Obama Advisers Say No Charges Likely Against Those Who Authorized Torture

Ugh.

Read It and Weep Department, Mach 1000

Unbelievable. "How can you decide guilt or innocence without a fair hearing," one asks.

By LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writer

Washington - Barack Obama's incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government officials who authorized or engaged in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush presidency. Obama, who has criticized the use of torture, is being urged by some constitutional scholars and human rights groups to investigate possible war crimes by the Bush administration.

Two Obama advisers said there's little - if any - chance that the incoming president's Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage.

The advisers spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are still tentative. A spokesman for Obama's transition team did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Additionally, the question of whether to prosecute may never become an issue if Bush issues pre-emptive pardons to protect those involved.

Obama has committed to reviewing interrogations on al-Qaida and other terror suspects. After he takes office in January, Obama is expected to create a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to study interrogations, including those using waterboarding and other tactics that critics call torture. The panel's findings would be used to ensure that future interrogations are undisputedly legal.

"I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture," Obama said Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." "Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world."

Obama's most ardent supporters are split on whether he should prosecute Bush officials.

Asked this weekend during a Vermont Public Radio interview if Bush administration officials would face war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said,

"In the United States, no."

"These things are not going to happen,"

said Leahy, D-Vt.

Robert Litt, a former top Clinton administration Justice Department prosecutor, said Obama should focus on moving forward with anti-torture policy instead of looking back.

"Both for policy and political reasons, it would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time hauling people up before Congress or before grand juries and going over what went on," Litt said at a Brookings Institution discussion about Obama's legal policy. "To as great of an extent we can say, the last eight years are over, now we can move forward - that would be beneficial both to the country and the president, politically."

But Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy.

"The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it," Ratner said. "I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable."

In the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the White House authorized U.S. interrogators to use harsh tactics on captured al-Qaida and Taliban suspects. Bush officials relied on a 2002 Justice Department legal memo to assert that its interrogations did not amount to torture - and therefore did not violate U.S. or international laws. That memo has since been rescinded.

At least three top al-Qaida operatives - including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed - were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003 because of intelligence officials' belief that more attacks were imminent. Waterboarding creates the sensation of drowning, and has been traced back hundreds of years and is condemned by nations worldwide.

Bush could take the issue of criminal charges off the table with one stroke of his pardons pen.

Whether Bush will protect his top aides and interrogators with a pre-emptive pardon - before they are ever charged - has become a hot topic of discussion in legal and political circles in the administration's waning days. White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto declined to comment on the issue.

Under the Constitution, the president's power to issue pardons is absolute and cannot be overruled.

Pre-emptive pardons would be highly controversial, but former White House counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. said it would protect those who were following orders or otherwise trying to protect the nation.

"I know of no one who acted in reckless disregard of U.S. law or international law," said Culvahouse, who served under President Ronald Reagan. "It's just not good for the intelligence community and the defense community to have people in the field, under exigent circumstances, being told these are the rules, to be exposed months and years after the fact to criminal prosecution."

The Federalist Papers discourage presidents from pardoning themselves. It took former President Gerald Ford to clear former President Richard Nixon of wrongdoing in the 1972 Watergate break-in.

This past summer, Craig Johnson joined dozens of other activists in a San Diego-area park to protest the expansion of a fence along the US-Mexico border.

An associate professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, Johnson says he took his two children, aged 8 and 10, to Border Field State Park in Imperial Beach in June. Scores of border patrol agents were on the scene, Johnson said, and some were recording license plate numbers from protesters' cars parked a more than a mile away from the border.

It seems that Johnson's participation in the anti-fence demonstration may have landed him on a government watch list that has inhibited his ability to travel freely between the US and Mexico. A professor of Music, Johnson said he traveled to Tijuana about a week after the protest; upon returning to the US, Johnson says he was handcuffed and arrested by customs agents after a listing associated with his name pegged him as armed and dangerous.

"I was thoroughly and aggressively searched. ... Every inch and crack and crevice of my body was poked and prodded," Johnson said. "I was in complete bewilderment of what was going on; I felt violated and frankly was embarrassed."

Prior to that visit, Johnson said he had traveled regularly between the US and Mexico for a variety of reasons without facing any harassment. After the June visit, Johnson said he did not cross the border again until October, when he decided to go simply to see whether he could re-enter the country easily. He was subjected to the same harassment.

"It took me four months to return to Mexico," he said. "Not because I'm afraid of traveling outside my own country, but rather because I'm afraid of returning home."

Johnson spoke Wednesday at a gathering organized by the American Civil Liberties Union, which is highlighting the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security is expanding the authority it claims at US border crossings to infringe upon Americans rights.

The ACLU says a "Constitution-free zone" exists within 100 miles of the US border, where DHS claims the authority to stop, search and detain anyone for any reason. Nearly two-thirds of the US population lives within 100 miles of the border, according to the ACLU, and the border zone encompasses scores of major metropolitan areas and even entire states.



Customs and Border Patrol, a component of DHS, was authorized by Congress to operate within a "reasonable" distance of the border, and that distance has been set at 100 miles in regulations governing CBP, the ACLU says. The authorization has been in place for decades, but complaints about abuses of the extended border zone began to ramp up as CBP was expanded and folded into DHS after 9/11.

Also of concern, according to the group, is the border patrol's use of massive databases and watch lists to screen travelers. Much remains unknown about how those lists are compiled and it is exceedingly difficult for a person to be removed from the list once he or she is added to it.

ACLU affiliates around the country have fielded dozens of calls from people claiming they were harassed by border agents, and the group believes there are untold numbers of other victims who are afraid to come forward.

No lawsuits have yet been filed against DHS or CBP, but the ACLU says its attorneys in border states are preparing cases.

"Part of what we're trying to do is to draw our own line in the sand here and say this has to stop," Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, said Wednesday. "We cannot determine two-thirds of America as a Constitution free zone."

DHS 33 "interior checkpoints" that are monitored by the border patrol, according to a 2005 Government Accountability Office report. The ACLU assumes more checkpoints have been established since then, and group affiliates have complained about checkpoints as far as 93 miles from the border.

ACLU lobbyists are working with members of Congress to rein in DHS's border authority. Caroline Fredrickson, the group's chief legislative counsel, praised a measure introduced by Sen. Russ Feingold and others to ban suspicionless laptop searches at the border.

"We need to restore the Constitution to the Constitution-free zone," Fredrickson said.




Wednesday's event also featured a video testimonial from Vince Peppard, another San Diegoan who faced trouble from border agents. Peppard said he was stopped at least 20 miles inside the border on a return trip from Mexico. He refused to open his trunk "on a matter of principle" and was detained for about 30 minutes.

"I didn't feel like I was in the United States," he says. "I felt like I was in some kind of police state."

The ACLU posted a video of Peppard on YouTube:

OVP Implicitly Claims Evidence of Illegal Activity Does Not Need To Be Retained

By testing - September 24, 2008, 1:20PM

Vice President Implicitly Admits To Not Fully Retaining All Legally Required Documents under Geneva, FISA

There's been some interesting give and take between the Vice President and Congress overs records retention. CREW attempted to review some documents, and OVP balked.The court essentially confirmed our suspicions: The OVP has parsed the legal language, as was done with Geneva, FISA and the Constitution, to justify hiding evidence of illegal activity. It will be interesting to compare the OVP records retention-compliance with the disclosures in the DoD emails.

Member of Congress Connection

Once Congress quickly moved on the financial issues this last week, Congress has a problem with Geneva:

The war crimes prosecutors could reasonably conclude Congress, in quickly responding to the US financial problems, showed the timeline it could work when faced with a significant legal problem. Members of Congress might be prosecuted for not similarly quickly moving on the Geneva violations.

