Laura Rozen rocks, and today she rolls up more jaw dropping malevolence and fraud on the part of the Bush/Cheney Administration.

A potentially explosive new court filing by the lawyers for Lakhdar Boumediene and five other Guantanamo detainees suggests that the Bush administration ordered the Bosnian government to arrest and hold the men after an exhaustive Bosnian investigation had found them innocent of any terrorism related activity and had ordered their release, in order to use them as props in Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union speech.

The filing–"Lakhdar Boumediene, et al., Petitioners, v. George W. Bush, President of the United States, et al., Respondents, Petitioners’ Public Traverse to the Government’s Return to the Petition for Habeas Corpus"–lays out the case that the Bush administration threatened at the highest levels to withdraw diplomatic and military aid to the Balkan nation if Bosnia released the men, which its own three-month investigation had found innocent of any terrorism charges in the days leading up to Bush’s January 2002 State of the Union.

Faced with the threats of the withdrawal of aid and that if it released the men, the White House would order NATO troops to detain them, Bosnia transferred the men under duress to the custody of the US government in January 2002. Ten days later, Bush used sixteen words to warn Americans that, in "cooperation" with the Bosnian government, it had captured terrorists who had planned to bomb the US embassy in Sarajevo: "Our soldiers, working with the Bosnian government, seized terrorists who were plotting to bomb our embassy," Bush told the nation.

But, six years later, the detainees’ petition says, after the US Supreme Court has sided with the detainees and ordered the US to give the detainees habeas corpus rights, the Bush administration has failed to repeat the embassy plot charges that Bush used in his State of the Union address, or to produce credible evidence of why the men should be held as enemy combatants.

It is hard to be shocked by these kind of revelations anymore, there has been so much criminal depravity on the part of the Bush/Cheney crew in relation to their torture and sadistic gulag detention programs that it just dulls the senses after a while. And it is not like we didn’t know that the case against Lakhdar Boumediene was bogus; that was evident from the prior litigation that led to the original Supreme Court Boumediene decision. The pleading containing the new allegations is here (pdf). For those of you perplexed by the title of the pleading, a "traverse" pleading is nothing more than a somewhat archaic term for a reply pleading.

The revelation that Boumediene has been, from the outset, about yet another 16 word intentional lie to the American public, and indeed the world, in the hallowed State of the Union Speech, in order to fraudulently gin up the basis for an illegal and immoral war of aggression, is heart stopping and hard to stomach. We already had a 16 word blatant lie by Bush for this purpose. Crikey, how many other 16 word lies are out there?

As I said, we knew the detention and persecution of Boumediene and the others known as the "Algerian Six" was unjustified and unsupportable, but the similarities to the other "16 Word" scandal are striking.

Both cases involved facts that the Bush/Cheney Administration possessed and knew were patently false, and yet cravenly used in the State Of The Union to sell their desire for war of choice and aggression. Both involved bordering Islamic countries in Northwestern Africa. Both were hurriedly put in the SOTU to gin up the war on terror and lay the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq that both Bush and Cheney were jonesing for since before they took office. And both were linchpins in the respective SOTU speeches in 2002 and 2003, seeking to sell and con the public for support by the Bushies.

Repetitive analogous conduct, in similar situations, over time. This is what in the law is known as pattern and practice evidence. Hard to say something is a mistake if you keep making that same "mistake" over and over and over. Well, the Bush/Cheney Administration has a crystal clear pattern and practice of using 16 word snippets of fraud to sell war to the American people. I wonder if Condiliar Rice will blithely laugh off the new "16 Word" fraud as overblown nonsense the way she did the original "16 Word" scandal?

It’s getting hard out there on the pimps and cons in the CIA, first Director Goss goes down the tubes, and now his right hand man Foggo is headed to the slammer.

As reported Monday, Dusty Foggo has copped an incredibly lenient plea to one count of simple wire fraud. Foggo, formerly Number Three man in the Bush CIA, under Director Porter Goss who also resigned in disgrace, had been charged with 28 counts of sordid and sundry fraud, conflict of interest, bribery aiding and abetting, and false statements, all primarily related to the Duke Cunningham and Brent Wilkes criminal convictions.

Just how did Foggo get such a sweetheart deal?

It must have been the evidence that Foggo created a new deputy director of administration position and hired his mistress to fill it, the weekly poker games at Washington hotels with Congressmen such "Duke" Cunningham, lobbyists, House intelligence committee staff members and prostitutes. Or maybe Foggo’s assistance to childhood friend, Brent Wilkes, one of two defense contractors bribing House intelligence committee member Cunningham with tens of thousands of dollars in antiques, travel, fancy meals, house payments, and hookers in exchange for earmarks steering more than $100 million worth of government contracts to Wilkes’ San Diego-based firm, right?

As the always excellent Laura Rozen details in an article just out in Mother Jones:

No, what truly worried Agency brass were the darker secrets their former top logistics officer was threatening to spill had his case gone to trial as scheduled on November 3. They included the massive contracts Foggo was discussing with Wilkes, estimated by one source at over $300 million dollars. "Wilkes was working on several other huge deals when the hammer fell," a source familiar with Foggo’s discussions with Wilkes told me. What kinds of deals? According to the source, they included creating and running a secret plane network
…
The "classified air support contract" and its implied purposes for renditions are among the truly damaging national security secrets, along with the methods the CIA uses to create front companies and dole out black contracts, that the CIA and Bush White House would have been anxious not to have exposed, especially in a trial set to take place the day before the election in a suburban DC courtroom within a ten-minute drive of the entire national security press corps. (Emphasis added)

Now, most people covering the Foggo case, including Laura, attribute Foggo’s wildly successful plea deal to a strong "graymail defense", especially in light of the fact that Foggo threatened "to expose the cover of virtually every CIA employee with whom he interacted and to divulge to the world some of our country’s most sensitive programs—even though this information has absolutely nothing to do with the charges he faces".

