I’m sure somebody will tell me. *g*
I would be shocked if you got to 41 (or more specifically prevented 60). We only got high 30s to consider the SJC bill. We would lose a number of those–people who prefer SJC but really want to pass something.
No, it would take a real filibuster because we’ve never had the votes on this.
I too would be shocked if 41 voted against cloture, but I can hope, can’t I? *g*
Seriously, I’ve felt all along that most of what we’ve seen (and will see) in the Senate, is Harry Reid’s effort at Kabuki.
I don’t believe he has ever been opposed to retroactive immunity, and that the little he has done to accomodate folks like Feingold, has been purely for show.
This train already left the station when Harry dissed Dodd’s “hold” and when Harry placed the SSCI version in as the primary package. All of Harry’s efforts to “accomodate” the opposing Democrats have been designed to deliberately fail via stuff like requiring a 60 vote majority.
This Jello Jay train has been the choice all along for most in the Senate.
I keep wondering how much concern or attention has been put on the possibility that this illegal wiretapping system was accessed or compromised by foreign nations. How much wiretapping before 9/11?
Fox News did a four part report by Carl Cameron just after 9/11 (that was forced off their website by the right wing group Camera) about Amdocs, Comverse Infosys and how these telecommunication systems 95% of all U.S.
phone records filtered and monitored by Amdocs) which are Israeli based companies may have been compromised. That there was some type of back door into their systems that may have been infiltrated.
Not much attention on this. There have been articles at Information Clearing House, News Follow Up, Anti war.com and a few other sites about this the last six years.
The four part report by Carl Cameron that was on Fox in Dec 2001 is not on their web site any longer. The four part report is still on the web is now posted under some twisted titles(this has happened in the last year). part two and three had info on how the telecommunications systems worked and then went onto describe the involvement of Amdocs and Comvese Infosys.
Wonder whether the alleged claims that these illegal wiretapping activities were infiltrated by another nation are true?
Part two and three are the parts that have info about Amdocs and Comverse Infosys. You can find them on the web
This link has part 1 and 2 on it
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWpWc_suPWo
Not many people talking about the dead in Iraq. Most Americans are happy to stay in the bubble. Not Justin
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12296
Deadly Hubris
A million Iraqis dead – for what?
for what?
So Dems could say they support the troops.
So Hillary could tout her leadership on anti-flag burning.
So George could have a legacy.
So Dick’s pals could use OPM and OPB to get their tentacles into Iraq’s oil
So the Executive Branch could become all supreme, desptie being all idiots.
So we could become a state sponsor of torture and of disappearing families.
So the Constitution could be quietly killed.
So the Dept of Justice could babysit the law like a pedophile with an infant.
So Afghanistan could collapse and anti-American sentiment grow.
So Iran could be the next target.
So …
Oh, excuse me. I just tuned in a 24 hour news channel, and apparently the correct answer is, “so what?”
The substitution of parties is worse than the straight immunity IMO. Substitute Dick Cheney, George Bush, Ashcroft, Gonzales and their DAG and Hayden and the NSA crew along with Tenet and Mueller all PERSONALLY as defendants and maybe. Otherwise, much as I generally like Whitehouse, how is it a great a idea for me to a) pay for govt through taxes, b) pay for telcom services, then c) PAY AS A TAXPAYER FOR GOV AN TELECOM FINES FOR LAWBREAKING? If you ever get there, which you won’t with a substituted sovereign party and state secrets apparently NOT having a criminal activity exception any longer.
boofreakingyah.
Outside the Beltway, and offTopic: Now that Tom Davis has announced his retirement, given his background working for a company that has a Litton division specializing in computerized translation of audio to text, I wonder if he will join the burgeoning ranks of the out-of-office former officials working to preserve privacy.
You mean like in a museum somewhere?
If we lose, and they pass the retro, is it consitutional?
Disregard the link, if it has been posted before…
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/s…..l#continue
Another e-mail delete fiasco (Texas)
http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin…..nfall.html
(EPU’d on the Dick’s Evolving Demands for Immunity thread, repeated here mainly b/c I found another source, but also amplified slightly:)
Third Undersea Cable Cut off Mideast. So it’s almost certainly a coordinated attack (or else the initial 2-site attack has been followed by a me-too).
