Bye bye 50 state strategy

Democratic leaders have now decided that they should concentrate on races they will probably win:

In the next two weeks, Democratic leaders will review new polls and other data that show whether vulnerable incumbents have a path to victory. If not, the party is poised to redirect money to concentrate on trying to protect up to two dozen lawmakers who appear to be in the strongest position to fend off their challengers.

“We are going to have to win these races one by one,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, conceding that the party would ultimately cut loose members who had not gained ground.

So, I guess the 50 state strategy is out. It’s not like it worked. Oh wait, it did. Ah well, I’m sure us liberal/progressives will be blamed for the losses anyway.

Gibbs/Obama continue to attack the left

In an interview, Press Secretary Gibbs unloads on the left:

“I hear these people saying he’s like George Bush. Those people ought to be drug tested,” Gibbs said. “I mean, it’s crazy.”
The press secretary dismissed the “professional left” in terms very similar to those used by their opponents on the ideological right, saying, “They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we’ve eliminated the Pentagon. That’s not reality.”

There are two problems with this. First, he has been the same as Bush in terms of state secrets and killing ‘terrorists’ (in most other regards he’s much better). Secondly, the left (such as me) isn’t upset at him so much for the legislation that has passed (he has passed some good legislation), but how he’s approached it. The health care bill is a good example: progressives really want single-payer and here’s Gibbs ridiculing even thinking about it and this is exactly how the Obama administration acted last spring.

Look, I get that we on the left won’t get all we want, but if a Democratic president seems to care more for what Republicans think than progressives then there’s something wrong.

This also isn’t the best way to motivate your voters who historically don’t come out for Midterm elections.

Gibbs does apologize a bit here, but even here he gets it wrong:

“I watch too much cable, I admit,” Gibbs told the Huffington Post. “Day after day it gets frustrating. Yesterday I watched as someone called legislation to prevent teacher layoffs a bailout – but I know that’s not a view held by many, nor were the views I was frustrated about.”

The people who called it a bailout were conservatives and Republicans, the only leftists who said anything against it was because it cuts food stamp payouts. You would think Gibbs wouldn’t confuse the two groups.

He’s probably guilty. Kill him

I’m a bit slow getting to this, but it seems that the Obama administration now is in the business of murdering US citizens:

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.

Murder might seem like a strong word, but notice that there has been no court case and so, by US law, he should be assumed to be innocent. Since they are not talking about killing him on a battlefield or in a terrorist attack and al-Awlaki seems to deny the charge (via Glenn Greenwald, who is suitably upset), it’s murder.

This idea goes back to President Bush (notice the lack of any kind of court):

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush gave the CIA, and later the military, authority to kill U.S. citizens abroad if strong evidence existed that an American was involved in organizing or carrying out terrorist actions against the United States or U.S. interests, military and intelligence officials said. The evidence has to meet a certain, defined threshold. The person, for instance, has to pose “a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests,” said one former intelligence official.

The Obama administration has adopted the same stance. If a U.S. citizen joins al-Qaeda, “it doesn’t really change anything from the standpoint of whether we can target them,” a senior administration official said. “They are then part of the enemy.”

but Bush never actually implemented it. So, Obama is more extreme than Bush here.

But it’s a secret

Despite threatening to take away documents from a judge, despite defying a judge’s orders, the Obama administration lost its argument that the Al Haramain case should be dismissed because it involved ‘state secrets’ (I put it in quotes since the Bush administration had inadvertently given the group evidence that they had been illegally wiretapped and the whole program had been exposed in 2005).

Given the ferocity of the defense, it’s hard to believe this:

A Justice Department spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, noted that the Obama administration had overhauled the department’s procedures for invoking the state-secrets privilege, requiring senior officials to personally approve any assertion before lawyers could make it in court. She said that approach would ensure that the privilege was invoked only when “absolutely necessary to protect national security.”

This is a good result, but still leaves lots of room for future excesses and does nothing to punish the people who broke the law (Congress passed laws that made most of the procedures legal and made telecoms immune from lawsuits against them, which the same judge ruled legal). The reason it has limited scope is because it still agrees that one has to be able to prove the government did something illegal and the government doesn’t have to turn over any documents it calls secret.