Likely OVP Failure To Retain Evidence of Geneva Violations

The court noted the OVP view of their legal obligations was narrow, raising the prospect some documents have not been retained, as required:

Court: However, Defendants admit that they have interpreted the PRA in a narrow fashion and have only preserved documentary material in accordance with that narrow interpretation. As such, if Defendants’ interpretation is not correct as a matter of law, there is no question that documents that may be entitled to PRA protection will not receive the statute’s protections.During the negotiations, before the final court order, the OVP and plaintiff CREW attemted to arrive at an agreement. However, Of the court found OVP, in responding to the CREW proposals, parsed language to define their legal obligations and compliance:
Court: [T]he defendants’ declarations offer carefully parsed language establishing only that defendants are preserving two subsets of vice presidential records

These two subsets are:

Declaration: all the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the Vice President fall within either

(a) the category of functions of the Vice President specially assigned to the Vice President by the President in the discharge of executive duties and responsibilities, or

(b) the category of the functions of the Vice President as President of the Senate.

Implicitly, the President would not have expressly "delegated" to the OVP the task of covering up war crimes, illegal FISA violations, POW abuse. The Libby Grand Jury testimony re Plame shows that the agreements were wink-wink, and not (necessarily) expressly assigned.

The problem is the OVP has been linked, in the DoD emails, with activities that fall outside these two subsets. There is no adequate information to know which other OVP activities, other than illegal domestic propoganda and FISA violations during wartime, also fall outside these two subsets. The OVP has essentially claimed that anything that is outside these two subsets is not subject to any legal requirement, oversight, review, or document retention requirement. This is a circular arguing to claim that evidence of illegal activity -- extending outside the law, and unrelated to the two subsets -- cannot be subject to any legal retention requirement. They're saying the National Archives cannot have access to evidence of unlawful OVP activity, which -- by their definition -- would fall outside the two subsets.

POCLAD's Democracy Insurgency Campaign

Giant corporations govern, even though they are mentioned nowhere in our Constitution or Bill of Rights. So when corporations govern, democracy is nowhere to be found. There is something else: when people live in a culture defined by corporate values, common sense evaporates. We stop trusting our own eyes, ears, and feelings. Our minds become colonized. Help us contest the authority of corporations to govern!

POCLAD works with people experienced in stopping corporate harms who want to rethink organizing strategies, exercise democratic authority at the local level, and strip fundamental powers-such as free speech and due process-from corporations.

NEW: Democracy Insurgency Campaign

Real change, led by We the People, is needed in our nation and world. A bottom-up democracy insurgency calling and working for genuine self-governance has begun.

The Declaration of Independence in 1776 was the first major collective statement in the colonies outlining oppression and asserting self-determination.

The Populists followed the same course 116 years later in their Omaha Platform of 1892.

One hundred and sixteen (116) years later is 2008.

Time for change again?

POCLAD is calling for individuals to come together beginning this year and in their own communities to JOIN OUR NEW CAMPAIGN TO LAUNCH A DEMOCRATIC INSURGENCY THAT PUTS CORPORATIONS ONCE AGAIN SUBORDINATE TO "We the People."

1. Study and reflect on the political, legal and institutional oppressions of today,
2. Learn about democracy campaigns and cooperative programs from democracy/anti-corporate organizations, and
3. More consciously discuss what people are willing to do to work for real change over the long haul - beginning where they are.

POCLAD has prepared resources to assist those who want to embark on this quest.

Democracy Insurgency Packet

Contents

• By What Authority (BWA) article: "Spirit of Change"
• U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776)
• Populist party Omaha platform (1892)
• BWA article: "The Case Against Judicial Review"
• BWA article: "Who Do We Think We Are?"
• BWA article: "The U. S. Constitution: Pull the Curtain"
• BWA article: "A U.S. Constitution with DEMOCRACY IN MIND"
• Democratic Arts: Attitudes and Skills for Participatory Democracy
• Democracy/anti-corporate groups and campaigns
• POCLAD resource list
• Discussion questions

Print out each section from the links above, or to order a Democracy Insurgency packet, contact POCLAD at people@poclad.org or call 508-398-1145. Cost of the packet is $5.

POCLAD
P. O. Box 246
S. Yarmouth MA 02664-0246 (508) 398-1145
(508) 398-1552 fax
Email: people@poclad.org

America's deplorable behavior has raised the dead

Common Sense II: A Patriot's Case for a Second Revolution

by Thomas Paine
Edited by Craig J. Cantoni

August 6, 2008

Editor's Note: As every high school student should know, Thomas Paine established the moral and political case for the American Revolution in his pamphlet, Common Sense, which was written in the vernacular of the common man of his time. It sold 500,000 copies the first year. Adjusted for population, that would be equivalent to 60 million copies today. Now, by speaking to this editor through a medium from the great beyond, Paine has made the case for a second revolution in a new pamphlet, which is printed below. His words are written just as he dictated them through the medium -- in the common vernacular of contemporary America, not in the vernacular of colonial America.

Common Sense II

In 1776 I wrote the following about the difference between society and government:

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher. Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil.

Since I wrote those words, the government that I and my fellow Patriots founded has done much to address wickedness, most notably by ending the wickedness of slavery, albeit with too much bloodshed and the passage of too much time. By the twentieth century, the Republic had achieved the greatest advancement in standard of living in the history of the world. It did this by protecting natural rights and property rights, by allowing commerce and foreign trade to flourish, and by letting people keep the fruits of their labor. As a result, the so-called "poor" in America have a better quality of life and a longer life expectancy than the royalty of England had in the eighteenth century, including King George.

Now, sadly, the government has become more contemptuous of the individual and more confiscatory of the fruits of the individual's labor than King George's government ever was. Although the nation has become rich in material goods, it has become impoverished in individualism and morality, with the individual being pushed aside by ever-increasing statism and collectivism. Over the last century, the nation has been transformed from a constitutional republic to a majority-rule democracy, meaning that it is now ruled by the passions of the mob, which like the passions of a king, can be either benevolent or malevolent, but much more likely to be the latter. In recent history, the passions have been largely malevolent, especially in the mob's taking of the fruits of other people's labors. Not to excuse their actions, but Americans have been encouraged to beggar their neighbors by the press and by the three branches of government, including the Supreme Court, which was supposed to be the last refuge of liberty and property rights.

It is bad enough that all levels of government now consume nearly 44 percent of national income, a four-fold increase from just a century ago. Even worse is the fact that well over half of citizens get more back in services, entitlements, subsidies, and handouts from the national government than they pay in taxes. Allowing people to vote to get free stuff at other people's expense is a formula for both moral and fiscal bankruptcy.

Fiscal bankruptcy has already happened. Outlays, including unfunded liabilities, have exceeded revenues for decades, even in the face of confiscatory levels of taxation. The unfunded liabilities for entitlements and public-sector pensions alone total more than $60 trillion, or about $700,000 for each American under the age of 18.

Moral bankruptcy has happened, too. Obviously, it is not moral to bequeath trillions of dollars of debt to children who can't vote and defend their rights. Equally obvious, it is not moral for some citizens to vote to take the money of other citizens for their own narrow benefit. An act that is immoral if done by an individual does not magically become moral if it is done by a group, whether the group is a mob, a special interest, or a plurality of voters.

Not so obvious is the fact that virtually all of Congress and the White House have engaged in fraud to cover up their stealing and fiscal bankruptcy. They have resorted to keeping crooked books, they have perpetuated pyramid schemes, they have expropriated money from citizens' trust funds, and they have encouraged the Federal Reserve to print money and debase the dollar, thus punishing citizens who save money and create the capital necessary for investments in industry, education, and infrastructure. With few exceptions, all of the nation's leaders are guilty of fraud, including the two presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, neither of whom has leveled with the American people about the dire fiscal straits of the country. Instead of being put in the White House, they should be put behind bars in the Big House.