But who benefits? As has been pointed out before, this is only a short-term deal ’til repairs can be made. What exactly is going on in that region right now that the US so desperately needs to hear? Alternatively, are the breaks cover for the insertion of fibre optic splitters? (i.e. site of break and site of splice are different) Is there some global hoovering project going on that might touch on the FISA revs?
Could this be related to why the immunity provisions are so damn urgent and Bush threatened to veto a 30 day extension?
I guess that’s what this has me wondering, yes. No idea what the specifics would be, though.
W/r/t the UC plan, I don’t have a good feeling about it. The R’s wouldn’t have agreed to any thresholds they’re not confident they’ll be able to prevail on, at least not for the ones that really matter. Smells like a Pyrrhic victory to me — yeah, we got the right to vote on amendments, but so frickin’ what since (and where have we heard this one before?) the votes are all rigged. And I include the Monday schedule there — going back to my earlier comment, Reid now seems to have taken Super Tuesday into account all right, but not in a positive way since he may well be down 2 hands when it matters most.
I hope other Senators join Feingold if he should have to Filibuster.
Yep. I’ll get on board with the coordinated attack at this point. But, since my tin foil is still in the kitchen, I think we really must consider a non-U.S. centric view. While it is certainly possible that this ties into US snooping, it’s hardly a covert operation when the whole world knows about it. If someone here was trying to listen in to traffic over there, wouldn’t they take a stab at keeping the operation on the Q.T.?
I suspect (for now) a much more likely explanation will be centered on ME interests and players. But I fail to see who benefits from this at the moment, unless it is someone interested in disruption for disruption’s sake.
This was the response I left Hmm over at Dick’s thread.
What happens is that most ME countries will have diminished internet access for at least the next 10 days, and even then, many of their communications will go primarily through the US, not Europe. (There was a comment in one of the articles about how, after a cable goes down, communication patterns often remain in the interim path).
I kind of said this before.
First, the Israelis seem to have little to no warning about the Hamas break-out, and there was coordination between Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood and someone else (I forget whether it was Ahmadinejad or Abdullah) got involved in a new way. So there you’ve got an event the Israelis (and presumably, therefore, the US) didn’t “hear” about before the fact.
But there’s another possibility. The US is prepping to put a bunch of special forces into the tribal lands in Pakistan and things are beginning to go really FUBAR there. There’s a whole lot of obscure factionalism in Pakistan, that, if you’re not seeing it, might put off a nuke or something.
In other words, I think this may have happened either to interrupt communications the US/Israel wasn’t able to look at for a while, and/or to rearrange the global patterns to make it easier to look at those same communications. Either we’re temporarily disabling some communications we’re worried about, and/or we’re making it easier to look at them.
So if this was NOT a mistake (and I agree, it seems unlikely), then I’d say one of those two are likely explanations. Doesn’t mean the US took out the cables–that sounds like something Mossad would be particularly good at. But when you consider the communication patters (and the way Israel has its own lifeline) you can imagine they’ve kept this in mind as a possible strategy for some time.
(cross-posted, sorry:)
Good analysis, thanks EW. I/P is an entire realm where I’m out of my depth. I suppose Israel could well be installing taps in those lines — note Saudi Arabia lies in the affected regions.
Oh, I’m not saying Israel is installing taps. I’m saying that either they’re trying to cut communications for the next little while (apparently in the ME they thought this might be the start of the Iran war) or they’re just trying to make sure the communications go through circuits that we’re already vacuuming up.
My thought is that the US may have noticed blind areas in their ability to wiretap and they cut these cables as a way to clear up the blindspots while, at the same time, making sure that the comm they’ve been blind to recently are immobilized until things start flowing through the US again.
One other possibility: With these lines cut, there are now fewer lines to cut should the time come when whoever is doing this wants to totally info-isolate that region: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain Pakistan, and India. (Boy, that covers a lot of troubled ground.)
Through the U.S. to Israel ..close that back door
Thanks EW. My main objection to the relationship to PAA is that we (as in American’s generally) suffer from a terribly myopic point of view. It makes much more sense to me that the Israeli’s are acting in their own self interest. It also makes sense that disrupting communications would benefit any plans Darth still harbors for mixing it up with Iran.
