Bush’s Cheney’s Signing Statement on the Geneva Convention

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It’s really tough sorting out the new Executive Order on torture. But after a whole day of pondering the details, I think I’m finally getting it. It’s yet another Bush signing statement, this time to record his own personal interpretation of the Geneva Convention. After all–that’s where this new EO came from: after SCOTUS, in Hamdan, told Bush that all detainees were covered by the Geneva Convention, after Congress, with the Military Commissions Act, told Bush he could shred concepts like habeas corpus but only if he had documentation for doing so, he was forced to write this new EO.

Charlie Savage provides a good overview:

Bush’s executive order laid out broad guidelines for how the CIAmust treat detainees in its secret overseas prisons, where theadministration has held some suspects without giving them access to theRed Cross. The document prohibits a range of abuses, including"intentionally causing serious bodily injury" and "forcing theindividual to perform sexual acts," as well as mistreating the Koran.

Theorder also said the CIA director must personally approve the use ofextraordinary interrogation practices against any specific detainee.Detainees must also receive "adequate food and water, shelter from theelements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat andcold, and essential medical care," it said.

But most of thepresident’s executive order is written in generalities, leavingunanswered whether the CIA will be free to subject prisoners to a rangeof specific techniques it has reportedly used in the past, includinglong-term sleep disruption, prolonged shackling in painful stresspositions, or "waterboarding," a technique that produces the sensationof drowning.

That is, some of the most obvious abuses–using sex and religion–are now forbidden. But the key information, what remains permitted, is in a separate, classified list that we don’t get to see. And three other key details: the Executive Order explicitly denies any legal responsibilities associated with the EO, so even if some overzealous torturer ignores it, he’s not going to jail. The Red Cross remains unable to monitor prisoners in this newfangled "enhanced interrogation" program. And Congress still doesn’t have a copy of the DOJ opinion on the program. For that matter, Karen DeYoung reports that the Administration hasn’t responded to Congress’ other questions, either.

They said the administration has not responded to the questions theyasked during a recent briefing on the new order and the detaineeprogram.

Mind you, this is the DOJ review that Congress mandated as part of the Military Commissions Act. But I guess that’s classified too.

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Eric Edelman, Leaker Extraordinaire

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I’ve been waiting to see if Pat Lang weighed in on the Hillary letter controversy because he’s the blogosphere’s expert (indeed, an expert in any venue) on the hazards of supply lines and withdrawal. And his response is as good as I expected, starting with his citation of the constitutional basis for Hillary’s inquiry. But I wanted to make explicit one of the criticisms that Lang makes only implicitly. He says:

Senator Clinton had every right to ask if there were seriouscontingency plans being made about HOW we would withdraw from Iraq.  Acivil and constitutionally correct response to her question would nothave required a public and unclassified answer.  So far as I know, shedoes not have a record of unauthorized disclosure of classifiedinformation.  Others do, (and not all of them in the Congress), but shedoes not.

[snip]

As Senator Clinton has observed, "You don’t snap your fingers, andbegin to withdraw."  In fact, a prudent program of withdrawal wouldrequire many months.  Such contingency plans would rightly be keptsecret for the reasons that Edelman mentions.  Secrets can be kept. Edelman knows that.  It is not true that everything "leaks" to themedia. [my emphasis]

Lang is talking about the suggestion in Edelman’s letter …

As you know, Read more →

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Did Eric Edelman Steal Robert Gates’ Mail?

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I’ve been following the little squabble between Cheney hack Eric Edelman and Hillary. There was his nasty letter and Hillary’s excellent response. Now Gates has entered the fray, embracing oversight and (backhandedly) slapping down the nasty Edelman.

I have long been a staunch advocate of Congressional oversight, firstat the CIA and now at the Defense Department. I have said on severaloccasions in recent months that I believe that congressional debate onIraq has been constructive and appropriate. I had not seen SenatorClinton’s reply to Ambassador Edelman’s letter until today. I amlooking into the issues she raised and will respond to them early nextweek. [my emphasis]

Now, I’m a little confused by that bolded line, explaining that Gates hadn’t seen Hillary’s letter. From the context, he appears to be referring to Hillary’s July 19 letter, the nasty-gram telling on Edelman. But that doesn’t entirely make sense. Of course he hadn’t seen Hillary’s letter until today (meaning yesterday). She only wrote it the day before.