Don't interpret what is written here as idealist or utopian. It is understood that politicians will always lie, pander, and speak in populist platitudes. That's not what the nation's overlords are being accused of here. They are being accused of massive fraud and theft in the trillions of dollars, seriously harming the financial well-being of hundreds of millions of people.

As history proves, most nations die not from invasion but from unrestrained spending and the debasement of the currency. This is true whether the form of government is communist, fascist, socialist, or democratic. It just takes longer for democracies to commit fiscal suicide. A politician who wears a flag pin on his lapel and then aids and abets the suicide is not a patriot.

The primary cause of America's fiscal and moral bankruptcy is the conflation of government and society, both of which are now treated as one sphere instead of separate spheres. Since government and society are now considered one and the same, government is seen as inherently good and not, as I saw in 1776, as a necessary evil. Consequently, according to conventional thinking, what is good for government is good for society, including the basic building block of society, the family.

The thinking is clearly wrong, as evidenced by the social pathologies that the thinking has wrought. When a woman is encouraged by the government to "marry" the government instead of the father of her child, it is good for government, in that government bureaucrats get more power, and politicians get a new constituency that is dependent on politicians. It is not good for society, however. When a man sires children by multiple women and is encouraged by the government to walk away from his parental responsibilities, it is good for government and bad for society, especially for children. When children are taught values by government agents instead of by parents and the local community, it is good for government and bad for society. When the poor and the sick are shunted off to government apparatchiks instead of being cared for by churches, families, and voluntary charities, it is good for government and bad for society. When common sense, self-reliance, industriousness, frugality, and personal responsibility are driven from society by government, it is bad for society, which ends up with less common sense, self-reliance, industriousness, frugality, and personal responsibility.

The nation still has a First Amendment, despite the attacks on it by McCain, other politicians, and academia. But the press is largely silent about the problems caused by the conflation of society and government. Worse, nary a peep is heard from the press about first principles. Freedom of speech does little good if the press covers politics like a sporting event, giving the play-by-play but ignoring the fact that the two political parties have conspired to play by their own rules instead of the rules of the Constitution.

Take the former television journalist of national renown, Tim Russert, who has joined me up here. He's a nice soul and wears his angel wings well, but his reputation on earth as a hard-hitting journalist was undeserved. Like so many others in the media, he was an establishment celebrity who went along to get along and to get ahead. Instead of relentlessly questioning politicians about their fraud and thievery, he stricted his questions to how they played the game, although he knew that the game was rigged. For instance, he never asked,

"By what constitutional authority, political philosophy, and moral code do you justify increasing the cost of groceries for working stiffs by giving crop subsidies to well-off farmers?"

By not asking such questions, he became a partner in crime. Perhaps that's why he had to do a stint in purgatory. (Because of my deistic views, I had to do a stint there, also.)

The worst abuse of the First Amendment takes place in government K-12 schools, because that is where the government and its agents have a monopoly on what is put in the heads of impressionable children for six or more hours a day. This was not a problem before the advent of compulsory government education, when students were taught at home or in private or community schools. Nor was it much of a problem for the first 100 years after the advent of compulsory education, because schools were still under the control of the local community and thus reflected local values and mores. However, this diversity of thought has been slowly extinguished over the last 50 years as control over curricula and textbooks has been usurped and centralized by state and federal governments.

The result has been the manufacturing of clones who think alike about government. Polls show that the majority of Americans don't believe that government is a necessary evil. To the contrary, they believe that government should have even more resources and power to fix the problems facing the nation, not realizing that most of the problems facing the nation were caused by government in the first place. Health care is a good example. Because government destroyed a consumer-is-king market in health care, costs are higher than they would otherwise be. Yet Americans have been taught to believe that free markets and free choice don't work in health care. Astonishingly, most are now willing to let the government treat physicians like serfs by dictating their pay, and they are okay with government bureaucrats peeking under their hospital gowns to see if they deserve medical care.

None of this should be a surprise. What other outcome would be expected when 90 percent of Americans are taught from the age of six to the age of 18 about government by the government?

Where does this leave us? Before answering, let me touch on national defense and foreign affairs. Although history correctly characterizes me as advocating a foreign policy based on trade and not aggression, coupled with a strong national defense, I don't believe that the nation's departure from that philosophy is a problem that cannot be fixed by the current political system. Yes, it is unsustainable economically for the nation to maintain over 700 military bases around the world and to attempt to turn every despotic nation into a democracy. Yes, as President Dwight Eisenhower warned, the military-industrial complex has too much political power. However, there is enough difference of opinion on these issues for citizens to elect representatives who will change foreign policy and national defense to what their constituencies believe is in the national interest. That's a different kind of problem than the problem of voters bankrupting the nation by voting for free stuff out of their own self-interest instead of the national interest. It's also different from the problem of politicians engaging in fraud to cover up their stealing and get re-elected.

The problems of theft and fraud cannot be corrected within the existing political system, for the simple reason that a majority of voters are on the take and in cahoots with their elected representatives and the press. Like the colonists, those who are being fleeced don't have the political power to protect themselves. They do have other kinds of power, however. Generally, they are smarter, harder working, more productive, and more determined than the takers. They also have the police and military on their side, for the police and military have to deal with the social pathologies of the conflation of government and society.

Unlike the first revolution, bloodshed is probably not necessary. But the enforcement of the law through armed force is absolutely necessary. To reinstate a constitutional republic, it is necessary to bring politicians to justice if they have broken the law by stealing and committing fraud. It saddens me to say that 90 percent of Congress has broken the law.

Extra-legal actions are not necessary, for the necessary laws are on the books and the judicial system is in place. The only stumbling block is that government prosecutors are unwilling to prosecute their brethren. As such, they have to be forced to do their jobs. This is what is meant by a second revolution.

Is this risky? Yes, but not as risky as the actions taken by the Patriots of my generation. Is it possible for Patriots to lose everything they have? Yes, but the probability is much smaller than what it was for the original Patriots. Will many Americans choose to be Loyalists instead of Patriots and not join in the fight to restore a constitutional republic? Yes, but that was also true during the first revolution.

There will be those who, upon reading this, will want to dismiss the seriousness of the problems and retreat to the comfort of the status quo. There will be others who will agree to the seriousness but mistakenly think that the problems can be fixed by winning the war of ideas, by tinkering with the tax code, by electing likeminded people to office, or by going to Starbucks and intellectualizing about the problems. To these people, I close with a quote from my good friend Edmund Burke and then with a quote from my original Common Sense:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

-- Edmund Burke

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.

-- Thomas Paine

______________

Readers should contact the editor at ccan2@aol.com if they want to send a message to Mr. Paine or if they are Patriots who want to help plan and organize the resurrection of the Republic.

Rove Confronted With Second Attempted Citizen's Arrest

Rove Confronted With Second Attempted Citizen's Arrest

Karl Rove, allegedly a traitor and complicit with war crimes planning and election fraud, was the target of another citizen's arrest in Iowa. Rove is alleged to have been complicit with Nuremberg-like war crimes planning, illegal retaliation against prosecutors, and illegal domestic propaganda.

In written responses to the House Judiciary Committee, Rove provided incomplete denials to questions about his alleged complicity with illegal prosecutions. Rove's legal counsel are members of the President's domestic military analyst program.

DOJ OLC memos reminded civilian policy makers and advisors they could be subject to war crimes indictments. If convicted of these alleged war crimes, Rove could be sentenced to the death penalty.

In Rife, he Iowa Supreme Court reviewed the applicable Iowa statute:

"Iowa Code section 804.9 governs the arrest of persons by private individuals. . . .A citizen may make an arrest for any public offense if the offense is "committed or attempted in the [citizen's] presence." . . .

