The Obama Administration was gung ho to brag about the GM IPO last year. But if I’m not mistaken, this is the first time the White House has bragged nationally about jobs created thanks to the auto bailout (Ron Bloom, who got promoted into an official Assistant to the President role at the beginning of the year, wrote this).

Today brings word of more good news for the American auto industry. GM announced that it would hire 4,200 workers at seventeen of its plants around the country.

President Obama took office amidst the worst recession in a generation and nowhere was this devastion [sic] felt harder than in the American auto industry and the communities it has supported for decades. In the year before GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy, the auto industry shed over 400,000 jobs.

Facing this situation head on, the President made a bold and, at the time, politically unpopular choice: Despite calls from critics to simply let these companies – and the entire American auto industry – crumble, he refused to allow these companies to fail. Had the Administration failed to intervene, conservative estimates suggest that it would have cost at least an additional one million jobs and devastated vast parts of our nation’s industrial heartland.

But at the same time, the President did not provide unconditional support.  He insisted that the companies and their stakeholders make tough choices and undertake massive restructurings requiring huge sacrifices from all of their stakeholders.

Because of this “tough love,” the American auto industry is now positioned to grow and prosper as the economy recovers.  Since GM and Chrysler emerged from bankruptcy in June 2009 the auto industry has added 115,000 jobs – the fastest pace of job growth in the auto industry since 1998. Last year, for the first time in 16 years, the Detroit Three actually gained market share compared to their foreign counterparts.

And these companies are not  just making cars and trucks – they’re making the kind of fuel efficient cars and trucks that will power us to energy independence, protect consumers against rising gas prices, and ensure America wins the future.

Some of the workers GM is hiring and re-hiring in today’s announcement will be at work producing larger-than-initially-planned quantities of the widely acclaimed Chevy Volt. And just last month, Ford – which didn’t receive government assistance but which supported our aid to GM and Chrysler and has said publicly that it would not have survived if the rest of the American auto industry had been allowed to collapse – reported its best first-quarter profit in more than a decade thanks in large part to its new fuel-efficient vehicles.

In the wake of an historic recession, there is no doubt that much work remains. And we will not rest until every American who is looking for work can find a job. But today’s announcement is another positive sign – including more than 2 million private sector jobs created over the past 14 months – that we’re seeing across the country.

The comparative silence about the success of the bailout in the terms that really matter to actual people–jobs–not only confirms Main Street suspicions about the White House viewing the economy solely through the lens of the banksters, but it also leads beltway folks like John Dickerson to wonder out loud whether there is anything a President can do to fix the economy (Dickerson must have skipped those weeks when his American history class covered the New Deal).

The effects of the too-small stimulus, though real, are a lot harder to see. But aside from the decade-long Military Industrial Complex stimulus the DC area has enjoyed, the auto bailout and related energy investments was the biggest concentrated stimulus the Administration championed. And it has had an effect, both in hiring at GM and Chrysler, but also in hiring in MI more generally.

It’d be nice if the Administration not only bragged about that, but replicated it for places like Nevada.

Update: John Dickerson corrects me; this July 2010 briefing (a presser leading up to an Obama trip to visit several plants in the MidWest, bragged about jobs created). Thanks to Dickerson for the correction.

Used to be, when you vanquished your enemy, you declared victory and went home.

Not this time. Just a week after the death of Osama bin Laden–who declared war on the US in 1996–Buck McKeon has renewed his effort to rewrite the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force so as to include our secret wars in Yemen, Pakistan, and wherever else an unchecked President wants it to be. As part of the bargain, McKeon’s GWOT 2.0 would give the President the authority to detain our enemies in this newly-redefined war for the length of the hostilities (otherwise known as “forever”).

Benjamin Wittes has a good analysis of McKeon’s GWOT 2.0 here.

Now, I realize it’s not as simple as declaring victory and going home. In fact, I bet that a new AUMF, which would divorce the President’s super-duper terrorist fighting powers from the territory of Afghanistan, might make him more likely to declare victory in Afghanistan and go home. Moreover, by redefining the GWOT such that we can attach those super-duper powers to, say, Anwar al-Awlaki rather than 9/11, then the President won’t face legal pressure to free indefinite detainees because the war has ended. While it won’t happen yet, if the US were to nab a few more key al Qaeda leaders using the intelligence seized from OBL’s compound, you could make a legitimate argument that it’s time to let the indefinite detainees free.

I’m just betting, but I suspect that’s the direction the Administration’s thinking will head from where it’s currently at, which–according to Josh Gerstein–is undecided.

A White Houses spokesman declined to comment to POLITICO about the administration’s official position on whether the AUMF needs to be reaffirmed or replaced.

However, a senior administration official said Obama aides are split over whether to endorse the idea of updating the use-of-force resolution.