Anne Kornblut reads that sentence differently.

In a statement, Gates said that he had not seen Clinton’s originalletter, but he added that he welcomes congressional involvement.

Now, again, the plain English reading of the sentence says Kornblut is wrong and Gates is Read more →

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Edelman Says: “Congressional Oversight Emboldens Our Enemies”

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Okay, Hillary didn’t adopt my recommended response to Eric Edelman’s insubordination. Well, she kind of does, insofar as she notes that Edelman is alone in spouting Cheneyisms:

Other members of this Administration have not engaged in politicalattacks when the prospect of withdrawal planning has been raised.

And she demands that Gates choose whether he supports Edelman’s insubordination.

I request that you describe whether Under Secretary Edelman’s letteraccurately characterizes your views as Secretary of Defense.

This is a particularly shrewd move, I think, because it forces Gates to disavow the Cheneyist wing–or face confrontation with Congress. Would that we had done this with Colin Powell, to make him disown John Bolton’s Cheneyesque rantings. It might have undercut Cheney’s strategy of having a plant in every agency to ensure his will is done. Let’s hope the strategy works in this case…

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Oh, It Was Eric Edelman Lecturing Hillary??

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Update: Thanks to Scarecrow for directing everyone over here–but don’t miss Hillary’s response to Edelman. She hits all the right notes.

I didn’t realize, at first, when I heard that Hillary had been lectured that public discussion of withdrawal reinforced enemy propaganda, who was doing the lecturing.

Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces fromIraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandonits allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam,Lebanon, and Somalia. Such talk understandably unnerves the very sameIraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks in orderto achieve compromises on national reconciliation, amending the Iraqiconstitution, and other contentious issues. Fear of a precipitate USwithdrawal also exacerbates sectarian trends in Iraqi politicians asfactions become more concerned with achieving short-term tacticaladvantages rather than reaching the long-term agreements necessary fora stable and secure Iraq.

But now I discover it was Eric Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. That makes a whole lot more sense–and really dictates the proper response.

You see, Edelman is kind of a poor man’s Dougie Feith. A total shill–and Cheney asset–though apparently with less flair for propaganda. He’s the bright guy who first suggested leaking Plame’s identity to Read more →

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A Field Position Game

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Mark Kleiman argues that the Democrats should see BushCo’s refusal to turn over proof that they buried details about Pat Tillman’s death as a godsend. This is the scandal, he argues, over which the Democrats should choose to confront Bush.

This is a Godsend for the Democrats in Congress. The committeesshouldn’t compromise at all; this is the case we want to go to warover, in the courts and the court of public opinion. The Tillmancover-up is a far smaller scandal than the U.S. Attorney firings, butit’s much easier to understand.

Most of the country is only vaguely aware of the Tillman case, sincethe press has been not very interested in advertising how badly it wasfooled, and how supinely it participated in the "Wag the Dog" foolingof the public. But if the facts got out there, everyone, including mostof the Republican base, would be outraged. Publicity about the fightover documents and testimony is also publicity about Tillman’s"friendly fire" death and the effort to cover it up, so it’s a no-winsituation for the White House.

Moreover, even the wingnuts are going to have a hard time claimingwith a straight face that the President needs to protect theconfidentiality of the process by which he Read more →

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A Second Strategic Failure

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I’m more and more convinced this is Dick Cheney’s design. Failure in Afghanistan, which might lead to the collapse of Pakistan’s western-friendly government, which might lead to a regional war between Sunni and Shiite.

Ashdown told The Observer that Afghanistan presented a graver threat than Iraq.

‘Theconsequences of failure in Afghanistan are far greater than in Iraq,’he said. ‘If we fail in Afghanistan then Pakistan goes down. Thesecurity problems for Britain would be massively multiplied. I thinkyou could not then stop a widening regional war that would start off inwarlordism but it would become essentially a war in the end betweenSunni and Shia right across the Middle East.’