What does not make sense is that the lines were cut to add a splitter for the US hoovering system. If that were true the folks that did the cutting would have done the splitting at the same time and patched things up quickly enough to make things look like a glitch. Just cutting the lines and waiting for the companies that own them to do the repairs wouldn’t result in a splitter being installed.
If by cutting the lines they were hoping to reroute traffic more permanently, wouldn’t the companies that own the original lines have something to say about that? Particularly, since these were European-ME cables, it seems to me that however cable traffic is controlled, there would be a push to restore the previous flow through the network, if for no other reason than for the companies in question to maintain market share.
The theory would be that the operation begins with the cover story break of the cable, and then while service is out the splitter is installed elsewhere. Simply installing a splitter without the cover story break would cause an outage that would be noticed.
Understand, I’m not saying it’s tied to PAA. I’m saying it’s most likely tied to events in the ME.
And I’m not saying they put a split in. I’m saying it’s about disruption, first of all, and then surveillance (by means already and still in place) that is more reliable going forward.
There have been a few comments in stories that, after past big splits, the traffic patterns remained in the new patterns after the fix had been made. You can’t be sure this will be true (and I have to believe the rich Sheikhs are going to build some redundancy into this system PDQ). But at least for the near term (and that may be all that’s at issue) you’ve hampered communications in a key region and possibly (though not definitely) made it easier to see what communication is happening.
I can see cutting the cables if there was some kind of emergency. But if this was at all planned, it would be stupid to do it and not install splitters.
OK, maybe that isn’t the best argument given this Administration’s record on doing things stupidly.
But if you read all the Qwest filings, it’s pretty clear a lot of the splitters are already there.
I realize that. And I agree with you. My comment about PAA was related to others who seemed to be making that connection.
I agree this rerouting can be turned to Cheney’s advantage in the near term. However, the Euros and the rest of the world at this point know exactly how much hoovering BushCo is doing. Not only are there national security issues involved with this, but business interests as well (as klynn points out with respect to OPEC). I simply don’t see a credible case that the Euros and ME countries are going to sit idly by while all their traffic gets rerouted through the States. In the short term, of necessity, yes. In the long term no.
Also, Hmmm, while I certainly see your point about creating a diversion to put a splitter elsewhere, such a public diversion will also induce much closer scrutiny which could mess up the whole splitter game plan. Of course, no one has ever accused BushCo of competence, so perhaps you are right.
It has the flavor of something done because someone thought they were faced with an emergency: subtlety be d**ned; get the traffic NOW!
EW refers to Pakistan’s “obscure factionalism”: Discussion in today’s NYT:
Three breaks at the same time..seems fishy
My guess: they don’t want any more well coordinated surprises for the Israelis like the 350,000 person jail break out of Gaza to Egypt, so spy splitters are being inserted into the cables. Still it seems stupid to draw attention to this – fishing boats are always mucking up the cables so breakage one at a time is believable. Three at a time is a message, which we (blogsphere) will decipher later. < =======tinfoil</p>
I don’t know what to make of the cutting of the fiber optic cables. It could be an accident. These cables pass through the Suez Canal so it would be possible for more than one of them to be snagged by a ship’s anchor or something. OTOH if I were being evil, I would stage such a break so that I could splice into the cables somewhere else, say Djibouti which we have been using for covert ops.
You think even with the third cable being cut it could still be an accident?
[tinfoil]
No way is this accidental. I think it’s the damn whales. All these naval exercises with their hammering sonar, and then the Japanese “scientific” whaling fleet. They’re pissed. …
[/tinfoil]
They are smarter than us, after all.
“So long, and thanks for all the fish.”
I agree 3 cable breaks is a stretch. As a cover story, a break in two cables “side by side” in the Mediterranean was a lot more plausible if not exactly persuasive. The third near Dubai is the one that is surprising because it undermines that story. I still think the splitters would be most easily run to Djibouti. There you are talking about a few miles of cables tops. If Israel were involved, you would have to run them up the Gulf of Aqaba to Eilat, and you would have to include the Isaelis in the deal. I suppose the Egyptians are also a possibility but for several reasons not a very good one. Djibouti is at the far end of nowhere. As I said above, it is a simpler solution and doing it there could keep it an all American operation. JMHO.