However, if the public offense is a felony, a less stringent standard
is imposed. If the offense constitutes a felony, the citizen must only
possess reasonable grounds to believe the person to be arrested
committed the felony." (Rife v. Corner,641 N.W.2d 761, Iowa Supreme Court, Filed 2002)

Earlier, in March 2008, Rove's arrest warrant was referred to as a "Citizen's Arrest Complaint" and specifically mentioned allegations of treason, fraud, and conspiracy. The written complaint had a typographical error, citing the US Code, calling it 19.371, instead of 18 USC 371.

COMMENTS

Oh brother. Be careful what you ask for.

The Clintonistas invented extraordinary rendition (torture), declared war and bombed Iraq, and indulged in domestic wiretapping via Carnivore. Whatever crimes you come up with can likely be followed back to them. Is that what you had in mind?

shooter,

Yes, it doesn't matter in the slightest which administration breaks the law and ignores the constitution. Whether it be democrat or republican, they should be prosecuted.

That's a lovely sentiment and all, but politics is the art of the possible. "Should" is not equivalent to "could." In a fantasy world all the men are handsome, the women strong, and the children, above average. It's nice to fantasize but don't confuse it with reality.

As for "breaks the law," you mean ALLEGEDLY breaks the law. Moreover, since the basis for Bush's alleged wrong doing is Article 2 of said Constitution - you are pretty much out of luck trying to wave the Constitution around as an indictment.

Like it or not, no future President is going to criminalize a prior President for doing what they thought best for the country, no matter whether you agree with it or not. Why? Because it is entirely possible for the future President to find himself in exactly the same position when a new regime steps forward.

Politics is irrelevant, art of the possible or not. It doesn't take politicians to successfully prosecute a malfeasor.

Forget this faux realism you are waving as if it were an all-powerful solvent for the criminal difficulties the administration is in.

Nothing is required of the next administration other than allowing the courts to do their work.

Just sit back and watch what happens.

jimmie dean,
maybe what you do not choose to understand is that there actually will not be a polarized GOP base that will spring to the defense of turdblossom in the context of this upcoming general election . There are many ,many former gwb43 supporters who are now openly calling for criminal indictments for the Bushies. Witness the Ron Paul Revolution in the GOP primary - and now see Bob Barr appearing in Congressial Hearings calling out the gwb43 ongoing criminal conspiracy . Liberterian Presidential Nominee Barr is polling consistently in the 8% range for those who are disaffected with gwb43.
This is not about revenge jimmie this is about holding Rover and the rest of the criminals accountable-and yes we can - in the context of the general election . Go google what Bruce Fein has to say about impeaching gwb 43 - there will be no polarized base of the gop to save turdblossom et al ...
jimmie rant away your still stuck at the five & dime soda stool ...

Wow... This post hit the Tollfecta.

Bulldog, your continued persistence here at TPMCafe belies your flippant remark and shows just how serious you and the rest of your Republican gang take this site and its "nutjobs". Must be tough for you to keep coming back. But hey, a job is a job.

I also find it amusing that one would admonish the asking of a legitimate question by basically saying, shush... or you'll wake the sleeping Republican base and sweep McCain into power.

Bull shit... Some of our current and former "Public Servants" should be prosecuted and shown to be the miscreates I believe they are. And now is the time, not later. The greater public knows the distinction between a witch-hunt and true pursuit of justice. Though, I guess, the blurring of the line seems to be the role of some of the local trolls.

The pursuit of Rove and others isn’t about getting the Democratic Party into the White House. (Though that is an end that I will work my best to assists, because I believe in the social, economic and civil government that I think Obama and the Democratic Party BEST represents.)

No, this is about efforts greater than one party or the other. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but it seems that testing’s continued posts are about the rule of law and the Constitution over partisanship.

Dave Kahn ,
You are correct , testing seems to be getting "TROLLVILLE " riled up -especially the one troll that keeps saying don't wake up the scary Republican base ( jimmie dean are you reading this buddy ?) - . I agree with you - Dave - this is about defending the country and its values -we must have accountabilty for this lawlessness , we cannot let war crimes -such as starting illegal wars go unpunished .

Testing -please keep bringing these excellent post -maybe we can arrest turdblossom in some state jurisdiction soon ,,,

National Guard Must Enforce Arrest Warrants Against Elected Officials Who Refuse To Enforce Laws of War

By testing - July 28, 2008, 1:07PM

American elected officials have refused to investigate, much less
consider evidence of war crimes. This inaction has put the American
elected officials at the state, local, and federal levels in
opposition to the Constitution and their legal obligations. Most, if not
all, elected officials to believe there will be no lawful consequences if they do nothing; or consequences will evaporate after the election. This is an excuse for malfeasance not legitimate government.

This absurd "hearing" before the House Judiciary Committee restricted
private citizens from exercising their First Amendment Right: To openly
call the President what he is -- A criminal. This President is not a
king. The House and Senate cannot reasonably expect the public to dance
around these felonies, avoid calling the President what he is, and not
lawfully confront the elected officials who are in collusion with his illegal activity.

Members of Congress need a lawful wakeup call. They must face the lawful threat of arrest for complicity with war crimes. The Constitution does not make Members of Congress immune to arrest. They can be arrested for treason:

Article I, Section 6: "They shall in all Cases, except Treason,
Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their
Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and
returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they
shall not be questioned in any other Place."

Yet, the possibility that they might be arrested or prosecuted
-- for treason, the felony of conspiracy with war crimes or refusing to fulfill their oath of office -- is meaningless to them and they refuse to investigate. There is only one reasonable conclusion: They are domestic enemies of the Supreme Law.

Let's consider the other view: That any effort to organize the National Guard to arrest members of Congress is an act of treason. Treason requires warfare from an external force, and there is no "foreign" enemy the defenders of the Constitution are aiding. Those involved with the civil war were not engaged in treason.

"To levy war there must be an assemblage of men in a condition and with an intention to [unlawfully] employ force." (Opinion on introducing evidence to Burr Trial on Treason, 8 U.S. 470, 1807)

National Guard units, by their definition, are domestic militia, under control of the governors, and charged to use force to defend the Constitution against domestic enemies. The question turns on whether the President, to thwart enforcement of the Constitution, illegally federalizes these national guard units.

Here, the issue isn't whether there is force to overthrow the government, but whether the force is lawful to enforce the law and defend the Constitution. Treason cannot possibly mean the use of the national guard to enforce arrest warrants against domestic enemies of the Constitution. Such a charge would absurdly have outlawed the use of national guard units to to enforce the Supreme Court orders banning state-level school segregation.


Let's turn our attention to Congress. The question is whether this President and elected officials have or have not waged war against the United States. Treason is

"only in levying war against them,
or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid or comfort."

One question is whether he refusal to enforce the laws of war,
FISA, or breaches of the FISA statute, or complicity with war crimes
amounts to a felony. Arguably yes, satisfying the requirement in the
Constitution permitting arrests of Members of Congress.

Treason does not require an overt act of supporting hostile military forces against the United States. Treason and misprison of treason relate to efforts to subvert the government:

"The person who procures treason
to be committed, who plots some project to subvert the government, who
advises, who hires, who counsels, who commands, or who abets a project
to subvert the government, is a traitor according to that common law." (US v. Burr,25 F. Cas. 55, 1807)

A failure to investigate the President for war crimes could be be misprison of treason; or an agreement to not disclose evidence of treason. The President has illegally used military force to subvert the United States government:

A. Used active duty combat forces, civilians, and government resources
to disseminate unlawful propaganda to mobilize the nation for illegal
warfare, absent the required imminent threat;

B. Illegally used military force to detain civilians in violation of habeas to intimidate a civilian population from confronting his illegal activity;

C. Illegally using the NSA to violate FISA and violate our rights and the Constitution during wartime, despite FISA applicability during wartime;

D. Domestically used military forces to intimidate the public and elected officials and thwart enforcement of the laws of war through investigations;

E. Deployed CIFA personnel to thwart oversight of the United State government, and

F. Domestically used military forces, NSA, and combat forces to collect intelligence to support an illegal policy of intimidation and induce Members of Congress not to enforce the laws of war.