“After ten years, you may need something other than the AUMF,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “As an intellectual policy matter you can make a very good argument for doing that [but] there are divisions.”

It would offer them flexibility in Afghanistan just in time for the electorate to voice its displeasure with our endless wars abroad, while guarding super-duper powers the President has come to apparently cherish.

I realize, too, that we can’t say “we killed OBL, so let’s stop fighting terrorists.” But therein lies the key issue, the week after OBL’s death. Note the logic Wittes gives for supporting some kind of new AUMF (though he has some concerns about McKeon’s version):

This provision is sure to come under fire from the political left, which will argue that it is an expansion of the war just as Bin Laden has been killed. This is silly. It largely enshrines in law the administration’s current interpretation of the AUMF as pertains to the scope of the conflict and the scope of detention authority in the conflict. And it would put Congress explicitly behind the power to detain the enemy for the first time. It is more of an updating of the AUMF, whose focus on the perpetrators of the September 11 attacks is requiring increasingly strained interpretation to address the combatants in today’s fight, than an expansion of it. The provision seems to me very healthy–for the reasons I have given in the past.

While Wittes’ support for a new AUMF have been more thoughtful in the past, the logic here is basically that it is a good thing for Congress to endorse what a President is already doing if what he is already doing “strain[s] interpretation” of an original Congressional authorization. It’s the same kind of logic that held Congress should pass the FISA Amendments Act with immunity to give legal sanction to what the President was already doing. And like the FAA, a new AUMF would take place without an assessment of efficacy. A year after FAA passed, the IG report on the illegal wiretap program showed that program had not been all that effective. But it was too late to go back and put those Presidential powers back in their genie bottle.

About the most valuable reason for engaging with the torture apologists’ claims that torture led to OBL also has to do with efficacy. Human intelligence was critically important–particularly the kind practiced by people who could recognize the importance of a courier. NSA wiretaps abroad was crucially important. Our partnership with Pakistan was crucial as well. But even accounting for OBL’s dead daughter, it’s not clear that dropping drones based on dubious intelligence was all that effective (even ignoring the blowback that has led directly to radicalization of others). And given that a new AUMF would primarily authorize drone strikes in sovereign countries and indefinite detention (both enhanced wiretapping and intelligence ops are now tied to terrorism more generally, not an AUMF), it’s not clear that it would support effective policies.

Spencer addresses this point well–particularly the expansion of the AUMF to include “associated forces”–in his story on GWOT 2.0.

“Associated forces” could place the U.S. at war with terrorist entities that don’t concern themselves with attacking the United States. Think Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani terrorist group aligned with al-Qaida that pulled off the Mumbai bombings of 2008. Under the House language, there’s nothing to stop Obama or his successors from waging war against them. It comes close to “terrorism creep,” says Karen Greenberg, the executive director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University.

Greenberg doesn’t dispute that the war on al-Qaida goes far beyond bin Laden. But before voting on an expansion of the war — beyond al-Qaida — “we need to absorb first what the death of bin Laden means,” she says. “We need to stop and think and re-think. The idea that we’re going to keep reacting and not have a thoughtful time out is just unacceptable.”

I’d add one more thing. If we embrace GWOT 2.0 without some real thought about what the most effective response should be, we’re also going to chip away at more widespread international adherence to rule of law. You’ll increasingly see countries using our practices as justification to, say, assassinate a political figure in a neighboring country as a terrorist. You’re going to see not just the US, but the entire globe, accelerate down a slippery slope, potentially greatly destabilizing the world as a result.

The Obama Administration has an excuse to rethink (though the attempted assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki suggests they don’t want to conduct such a rethink) not just about what we’ve done–and the legal cover that all that really should have had–but what has been effective and what has been counterproductive. It seems Republicans are in such a rush to double down on war powers that they may lead us, and the world, further down the path of stupid belligerency.

I think a parade to celebrate would be a much smarter idea.

As Mark Bittman said when he tweeted this press releasem, “If bottled water is getting recalled we’re all in a lot of trouble.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – May 4, 2011 – Officials at the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH) announced today that test results on a sample taken from certain lots of Mountain Pure bottled drinking water show the presence of biological contamination.

The company has announced a voluntary recall of lots marked with a four-digit time code. The time code is written in military time, and the affected time period is from 2200 through 0400. This is etched into the plastic bottle. Also included is an expiration date code that says either Best By 2-27-2013 MPWA or Best By 2-28-2013 MPWA. These are bottles of purified drinking water in the 16.9 fl. oz. (506 ml.) size. ADH is recommending that anyone who might have purchased or received any of this bottled water dispose of it or return it to the point of purchase.

More testing is needed to identify the specific type of mold and its origin, and that is expected to take several more days. ADH has recommended to the company that they recall the entire lot where this sample originated, and the recall process is underway.