But it’s not graymail behind Foggo’s plea, it is CYA. A true graymail defense is where:

The defendent claims that classified records are necessary to the defense. The goal of the defense team is to request so many classified documents that the federal government says "no." At that point, the defense tries to convince a judge that they cannot get a fair trial without these records; the goal is to have the case or charges dismissed.

Congress enacted the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) to permit defendants to deal with secret information germane to their trial in sealed court hearings; so anything germane to Foggo’s case could have been handled thusly. And the rest, such as Foggo’s brazen and scurrilous threat to reveal every fellow CIA agent and contact he knew, and all the programs, well that is the epitome of extortion via threat of treason; simply make a record of the threat and throw his rear in solitary. If he makes one single overt act on the threat, prosecute him for treason outright, which is punishable by death.

There were tried and true ways to legally deal with Foggo and his treasonous threats. No, it was that Cheney, Bush, Mukasey and the other grifters, pimps and lackeys they populated our government and intelligence service with didn’t want the public reminded of their secret torture airlines, corruption, dishonesty and perfidy right before the election. Gee, who could have predicted that? Must be hard on those pimps out there these days.

It has been clear for a long time that Gonzales had serious criminal exposure for his acts during his service in the Bush Administration, which is why immediately after departure from the DOJ AGAG lawyered up by hiring criminal-defense lawyer George Terwilliger. Probably one of the reasons Gonzales announced his resignation within a week of the initiation of an Inspector General’s investigation into his conduct.

That IG report described how Gonzales’ improperly, and illegally, possessed, handled and transported Top Secret information; i.e. the two most important, secret, and arguably illegal, programs in the history of the Bush Administration, the illegal wiretap program and–almost certainly–the torture program.

In most circumstances when the DOJ gets a fish like this on the hook, the first thing you would expect would be for them to work him for incriminating information on other malfeasance he is aware of and to entice him into a cooperations agreement to help bring others to justice. And this is just what it looks like is happening. Murray Waas is just out with a major article in The Atlantic:

According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.
…
Gonzales has also told Justice Department investigators that President Bush played a more central and active role than was previously known in devising a strategy to have Congress enable the continuation of the surveillance program when questions about its legality were raised by the Justice Department, as well as devising other ways to circumvent the Justice Department’s legal concerns about the program, according to people who have read Gonzales’s interviews with investigators.
…
In describing Bush as having pressed him to engage in some of the more controversial actions regarding the warrantless surveillance program, Gonzales and his legal team are apparently attempting to lessen his own legal jeopardy. The Justice Department’s inspector general (IG) is investigating whether Gonzales lied to Congress when he was questioned under oath about the surveillance program. And the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is separately investigating whether Gonzales and other Justice Department attorneys acted within the law in authorizing and overseeing the surveillance program. Neither the IG nor OPR can bring criminal charges, but if, during the course of their own investigations, they believe they have uncovered evidence of a possible crime, they can seek to make a criminal referral to those who can.
…
And what began as investigations narrowly focused on Gonzales’s conduct could easily morph into broader investigations leading into the White House, and possibly leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Man, that all sounds great. But the suspects that Gonzales could hand up are current and former Bush Administration officials, all the way up to Bush, Cheney and other senior officials. Who in George Bush’s and Michael Mukasey’s DOJ is going to have the moral and ethical fortitude to do their duty in this regard? What provisions will be made to avoid the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in this situation? Who will do the right thing and uphold the rule of law? And who will insure that the situation is not allowed to be played, again, like a drum by the Bushies and their cagey attorneys so that they all skate?

Glad you asked, because that is already a prime concern. Again, from Wass and The Atlantic:

Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and professor at Columbia Law School, told me that Gonzales appears to be attempting to walk the thin line of taking himself out of harm’s way while at the same time protecting the president, a strategy that very well could work: “I think he is serving his own purposes and the White House’s purposes,” Richman says.

According to Richman, by invoking Bush’s name and authority, Gonzales and his legal team are making it more difficult for investigators to seek a criminal investigation of his actions, or for other investigators to later bring criminal charges against him: “The clearer it is that Gonzales did what he did at the behest of the president of the United States, the safer that he [Gonzales] is legally,” says Richman. At the same time, by saying that he is advising the president, Gonzales also makes it easier for those at the White House to claim executive privilege if they do indeed become embroiled in the probe.

Moreover, according to one senior Justice Department official, Gonzales, his legal team, and the White House also know that Justice’s IG and OPR are unlikely to press senior White House officials, let alone the president, to answer their questions.

And, therein you have the $64 billion conundrum. You have Alberto Gonzales working to protect both himself and the rest of the Bush brigade, and they are negotiating with Bush’s Department of Justice, led by the new AGAG and consigliere, Michael Mukasey. This is not, in terms of the best interests of the American people, the Constitution and the rule of law, exactly an arm’s length transaction. And, quite frankly, that is a glaring understatement.

So, how do the forces of truth, justice and ethics move the matter towards an honest consideration that actually might portend accountability for the malfeasance so prima facially apparent?

One scenario feared by the White House is that the IG or OPR could send a public report to Congress concluding that Gonzales or some other official may have committed a crime. At a minimum, that would make the conduct of Gonzales, or of any other official deemed to be under suspicion, the subject of a criminal investigation.

If the report also raised unanswered questions about possible misconduct by other senior administration officials, or even the president, that could lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor. Some consider this unlikely; Attorney General Mike Mukasey has said that he is not an advocate of special prosecutors, and his critics in Congress have said that Mukasey tends to use his position for the political benefit of the White House. But in the hands of congressional Democrats, a public report accusing Gonzales and other administration officials of misconduct could make it difficult for Mukasey to resist their calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Inside the White House, this is what is called the “nightmare scenario.” White House Counsel Fred Fielding, who served in the Nixon White House during Watergate and as a White House counsel during the Reagan administration, has told others in the White House that although he does not consider this a likelihood, it should not be ruled out, and Bush and his staff should be ready for such a contingency.