Except that the first two breaks were not adjacent, according to one report:
My understanding of where the first breaks occurred comes from the BBC article cited and others I have read on this. If there was a break near Marseille that will soon become evident since the cable will have to be fixed by the company that owns it and that won’t exactly be a secret.
That’s what I read last night.
By the way folks, OPEC met in Vienna today. Funny those cables were all cut before the OPEC meeting…
http://www.rttnews.com/FOREX/F…..038;item=9
Might have our Bingo there. What was Saudi Arabia tellings its OPEC delegates?
Just pointing out that there is conflicting information on the location of one of the initial breaks. Not disputing that they run close together in some places. I notice the info you quote doesn’t say the second cable’s break was in the same location as the first cable’s.
Possibly to Camp Lemonier, the future site of US Africa Command (AFRICOM), and currently a Navy SEAL training site?
What’s in my ‘mind’s eye’:
The wind moaning in the trees in the American cemetary above the Omaha (D-Day) Beaches in Normandy; seeing line, after line, after line of white crosses above row after row of burial plots — one for each of the American soldiers who died on D-Day fighting against totalitarianism.
It’s haunting, and it’s humbling. It’s unforgettable.
(It’s the location where the beginning and ending scenes of ‘Saving Private Ryan‘ were shot.)
I heartily wish that the entire US Senate had to justify their FISA votes to the ghosts of those dead American soldiers who sacrificed their lives for ‘freedom and liberty’.
I suspect that Dodd, Feingold, and only a few current US Senators would persuade our military ghosts that the Senate honors their memories, or keeps faith with the enormous sacrifices they made to protect the freedom and liberties of their fellow citizens.
Watching some of the cowardly, craven Republican bullsh*t on FISA is like watching US Senators spit on the flag while rubbing their heels right into the gravestones of those military dead. When did the US Senate become so utterly disrepectful of the sacrifices of those who built this nation?
Entirely apart from the insult of allowing criminals to spy on us all, it’s the utter disrepect for — and contempt of — American military sacrifices that really sticks in my craw.
I have never heard Mr. Clarke make a statement that was baseless before. It is deeply traumatic considering he was one of the first willing to tell the truth about something that gave him great troubles, and a good book.
To state in public that folks he knows have committed treason, are working like he is to help this country, is at least a disservice, at worst, rewriting history?
I hope this is somehow out of context. Sibel Edmonds alone can put many of these people at odds with your work while you were in the intelligence business and actively seeking the people that were bribing your congress people. I hope that he issues a retraction to remain as one of the what, 20?, people that have never wavered from the truth.
They are smarter than us, after all.
It’s the blow hole.
I have no idea what is going on, just the bad feeling that, ever since word of the failed McConell/Hayden Pakistan Quest, it has seemed like W really wants to pull something off for his legacy crew and like the Republicans really need and want something more than just the gift that is HRC to help keep the Presidency. The list is so full of so many possiblities, and with someone like Hayden in charge at CIA there are no limits on what he’ll do to make sure Bush gets political brownie points at whatever costs to anything else – and it’s not like their uniforms are anything more than an inside joke between them – so who knows?
Could the clipped wires be something bad, brought to you by torturers and the invaders/occupiers who have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and into the trillion vicinities of dollars, all because they are so desparate to make Bush happy that the thousands of dead children they have already directly participated in creating have no impact?
Or could it be something bad brought to you by the guys who program suicide bombers and send off young men to fly planes filled with the unsuspecting of every age and background into building – guys who are also happy to stack the the dead outside their doors as a bragging rights exercise, rather than a collapsing in shame over what they’ve done?
It’s not like there’s much that can surprise anymore.
I guess the surprise would be if something were being done and planned by men and women with integrity who don’t take the souls of dead children with them wherever they go.
Nobody is going to cut a cable over an OPEC meeting. OPEC can’t do much more than what it’s doing now. Besides the February 1, 2008 OPEC meeting was held in Vienna, Austria.
Exactly. The cut cables ran Middle East to Europe. And cutting them forced that traffic through the US instead.
But that’s assuming the people they’d be interested in hearing from don’t have secure sat phones. Plus, keep in mind they’d be as interested in conversations between Venezuela and Vienna as ME/Vienna.
These cuts will interrupt the communications of commoners, and potentially some big businesses (but very temporarily). It won’t interrupt the secure communications between King Abdullah and the oil minister while he’s in Vienna.