According to William L. Mason, MD, MPH, branch chief for the Preparedness and Emergency Response branch at ADH, it is unlikely that a healthy person would become ill from drinking this water. “People with a weakened immune system might be at higher risk,” Mason said. “Anyone who thinks they may have become ill after drinking this water should consult a physician.”

The affected water was found in a shipment of bottled water ordered by the city of Clinton for use during disaster response efforts that are on-going there. In some communities, including Clinton, public drinking water systems are under precautionary boil orders to help reduce the possibility of diarrheal illness. Residents are urged to boil drinking water for one minute prior to consuming it or to drink bottled water.

“We want to stress that the bottled water recall applies only to the specific lots of Mountain Pure water that are on the recall,” Mason said. “We are still saying that bottled water and water that you have purified by boiling is the safest way to provide drinking water in those communities with disrupted water supplies.”

This water was distributed because the water treatment plant in Clinton, AR, failed after heavy rains. According to the “Pure Mountain” people, the mold was introduced into the bottles as dust fell into the bottles during “purification.”

He said dust particles got into some water bottles during the capping of filled water bottles as part of the final process known as ozonation, where ozone is used to remove iron, manganese, taste, odors and sulfur without adding chemicals.

The particles may not show up for several days, depending on the temperature at which the bottled water is stored, according to Stacks.

It’s bad enough that we can’t produce eggs or peanut butter without contamination. But it seems somehow symbolic that we can’t manage to bottle water without introducing some kind of contamination.

Robert Chesney notes that the HASC Mark on the Defense Authorization bill includes a section on cyberwar. Here’s the entire section:

This section would affirm that the Secretary of Defense has the authority to conduct military activities in cyberspace. The committee recognizes that because of the evolving nature of cyber warfare, there is a lack of historical precedent for what constitutes traditional military activities in cyberspace.

In particular, this section would clarify that the Secretary of Defense has the authority to conduct clandestine cyberspace activities in support of military operations pursuant to the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (Public Law 107-40; 50 U.S.C. 1541 note) outside of the United States or to defend against a cyber attack on an asset of the Department of Defense.

The committee notes that al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces are increasingly using the internet to exercise command and control as well as to spread technical information enabling attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in areas of ongoing hostilities.

While these terrorist actions often lead to increased danger for U.S. and coalition forces in areas of ongoing hostilities, terrorists often rely on the global reach of the internet to communicate and plan from distributed sanctuaries throughout the world. As a result, military activities may not be confined to a physical battlefield, and the use of military cyber activities has become a critical part of the effort to protect U.S. and coalition forces and combat terrorism globally.

In certain instances, the most effective way to neutralize threats and protect U.S. and coalition forces is to undertake military cyber activities in a clandestine manner. While this section is not meant to identify all or in any way limit other possible military activities in cyberspace, the Secretary of Defense’s authority includes the authority to conduct clandestine military activities in cyberspace in support of military operations pursuant to an armed conflict for which Congress has authorized the use of all necessary and appropriate force or to defend against a cyber attack on a Department of Defense asset.

Because of the sensitivities associated with such military activities and the need for more rigorous oversight, this section would require quarterly briefings to the congressional defense committees on covered military activities in cyberspace.

While Chesney focuses on the use of “clandestine” in this passage (which I’ll return to), I think one of the key phrases is simply the requirement that DOD brief the Armed Services Committees quarterly on what it’s doing in cyberspace. As the AP reported in January, the SASC complained during the confirmation hearings of Michael Vickers that they weren’t getting briefed on clandestine cyberwar activities. Vickers claimed in response that the law only required that DOD brief Congress on human clandestine activities.

The Senate Armed Services Committee voiced concerns that cyber activities were not included in the quarterly report on clandestine activities. But Vickers, in his answer, suggested that such emerging high-tech operations are not specifically listed in the law — a further indication that cyber oversight is still a murky work in progress for the Obama administration.

Vickers told the committee that the requirement specifically calls for clandestine human intelligence activity. But if confirmed, he said, he would review the reporting requirements and support expanding the information included in the report.

So this section appears to close Vickers’ loophole, now requiring that DOD brief Congress on its activities in its quarterly clandestine activities reports.

In addition to legally demanding briefings, the section appears to affirmatively approve–as clandestine activities–cyberattacks against an AUMF-authorized target (so, al Qaeda and people like Anwar al-Awlaki we claim to be included in AUMF), and cyberdefense against an attack on an asset of DOD.

By the way, anyone want to speculate whether a Specialist allegedly downloading several databases onto a Lady Gaga CD constitutes a cyberattack on a DOD asset? Because if this permission includes WikiLeaks, then this section might be retroactively authorize attacks–say, DNS attacks on US-based servers–on WikiLeaks (note that DOD can attack outside the US, but such geographical limits are not placed on defensive actions).