Fred Fielding doesn’t consider accountability "a likelihood". How quaint. I wonder if the odds might improve substantially if citizens far and wide, say for instance all the readers of this and the other key blogs in the blogosphere, were to put direct and heavy pressure on their congressional Representatives and Senators to give Fred fielding and the Bushies their "nightmare scenario" they so richly deserve. And guess what? They are all going to be home in your districts begging for votes and support for an election set to go in five weeks. If there was ever a time they were hungry and amenable to influence, now is the time. Lock em down; make them promise to bring accountability!

There is one other paragraph in Murray’s article of particular note that should be related here:

A congressional source familiar with the meeting said in an interview that he believed it was significant that Bush personally directed Gonzales to write notes as to what occurred at the meeting. Ordinarily members of Congress don’t take notes at briefings concerning such highly classified issues. Very likely, Gonzales’s notes are the only ones that exist. [The Justice Department is investigating whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales created a set of fictitious notes so that President Bush would have a rationale for reauthorizing his warrantless eavesdropping program. For that story click here.]

Only time will tell whether or not Congress can be supplied with the electoral fear to induce backbone formation necessary for accountability. It is up to use to see that all the senior officials in the Bush Administration are place in the dock of a criminal trial court.

One thing is for sure, for Alberto Gonzales, the man that George Bush appallingly appointed to lead the nation’s most critical cabinet agency, the Department of Justice, it will be the first real experience he has ever had in a trial courtroom.

You knew this was coming, and since I simply can’t stomach any more Lurch Paulson discussion today, I bring it to you. Remember Marcy’s Drill, Baby, Drill post on sex, lies and oil at the Minerals Management Agency?

Clearly, John Conyers found it as titillating as we did. He wants to hear more. From McClatchy:

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee demanded Tuesday that the attorney general provide an "immediate explanation" for a Justice Department decision that could have cost taxpayers up to $40 million in royalties from a major oil company.

Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers’ cited a McClatchy story Sept. 12 that detailed the department’s rejection of the Colorado U.S. attorney’s recommendation to intervene in a whistleblower’s suit against the Kerr-McGee Corp.

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Conyers said charges that politics might have played a part in a decision favoring a major oil company "must be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated." Conyers said he wanted to question the officials involved in the case and that he sought access to all related records.

When Marcy last reported, the Inspector General’s reports had just been released, and they sure had some juicy material in them. Since that time, IG Earl Devaney is royally pissed that the DOJ prosecuted two line level scrubs at the MMA, but refused to prosecute the big dog managers he wanted nailed. And he let his displeasure be known:

"I would have liked a more aggressive approach, and I would have liked to have seen some other people prosecuted here," he said during a hearing before the House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee.
…
Devaney also recommended that the Justice Department prosecute RIK’s former Denver office director, Gregory Smith, and the former associate director of the Minerals Revenue Management office, Lucy Dennet.

The reports accuse Smith of having sex with two subordinates and improperly accepting $30,000 from a private company for marketing its services to oil and gas companies.

Dennet is accused of helping Mayberry create the contract he was awarded after his retirement.

The Justice Department hasn’t explained why it declined to prosecute them.

But in today’s McClatchy report on Conyers’ letter, we learn just how mad IG Devaney really is with the DOJ:

Inspector General Earl Devaney was so displeased with the department’s refusal, Conyers wrote, that he pulled his investigators off a department task force examining disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s influence-peddling.

In the grand scheme of things, a pretty small act; however, a pretty telling one in these circumstances. There are a lot of people from both sides of the partisan fence that are hopping mad over this. Devaney is joined by loyal Republican US Attorney in Colorado Troy Eid and his Civil Division Chief, Lisa Christian; Conyers is joined by Pat Leahy and Sen. Ken Salazar from Colorado.

So why did Michael Mukasey squelch this prosecution that has so many authorities across the spectrum hot under the collar? Stay tuned, this could get fun.

Well, okay, it was Dick Cheney. Close enough. From The Los Angeles Times:

Appearing alongside beleaguered Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday criticized Russia’s conduct in its short war with Georgia and pledged to continue American support for reconstruction and humanitarian aid.
…
Cheney’s remarks probably will further inflame Moscow, where officials have railed against the United States’ alliances with the former Soviet states. This week, President Dmitry Medvedev said bluntly that Moscow expected to maintain a "privileged" sphere of influence in the region of the former Soviet Union.

However, U.S. officials Thursday brushed off criticism that the White House is deliberately approaching the brink of confrontation with Russia.

"The United States is not trying to paint Russia as an enemy," said Robert A. Wood, a State Department spokesman. "We’re very concerned about its behavior and what that means for the future of the U.S.-Russia relationship. We’re looking at all aspects of our relationship with Russia, in terms of how we go forward."

Russian officials also have been dismayed by the apparent staying power of Saakashvili, often referred to in Moscow as a "war criminal" for launching the military operation in early August in the breakaway province of South Ossetia. Russia responded by sending in troops to defend the pro-Russian enclave, which broke with Georgia’s government more than a decade ago. The fighting ended with Russia continuing to occupy parts of Georgia proper to enforce the separation from South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said this week that the world should impose an arms embargo on Georgia until Saakashvili is out of power.

Georgian officials have said the United States will help rebuild the country’s crushed military. But that was not directly affirmed during Cheney’s visit, which came a day after President Bush said the U.S. would provide up to $1 billion in nonmilitary assistance.

The whole Georgia/Russia war in, and over, the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions in the Caucasus seems somewhat surreal. In spite of the critical nature of what happened, and continues to happen there, there has been a paucity of credible reporting in the United States. What are still the two nuclear superpowers in the world, and a clear step toward cold war renewal, were all involved as were, of course, the people who actually live in those areas. Some of them are no longer living; and, yet, we still don’t know who the true aggressor was. And, strangely, the American educated, Cheney confidante, Georgian President Saakashvili was literally plastered on American television during the entire conflict in an unprecedented manner for a foreign leader. While there may be slight confusion over who started the Georgia-Russian war; we do know who ended it, the Russians handed the Georgians their own rear ends.