State governors require compelling evidence to arrest Members of Congress for treason, waging war against the United States, and felonies For example, one extreme example -- to avoid any action -- is the claim that any confrontation with Congress is laughable. Those justifying inaction might suggest it is "laughable" the Congress "knew "the President and others waged war against the United States in the attacks of 9-11, but have aided him in thwarting complete investigations into these attacks against the United States.

Something must remedy this lawlessness, and continued spiral into
illegitimacy: Where written law is no longer universally enforced.

Regardless the legal theory used to justify the lawful arrest of Members of Congress for collusion with the President on war crimes, FISA violations, and violations of the Supreme Law, the current condition is unacceptable:

A. Illegal activity is not getting investigated;

B. The President faces no prospect of an impeachment investigation, as the Framers promised in Federalist 77 ["his being at all times liable to impeachment"]

C. The Members of Congress have not timely conduct an investigation of war crimes or impeachable offenses;

D. The Supreme Law has not been enforced; and

E. The Constitution, with Member of Congress agreement, is seen as inapplicable to the United States Government and this President.

This is unacceptable. Other than hoping Congress cooperates with their legal obligations -- which they show they are not willing to do -- there is no credible plan to defend the Constitution with credible legal consequences.

Lawful arrest warrants for Members of Congress felonies must be on the table.

State Governors have the lawful authority to declare a state of emergency; work with the courts to secure arrest warrants; and use lawful force to detain, arrest, and deliver to a magistrate Members of Congress.

State Governors, national guard units, and judicial officers must work
together, process arrest warrants, and have them lawfully served on
Members of Congress.

The allegations for the arrest warrants for members of Congress link with their oath of office, and include:

1. Collusion with the President in unlawful warfare, a war crime;

2. Conduct breaching their legal duty to defend the Constitution against domestic enemies;

3. Active cooperation with efforts to thwart investigations by members of Congress into Presidential war crimes;

4. Treason, fraud, and malfeasance in aiding domestic enemies of the Constitution; and

5. Unlawful assent to illegal executive and legislative orders to not investigate violations the Constitution, oath of office, Geneva conventions, and Supreme Law.

The American public must support their national guard units in lawfully
enforcing arrest warrants against elected officials who refuse to
support, defend, and protect the Constitution against these domestic
enemies in Washington, DC.

It is not a lawful order for the President to direct anyone in the
National Guard to refuse to enforce the Constitution, or avoid lawful
state governor orders requesting lawful assistance to process arrest
warrants against Members of Congress.

The National Guard oath of office does not permit following illegal orders of the President:

"I, (Name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the State of (State Name)
against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith
and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the
President of the United States and the Governor of (State Name) and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to law and regulations. So help me God."

The National Guard has the lawful authority to suppress domestic rebellions, and enforce the orders of the Governors against domestic enemies and traitors.

The American government refuses to enforce the laws of war. Arguably, these are act of treason. National Guard members take an oath to the United States Constitution to defend the Constitution against domestic enemies.

State governors are lawfully permitted to organize with other state governors to jointly apprehend, seize, detain, arrest, and deliver to the courts Members of Congress, and other state-connected officials. The Supreme Court has decided this issue, and well provides a wealth of guidance for your state attorney general, national guard unit JAGs, and Governor legal counsel:

"In view of these provisions of the Code of Georgia, we hold that the
notary public before whom the affidavit in that state was made may be
regarded as a magistrate within the meaning of 5278 of the Revised Statutes of the United States. Such, it must be assumed, was the view of the governor of Alabama when issuing his warrant of arrest under the authority of that statute." Compton v. State of Alabama, 214 U.S. 1 (1909)

Once arrested, and not available for service in government, the State legislatures and governors may lawfully declare that seat vacant in the Congress, and appoint a new Member of Congress.

There is no excuse for inaction. There should be no debate to consider what the Members of Congress might not support. They've had their chance to dabate. Their decision is to support, with inaction, war crimes and violations of the Supreme Law.

No American should come to the defense of the traitors in Congress. Rather, Members of Congress, having been lawfully detained and arrest for alleged treason, must make their case.

A. Why is their detention unreasonable?

B. Why is their arrest unlawful?

C. Why is their replacement illegal or in violation of the law?

D. What evidence do they have to refute the charges against them?

D. What is their plan to show they have fully asserted their oath of office to enforce the laws of war?

Senators Obama and McCain -- one of them -- are the most likely next President. Imagine on their inauguration day one of them is sitting in jail because they've been charged with treason, and not demanding investigations of the United States' Government war crimes.

The governors must prepare transition plans, and identify replacements
for Members of Congress lawfully arrested, detained, and brought to
trial.

What You Can Do

The American public must rise to the defense of this Constitution, and lawfully work with available national guard units to enforce arrest warrants against Members of Congress and other state and local officials:

1. Contact your State Attorney General, and State Governors to seek their comment on discussions of using the National Guard to arrest Members of Congress who are in collusion with the President.

2. Contact your National Guard units in your local districts, cities, and municipalities. Ask them what their commanders and legal advisers with the Judge Advocate General have said regarding the use of their units to enforce arrest warrants against your state's elected officials at the local, state, and federal level.

3. Identify nominees for your state governors to consider to replace the alleged traitors in Congress.

4. Work with your friends in your communities to remind your local elected officials they must take their oath of office seriously, support investigations, or they could be lawfully charged with complicity with war crimes and treason.

Comments

Strategically, it might be more effective if all those interested in seeing this through begin by focusing on one state, contacting that state's AG, Governor, State House and local national guard.

This is just to get the ball rolling. A collective focus on one state or one politician, John Conyers for example, to create the initial spark.

Power is often the result of well-organized momentum.

Jason Call calls for CITIZEN'S ARRESTS

I'm casting a wide net with this email. Some of you have much more professional experience with legal issues and procedural matters than I do. I've been reading Bugliosi's book The Prosection of George Bush for Murder. The case is clear, as most of us have known for years, but it has now been organized and is ready and waiting for someone to pick it up and move forward.

Can we count on the various state and federal attorneys general to file suit? At one point I may have thought so, but look at what the Democratic leadership is doing to actively thwart the will of their constituents to hold impeachment hearings.

So how does a citizen group use what Bugliosi has proferred? I don't know if the case has to be taken up by a representative of the government, or if it can be done by a private citizen (or citizens) as a class action type suit, being that Bush's assault on the Constitution (resulting in the deaths of 4000 Americans) has done injury to us all.

Here's what I know though - if these bastards are going to be held legally accountable, and it can be done by a citizen or citizen group - I want to be a part of it.

Peace

Jason

Lynnwood, WA

Reminder: Blackwater is still around - even in Canada !!

Proposal to Amend the US Constitution

by magnetics

on Daily Kos

Thu Sep 27, 2007 at 09:50:54 PM PDT

The dangers of private security contractors to civil society have been much discussed in light of the recent shootings of Iraqi civilians by employees of Blackwater Security. Author Naomi Wolf (among others) has emphasized, in a current diary on Dkos, the dangers to Democracy of a Praetorian Guard responsible ultimately to the President, and largely protected from the legal consequences of their actions.

I propose to fix this problem by amending the US Constitution; please continue reading for further details.

• magnetics's diary :: ::
• 
  

I am not a lawyer, but I believe the following draft of a 28th amendment would provide an interesting springboard to discussion and action.