In any case, as Chesney emphasizes, this section specifically authorizes attacks on AUMF-authorized targets and defense against attacks on DOD targets. Chesney notes that by calling these activities “clandestine,” it makes them a Traditional Military Activity.

That is to say, the language in § 962 refers to DOD authority to engage in cyber operations which are mean to go undiscovered but not meant to be denied.  That alone would presumably keep them from being categorized as a “covert action” subject to presidential finding and SSCI/HPSCI notification requirements.  Yet one can imagine that this does not quite suffice to solve the boundary dispute, insofar as it might not be clear on the front end that one would be willing to acknowledge sponsorship of an operation publicly if it becomes known…and indeed it might well be that the activity is very much meant to be both concealed and denied, making it hard at first blush to show that the activity is not a Title 50 covert action after all.  But in at least some instances there is a separate reason it should not be deemed a covert action: i.e., when the action is best understood as a high-tech equivalent to a traditional military activity (the “TMA” category being an explicit exception to the T50 covert action definition).  And that appears to be the case with the two categories explicitly described above, or at least arguably so.

The explanatory statement accompanying § 962 supports this reading.  It opens by stating that

[t]he committee recognizes that because of the evolving nature of cyber warfare, there is a lack of historical precedent for what constitutes traditional military activities in cyberspace.

So, to summarize, this section appears to affirmatively authorize two types of activities, defining them as clandestine operations, and mandating that Congress get quarterly briefings on them.

But note this clause: “this section is not meant to identify all or in any way limit other possible military activities in cyberspace.”

So, it appears, there may be these two types of explicitly authorized clandestine operations, and then the stuff John Rizzo warned about.

The House Armed Services Committee Mark-Up for next year’s Defense Authorization is out. And it includes funds to build drone hangars at four bases in the Continental US. The bases are–with images showing how far a Predator drone might be able to fly with its 2,300 mile range–are below:

Fort Riley, KS ($60 million)

Fort Campbell, KY ($67 million)

Fort Bragg, NC ($54 million)

Fort Hood, TX ($47 million)

Congratulations California! You seem to be slightly out of range of these new drone hangars.

Mind you, these aren’t the domestic drones you’re looking for. The domestic drones–piloted by the Air National Guard at Fort Drum, NY to monitor black bears in the Adirondacks–just cover the East coast. These drones probably won’t have a domestic purpose.

Still, with members of Congress itching to approve drone overflight in the name of job-creation, how long will it be before we see drones overhead?

Normally, Marc Thiessen’s torture apologies aren’t worth my time. But seeing as how I didn’t whack any piñatas on Cinco de Mayo, why not Thiessen’s latest, in which he claims those who deny CIA interrogations played a part in nabbing bin Laden are the latest birthers?

Note the formulation, though: Thiessen’s not talking about torture. He’s talking about CIA interrogations generally, even while he links to a Sully post that in turn links to me (thanks Sully!). Sully was explicitly talking about torture, not interrogations generally, and I was talking specifically about waterboarding, and from that Thiessen concludes we deny CIA interrogations had any role in nabbing OBL.

What’s the matter, Marc? Is your shifting of the debate indication you know you’ve lost the torture debate?

And boy does he lose that debate. Thiessen spends much of his column talking about people whose interrogations led to other plots, some of them totally debunked even within the documents Thiessen quotes. About the only piece he really connects to OBL is this interpretation of the intelligence Abu Faraj al-Libi contributed.

Take, for example, the file on Abu Faraj al-Libi — one of several CIA detainees who helped lead the agency to bin Laden’s courier. The document describes Abu Faraj as the “communications gateway” to bin Laden who once in custody “reported on al-Qai’das methods for choosing and employing couriers, as well as preferred communications means.” Based on intelligence obtained from Abu Faraj and other CIA detainees, it states that “in July 2003, [Abu Faraj] received a letter from UBL’s designated courier” (to whom he referred by a false name, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan) in which “UBL stated [Abu Faraj] would be the official messenger between UBL and others in Pakistan.” The file also notes a vital piece of intelligence: To better carry out his new duties “in mid-2003, [Abu Faraj] moved his family to Abbottabad” — the city where bin Laden eventually met his end — “and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar.” And the file reveals that “in mid-April 2005, [Abu Faraj] began arranging for a store front to be used as a meeting place and drop point for messages he wanted to exchange” with bin Laden’s courier and was captured while waiting to meet him.

So to summarize Thiessen’s spin of how al-Libi helped nab OBL:

• Al-Libi told the CIA that at a time when he was a key messenger for OBL, he had been in Abottabad
• Al-Libi told the CIA how important couriers were
• Al-Libi managed to hide the name of the all-important courier through whom we eventually found OBL, even under torture

Okay, Marc, so what did the CIA do with that intelligence? As Jose Rodriguez (who was head of Clandestine Services at the time) helpfully explained, they concluded from al-Libi’s interrogation that OBL was just a figurehead.