Juan Cole relates:

All sides have committed massacres and behaved abominably. There are no clean hands involved, notwithstanding the strong support for Georgia visible in the press of most NATO member countries. (Georgia has been jockeying to join NATO, something Moscow stridently opposes.) Still, not everyone in NATO agrees that Saakashvili is a hero. While traveling with the negotiating team of President Nicolas Sarkozy, one French official observed that "Saakashvili was crazy enough to go in the middle of the night and bomb a city" in South Ossetia. The consequence of Russia’s riposte, he said, is "a Georgia attacked, pulverized, through its own fault."

Far as I can determine, that is about right. Tiny Georgia made a gutsy, and monumentally ill advised, move on South Ossetia, an area that wanted independence and that was under the protective eye of Russia. Despite initial heavy losses, Georgia did not back off, and Russia rolled over them until there was basically no way for Georgia to continue fighting.

What would motivate Georgia, with a military probably not ready to take on the Alaska National Guard and it’s brilliant commander in chief Sarah Palin, to make such an insane play? There appear to be two possibilities 1) Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili decided on his own that Russia would not care that much; and, if they did, the United States and the West would come to his aid militarily, or 2) the United States affirmatively led Saakashvili to believe the scenario in 1 ahead of time. You can place Vladimir Putin emphatically in favor of door number two.

From a remarkable interview with Matthew Chance of CNN, Putin states:

If my suppositions are confirmed, then there are grounds to suspect that some people in the United States created this conflict deliberately in order to aggravate the situation and create a competitive advantage for one of the candidates for the U.S. presidency. And if that is the case, this is nothing but the use of the called administrative resource in domestic politics, in the worst possible way, one that leads to bloodshed.

You really should read the entire interview. The detail, knowledge, intricate history over hundreds of years – the mastery of the situation, that Putin just casually rattles off unscripted, is eye opening. Then ponder that for seven and a half years Bush has been dealing with Putin thinking he was his equal. Bush looked into Putin’s eyes and could see Putin’s soul and that Vlad was a man he could do business with. Vlad looked into Bush’s eyes and saw an ignorant rube he could take advantage of. Guess which one had it right?

Which brings us back to Cheney.

The devil went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal.
He was in a bind ’cause he was way behind: he was willin’ to make a deal.

The monumental insanity of Georgia’s aggression, and the direct allegation by Putin, sure make you wonder about Cheney’s trip down to Georgia to placate his friend Saakashvili; and, out of the blue, for apparently nothing in return, decision by the Bush/Cheney Administration to give Georgia a billion dollars in civilian and, potentially, military aid. Would darn near make you think we owed them something for them having started the recent war and getting annihilated. A war that Cheney’s designated replacement John McCain, who "was in a bind ’cause he was way behind", took huge advantage of at the time to try to boost his sagging campaign heading into the conventions.

Putin was awfully sure of himself about the deal he suggested the Fourth Branch government devil may have made in Georgia, and I don’t think it was because he had been busting out his collection of old Charlie Daniels Band vinyl recently.

The country and the progressive blogosphere have long been suckers for Cheney/Rovian shiny object distractions. I am afraid that is happening as we speak. First off (and i will come back to this later in a separate post) all of the heat, passion an unity that was generated and consolidated by Los Dos Clintonos, Al Gore and then, mightily and masterfully, Barack Obama, is being dissipated by the wind of fixation on Sarah Palin.

But more importantly, critical and substantive things are going on that we need to be paying attention to. Eric Lichtblau in the NYT reminds us of a huge one this morning:

Tucked deep into a recent proposal from the Bush administration is a provision that has received almost no public attention, yet in many ways captures one of President Bush’s defining legacies: an affirmation that the United States is still at war with Al Qaeda.
…
The language, part of a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, goes beyond political symbolism. Echoing a measure that Congress passed just days after the Sept. 11 attacks, it carries significant legal and public policy implications for Mr. Bush, and potentially his successor, to claim the imprimatur of Congress to use the tools of war, including detention, interrogation and surveillance, against the enemy, legal and political analysts say.
…
The proposal is also the latest step that the administration, in its waning months, has taken to make permanent important aspects of its “long war” against terrorism. From a new wiretapping law approved by Congress to a rewriting of intelligence procedures and F.B.I. investigative techniques, the administration is moving to institutionalize by law, regulation or order a wide variety of antiterrorism tactics. (Emphasis added)

In all the flurry and bustle of the conventions and Palin, not to mention back to school and Labor Day weekend for the nation, this could be lost in the flow. It must not be. This provision has all the potential implications, problems, and potential for abuse that the Authorization For Military Force (AUMF) had in 2001. And with a Cheney/Bush Administration still in power, and with their known predilection for abuse, this simply cannot be allowed.

This is but another callous and cynical play by the Administration to manipulate timing and political posture for craven gain. Cheney, Bush and the GOP enablers are going to parry this against the Democrats during election season and try to fearmonger them into approving it.

In the midst of an election season, the language represents a political challenge of sorts to the administration’s critics. While many Democrats say they are wary of Mr. Bush’s claims to presidential power, they may be even more nervous about casting a vote against a measure that affirms the country’s war against terrorism.
…
Mr. Bush “is trying to stir up again the politics of fear by reminding people of something they haven’t really forgotten: that we are engaged in serious armed conflict with Al Qaeda,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional scholar at Harvard and legal adviser to Mr. Obama.

Make no mistake, this is yet another critical cog in their efforts to cloud the waters and fog the field so that they cannot be effectively subjected to accountability for the crimes, both moral and statutory, they have perpetrated. I made the same warning about the "seemingly innocuous" extension of the Protect America Act; I make that warning again here. This "seemingly innocuous" reaffirmation of our battle against terrorism is not innocuous at all; it is diabolical and craven. I am not the only one who thinks so.

The language recalls a resolution, known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001. It authorized the president to “use all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks to prevent future strikes. That authorization, still in effect, was initially viewed by many members of Congress who voted for it as the go-ahead for the administration to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, which had given sanctuary to Mr. bin Laden.