No person in the service, under the orders, or at the behest or bidding of the United States Government shall employ, pursuant to their duties as such, a firearm, or any other physical weapon of aggression, protection, or restraint, except that said person be an employee of the United States Government, such as a member of the Armed Forces, an agent of the Justice Department, or in exceptional cases, a deputized federal marshal or equivalent, subject to the full battery of institutional laws, liabilities, and constraints customarily applying to such persons.

The idea is simple: any person with the power to employ lethal force on behalf of the US Government must be an employee of the US Government.

If this thing needs a name, call it the Blackwater Amendment.

Poll

Should the US Constitution be amended to prohibit employment of private security contractors by the US government?

	Yes.
57%	83 votes
	No.
15%	22 votes
	No, it's too slippery a slope.
9%	13 votes
	I don't know.
1%	2 votes
	It's a good talking point at least.
16%	24 votes

| 144 votes | Vote | Results

Findlaw interpretation of Boumediene v. Bush

	Did the Supreme Court Violate or Vindicate the Constitution in the Latest Guantanamo Bay Decision? The Difference Between Separation of Powers and Checks and Balances
	By MICHAEL C. DORF
	Monday, Jun. 16, 2008

Not surprisingly, last week’s landmark 5-4 Supreme Court ruling in Boumediene v. Bush has already been decried by conservatives and hailed by liberals. Curiously, however, critics and admirers of the decision both appear to claim support from the same venerable principle: the balance of powers under the U.S. Constitution. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion, conservatives say, violated the Constitution by failing to provide adequate deference to the political branches—Congress and the President—in wartime. Not so, say liberals. The Court vindicated the Constitution by acting as a vital check on one of the worst abuses government can commit: detention without trial.

How can the Constitution’s structure be invoked on both sides of this question? The answer is that the Constitution contains two distinct structural mechanisms for allocating power among the branches of the national government: (1) separation of powers; and (2) checks and balances. Although often conflated in high school civics classes, these concepts are distinct and sometimes conflict. Understanding the difference between them will help explain how the Court could divide so sharply over such fundamental matters.

The Boumediene case itself presented two questions. First, does the Constitution guarantee a right of habeas corpus to foreign detainees held as enemy combatants on territory over which the United States exercises plenary control but technically lacks sovereignty? A majority of the Court said it does.

Having found that neither the President nor Congress could simply eliminate the right of habeas corpus, the Court next asked whether the combined military and civilian process in place for determining whether particular detainees are in fact enemy combatants is an adequate substitute for habeas corpus. Finding that it is not, the Court ordered that the detainees be permitted to file habeas corpus petitions in federal district court.

The Role of Ideology in the Court’s Division

What explains the Court’s sharp divisions? Here, as in all highly-charged Supreme Court cases, the respective ideologies of the individual Justices must be a big part of the answer. Every one of the four dissenters is, overall, more conservative than every one of the five Justices in the majority.

Moreover, Justice Scalia’s dissent—joined in full by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas and Alito—is poisonously provocative. In just the opening paragraphs, Justice Scalia: (1) says the majority opinion “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed”; (2) adopts the Bush Administration’s highly misleading characterization of the Iraq war as part of the same struggle against radical Islamists as the military response to 9/11; and (3) cites an Office of Legal Counsel memorandum co-authored by John Yoo as authority for the proposition that the Bush Administration was entitled to assume that aliens held at Guantanamo Bay would be beyond the reach of U.S. courts.

Although more respectful in tone, a second dissent, authored by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by the other dissenters, also finds little fault with the Bush Administration’s detention policy. The Chief Justice begins by hailing the process afforded Guantanamo Bay detainees as “the most generous set of procedural protections ever afforded aliens detained by this country as enemy combatants,” and later refers to Guantanamo Bay as a “jurisdictionally quirky outpost”

In marked contrast, the majority opinion openly disdains the Bush Administration’s transparent effort to evade review by selecting Guantanamo Bay as a prison site precisely for its jurisdictional quirks. Justice Kennedy repeatedly dismisses such “formalism,” arguing instead that the reach of the writ depends on functional considerations.

A Methodological Disagreement?

The majority’s rejection of formalism suggests a methodological division on the Court that closely parallels ideological ones. Broadly speaking, formalism is the notion that formal criteria decide legal questions. In Boumediene, Justice Kennedy meant to reject the formal criterion of sovereignty—for Guantanamo, sovereignty is technically vested in Cuba—as the basis for determining whether the writ extends to a particular territory. In its place, he favored asking practical questions: Will a habeas court’s orders be obeyed? Will they be disruptive of military operations in an active theater of war? And so forth.

In other contexts, however, formalism can refer to the propositional logic of the law itself. Formalists believe that formal legal materials—especially enacted text like that of statutes or the Constitution—resolve legal questions, whereas functionalists often find that such materials are too imprecise to do the hard work in hard cases. Although all Justices sometimes write formalist opinions, it is fair to say that the four Boumediene dissenters are substantially more committed to formalism than the five Justices in the majority. Justice Scalia once even wrote (in his book, A Matter of Interpretation) “Long live formalism.” It is thus not especially surprising that the Court’s formalists would recoil from a strongly anti-formalist opinion.

Nor is it especially surprising that the Court would divide over the proper role of history in matters of constitutional interpretation. Here too, all of the Justices believe that the historical origins of a constitutional provision are relevant to its current construction. The four dissenters, however, are the most strongly originalist members of the Court. In Boumediene, they thought it a fatal weakness in the petitioners’ argument that prior to the adoption of the Constitution in 1789, no English court had ever issued a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a prisoner held outside the sovereign territory of the Crown.

For Justice Kennedy and the other majority Justices, the history was at most a fuzzy starting point. For one thing, the majority pointed out that the relevant English history was silent, not negative: No reported English case granted or rejected a habeas petition from an alien outside the realm. For another, even if the early English history were indeed to be read as rejecting a habeas right for aliens beyond the realm, that may well have been because of practical concerns applicable in the Eighteenth Century, but not in the Twenty-First. [V's. note: Bold is mine.]The majority found no precise analogue to Guantanamo Bay in the early cases, and was left to reason from the purpose of the Suspension Clause itself: protecting personal liberty against arbitrary detention.

Separation of Powers Versus Checks and Balances

The Justices’ respective ideological and methodological dispositions may well suffice to explain their disagreement in Boumediene. However, another fault line can be found as well: between two venerable but often misunderstood principles—separation of powers on the one hand, and checks and balances on the other.

The principle of separation of powers says that each branch of government should be confined to its own role: the legislature makes the laws; the executive executes the laws; and the judiciary interprets the laws. Although the Constitution does not contain an express “separation of powers clause,” the principle can fairly be inferred from the Constitution’s overall structure and language: Separate articles vest the legislative, executive, and judicial powers in distinct branches. Furthermore, particular clauses prevent legislative trials (the Bill of Attainder Clause) and parliamentary rule (the Incompatibility Clause).

The principle of checks and balances says that the Constitution prevents overreaching by any one branch through the checking function of the others. Here too, there is no express “checks and balances clause,” but the principle can be inferred from what the Constitution does express. The President can veto legislation; Congress can, in turn, override the President’s veto; the Senate must confirm principal officers nominated by the President; and the courts ensure that the other branches act within the Constitution, exercising a power readily inferred from the Supremacy Clause and Article III.

A moment’s reflection will reveal the tension between separation of powers and checks and balances. In order to check legislative excesses through the veto power, the President must in fact take part in making law; in order to constrain the President, Congress can hold oversight hearings and withhold funding when it disapproves of his execution of the law; and in order to keep the judiciary within bounds, the President and Senate may opt to only confirm judges whose approach broadly fits the elected officials’ conception of the role. In each of these and other instances of checks and balances, the very idea of checking entails some interference by one branch with the actions of another.