Glenn Greenwald has a more thorough examination here and Time has a quick one here.

Yay

Well, lookie there, the US now will have national healthcare (mostly). I’ m a bit stunned. Democrats have been trying to get this done since FDR and it’s actually a reality. This bill is far from perfect but should get better as the years go by (think Social Security). Very nice.

Maybe now Democrats can relax and get to reforming the financial system, helping to end the recession, and passing a carbon tax/market–minor things. I would hope that they really make creating jobs and reforming the financial system high profile, since Republicans are on the side of doing nothing (well, more tax cuts). In some ways, I’m curious to see how Republicans will try to make people believe that regulating bankers is a bad thing.

Better regulation

John Judis has an article in the New Republic talking about how President Obama is changing the mentality of the regulatory agencies:

Obama’s three Republican predecessors were all committed to weakening or even destroying the country’s regulatory apparatus: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the other agencies that are supposed to protect workers and consumers by regulating business practices. Now Obama is seeking to rebuild these battered institutions. In doing so, he isn’t simply improving the effectiveness of various government offices or making scattered progress on a few issues; he is resuscitating an entire philosophy of government with roots in the Progressive era of the early twentieth century. Taken as a whole, Obama’s revival of these agencies is arguably the most significant accomplishment of his first year in office.

The basic idea is that Obama is appointing people who are actually qualified for their positions, as opposed to putting in politicians, and putting money back into the agencies. It all sounds good, especially compared to the Bush administration. I don’t really know enough about all these people but this makes me doubt a bit:

In addition, Bush put a political appointee in each of the regulatory agencies whose job was to make sure they were following OIRA’s dictates. From July 2001 to March 2002, Bush’s OIRA killed 20 regulations, more than Clinton’s OIRA had killed in eight years.Now Obama has put a liberal proponent of cost-benefit analysis, Harvard law professor (and former TNR contributing editor) Cass Sunstein, in charge of the super-agency. He also revoked Bush’s executive order allowing OIRA to intercede at the start of the process and called for reframing cost-benefit analysis to take account of “the role of distributional considerations, fairness, and concern for the interests of future generations.”For his part, Sunstein has stated that he wants to make sure “environmental regulations … are attentive to the interests of future generations and those who are least well-off.” These might seem like general ideas, but they are a clear signal that Obama and Sunstein plan to purge cost-benefit analysis of its conservative bias.

It is very probably true that Sunstein will use a more balanced cost-benefit analysis, but he still thinks that cost-benefit analysis is better than any type of precautionary principle (I look at that here–there are links there to more discussion). This means that he is really a mainstream regulator, he only looks liberal when compared to the reactionary practices of the Bush administration, which may be why:

Four analysts from the Center for Progressive Reform recently wrote that the administration deserves a “B-” for regulation during its first year.

The Obama administration has done a lot of good, but it’s far from progressive in many areas.

Honduras coup succeeded

So, Honduras held an election and the US will recognize it. This might seem to be a good conclusion, but think about what this means in terms of the structure of power in Honduras–suppose the elected president does something that the military doesn’t like, what will they do? This episode tells them that if they overthrow him and eventually hold elections then everything will be fine. This is a terrible precedent.

It also sends a bad signal to the rest of Latin America and they see this:

With the exception of Panama and Costa Rica, no other countries in the region have publicly said they will join the United States in recognizing the vote.

“They really thought he was different,” said Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to Latin America’s view of Mr. Obama, adding, “But those hopes were dashed over the course of the summer.”

This is why those countries feel the US did not follow through:

The administration suspended some $30 million in assistance to Honduras, but continued the bulk of its aid — worth hundreds of millions of dollars — saying it did not want to punish the majority of Hondurans living in poverty.

The United States was slow to criticize human rights abuses by the de facto government, but swift to scold Mr. Zelaya for political stunts that culminated with his sneaking back into Honduras, where he remains camped inside the Brazilian Embassy.