But the military authorization became the secret legal basis for some of the administration’s most controversial legal tactics, including the wiretapping program, and that still gnaws at some members of Congress.
…
For Bush critics like Bruce Fein, a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration, the answer is simple: do not give the administration the wartime language it seeks.

“I do not believe that we are in a state of war whatsoever,” Mr. Fein said. “We have an odious opponent that the criminal justice system is able to identify and indict and convict. They’re not a goliath. Don’t treat them that way.”

Bruce Fein is right. Larry Tribe is right. I am right.

Not now. Not again. Never again. This too cute by a half "little reaffirmation" slipped into the mix during the sturm, drang and heat of presidential election season must not be allowed to slip through and pass into law. People always want to know what they can do post FISA, what are our issues; well, here is one. Make sure that the Cheney/Bush/GOP cabal, and their Hoyer/Pelosi/Blue Dog enablers do not screw the pooch yet again.

.
.
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When The Levee Breaks I’ll have no place to stay.

Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
Now, cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

In the face of what ought to be the most serious and profound Presidential election in the last 75 years, and with the opening of the Democratic Convention on the brink, it seemed appropriate to recalibrate for a moment. Over three days has been spent on the sophomoric PR stunt by the Obama campaign to play the Vice Presidential selection like some kind of two bit cross between a high school prom queen election and American Idol. "We’ll text our special friends first! You’ll be the first to know". Please. Spare me.

That is the good side; on the other there is some senile, angry, old, self-entitled curmudgeon that doesn’t even know how many houses he owns, nor what kind of car he drives. The media and, yes, even the blogs, lap this idiocy up like milk to starving kittens. Almost makes you wonder if something important hasn’t been forgotten in the headlong rush to inanity.

Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. Three years ago to this very day.

Katrina was the costliest and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest hurricane on record that made landfall in the United States and caused devastation along much of the north-central Gulf Coast. The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as the levee system catastrophically failed, in many cases hours after the storm had moved inland. The hurricane caused severe destruction across the entire Mississippi coast and into Alabama, as far as 100 miles (160 km) from the storm’s center.

The storm surge caused severe damage along the Gulf Coast, devastating the Mississippi cities of Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, D’Iberville, Ocean Springs, Gautier, Moss Point, and Pascagoula. In Louisiana, the federal flood protection system in New Orleans failed in more than fifty places.

Nearly every levee in metro New Orleans breached as Hurricane Katrina passed east of the city, subsequently flooding 80% of the city and many areas of neighboring parishes for weeks. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. The storm is estimated to have been responsible for $81.2 billion (2005 U.S. dollars) in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. (Information here culled from the Wiki Katrina entry, which is a superb reference.)

The devastation and desolation occasioned by Katrina struck a deep nerve in America. The despair played out in front of our eyes non-stop, in real time, on television. The powerful and overwhelming images portrayed every characteristic of the pathos and hopelessness of third world countries that we had become accustomed to seeing. But it was not a third world country on the other side of the globe, conveniently out of sight and mind. It was America. It was New Orleans. Birthplace and home of jazz and creole cooking; one of the most important sea ports in the country. Mouth of the Mississippi. It was us, it was our people; our mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.

Katrina was much more than that though. Katrina was the hot, sharp knife that filleted open, not just for the progressive activists that daily work the beat, but for all of the country, the cold and detached callousness, incompetence and strict focus on self serving greed of the Administration of George W. Bush. With the flood of Katrina came the real turn of the tide on the malicious cancer that has been the Bush/Cheney control of our country. The hellish wrongheaded blunder that is Iraq, the overarching albatross hanging around the neck that it is, still played out in a remote land, with aggrandized and propagandized reporting. The stench and the death were there, not here. Even the deaths of our own soldiers haven’t really etched into the surface of our consciousness; it has been a sanitized hell. Over there, not here.

But there was nothing antiseptic about Katrina and it’s aftermath. The caustic, toxic waters flowing through a great American city carried the death, despair and decay to all of us. They left an indelible and uncomfortable mark. An American Presidency born and sold through stagecraft and fraud instead of deeds. A Bush/Cheney Administration that had a long arm for taking from the American citizenry, but a pitifully short arm for giving.

The moment, however, does not seem to have lasted. The politicians went down to the bayou and made their speeches and promises. Bush invaded the grand symbolic heart of New Orleans, Jackson Square, and put on a stagelit production worthy of Leni Riefenstahl. Bush, predictably, stepped on the downtrodden people of New Orleans on the way to his propaganda moment, and then welched on all his rhetorical promises. John Edwards announced his candidacy from the wrecked ground of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and built his entire "Two Americas" campaign theme on those images. Now both the Edwards medium and message are down the crapper with his political future, abandoned by him along the road of personal lust and indiscretion.

So, here we are three years later. The politicians have gone, the stagecraft moment having passed. The grand promises made by Bush, like so much else in his wake, broken. The Ninth Ward still a blighted mess with no rebuilding and it’s life as a community hanging by a thread. The population of New Orleans still down, with many of her people never to return home again. Worst of all, the city itself is still in peril from the very forces and neglect that took it down three years ago. In a fine work that is a must read in it’s entirety, AP/MSNBC reports:

Katrina’s storm surge laid bare the incomplete and inadequate work.

What happened? By 1968, a Congress worn down by the Vietnam war and economic turmoil began reining in spending; at the same time, the work met resistance from Louisiana politicians, communities, environmentalists and businesses fighting for individual interests.

For example, the corps scrapped a plan in the 1970s to build a floodgate at the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain out of concern that it would impede boats and marine life. Next, the alternate plan to build gates at the mouths of city drainage canals was rejected. Finally, the corps built floodwalls on the canals — and they broke during Katrina.

Can this sort of history repeat itself?

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.
…
"All the human instincts post-Katrina are the same (as) post-Betsy," said Oliver Houck, a natural resources law professor at Tulane University and longtime New Orleans resident who participated in many of the fights since Betsy.