The Constitution contains no master rule for deciding when powers must be separated and when they can be shared so as to facilitate checking. That presents no difficulties where the Constitution’s language is pellucid. For example, no one doubts that the President can veto acts of Congress. But such cases do not give rise to litigation, much less Supreme Court litigation. How the Court resolves hard structural cases will thus typically depend on which principle—separation of powers, or checks and balances—the Justices consider stronger in any given context.

In the Boumediene case, the dissenters thought that the separation principle ought to prevail because of the deference courts typically afford the political branches in wartime. Congress has the power to declare and fund war, while the President prosecutes war as Commander in Chief. The courts, in this view, have no war powers as such.

The Boumediene majority was unwilling to concede even on separationist turf. The Suspension Clause itself authorizes Congress to suspend habeas corpus if the public safety so requires because of rebellion or invasion, but, Justice Kennedy noted, Congress had not purported to suspend the writ, and even if 9/11 could be characterized as an “invasion,” it hardly follows that public safety required suspending the writ. After all, the civilian courts have remained open, including for the trial of terrorism suspects.

Furthermore, the Boumediene majority was unwilling to concede that the case ought to be handled under a separation-of-powers, rather than a checks-and-balances, paradigm.

Separation of powers is partly about constraining government. Accumulation of all powers into one branch, Montesquieu and the Framers warned, is the very definition of tyranny. Accordingly, separating powers checks tyranny.

However, it does so less robustly than the checks and balances principle. The latter says that even within their respective spheres of competence, each branch can act capriciously. In the competition between the two principles, separation of powers is about leaving each branch to do what it is most competent doing, while checks and balances is about blocking abuses: ambition countering ambition, in James Madison’s phrase.

Seen in this light, Boumediene comes down to a question of trust. The dissenters believed that Congress and the President must be trusted to fashion and carry out war-related policies. The majority, in contrast, thought that Congress and especially this particular President had shown themselves unworthy of that trust.

---

Michael C. Dorf is the Isidor & Seville Sulzbacher Professor of Law at Columbia University. He is the author of No Litmus Test: Law Versus Politics in the Twenty-First Century and he blogs at michaeldorf.org.

Bill Moyers speech to Us Military Academy: Must read

I post this 17 June from Democratic Underground as I am listening to Keith Olbermann count down ALL the BuZh Constitutional violations.

Yes, the media and telecoms are furious, as I see Rogers has gone into messing with my blog formatting !! They go right in as I am on my son's computer instead of my own.

Man! Wake up folks who do the bidding of corporations, we are trying to save you and North America ! The TYRANNY can't go on any longer .. and that means YOU. too.

Russia and China are chomping at the bit to take over American and Canada which is now a Failed state, unless impeachment proceeds immediately.

Veeger


Bill Moyers to U.S. Military Academy: Before you Assume that I am Calling for an Insurrection…