You’re probably right. The answer depends on details we don’t have access to. People who should know better use insecure communications all the time. The convenience of the Blackberry etc. and the cell phone often wins out. Also codewords can safely be used over channels, and whoever’s been listening may well already know the codewords.
I do think the OPEC move to Euros is a huge shoe waiting to be dropped. I have the sense that it will affect the US Prez election if it happens first, though I’m not sure who it tends to favor. Seems off the radar of all the leading candidates.
About the Euros, yeah I was pointing that out to mr. ew last night. My larger sense about this–if the cuts in the cables are deliberate–is that it is either the harbinger of or a response to a realignment in the ME. And that will almost certainly be accompanied by a switch to the euro, regardless of what that realignment is.
Wow. Do you mean the Euro changeover would be caused by said shift, or more that it’s inevitable and likely to happen more or less coincidentally but still in the same time frame as the shift?
Whatever, if those two things do happen, that would rather thoroughly repudiate the entire NeoCon Middle East Project, would it not? And if they happen before the election then (predictable fear rhetoric notwithstanding) that sounds like game, match, House, Senate, and Presidency to the D’s.
(P.S. I’m guessing harbinger.)
Either one or the other. Any shift I can imagine would include a shift of some sort–however slight–on the part of the Saudis. At this point, they’re the one thing standing between us and the Euro exchange. And as soon as its safe for them to do so,they’re going to find a way to ditch the dollar. That, in and of itself, would bring about a shift, bc it would end the mutual co-dependency we’ve got–or lessen it greatly.
Also, yes, the euro switch would mean one of the main things the neocon strategy (and, frankly, most US strategy more generally) tried to forestall actually accelerated it.
But I have no idea whether that means game set match for anyone. Things would be likely to get miserable so fast, it’s unclear whether the really miserable would turn to a warmonger McCain or to sane Democrats. And frankly, I think Hillary and Obama would respond to this differently, so I thikn it probably depends who we have as candidate.
I guess we have significant Saudi investments in the US to figure in, though. And the OPEC meeting report mentioned concern that if the US economic situation gets worse, it will negatively impact worldwide petrobiz. On the other hand you have to figure that OPEC countries have for some time been expecting the US empire to collapse at some point, and (being neither stupid nor crazy) have been saving up for a rainy day (couple of years) while the dust settles. Meaning they’re fully expecting to endure some pain at some point. Maybe that point will soon be upon us all.
I don’t know. At some point they can replace us with China, as a customer.
Yes, they own plenty in the US, but they’re not jumping at the opportunity for bargain basement banks, which isn’t like them (though Kuwait, which owes us more, and Abu Dhabi, are buying some). They have already done enough to contribute the upcoming recession, so they’ve already made the decisions that will bring about a drop in US business.
Or a warmonger like Hillary (she voted for the Kyl Lieberman amendment in Oct) Senator Webb “this amendment is tantamount to declaring war on Iran” Webb “this is Cheney’s fondest pipe dream”
Maybe more to the point:
OPEC can move oil off the US dollar whenever it wants. Then we crash economically.
Remember, this OPEC meeting was not suppose to happen. It was scheduled as a ”sort of” emergency meeting in December…
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm/sidANA349030115206
From klynn’s first link:
Now why would Iran and Venezuela want to stick it to George Bush and the American People?
Because we are so compassionate?
Does anyone know anyone who works at VISA or MasterCard processing centers who can tell us if credit card and ATM transactions have been re-routed to VISA/MC networks for verification due to local processing centers in the ME taking too long to process cards?
Card issuers have 8 seconds to accept or decline a card. If they take too long, transactions are automatically declined. If a processing center has too many declines they will start to wonder why and make changes, like send transactions directly to VISA/MC for processing.
My point is – can anyone tell if there is an increase in “on-us” credit card verifications taking place at VISA or MC? (A line on a billboard lights up at the networks for each processing center that is down, so does anyone know anyone who can tell us if an unusually large number of lines are lit up on those billboards today?)
It’s a good question. Though in one of the articles Citibank said there were only down briefly.