Al-Libbi told interrogators that the courier would carry messages from bin Laden to the outside world only every two months or so. “I realized that bin Laden was not really running his organization. You can’t run an organization and have a courier who makes the rounds every two months,” Rodriguez says. “So I became convinced then that this was a person who was just a figurehead and was not calling the shots, the tactical shots, of the organization. So that was significant.”

And later that same year, the CIA shut down its dedicated hunt for OBL.

The Central Intelligence Agency has closed a unit that for a decade had the mission of hunting Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants, intelligence officials confirmed Monday.

The unit, known as Alec Station, was disbanded late last year and its analysts reassigned within the C.I.A. Counterterrorist Center, the officials said.

The decision is a milestone for the agency, which formed the unit before Osama bin Laden became a household name and bolstered its ranks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when President Bush pledged to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice “dead or alive.”

The realignment reflects a view that Al Qaeda is no longer as hierarchical as it once was, intelligence officials said, and a growing concern about Qaeda-inspired groups that have begun carrying out attacks independent of Mr. bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

It wasn’t until the intelligence community got the courier’s real identity, and with it traced him back to Abbottabad–neither of which (according to reports thus far) came from al-Libi–that the intelligence community managed to track the courier in Abbottabad and in turn to OBL.

Now, as even the little bit I wrote that was quoted in Sully’s post made clear (so Thiessen presumably read it), the point I’m making is not that CIA interrogations didn’t yield information and–just as importantly–unbelievable denials–that ultimately helped lead to OBL. Rather, that either torture didn’t do as promised (that is, ensure we got all the important information that might lead to OBL’s location quickly) or the torturers were unable to understand the intelligence they were getting and so the intelligence was not used for years after we got it. Here’s what Sully quoted from me.

We can conclude that either KSM shielded the courier’s identity entirely until close to 2007, or he told his interrogators that there was a courier who might be protecting bin Laden early in his detention but they were never able to force him to give the courier’s true name or his location, at least not until three or four years after the waterboarding of KSM ended. That’s either a sign of the rank incompetence of KSM’s interrogators (that is, that they missed the significance of a courier protecting OBL), or a sign he was able to withstand whatever treatment they used with him.

And Thiessen’s own argument backs that up! According to his own argument, al-Libi gave us two key pieces of information, lied about another, and … the CIA responded by deprioritizing their hunt.

This, apparently, is Thiessen’s idea of a success!

And so, while those of us who note how torture stalled the hunt for OBL and didn’t deliver as promised note that fact, Thiessen sits at the WaPo proclaiming misunderstood leads and detainee lies a sign of success.

Alas, thwacking Thiessen’s nonsense won’t do a damn bit of good. Like torture, I guess, piñata thwacking never seems to work with dead-enders like Thiessen.

(Piñata image by peasap, used under Creative Commons license)

Condi Rice is, of all Bush’s top aides, the best at managing her reputation. Which is why her interview with Fareed Zakaria yesterday is so interesting.

Sure, there are some examples of Condi’s signature lies, such as when she claims the dedicated group to hunt Osama bin Laden–which was shut down between 2005 and 2009, after which Obama reinstituted it–proves the Bush Administration’s focus on capturing OBL.

ZAKARIA: President Obama did say that he felt that the capture or killing of Bin Laden was not a top priority when he took office and he moved it to a top priority. What’s your reaction?

RICE: Oh, it was a top priority. We wanted to get Osama Bin Laden every single day. And there was a unit at the – the agency that worked on nothing else.

More interesting, though, is Condi’s confusion about how many Presidents have hunted OBL. At the beginning of her interview, she suggests that the hunt for OBL has spanned just two presidencies.

ZAKARIA: When you first heard the news about Bin Laden’s assassination, what – what did you think?

RICE: Well, I was incredibly gratified and, frankly, relieved. It been a long hunt for him. I was proud that over two presidencies we were persistent enough and patient enough to put together the picture that ultimately led to him. You don’t just stumble upon Osama Bin Laden. It takes a lot of work to get there.

But then there’s this remarkable exchange.

ZAKARIA: And you’re hearing some Republicans, people like Rush Limbaugh, say Obama really doesn’t deserve much credit for this. You know, the – the operation was a routine operation.

You’ve been in the White House. Do you think that the president at key moments had to make difficult calls whether to use a drone, whether to use a special operations?

RICE: I’ve been in the White House, and I’ve seen a president make difficult decisions. And there were difficult decisions in this. What – what President Obama has done, indeed, it was a – it was a brave decision.