As an aside, this article includes this stupid statement:

Mr. Zelaya, once a darling of the Honduran upper classes, fell from favor when he began increasing the minimum wage, reducing the price of fuel and allying himself with President Chávez. His critics say he crossed a line when he defied the Supreme Court and pushed a referendum to change the Constitution so that he could run for another term.

Since he did not actually push a referendum to change the constitution so that he could run for another term, you would think the article might mention this.

Also, look at the willful blindness that Assistant Secretary Valenzuela exhibits:

QUESTION: So is it not a legitimate concern that by recognizing the election, you could be encouraging further coups?

MR. VALENZUELA: No, because I think that we have to make absolutely clear that any country that encourages a military coup, or if a military coup takes place, they run the risk of actually being suspended from the Organization of American States, of not being recognized by the Organization of American States.  

and then if they wait a couple months everything will be ok according to the US–ok he didn’t explicitly say this but it’s what he implies. He sounds ok here:

And by that, I mean that – what are the additional steps that need to be taken? A government of national unity needs to be formed. The congress has to take a vote on the return of President Zelaya to office. And another element of the San Jose Accords that I think would be very, very important as Honduras moves forward to try to reestablish the democratic and constitutional order is the formation and the structuring of a truth commission, which was also contemplated in the original Tegucigalpa framework and San Jose Accords. And the truth commission would be a body that would look into the incidents and the situation that led to the coup, but at the same time, as the accord says, I think – I was thinking about it in the Spanish version of the accord – it also will provide the elementos, as it says in the accord – the elements to help the Hondurans make the necessary reforms to their constitutional process and to bring about a fuller reconciliation of the Honduran people.

but if you go down further you see that he will not commit to not recognizing the government if they don’t follow through (wow is that a triple negative?). Also, note that he doesn’t seem to think it’s important that Zelaya doesn’t think the process so far has been legitimate.

US

The US had said that they were against the coup in Honduras, but they aren’t showing they care all that much. It is now less than two weeks until the election, Zelaya is still not back in power, and yet the US is hinting that they will support the election. This type of show is good enough for the US:

Roberto Micheletti, who seized power after a June military coup toppled President Manuel Zelaya, said in a televised address Thursday he might give up his duties between November 25 and December 2.

“We welcome that he is going to take a leave of absence and expect its prompt implementation. This will allow some breathing space for the process in Honduras to go forward,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood told a news briefing.

And it’s obviously just a show:

Micheletti said he will consult with “representatives of diverse sectors of Honduran society” before stepping down. The acting leader said he reserves the right to resume his post at any time during the planned absence if the Central American nation’s national security is threatened.

In other words, he will still keep all of his powers he’ll just not show himself. Also, the congress won’t vote on whether to reinstate Zelaya until December 2–after the election–which means the coup leaders will control the election during the vote. Only someone looking for political cover would think this will be a legitimate election. It looks like that’s what the Obama wants.

More healthcare craziness

Now that the lies about ‘death panels’ have lead to the elimination of funding for end of life counselling, what’s next? It seems we might go to the start of life (via here):

Now conservative opponents of health reform have found a new threat: home nurse visits to low-income parents. “We are setting up a situation where Obama will be invading parent’s [sic] homes and taking away their children,” one columnist warned on RightWingNews.com. That something as harmless as home nurse visits has become a target of conservative ire is surprising because of its longstanding popularity with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. But health reform advocates are scratching their heads at the attacks for another reason: funding for home nurse visits was largely included in health reform legislation to accommodate social conservatives.

Here’s the argument in all its craziness:

This is a backdoor means of obtaining agreement to go around the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and similar provisions in most state constitutions that prohibit entry into a home without a search warrant. If you agree, then you have waived your right to require a search warrant, which can only be authorized by a magistrate or judge on probable cause that a crime has or is being committed.

This part of the Obama healthcare bill is terrifying, and the numbers of children taken from families, as well as those who will have to endure weekly or monthly visits from a social worker, will increase manyfold. This conclusion is not speculative, as it is the whole reason for mandating these visits to homes in the first place. If they did not expect to kidnap more children and to open many more administrative cases, the provision would not have been there.