Politicians have pushed for development in wetlands, undercut flood protection efforts with legislation and balked at paying for levee work.
…
"We keep building in holes, and contractors keep trying to move in and take advantage of a situation: They come in with a bunch of contractors, sell off property in low places, take their money and run," Sullivan said.

So, as we head into the big Democratic National Convention, lets reflect back on a defining moment, and what it meant. Because Katrina and the hell in the Big Easy is not something we should be shining on, putting behind us and forgetting. And it is not just New Orleans and the Gulf Coast either, there is a Katrina waiting to happen to every community and to every one of us. Spring flooding in the midwest, fallen bridges in Minnesota, fires in California, drought in Georgia. Our ecosystem is out of balance, and our infrastructure in severe need of repair. Now is not the time for idle chatter and twitter, it is not about houses and spouses. This country faces serious and huge problems, we need genuine leadership and substantive solutions. Just exactly what does it take to get that across to the people who would represent us that are gathered mile high in Denver Colorado? Because, we do not want a repeat of the two stooges at left, who were eating cake while America bled in Katrina.

NOTE: The video at the top is "When The Levee Breaks" set to still and video of Katrina. Very powerful, take a look.

In part 1, I laid out the facts surrounding the detention and illegal transfer of Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul. In this post, I want to demonstrate why this case matters. There is a pattern to the Bush/Cheney Administration’s illegal usurpation of executive power. Because the pattern broke down in this case, the strategy behind that power grab is laid bare. The struggle within the administration over the disposition of Rashul and the way it was resolved helps to illuminate the true nature of the current regime. Perhaps this case creates an opening to unravel the authoritarian infrastructure that has been built within our country in the last eight years.

Part 2: Why it matters

In the grand scheme of things, focusing on this case might seem a little like busting Al Capone for tax evasion. The Bush/Cheney Administration has institutionalized the most egregious extralegal executive abuses in our nation’s history. As matters of policy, they’ve launched a war of aggression under false pretenses, violated the most basic human right treaties, trashed the Fourth Amendment, denied the right of habeas corpus to citizens and non-citizens alike, set up secret prisons, disappeared their presumed opponents around the world, tortured the innocent and presumed guilty alike, conducted sham military tribunals against the underage and the mentally ill, and, worst of all, claimed the power to indefinitely detain anyone in the world, including U.S. citizens, without any external check whatsoever. And that’s just the stuff they have admitted to.

If we want to undo all this, and I very much do, we’ll have understand how they were able to accomplish it. I’m not going to rehash the sociopolitical environmental conditions that the administration took advantage of. Folks here understand that the generalized fear and anger after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the fecklessness of the Democratic party, the docile and compliant traditional media, the tight discipline within the Republican party, and the latent authoritarian impulses of a sizeable minority of the country created the necessary conditions for what happened. I want to focus on how the administration manipulated secrecy, its own people’s psychology, and the instinct for institutional self-preservation to manage a shifting set of narratives that allowed them to follow a deliberate strategy of expanding executive power and upsetting the constitutional balance of government while evading responsibility and steam-rolling all opposition. Then, I hope to show how this case exposes some chinks in the rather substantial armor of these malefactors.

Competing Narratives

One of the biggest problems in telling the full story of the Bush/Cheney Administration various illegal activities is distinguishing between the various narratives surrounding each episode. In every case, there is the story of the actual events are that always hidden behind a veil of secrecy. Then there is the momentary political scandal caused by a leak or leaks. The traditional media and the political opposition typically focus on that narrative only until there is an administration response. The administration responds with a modified limited hangout, selectively declassifying or leaking some information and augmenting it with false or misleading public statements to create an alternative narrative to defuse the political scandal. Later on, additional information comes out that contradicts the official narrative, but by that time, the issue is ‘old news’. Only after a series of scandals could anyone notice that there is a pattern to the actual events, the leaked narratives and the official narratives that help illuminate the strategy that the administration used. Keeping in mind that we always have to be alert to the unreliable narrator problem, let’s take a look at these narratives in the order they come into the public consciousness, the scandal, the hangout, and what really happened.

Narrative 1:   The Scandal

The most easily overlooked, and most interesting, aspect of the scandal narrative is that it is almost always driven by institutional self-preservation. In this instance, the confirmation of the existence of ghost detainees in Iraq was a side effect of Gen. Taguba’s investigation of the Abu Ghraib scandal. The original leakers wanted to separate themselves from the Abu Ghraib scandal and prove they had explicit orders from higher-ups to hide Rashul. The first story about Rashul starts like this:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, issued a classified order last November directing military guards to hide a prisoner, later dubbed "Triple X" by soldiers, from Red Cross inspectors and keep his name off official rosters. The disclosure, by military sources, is the first indication that Sanchez was directly involved in efforts to hide prisoners from the Red Cross, a practice that was sharply criticized by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba in a report describing abuses of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

Whatever the triggering event, whether there’s a whistleblower, an inadvertant disclosure, or just someone with a score to settle, the first big story in the mainstream press is usually shaped by a bureacracy trying to protect itself. Which mean the story always has one big revelation and it almost always points the finger at political appointees. That naturally leads to an official administration response.

Narrative 2: The Modified Limited Hangout

This is where the Bush/Cheney team has shown real innovation. The typical script for goes like this. You put a Cabinet-level official (or if you do it on background, the infamous Senior Administration Official or SAO) out front, backed up by some guy in uniform. After the obligatory ‘the terrorists are gonna kill us all’ hand-wringing, the SAO confirms some of the details from the scandal story and adds a few new juicy bits, but denies or ignores significant elements of the previous narrative. The situation is presented as perfectly normal, at least for a post 9/11 world, and besides, the lawyers signed off on the whole thing, so no one could possibly question the purity of the administration motives, except the partisan media and their anonymous sources who are obviously from the Democrat party. Any uncomfortable questions are avoided because the answers are, of course, classified. The main purpose of the new narrative is deflect attention away from the most damaging aspects of the story. A key function of the cover story is to allow the policymakers to hide behind the lawyers and the lawyers to disclaim any responsiblity for the policy.