‘Mao Zedong used torefer to the First and Second World Wars as the European civil wars.You can have a regional civil war. That is what you might begin to see.It will be catastrophic for Nato. The damage done to Nato inAfghanistan would be as great as the damage done to the UN in Bosnia.That could have a severe impact on the Atlantic relationship and maybeeven damage the American security guarantee for Europe.’

What other logic is there–besides pure stupidity–for ignoring nuclear-armed and increasingly extremist Pakistan–while ratcheting up war against Iran? Wasn’t this whole Middle Eastern fuckup Read more →

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The “Embarrassment Privilege”

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We’ve got to start calling these refusals to testify what they are–because they surely aren’t executive privilege. With Sara Taylor’s plea to avoid testifying because she admires–and apparently took a vow to–Bush it’s not executive privilege because she didn’t speak to him about the USA firings. But we might call her refusal to testify the "I love me my Prezident privilege"–because that’s about as serious as the legal discussion behind it is.

And then there’s Harriet Miers. To justify her refusal to even show up, some DOJ hack suggested that the branches of government are so independent that they cannot force the other branch to show up. They say:

The President is an independent branch of government. He may not compel Congressmen to appear before him.

Someone better tell Duke Cunningham and William Jefferson, because for some reason, when the Executive Branch required them to show up and be investigated, they showed up–Jefferson only even got limited immunity for his Congressional office. Maybe Cunningham can get out of the Executive Branch’s prison, once he asserts the Independent Immunity Privilege, huh?

But the real absurdity is BushCo’s refusal to show up and reveal the truth about when it learned that Pat Tillman was killed by Read more →

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The Guy Who Failed Points Fingers

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ThinkProgress had a piece the other day about Stephen Hadley visiting the Hill and blaming the military for the failure in Iraq.

Two weeks ago, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) shifted his position on Iraqin a speech on the Senate floor, where he called for a reduction of theU.S. military presence. After the speech, National Security AdviserStephen Hadley attempted to “calm Republican waters” over Iraq with avisit to the Hill, but his efforts “failed and appeared to some GOPlawmakers to be an effort to put the blame for Iraq War failures on the military.”

Stephen Hadley … Stephen Hadley. Isn’t he the guy who was supposed to be doing all the things the new Iraq War Czar has now been doing? As I recall, neither Hadley nor his former boss could hack that job.

So here we are again, 3 years later, trying to appoint someone inNational Security Council who can do what the National Security Advisoris supposed to do. Sure, this time it’s Stephen Hadley, and not hisformer boss, Condi, who is not up to the task. But the reason is thesame.

We taxpayers pay a National Security Advisor to make sure thatsomeone mediates the opinions and agendas of the many strong-willedpeople running Read more →

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AQ Khan’s on the Loose

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Does it bother anyone that–at a time when Pakistan’s Interior Ministry is raising concerns about the Taliban taking over significant chunks of Pakistan, the father of Pakistan’s nuke program is on the loose? [Thanks to Mimikatz for the spelling correction.]

Authorities have eased the virtual house arrest imposed on A.Q. Khan,the disgraced scientist who sold Pakistan’s nuclear secrets to Iran,North Korea and Libya, officials said Monday.

[snip]

However, two senior government officials told the AP that therestrictions were eased several months ago and that Khan could now meetfriends and relatives either at his home or elsewhere in Pakistan.

"He is virtually a free citizen," said one of the officials, who is attached to the nuclear program.

It just seems to me that the conjunction of these two events–Al Qaeda’s state ally taking over Pakistan at the same time as Pakistan’s chief nuclear proliferator goes free–that would raise the concerns of the same people who brought us to war against Iraq because of Saddam’s phantom nukes and phantom ties to Al Qaeda.

But apparently Dick Cheney (and the non-experts he’s got in charge of our Pakistan policy) has it all under control, and we don’t have to worry about countries that could give Al Qaeda nukes anymore. Read more →

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