What do you think they would say if this wasn’t something backed by most social conservatives?

This type of thing is the reason I think Obama is stupid to say he might be ok with getting rid of the public option: no matter what he does, almost all Republicans will vote against the bill. Here’s one of the leading Republican negotiators:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) dug in against a public option today, telling MSNBC this morning that “the government is a predator.”

“When you have the government running something, the government is not a fair competitor,” he said. “The government is a predator, not a competitor.”

Grassley, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee and key Republican negotiator on the health care reform bill, said he wouldn’t vote for a plan without widespread Republican support.

“I’m negotiating for Republicans and if I can’t negotiate something that gets more than four Republicans, I’m not a good representative of my party,” he said. “It isn’t a good deal if i can’t sell my product to more Republicans.”

Do you think he’s going to vote for the package?

Karzai signs law that makes women second class

The updating of the infamous law for Shia women has now been published and thus is law. Human Rights Watch talks about it here:

A copy of the final law seen by Human Rights Watch shows that many regressive articles remain, which strip away women’s rights that are enshrined in Afghanistan’s constitution. The law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers. It requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying “blood money” to a girl who was injured when he raped her.

Obviously this was done to get votes. It also shows Karzai doesn’t really believe in an open process:

Female parliamentarians said they thought they would get the chance to fight for revisions, only to discover in recent days that Karzai had taken advantage of a legislative recess to approve the law by decree. Parliament has the right to examine and change the law when they reconvene but the law stays in effect in the meantime.

Karzai has also brought back warlord Dostum, so he’s also going for the warlord vote.

Republicans want uninsured to die

Ok, I don’t really believe my headline. It’s just hard not to get angry and frustrated when the other side makes ludicrous claims (see here for example). And this isn’t fringe elements, the Republican candidate for VP claims that the legislation includes death panels that would not have allowed her baby to be born (and then says she wants there to be a civil discourse?).

What makes this so funny is that Republicans don’t have any real plan to extend insurance to the uninsured and worked against all the programs that have helped the poor and elderly: they were against Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid,extending SCHIP to more children, and many other programs. It should only be in Bizarro world where Republicans could claim that Democrats are trying to deprive seniors of care–it seems we live in Bizarro world (in this world Stephen Hawkings does not live in the UK, via here).

What makes my headline less wrong than the Republican’s stupidity is that the uninsured are more likely to die than the insured (You can see the report here):

According to an earlier Kaiser report:

• People without health insurance receive less preventive care and are less likely to have major diseases detected early.
• The uninsured are more likely to die prematurely than the insured, with various studies putting the mortality rate for the uninsured somewhere between 1.2 times to 1.6 times the rate for the insured.
• Uninsured infants have relative odds of dying that are 1.5 times higher than infants with private insurance.
• The poorer health associated with being uninsured depresses workers’ average lifetime earnings significantly. The commission estimated that better health would boost earnings by 10% to 30%.

The report puts the number of excess due to being uninsured for adults aged 25-64 at 22,000-27,000 in 2006. The economic impact of the worse health and shortened lifespan for the uninsured has been estimated at $200 billion. Republicans want to keep this status.

End of life conversation=euthanasia?

As usual, there’s a lot of crazy talk from some rightwingers about healthcare (via Pandagon). One of the craziest is that the new healthcare plans will lead to euthanasia of the elderly. This would be a joke except it’s being pushed by people in Congress–here’s a statement from Reps Boehner and McCotter:

Section 1233 of the House-drafted legislation encourages health care providers to provide their Medicare patients with counseling on ‘the use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration’ and other end of life treatments, and may place seniors in situations where they feel pressured to sign end of life directives they would not otherwise sign.  This provision may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia if enacted into law.  At a minimum this legislative language deserves a full and open public debate – the sort of debate that is impossible to have under the politically-driven deadlines Democratic leaders have arbitrarily set for enactment of a health care bill.