Now, it is absolutely the case that the United States of America has been fighting this war for at least 10 years, and really a bit longer. And so this is a victory across presidencies. It’s a – it’s a victory for having learned more how to fight the counterterrorism fight. [my emphasis]

Now, I presume the reference to a war that pre-dates 9/11 and even May 2011 is Condi’s claim that when she was demoting Richard Clarke in the early days of 2001 and when Bush was saying “I’m tired of swatting at flies … I’m tired of playing defense. I want to play offense. I want to take the fight to the terrorists” in March 2001, that was part of an already-engaged war with al Qaeda. Her reference to the hunt for OBL across two, not three, presidencies would seem to discount Clinton’s efforts to capture or kill him.

But that would presumably also mean Condi and Bush were at war when they dismissed the urgency of the August 6, 2001 PDB, titled “Bin Laden determined to strike in US” and discussing preparations for plane hijackings.

Or maybe the reference to a longer war refers to the efforts Clinton made to neutralize OBL after OBL declared war on the US in 1996. If so, it’d sure be nice if Condi said that explicitly, given how many times the Bush Administration claimed Clinton did nothing to hunt down OBL.

Which raises the next question. I agree we’ve spent much of the last 10 years learning how to fight terrorism. Aside from obvious stupid, easily avoidable mistakes like the Iraq War and torture, there’s nothing wrong with admitting that we had to learn to do this right (though we often ignored the lessons that the UK and Israel, as well as other European countries, learned in their earlier counterterrorist fights).

But is Condi admitting that Obama has learned things that the Bush Administration didn’t know?

As I noted in an update to my Mushroom Cloud Brigade post, even Univision joined in the torture apologist fun, inviting Alberto Gonzales on to talk about the killing of Osama bin Laden. And Gonzales did defend torture.

Jorge Ramos: Mr. Gonzales The New York Times reported that the information that led to the capture of Osama Bin Laden was probably obtained through torture, through waterboarding, do you know if that was the case?

Alberto Gonzales: Well, first of all, I wouldn’t describe waterboarding as torture, as you just described it. At least with respect to the application of this technique back during the Bush administration because the Department of Justice issued an opinion, a painstaking analysis of the anti-torture statute and provided guidance to the CIA that if certain precautions, certain safety measures were taken in the application of this technique that it would be lawful under the anti-torture statute and so, that’s the reason why this technique was applied only three times during the Bush administration, because the President understood the need to gather information which we now believe, many are reporting, led to actual intelligence which led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

Yet Gonzales didn’t defend torture very effectively. Even this statement is full of equivocations: the seeming reliance on “certain safety measures” that we know weren’t used, the illogic that because it was legal it was only used three times, and his restatement of “we now believe” to “many are reporting” that torture led to OBL.

But that’s nothing compared to the way Gonzales completely undercuts the logic behind using torture here (in the question that preceded his answer on torture).

JR: Mr. Gonzales how do you explain that President Bush couldn’t get Osama bin Laden for eight years and Barack Obama did it in two years?

AG: Often time these kinds of successes are a function of timing, good luck, getting information from various sources, putting that information together which may then lead to actual intelligence. My understanding is this depended a lot on human intelligence and every intelligence expert I know tells me that it takes a great deal of time to develop human intelligence and so the fact that it took so long, for me I expected it to happen, I was not surprised that it happened, it was just a matter of time and it was as a result of a lot of hard work and dedication and you know the fact that it happened during the Obama administration it’s a credit to the administration, but I know this, working in the White House as the Attorney General of the United States, we did everything we could to try to find him ourselves. [my emphasis]

Implicit in the Techniques memo that authorized the Abu Zubaydah torture (which presumably served as the basis for the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed torture) is a ticking time bomb scenario. It refers to an increased level of chatter, suggesting that that means there must be an imminent attack.

Moreover, your intelligence indicates that there is currently a level of “chatter” equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks. In light of the information you believe Zubaydah has and the high level of threat you believe now exists, you wish to move the interrogations into what you have described. as an “increased pressure phase.”

And one of Jay Bybee’s defenses of the memos signed by him specifically refers to the ticking time bomb scenario (relying on faulty intelligence about Jose Padilla that was collected using torture).

In other words, the “painstaking analysis” Gonzales claims DOJ did to authorize torture relies on the argument that torture must be used because only torture will reveal information quickly enough. But here we are, nine years after that analysis was done, and the recipient of one of the memos summarizing that analysis now concedes that “every intelligence expert” he knows confirms that “it takes a great deal of time to develop human intelligence.”

The decade long search for Osama bin Laden proves that torture did not deliver on that promise–it did not yield the most crucial intelligence immediately. And Alberto Gonzales, in his effort to defend the use of torture, concedes that it did not do so.

There’s a lot more that’s fascinating in this transcript (I’m looking for a link). Here’s the part of Gonzales’ appearance that pertains to torture.

JR: Do you think that President Bush deserves some credit for the apprehension and elimination of Osama bin Laden?

AG: Well I think a lot of people deserve some credit, obviously President Obama and the administration should be congratulated for executing such a wonderful plan, but clearly, President Bush implemented various policies that continue still today under the Obama administration and I think helped contribute to the success that we saw this weekend.