Narrative 3: What really happened

Of course, the cover narrative never satisfies everyone. For example, Philippe Sands’ dogged investigation of torture at Guantanamo led him to uncover the facts behind the institutionalization of torture there. Sands’ article for Vanity Fair exposing the false timeline was really the inspiration for my analysis of the Rashul case. Valtin’s yeoman work in ferreting out the fact that SERE techniques were the first choice for interrogations by some in this administration provided another clue. Ultimately, I came to realize that there was a pattern, even in the actual narratives.

In a comment to my previous post, Ondelette gets this almost exactly right, so I’ll quote that:

I think your timeline on Rashul is probably quite correct and very devastating. But I tried to do the ‘when did the document come and when did the illegal actions come’ thing several times now, and it turns out as information seeps out, every time line is similar to yours with Rashul.

The conduct begins.
The administration wishes to make the conduct the norm.
They solicit an opinion from OLC, who is led to believe that the conduct is only being contemplated.
The OLC writes a memorandum.
Written policies flow from the memorandum.

The one thing I think Ondelette gets wrong is the bit about the OLC thinking that the conduct is only being contemplated. I think the available evidence points us in a different direction. In this case, Goldsmith clearly knew that Rashul was already in Afghanistan when Gonzales asked for the opinion. Even before he was confirmed, when Goldsmith gets the call from Philbin it’s described as urgent. You don’t make calls like that for contemplated action. Those issues become urgent after the fact when someone questions the legality of the action. Compare this to what we know about the warrantless wiretapping. The program was started, the FBI and others questioned the legality, and then the OLC opinion was issued to shut down the debate. If you look closely at Yoo’s DOD torture memo, you find some very direct coorelation between what had already been done at Guantanamo and the specific actions he immunized. This coorelation goes beyond the techniques documented in the request from Diane Beaver to Rumsfeld to include ‘unauthorized’ techniques used on al-Qatani and others. Here’s how I would alter Ondelette’s outline:

• An illegal policy is adopted. 
• The policy is implemented.
• The policy is challenged.
• The OLC is presented with the Hobson’s choice of authorizing the policy as already implemented.
• The OLC writes an opinion.
• The policy becomes ‘legal’.
• A select few in Congress are notified about the policy, but only in broad outlines and under strict secrecy.

The OLC was repeatedly confronted with being asked to come up with a legal justification for a ‘vital’ program in the so-called War on Terror. Goldsmith’s descriptions of his interactions with David Addington are revealing. On one occasion, he quotes Addington thusly:

If you rule that way, the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.

Waving the bloody shirt was even more effective for the administration internally than it was politically. Despite all of Cap’n Jack’s protestations to the contrary, he effectively caved to this pressure with his draft opinion of March 2004.

Rashul: Frayed Narratives

The Bush/Cheney Administration has been remarkably effective in creating a consistent false narrative that disguises the true nature of their regime and protects the perpetrators from being held accountable. In the case of Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul, there are some interesting holes in the cover story and breakdowns in the Administration’s execution of their standard game plan that leave an opening for an effective investigation. The first failure of execution was Goldsmith’s initial unwillingness to bless the rather obvious breach of the Geneva Convention. By bringing Rashul back to Iraq and hiding him from the ICRC, the administration engaged in conspiratorial conduct. By renewing the program of disappearing Iraqis to Afghanistan on the basis of a DRAFT opinion from Goldsmith, the administration showed that they considered legality nothing but a formality. Finally, the cleverest thing part of the Bush/Cheney Adminstration game plan for implementing their tyrannical policies was the way they implicated Congress in their actions by manipulating Congressional notifications. I suspect that Congress is in the clear on this one. During the Rumsfeld modified limited hangout presser there was this exchange:

            SEC. RUMSFELD:  And as we get more information, we’ll make it available.  The Congress has been briefed extensively on this, as I understand it.  No.

            MR. DELL’ORTO:  Not this particular case, as far as I know.

            MR. DIRITA:  Yes.  No, we’ve done some notifications to the staff on the Hill, both us and the CIA, with respect to the details of this particular case.  And as we get more, we will provide it.

That’s clear as mud. If there were notifications, it’s likely they were done in June 2004 rather than July 2003 when the deed was done.

In that same presser, Rumsfeld openly implicated himself and George Tenet in the coverup. The CIA OIG criminal referral implicates the highest levels in the DOJ. The available information leaves a number of avenues open for Congressional investigation. Might I suggest to Sen. Leahy that he add that criminal referral to the list of documents he’s been asking for? Indeed, I will. At the same time, I’ll remind the Obama camp of that promise they gave Will Bunch and that they will likely be in charge of all these records in a few months. I’ll also remind the folks here that our duty as citizens includes keeping the pressure on ‘our’ guys to do the right thing. I’m not naive enough to think that Obama will do much about any of this unless there’s some pressure. In fact, I’m old enough to remember that the best conditions for limiting Executive Branch power are when there is a Dem President and Dem Congress. We need to help Leahy, Levin, Waxman, and the rest that they need to keep pushing.

Here’s my bottom line. There’s plenty of evidence of war crimes for an international tribunal to start an investigation of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the whole crew in February 2009. I think an international tribunal, as unlikely as it seems, would be a disaster. It would ignite a jingoistic furor in this country. These guys are our criminals and our responsibility. It’s time for America to face up to what we’ve allowed this country to become. Unraveling some this big has to start with a single thread. I think that thread just might be asking what happened to Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul and what are we going to do about it?

[UPDATE]

If you really want to understand what Cheney’s been up to the last eight years, you need to go back read the Iran-Contra Congressional Minority Report that he and David Addington wrote. The goal has always been as much about expanding Executive Branch power as anything else. I’m sure that Bush and Cheney get off on the torture, but for Cheney at least, that’s secondary to the effort to establish what is effectively an elected constitutional dictator. That’s another thing Cap’n Jack never understood. It was never really about protecting America from terrorists. It was about using that as an excuse to push the real agenda.