If you track financial news closely, there is a window that the Suisse franc might become OPEC’s choice currency which would “strap” US and European economies…
http://emagazine.credit-suisse…..38;lang=EN
That’s interesting. We’ve been speaking as though the only option to US Dollar pricing is Euro pricing, hadn’t thought of a 3rd currency.
I’m an economic dunce, so apologies in advance if the following is just stupid, but I wonder, are there any alternate pricing structures available to OPEC that might have less sudden/drastic impact on the market value for US dollars? For example moving to some sort of continuous pricing that tracks multiple currencies with e.g. hourly adjustments for their relative values? Essentially detaching oil from any single currency in future? Just looking for some sort of soft exit from the dollar, vs. a dumping that would be catastrophic for the US economy.
I am not an econ wiz either. Former UN intern in Switzerland and tend to follow Suisse news. Found my interest peaked as I read about Credit Suisse partnerships with Halliburton in Dubai and Credit Suisse is tight with Saudi Gov’t… Switzerland and Saudi Arabia have been growing their economic ties.
http://www.bilaterals.org/arti…..ticle=4061
These are all just little bits I’ve picked up in my reading…
And this gem on staking a future in fossil fuels posted today – an important read:
http://www.canada.com/vancouve…..0d071e9e0e
O/T
Here’s more O/T:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/…..efer=india
43+87. 43, What I had in mind was former government officials who have memberships in aclu, like the esteemed RClarke; but where the civil liberties wax museum is situated perhaps is a question better asked of the archivist who preserves government records, as dissension of the sort Clarke is espousing would constitute disloyalty if he were still in his post. I still think he has a trove of knowledge about an important few years in the transition from Cl to Bu, even possibly an awareness of the puzzle which was the executive IT enterprise architecture revision first in EOVP then EOP. Maybe we could chalk it up to books no former associates would let former officials publish.
87, I was thinking perhaps the instantaneity is important, but during some of the Rocky Mountain News archive postings we had a minor glitch in our local broadband, so I have yet to peruse those specifics in bulky pdfs better to wait until broadband restored. As far as undersea cables, the first link someone here kindly posted depicted the onomatopoeically funny sea-we-me consortium, and the so called Flag cluster of companies; yet, as I recall, though the Japanese have ample seaworthiness, ATT at the time had the world’s largest and most dispersed available fleet of undersea cable repair vessels, and did a lot of the contracting for the wiring of the globe in that decade. I would consider other topologies, as well; viz., thru which signal imaging apparatus light would have to pass during the outage, perhaps the bypass better equipped already to mirror to the storage farm. I did a study of Middle East cable infrastructure once, but it is too OT and filled with geopolitical contention; plus our group was working in a parallel project. One of the key consultants since was bought out by one of the Elsevier family, but the other, I believe, may still exist, and has a long base in marketing research for Latin America telephone architectures. I did that work, at least a lot of the Excel drillthroughs for yet a third consulting entity with global impact, then left that business.
_____
Subscripts: from my 41, Litton on machine translation the old technology.
Clarke as less neo than the stovepipe conservative newWave.
Bush Sr glimpsed in NYT1988 borrower from Mccarthyism smearing Dukakis about belonging to the same bogey organization as a latter day RClarke.
Upon further mulling, it occurs to me that IF one has the opportunity to surreptitiously splice a splitter into a given optical cable, such as exists during these supposedly cable-break-caused outages, then one also has the opportunity to surreptitiously splice a remotely controlled on/off switch in there as well. Once the cable is placed back into service, such a switch would allow one to remotely cause exactly this kind of massive service outage/re-routing again, at will, forever. (A remotely controlled packet filter is another possibility, which would allow interruption in progress of any given communication one wanted to stop.)
So yeah, I’m going with harbinger.
94 – Gates has found out what it’s like to be reduced to sending stern letters. He should have made W do it.
91I guess we have significant Saudi investments in the US to figure in, though. Well, here’s the thing. It’s taking a steady influx of ME bailouts to keep the economy from collapsing. We aren’t in a leveraged spot to do freezes or anything much right now. ME governments in their bank guises have been directly bailing out all our major brokerage houses. We have to send out huge chunks of money every day to cover oil costs – freeze and you give them incentives to make that more and more painful for us. Then you also drive them to China and you get China using its leverage as a direct US gov creditor – right now, if China (and ME govs) don’t keep buying up our Gov paper as it hits, we are soooo in deep trouble.