JR: Mr. Gonzales how do you explain that President Bush couldn’t get Osama bin Laden for eight years and Barack Obama did it in two years?

AG: Often time these kinds of successes are a function of timing, good luck, getting information from various sources, putting that information together which may then lead to actual intelligence. My understanding is this depended a lot on human intelligence and every intelligence expert I know tells me that it takes a great deal of time to develop human intelligence and so the fact that it took so long, for me I expected it to happen, I was not surprised that it happened, it was just a matter of time and it was as a result of a lot of hard work and dedication and you know the fact that it happened during the Obama administration it’s a credit to the administration, but I know this, working in the White House as the Attorney General of the United States, we did everything we could to try to find him ourselves.

JR: As Attorney General you wrote a controversial memo in February 2002 claiming that the protections of the Geneva conventions did not apply to certain prisoners and certain individuals in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you think that it was legal to kill Osama Bin Laden?

AG: Well, I think what happened over the weekend is very separate apart from the discussions that we had in 2002 over the Geneva convention, you asked me whether I thought it was legal to kill him, again, I wasn’t there I don’t know all the facts, but based on what I’ve been told, and based upon the reporting it seems to me that it was in fact a lawful kill. Osama Bin Laden was an enemy of the state, he was a military target and consequently it was legitimate to kill him during our conflict with Al Qaeda. If someone is raising a question that in fact he may have attempted to surrender then of course international laws would prohibit the United States from killing someone once they’ve indicated that they’re going to surrender. But the fact that he may have been armed, he may have been unarmed, if in fact he resists capture or makes any kind of threatening move you have to remember you have the military in a very dangerous situation, decisions have to be made in a split second and based on what I understand I think that there’s no question this was a lawful killing.

JR: Mr. Gonzales The New York Times reported that the information that led to the capture of Osama Bin Laden was probably obtained through torture, through waterboarding, do you know if that was the case?

AG: Well, first of all, I wouldn’t describe waterboarding as torture, as you just described it. At least with respect to the application of this technique back during the Bush administration because the Department of Justice issued an opinion, a painstaking analysis of the anti-torture statute and provided guidance to the CIA that if certain precautions, certain safety measures were taken in the application of this technique that it would be lawful under the anti-torture statute and so, that’s the reason why this technique was applied only three times during the Bush administration, because the President understood the need to gather information which we now believe, many are reporting, led to actual intelligence which led to the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

JR: Mr. Gonzales, just to clarify, why according to you waterboarding is not torture?

AG: Well again, the question is whether or not does it violate the anti-torture statue. You and I may have very different definitions of torture, my job as a lawyer it’s always to see what does a law prescribe, not what makes me uncomfortable but what is unpleasant. And clearly waterboarding is unpleasant and I’m not here to defend it as something that we should all experience. But the Department of Justice, this is when I was at the White House not at the department, but the Department of Justice under General Ashcroft rendered guidance to the executive branch that this technique if administered, under the precautions, under the watchful eye of doctors and under various safety procedures that it could be administered on high value detainees, which are individuals that had knowledge of an impending attack that it would not violate the anti-torture statue. Now, you may be offended by it, I’m offended in terms it’s a very, very tough procedure no question about it. But the question as a lawyer is, does it violate the anti-torture statue? And the Department of Justice rendered opinion that it could be applied in a certain way and it not violate the statue.

I noted this already, but it so exceeds even the abysmal standards of the Sunday show bookers, I’m going to repeat it.

To celebrate Mothers Day, the Sunday shows have brought you the Mushroom Cloud Brigade–Condi Rice, Rummy, and Dick Cheney–the three people who, on September 8, 2002 used the Sunday shows to trumpet the intelligence they had laundered through Judy Miller to lie us into war against Iraq.

RICE: You will get different estimates about precisely how close he is. We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into Iran, for instance — into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to — high-quality aluminum tools that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.

We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought, maybe six months from a crude nuclear device.

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t what the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

Of course, the Mushroom Cloud Brigade won’t be lying about Iraq today. They’ll be lying about torture. And they’ll be helped by a slew of other torture apologists: Michael Hayden, Michael Chertoff, Rudy “9/11” Giuliani, and Liz “BabyDick” Cheney. Update: My apologies for forgetting Univision, which also hosted a torture apologist (Alberto Gonzales), today.

As they spew their torture apology, remember this. The guy who ran their torture program, Jose Rodriguez, has said the best piece of intelligence we got from torture with respect to Osama bin Laden led him to conclude that OBL was no longer the tactical leader of al Qaeda.

