Democratic Party Abandons Its Base

Since January 20 of this year – which was more than eight months ago – we’ve been handed some rather clever lines of defense for the things Barack Obama is NOT doing with his executive power, with his supermajority in the Senate, or his eminently workable majority in the House. Things we the voters gave him in the first actual electoral mandate of the 21st century last November. We voted for change. We haven’t gotten any.

We’ve been told Obama’s “got this” because he can shoot hoops in the WH basement with skill, and grab flies out of the air like a Kung Fu master. We’ve been told Obama’s playing “multidimensional chess” with his opponents by continuing every single one of the illegal and anti-democratic policies of his Neocon predecessor. And now, with the health insurance reform debate gone all Town Hall during recess, we are told we don’t really need health insurance reform, single payer health care, or even a public option to facilitate the expected mandate we’ll be handed that forces us to pay more money than we’ve got to the murder-by-spreadsheed for-profit industry.

We still have “state secrets” privilege on who’s lobbying in the Oval Office. We still have DADT in the military. We still have two illegal wars going, a new third front opened in Columbia, off-the-books deficits accumulated by the fact that there’s twice as many paid mercenaries in those war zones than U.S. soldiers, we’re still rendering and torturing “detainees” who haven’t been charged with any crimes and haven’t been afforded the status of POWs, and we’re still bailing out Wall Street gamblers to the tune of multiple trillions while not even beginning to address reinstating necessary regulations.

A plethora of Democratic/Progressive activist groups have sprung up to pressure Congress and the White House on these issues as well as health insurance reform, letter-writing campaigns, calls and emails to representatives and senators, mass demonstrations… You name it, it’s being done. And what we get from the WH is insults and dismissals as those of us anywhere to the left of center are repeatedly told to STFU.

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Filed under Balance of Power, Barack Obama, Class War, Corruption, Debates, Democrats, DNC, Elections, For-Profit Insurance, Health Care, Legislation, Outrage, Party Platforms, Policy, Protests, Torture, Universal Care, War Crimes | Comment (0)

Senate’s Secret Torture Investigation

…will it prevent a public accounting?

While both houses of the U.S. Congress are busily debating whether or not possible investigations of the Bush administration’s policies on the torture of prisoners and detainees in its wars on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan should be held at all, and if held whether or not they should be public, California Senator Diane Feinstein has managed to forestall the public possibility for a year. Democrat Feinstein and Republican Kit Bond of Missouri as chair and co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee announced on March 5 a Committee review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

The probe is designed to discover new information about the origins of the programs as well as to scrutinize their operations. The five specified areas of investigation include:

• The creation, operation and maintenance of the CIA interrogation program.

• How detainees were assessed as to who possessed information valuable enough to require “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

• Whether the Intelligence Committee, Office of Legal Counsel and other responsible offices of government received accurate information from the CIA about its detention and interrogation programs.

• Whether the programs were implemented in compliance with guidance issued by the pertinent government offices.

• Whether information gained through the programs was valuable enough to justify the programs themselves.

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Filed under Bush, Immunity, Intelligence, Torture, War Crimes | Comment (0)

“Justice is Meant to Serve the Party”

Kangaroo Trials for Gitmo prisoners

The Pentagon announced on February 11 that it is charging six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with war crimes, and will be seeking the death penalty for all. According to ex-JAG officers, it has already been decided that all will be convicted, and all will die. The highlights will be secret evidence and confessions gathered under torture from people who have been held for years sans habeas corpus.

Ross Tuttle’s Rigged Trials at Gitmo appears online from The Nation. Looks like BushCo are fixing to compound their own war crimes. Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Gitmo’s military commissions detailed a conversation with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes, who now oversees the tribunal process for the Department of Defense…

“[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.’”

Filed under 9-11, al Quaeda, Appointees, Guantanamo, Military, Torture, War, War Crimes | Comment (0)

Secrecy and the Rule of Law: Connecting the Dots

Senator Chris Dodd made a statement on the Senate floor on Friday, January 25th during the cloture debate on Bush’s FISA bill – the one granting retroactive immunity to America’s telecom giants for aiding and abetting Bushco’s rampant lawbreaking. The statement well explains what’s wrong with the entire situation in which we find ourselves after 7 long years of the decidedly un-American “Unitary Executive” – a.k.a. “The Deciderer.”

Dodd had threatened to filibuster the bill last month, so Harry Reid was forced to withdraw it from debate until last Friday, when Dodd again threatened filibuster. Reid then put off the cloture vote until today, January 28th. Senators Clinton and Obama, who were out of town campaigning in South Carolina on Friday, are scheduled to be present for this afternoon’s cloture vote (and filibuster, should that ensue).

Dodd noted that it wasn’t his colleagues in Congress – either house – who convinced him of the unacceptability of telecom immunity, it was the many citizens he met in his recently aborted campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination…

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Filed under Analysis, Bush, Corruption, History, Intelligence, Torture, Treason | Comments (2)

State of Denial

Torture as U.S. Policy and Practice

The recent hoopla about videotapes of the torture of ‘War on Terror’ prisoners Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by CIA interrogators has drawn some odd denials from people who ought to know better by now. White House press spokesbot Dana Perino kept insisting to all questions that the US does not torture. Period, end of discussion.

What American with an IQ of over 75 believes this garbage, or the George W. Bush “doesn’t remember” knowing about those torture tapes – or ordering their destruction? Anyone who doubts US involvement in torture (and, too often, murder) should read Jennifer Hardbury’s Interview with Buzzflash for realistic background on this issue.

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Filed under Analysis, Books, Bush, Intelligence, Media, Torture, War | Comments (2)

Waterboarding: Torture or Not?

It’s just so darned hard to get a straight answer out of policy makers and policy hacks. Though, interestingly enough, it’s not that hard to get opinions from warriors (or prisoners) who have been subjected to it.

Yes, it’s torture. It’s labeled such, known as such, practiced as such. The fact that we subject our SEALs and Rangers and other special forces operatives to it to give them an idea of what torture *is* and how to resist it, tells us that it’s legitimately, objectively classifiable as TORTURE.

So, you might ask with wonder in your eyes, why are Senators and Congresscitters and administration hacks arguing about it in public? Why is it “important” on somebody’s scale of things to do to make this long-ago made distinction? Why won’t AG candidate Michael Mukasey lend us his views on the issue? It’s a fair question, let’s ask it…

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Filed under Anti-War, Appointees, Corruption, History, Humor, Hypocrisy, Military, Republicans, Snark, Torture | Comments (2)