Bush has taken away every bit of strength this country has in his efforts to festoon his pals with the baubles of war souvenirs – like multibillion dollar contracts with no oversight to do a bad job or no job at al and leave the middle class and poor stuck wtih the bill.
I wonder how much the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees get briefed on methods of surveillance that can affect US citizens. Classification is a formidable barrier to acquiring the knowledge that is needed in order to make informed legislative decisions.
There has to be some classification, but we’re going to have to learn much more than we know, and it’s possible to release quite a bit more information without helping terrorists.
The Big Vacuum Cleaner metaphor is gaining traction in the public.
100 – another link from the vancouver paper:
http://www.canada.com/vancouve…..38;k=65248
CN gov scientists muzzled, bc the gov agency should all speak with one voice, you know, unitary.
Who could have given them that idea?
WRT news of 3 undersea cables ‘accidentally’ cut:
There was also the news last week of a US spy satellite expected to crash to earth in February or early March?
If this satellite monitors the ME and its phone calls and faxes, maybe the anticipated information gap when the satellite falls from the sky required the reconfiguration of all ME internet traffic through the US bottle neck, as noted above by EW as an emergency plan for intelligence gathering?
If one believes the reports on the falling satellite, it was crippled upon launch completion and never responded to ground-based command and control. It has basically been a lump of flying lead its entire short life.
Secondly, it has been reported as a “radar” satellite. That doesn’t mean it did not have “other” capabilities such as communications monitoring.
If one believes what one reads…*g*
Well, let’s add a couple more pieces to this bizarre little mix:
– three undersea cables cut, two different sites
– one spy satellite allegedly falling to earth
– one cell phone outage affecting Blackberry and Treo devices with carrier AT&T
– CIA disclosed Cyberstorm exercise
Um, yeah. That last bit. Was that part of what happened, or was it intended to mask what was happening?
Part of that exercise also included some weird assumptions about bloggers. Are we inside their damned test right now??
On a more cynical note, maybe the US spy satellite was outed by the White House because its information was not conforming with OVP’s plans for war with Iran.
Without facts to contradict OVP, Cheney’s 1% Doctrine kicks in to “protect” US interests and poof, war with Iran.
March is named after Mars, the god of war.
Well… Don’t think it’s particularly conspiracy-addled of me to note that games/exercises have been known to coincide with real events before, e.g. 11th Sept ‘01. But then again there are always any number of really unusual events happening in the world. In the same time frame we also had a near encounter with an asteroid; death of a Presidential candidate’s brother; assassination of a senior AQ in Pakistan figure; an emergency OPEC meeting; discovery of a new mammal species; etc. etc. etc.
With so much input, actual connections are generally much harder to discern than mere apparent patterns are. Of course our brains are built to favor false positives, pattern-detection-wise, so it’s good that we come together here to check our perceptions against others’, filter out the weaker ones, and sometimes even come to consensus hypotheses. Here’s to our hostess’ rather rare powers of discernment.
If you only knew the nature of a conversation I had with a reporter this evening, you might give more credit to the likelihood that half those items were connected in some way, even if they were connected only by a so-called “game”.
I wish like hell I could share it, I’m still freaked out.
Off hand I’d say the asteroid and the mammal would be off reporter’s list…?
And BTW if you’re suggesting I’m not nearly paranoid enough, well, that’d be a first…
Read this book very carefully…
Payback’s a bitch.
Fear.
Fear Makes Weak Men Run.
Bush is Running – Running from Accountability.
He’s been Running ever since He Invaded Iraq on Lies.
He was willing to Out a CIA Spy for Fear of ‘Getting Caught’ in his WMD Lies.
He’s Already Shown that He will Hurt US before he Accepts Responsibility.
Bush is the Classic Serial Abuser – Writ Large.
He’ll keep Running from Accountability.
And, He’ll hurt US again, too.
Not Principled.
Fear.
Regarding EW’s sense that something may be up in the Middle East, I found this today:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/S…..2FShowFull
Putting all the pieces together, I’m wondering whether the US is signaling the ME that if they crash the US economy by moving oil off the US dollar, the US will crash their economies by turning off their internet. I feel there’s definitely an I/P aspect to it too, but I don’t understand that world well enough to hear those particular dogwhistles.