Al-Libbi told interrogators that the courier would carry messages from bin Laden to the outside world only every two months or so. “I realized that bin Laden was not really running his organization. You can’t run an organization and have a courier who makes the rounds every two months,” Rodriguez says. “So I became convinced then that this was a person who was just a figurehead and was not calling the shots, the tactical shots, of the organization. So that was significant.”

That led the CIA to shut down its search for OBL precisely because they believed OBL no longer headed a hierarchical organization.

Only, at least according to a background briefing at the Pentagon yesterday (which could itself be more propaganda), that conclusion was wrong. The biggest lesson our intelligence agencies have gotten from analyzing the stash of materials at OBL’s compound is that OBL was not a figurehead, he remained not just the strategic, but also the tactical head of al Qaeda.

The following is a key point:  the materials reviewed over the past several days clearly show that bin Laden remained an active leader in al Qaeda, providing strategic, operational and tactical instructions to the group.  Though separated from many al Qaeda members who are located in more remote areas of the region, he was far from a figurehead.  He was an active player making the recent operation even more essential for our nation’s security.

According to torture apologist Jose Rodriguez, the most important information we got on OBL using torture was that he was a figurehead. According to those analyzing the materials from OBL’s compound, OBL “was far from a figurehead.”

Rodriguez’ torture-induced conclusion was completely wrong.

That’s what the torture apologists have to show for themselves: they gave up the hunt for OBL because they got bad information from torture.

So whereas on September 8, 2002, the Mushroom Cloud Brigade used the Sunday shows to sell a war that would distract us from fighting al Qaeda and getting OBL, today they’ll use the Sunday shows to claim torture helped find OBL. Yet another lie from the Mushroom Cloud Brigade on the Sunday shows.

Happy Mothers Day, moms! May the breakfast in bed your kids made for you help you avoid seeing the Mushroom Cloud Brigade and torture apologists on TV.

One more point about the case of Mohamed Mohamud, the accused bomber from Oregon. A government filing submitted last month addresses the defense’s requests for notes regarding various interactions Mohamud had with the FBI.  It describes two sets of hand-written notes from a FBI agent(s). The first are the notes an FBI agent took after Mohamud got stopped at the airport last year.

The government has notes of its interview with defendant on June 14, 2010. Those notes are accurately summarized in the report of that interview that has been provided to defendant. The government has compared the agent’s handwritten notes to the final, written report, and there are no variances or discrepancies. The only information that appears in the notes, but not in the report, is a statement made by defendant or one of his parents that he was born in Mogadishu, and the date defendant said he planned to return from Alaska. Thus, the notes should not be produced. The government does not have notes from its second, and only other, interview with defendant that occurred on November 26, 2011.

Those handwritten notes were preserved.

But there was another set of handwritten notes–those documenting the July 30 meet at which a recording device failed. Those notes were not preserved.

Defendant has also asked for notes “purporting to relate to the July 30th meeting.” The contents of the July meeting were summarized by an FBI agent in a typewritten report that was provided to defendant on December 10, 2010. Consistent with his practice in all cases where witness statements were not taken, the agent memorialized his notes in their entirety in typewritten reports for all the meetings between UCEs and defendant and, after doing so, he destroyed his handwritten notes. All of the reports written based on those notes have been provided to the defense. [my emphasis]

Now, it’s not clear that the agent in question is the same (that is, it’s not clear that the same agent chose to destroy just some of his notes); the complaint uses “I” a lot, but does not use “we” in its discussion of the follow-up to the airport stop, and the agent who destroyed his notes is not stationed in Portland. The government explanation–that one interview included a witness statement while the other did not–sort of offers an explanation if the same agent took both sets of notes, though not a logical one. After all, if something happens with the recording in the most important meeting in a case, wouldn’t it make sense for an agent to make an exception to his normal procedure, and keep his notes?

The government admits as much when it talks about making sure remaining records of the meeting are preserved.

Even before the filing of defendant’s motion, the government had taken steps to ensure that any remaining notes or other documentation of the July 30, 2010 meeting were preserved and that the events surrounding the meeting were documented.

If keeping remaining records after a failed recording makes sense after indictment, doesn’t it make sense before indictment, too?

Yet one of the reasons the government objects to an order the defense has proposed limiting FBI agents’ ability to discuss the meeting is that if they’re prohibited from doing that, they won’t be able to provide further reports from the meeting to the defense.

Additionally, the proposed order is problematic because it would prohibit agents from discussing any issue related to the August 3 report, which includes not only details of the meeting but other details of defendant’s initial contact with the agent. The order would also limit the government’s ability to comply with its discovery obligations. For example, the agents who are processing the discovery would be unable to finish any reports related to the July 30 meeting and would be unable to complete the ongoing process of providing defendant with additional discovery related to that meeting.

In other words, the government seems to be saying that the court should not order its employees not to talk about the meeting, because doing so would prevent another person who heard the meeting to complete a report, almost a year after the fact, about the meeting, because she has to talk to others to complete such a report.