Edited on Fri Jun-13-08 01:19 AM by Time for change Bill Moyers is as straight talking a journalist as you would ever want to meet. So when he was invited to be the speaker for “The Meaning of Freedom” lecture series, to be given to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in November 2006, he had a dilemma on his hands. He notes in his new book, “Moyers on Democracy”: The committee had to have known of my opposition to the invasion of Iraq…. These cadets had committed themselves to Duty, Honor, Country and were now being asked to fulfill those obligations in a war they should never have been asked to fight. As I weighed the decision to accept or decline, I fastened on the title of the lecture series: The Meaning of Freedom… How do you give a speech to a group of young men and women who will soon be serving in a war that you despise? Do you try to sugarcoat that war in order to avoid risking offending them? Or do you tell them what you really think? The speech that Moyers gave is one of the best I have ever read or heard. He explained how our Founding Fathers tried to limit the role of war in our nation’s future, and then he told the truth about our nation’s military history and how our current leaders have abused their powers and used our soldiers as pawns for their own nefarious purposes – while providing as little offense to his audience as he possibly could. Moyers began his speech by acknowledging that he had never been a soldier, but that he had tried very hard to learn about what war is like by talking with veterans about their experiences. His main experience with that was that veterans are rarely inclined to talk about their combat experiences. He then launched into his feelings about how we were led into the Iraq War and the chicken hawks who led us there. On the chicken hawks who led us into war Watching another White House go to war (Moyers was an aid to President Johnson during the early escalation of the Vietnam War), also relying on inadequate intelligence, exaggerated claims, and premature judgments, keeping Congress in the dark while wooing a gullible press, cheered on by partisans, pundits, and editorial writers safely divorced from realities on the ground, ended any tolerance I might have had for those who advocate war from the loftiness of the pulpit, the safety of a laptop, the comfort of a think tank… How often we hear the most vigorous argument for war from those who count on others of valor to fight it… Rupert Murdoch comes to mind… In the months leading up to the invasion Murdoch turned the dogs of war loose… Today Murdoch says he has no regrets… and that “from a historical perspective” the U.S. death toll in Iraq was “minute”…. “Minute?” I don’t think so… I thought that to describe their loss as “minute”… is to underscore the great divide that has opened in America between those who advocate war while avoiding it and those who have the courage to fight it without ever knowing what it’s all about. Why our founding fathers felt it necessary to write a Constitution that makes war unlikely Moyers then proceeds to give the cadets a history lesson on the safeguards against war in our Constitution. He quotes John Jay on the ubiquity of war in world history: It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations get nothing by it, but for the … thirst for military glory, revenge…, ambition… Moyers quotes James Madison on the rationale for the place of war in our Constitution: In no part of the Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war and peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department… The trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man. Moyers then describes how the safeguards against war in our Constitution have broken down, and what that means to our soldiers Twice in forty years we have now gone to war paying only lip service to those warnings… It is impossible for soldiers to sustain in the field what cannot be justified in the Constitution; asking them to do so puts America at war with itself. So when the vice president of the United States says it doesn’t matter what the people think, he and the president intend to prosecute the war anyway, he is committing heresy against the fundamental tenets of the American political order. This is a tough subject to address when so many of you may be heading for Iraq… It’s more important than ever that citizens and soldiers… honestly discuss and frankly consider the kind of country you are serving and the kind of organization to which you are dedicating your lives. Moyers later elaborates on the dangers of war – how frequently it is used for the advantage of the powerful, who use soldiers as mere pawns in their great game, by asking them to fight for their King, their God, or their Nation. Again speaking of our Founding Fathers, he says: Wherever they looked in history, they saw an alliance between enemies of freedom in palaces and in officer corps drawn from the ranks of nobility, bound by a warrior code that stressed honor and bravery – but also dedication to the sovereign and the sovereign’s god, and distrust amounting to contempt for the ordinary run of the sovereign’s subjects. A brief history of the contradictions between U.S. military actions and American ideals Probably most of us DUers who are American citizens have struggled with the contradictions we feel between the ubiquitous calls for “patriotism” and the many examples of American military actions that have contradicted the ideals expressed in our founding documents. Moyers felt that it would be good for the cadets to think about this. He summed this up for them better than I’ve ever seen it described. We encounter a paradox: Not all our wars were on the side of freedom. The first that seriously engaged the alumni of West Point was the Mexican War, which was not a war to protect our freedoms but to grab land – facts are facts… When the Civil War came… From the Southern point of view, they were fighting for the freedom of their local governments to leave the Union when, as they saw it, it threatened their way of life. Their way of life tragically included the right to hold other men in slavery… After 1865 the army shrank as its chief engagement was now in wiping out the last vestiges of Indian resistance to their dispossession and subjugation: One people’s advance became another’s annihilation and one of the most shameful episodes of our history. In 1898 the army … warred with Spain to help the Cubans complete a war for independence… The Cubans found their liberation somewhat illusory, however, when the United States made the island a virtual protectorate and allowed it to be ruled by a corrupt dictator. Americans also lifted the yoke of Spain from the Filipinos, only to learn that they did not want to exchange it for one stamped MADE IN THE USA. It took a three-year war, during which the army killed several thousand so-called insurgents, before… the Filipinos were cured of the illusion that independence meant … well, independence. I bring up these reminders not to defame the troops… Nonetheless, we have to remind ourselves that the armed forces can’t be expected to be morally much better than the people who send them into action, and that when honorable behavior comes into conflict with racism, honor is usually the loser unless people such as yourself fight to maintain it. World War II… The incredibly gigantic mobilization of the entire nation, the victory it produced, and the ensuing sixty years of wars, quasi-wars, mini-wars, secret wars, and a virtually permanent crisis created a superpower and forever changed the nation’s relationship to its armed forces, confronting us with problems we have to address, no matter how unsettling… The meaning of freedom Moyers goes to some length to remind the cadets of the ideals of our nation, as expressed by our Founding Fathers. I think this is the most pertinent passage: For Jefferson’s pursuit of happiness… the goal was… to secure productive property for all as a right to citizenship. It’s easy to forget the difference (between freedom for all versus freedom for a powerful few) when huge agglomerations of personal wealth are defended as a sacred right of liberty, as they are today with the gap between the rich and poor in America greater than it’s been in almost one hundred years. On the tragedy that we call the Iraq War and the real meaning of “supporting the troops” Moyers then described some of the underlying problems with the Iraq War in a way that is unlikely to generate much enthusiasm for fighting in it: The cheerleaders for war in Washington, who at this very moment are busily defending you against supposed “insults” or betrayals by the opponents of the war in Iraq, are likewise those who have cut budgets for medical and psychiatric care; who have been so skimpy and late with pay and with provision of necessities that military families in the United States have had to apply for food stamps; who sent the men and women whom you may soon be commanding into Iraq under-strength, under-equipped, and unprepared for dealing with a kind of war fought in streets and homes full of civilians against enemies undistinguishable from noncombatants; who have time and again broken promises to the civilian National Guardsmen… by canceling their redeployment orders and extending their tours. You may or may not agree on the justice and necessity of the war itself, but I hope that you will agree that flattery and adulation are no substitute for genuine support. Much of the money that could be directed to that support has gone into high-tech weapons systems… that are useless in a war against nationalist or religious guerrilla uprisings that, like it or not, have support… among the local population. We learned this lesson in Vietnam, only to see it forgotten or ignored by the time this administration invaded Iraq, creating the conditions for a savage sectarian and civil war with our soldiers trapped in the middle, unable to discern civilian from combatant, where it is impossible to kill your enemy faster than rage makes new ones. And who has been the real beneficiary of creating this high-tech army called to fight a war conceived and commissioned and cheered on by politicians and pundits not one of whom ever entered a combat zone? … The real winners of the anything-at-any-price philosophy would be the “military-industrial complex”… The bargain between civilian authorities and the military on which our nation rests Moyers goes on to talk about the need for our military to be subservient to civilian authority, but also that our civilian authority must maintain their end of the bargain by using good judgment and common decency before committing our nation to war. He makes it clear that the bargain is no longer working out very well: The army has, for the most part, kept its part of the bargain and…, at this moment, the civilian authorities whom you loyally obey are shirking theirs. And before you assume that I am calling for an insurrection against the civilian deciders of your destinies, hear me out, for that is the last thing on my mind… The current president has made extra-constitutional claims of authority by repeatedly acting as if he were commander in chief of the entire nation and not merely of the armed forces. Most dangerously to our moral honor and to your own welfare in the event of capture, he has likewise ordered the armed forces to violate clear mandates of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva conventions by claiming a right to interpret them at his pleasure, so as to allow indefinite and secret detentions and torture. These claims contravene a basic principle usually made clear to recruits from their first day in service – that they may not obey an unlawful order. The president is attempting to have them violate that longstanding rule by personal definitions of what the law says and means. There is yet another way the armchair warriors are failing you… In veterans’ hospitals across the country – and in a growing number of ill-prepared, under-funded psych and primary-care clinics as well… nurses have witnessed the guilt, rage, emotional numbness, and tormented flashbacks of GIs just back from Iraq.” Yet, a returning vet must wait an average of 165 days for a VA decision on initial disability benefit… This is reprehensible. I repeat: These are not palatable topics for soldiers about to go to war… But freedom means we must face reality: “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.” Free enough, surely, to think for yourselves about these breaches of contract that crudely undercut the traditions of an army of free men and women who have bound themselves voluntarily to serve the nation even unto death. Wow!!! Moyers says that “calling for an insurrection against the civilian deciders” is “the last thing on my mind”. If he says that it was the last thing on his mind, I believe him because of the tremendous amount of respect I have for him. But he certainly has given them a lot to think about. Some great advice for the troops Moyers ends his speech with some great advice: What, then, can you do about it if (my emphasis) disobedience to the chain of command is ruled out? For one, you didn’t give up your freedom to vote nor did you totally quit your membership in civil society when you put on the uniform… Second, remember that there are limitations to what military power can do… Some objectives are not obtainable at a human, diplomatic, and financial cost that is acceptable… Douglas MacArthur announced in 1951 that “there was no substitute for victory.” But… there are alternative meanings to victory and alternative ways to achieve them. Especially in tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a “war on terror” – exactly what, pray tell, is that? – to the mind-set of… a local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process. Help us to think beyond a “war on terror” – which politicians could wage without end… Third, don’t let your natural and commendable loyalty to comrades-in-arms lead you into thinking that criticism of the mission you are on spells lack of patriotism. Not every politician who flatters you is your ally. Not everyone who believes that war is the wrong choice to some problems is your enemy. Blind faith in bad leadership is not patriotism… To say my country right or wrong is something no patriot would utter… Patriotism means insisting on our political leaders being sober, strong, and certain about what they are doing when they put you in harm’s way. Fourth, be more prepared to accept the credibility and integrity of those who disagree about the war even if you do not agree with their positions… If there is mismanagement and incompetence, exposing it is more helpful to you than paeans to candy… Finally, and this above all… If you rise in the ranks to important positions – or even if you don’t – speak the truth as you see it, even if the questioner is a higher authority with a clear preference for one and only one answer. It may not be the way to promote your career; it can in fact harm it. Among my military heroes of this war are the generals who frankly told the president and his advisors that their information and their plans were both incomplete and misleading – and who paid the price… It is not easy to be honest and fair… But it is what free men and women have to do… If doing so exposes the ignorance and arrogance of power, you may be doing more to save the nation than exploits in combat can achieve… The importance of Moyers’ speech A few weeks ago I did a post on a “Special Comment” by Keith Olbermann, which I titled “Thank you Keith, for Speaking of the Unmentionable”. Keith’s “Special Comment” was on a similar subject as Bill Moyers’ speech to the U.S. Military Academy – George Bush’s war crimes. I ended that post with this paragraph: Keith Olbermann is one of the few highly and widely visible people in our country today who has the courage to speak of unmentionable subjects that are in dire need of discussion. By doing this he makes it much easier for other Americans to talk and think about these things. If more national politicians and journalists were like that we would throw George Bush and Dick Cheney out of office, end the Iraq War, and then get on with the business of living up to our nation’s ideals. The same thing can be said of Bill Moyers. His speech to the West Point cadets reached a much smaller audience than Keith’s did. But it was clearly a very difficult audience with whom to speak of the things that he did. If enough of the U.S. military hears that speech and thinks carefully and honestly about it, the Iraq War will end, regardless of what our President, Congress, or military-industrial complex want to do about it.