[WilliamOckham makes an excellent, and absolutely critical, point in the update paragraph immediately above about the overarching plan of Cheney to retake, and expand further, Executive Branch power that was spelled out in the Iran-Contra Congressional Minority Report. And that is exactly what we have been witnessing in the announcement by the Administration of last minute wild expansion of domestic spying and datamining capabilities, and as discussed in the two "FISA Redux" posts here and here. – bmaz]

Five days ago, in the post "FISA Redux: The Slippery Slope Becomes A Mine Shaft", we discussed the new set of domestic spying protocols that the Bush Administration is determined to entrench into law and practice before leaving office. The measures would:

…make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. … would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies.

Criminal intelligence data starts with sources as basic as public records and the Internet, but also includes law enforcement databases, confidential and undercover sources, and active surveillance.

…also would allow criminal intelligence assessments to be shared outside designated channels … It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government.

As if that wasn’t enough fun for one post, we also learned that Attorney General Mukasey

…would release new guidelines within weeks to streamline and unify FBI investigations of criminal law enforcement matters and national security threats.

Well, that didn’t take long. Guess what; they’re here. It is amazing how when it comes to protecting the rights and privacy of American citizens, the health and stability of the environment, the education of our children, and the care and compassion to military veterans, the Bush Administration produces nothing but bad faith delay, obstruction and, often, outright refusal to act. They are imminently capable, however, of moving with breathtaking alacrity when they sense the opportunity to seize unheard of domestic police state powers that undercut the Constitution, solely by Administrative fiat, and that fundamentally alter the way the American public exists in relation to it’s government in terms of their privacy and, in an existential sense, if not physical, their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Here, courtesy of the New York Times, is the new joy the Attorney General is announcing to "protect yer freedums":

A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.
…
The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.” The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,” the letter said. It was signed by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. (emphasis added)

At first blush, you are tempted to think "this is the same thing we talked about last week, what’s new here?" But there is a significant difference. The provisions last week took the controls off of domestic intelligence gathering, created new roles for intelligence agencies and authorized greater coordination and sharing of intelligence information with state and local police agencies. The instant provisions remove the controls from the FBI/DOJ end of things, a separate, but critical distinction. Taken in total, however, the two announced sets of changes to domestic spying and surveillance rules create an unrestrained and unbound free for all for any and all governmental interests whether federal, state, local, or some combination thereof, to collect and retain effectively any and all information imaginable on American citizens.

There is a higher authority, all knowing and all powerful, that knows everything about everyone; and it isn’t god, it’s the government. That, however, is not even the most frightening aspect of this scheme. No, the worst part would appear to be that, from this mass database of everything, the government will be free to cherry pick unrelated, and indeed even innocuous, bits and pieces of information on an individual or group of individuals and cobble it together to imply suspicion sufficient to target said individuals and/or groups for formal criminal and national security investigations. This makes "Big Brother" look like an infant stepchild.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Not any more. Nope, the Fourth Amendment is so "pre 9/11". How quaint and archaic. 9/11 changed that. 9/11 changed everything. There was only one way for terrorism, whether it be from al Qaida, Iran, Iraq, or timbuktu, to destroy this country, and that was if we, ourselves, let the grip of abject terror and fear consume us from within and destroy our basic Constitutional ethic. The craven neocon authoritarians of the Cheney/Bush Administration have seen to it that just that result occurred. Heckuva job. Mission accomplished.

We have met the enemy, and it is us.

A little something to tide you all over. Because I know you are suffering withdrawal symptoms from a lack of malicious BS from your government. Hot off the press at the Washington Post:

The White House is missing as many as 225 days of e-mail dating back to 2003 and there is little if any likelihood a recovery effort will be completed by the time the Bush administration leaves office, according to an internal White House draft document obtained by The Associated Press.

The nine-page outline of the White House’s e-mail problems invites companies to bid on a project to recover the missing electronic messages.

The work would be carried out through April 19, 2009, according to the Office of Administration request for contractors’ proposals, which was dated June 20.
…
The draft document outlines a process in which private contractors would attempt to retrieve lost e-mail from 35,000 disaster recovery backup tapes dating back to October 2003, a period covering such events as growing violence in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the criminal probe into the disclosure that Valerie Plame had worked for the CIA.

The recovery project would not use backup tapes going back to March 2003, according to the draft document, even though an earlier White House assessment suggested e-mails were missing from that period as well.

Industry experts point out that relying on the backup system to ensure accurate retention, preservation and retrieval of all e-mails is problematic because it does not take into account deleted e-mails.

This is truly shocking. Really, who could have predicted such mendacious obstructionistic crap from the Bush/Cheney Administration? If the DC District Court can hold Toni Locy in contempt, I wonder if perhaps they can find some maximum hurt contempt provisions for a few of the White House Mafiosi too?

Paging MadDog. Mr. MadDog to the EW courtesy desk please. We have red meat for you. I am working on something already and, quite frankly, you folks kill me on the email dissection anyway. So, I respectfully request that the finest collective in all of the blogosphere sharpen their scalpels and see where we stand on this case. And feel free to discuss anything else too, I will be back shortly.

ADDENDUM: A couple of very cogent points from Earl of Huntington from the comments in the prior thread:

What are the accomplishments of the stellar WH telecoms team, assembled over the past several years? Its purported goals included solving this and other problems in the publicly acknowledged White House telecoms system they’ve built and operated. Although let’s not forget the additional telecoms systems the WH did or does use that they do not publicly acknowledge, eg, the mysterious, multi-faceted RNC system.

I hope that Sen. Obama’s has already assembled a dedicated team to design and implement a whole new WH telecoms system. Because whatever Bush’s IT-political gurus leave behind manifestly won’t work as described and will be loaded with back door keys and bugs. Without it, Obama’s team will have their hamstrings and Achilles tendons slashed before getting into the starting blocks. They will also be in violation of the PRO from day one.

The cost of a competent new WH telecoms system will be considerable, I would guess at least $100 million, which the Democrats should clearly label as another legacy of George W. Bush.