 

“This provision of the legislation is a throwback to 1977, when the old Department of Health Education and Welfare proposed federal promotion of living wills for cost-savings purposes described as ‘enormous.’  At that time, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago decried this effort by saying: ‘The message is clear: government can save money by encouraging old people to die a little sooner than they otherwise would.  Instead of being regarded with reverence, and cherished, human life is subject in this view to a utilitarian cost-benefit calculus and can be sacrificed to serve fiscal policy and the sacred imperative of trimming a budget.’

 

“With three states having legalized physician-assisted suicide, this provision could create a slippery slope for a more permissive environment for euthanasia, mercy-killing and physician-assisted suicide because it does not clearly exclude counseling about the supposed benefits of killing oneself.

 

“Health care reform that fails to protect the sanctity and dignity of all human life is not reform at all.”

Wow, huh. And there’s worse. What does this refer to?

The legislation would order Medicare to pay for consultations between patients and doctors on end-of-life decisions, which it currently doesn’t cover. But the consultations wouldn’t be mandatory; if your grandmother doesn’t want to go talk to her doctor about end-of-life care, she won’t have to. Because Medicare doesn’t pay for this kind of planning now, only 40 percent of seniors who depend on the government insurance say they have an advance directive that tells healthcare providers what measures they do and don’t want used to prolong their life, even though 75 percent say they think it’s important.

 So, for some Republicans, saying that Medicare should pay for terminal patients to have voluntary conversations with doctors to discuss what type of care they want, if they have a living will, who will make decisions if they are incapacitated, and similar things is the same as euthanasia? Interesting.

 

What makes this even more interesting is that a study (this is a pay site, the abstract is here) found:

On the other hand, patients who reported having end-of-life discussions received less aggressive medical care and were more likely to receive hospice services for more than a week. Less aggressive care and earlier hospice referrals were associated with better patient quality of life near death. Of note, patients who received less than a week of hospice care had the same quality of life scores as patients who did not receive hospice at all, suggesting that patients benefit more from early hospice referrals. Better patient quality of life near death, in turn, was associated with better quality of life among surviving caregivers who experienced less regret and showed improvements in self-reported health, physical functioning, mental health, and overall quality of life during the bereavement period.

And they lived as long too. What a terrible outcome: the patients are happier and live just as long, their families are happier, and it cost less money. We can’t have that.

The text of the relevant section of the bill is below the fold (go here for the text of the full bill).

Problems in Afghanistan

Back in March, Afghanistan passed a rule that severely restricted the rights of Shia women but a huge international outcry forced President Karzai to say he would rewrite it. The new version is out and it seems it’s not much better:

The changes, which are not yet approved by Parliament, would delete sections that said a woman needs her husband’s permission to leave the house and must be ready for sex at least every four days. In a letter to the president, activists said other parts would change so little that the law is still unacceptable.

…

The section about submitting to sex every four days was deleted, but other sections let a husband order sex, said Shinkai Kharokhel, a lawmaker involved in attempts to change the legislation.

A section explaining a husband must provide financially for his wife also says he can withhold support if she refuses to “submit to her husband’s reasonable sexual enjoyment,’’ according to Human Rights Watch.

…

The revised law would also restrict a woman’s right to leave the house and to work, she said.

and:

The new law also still gives rights of guardianship entirely to fathers and grandfathers. By stipulating blood money should be paid for underage girls who are raped, human rights groups allege it also implicitly sanctions child abuse.

I guess we’ll have to wait a bit to see what Karzai does. I’m not too optimistic given that this was supposed to be a revision forced by him. He also is also very good at helping people that might help get him reelected: pardoning drug dealers and vicious rapists.

In general the state of women in Afghanistan is very bad:

“The limited space that opened up for Afghan women following the demise of the Taliban regime in 2001 is under sustained attack, not just by the Taliban themselves, but by deeply engrained cultural practices and customs,” said the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay.

Pillay also denounced “a chronic failure at all levels of government to advance the protection of women’s rights in Afghanistan” despite “significant advances” in the creation of new legislation and institutions.

The report, issued by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned of a “growing trend” of violence and threats against women in public life.

“Violence, in the public and private spheres, is an everyday occurrence in the lives of a huge proportion of Afghan women,” the report said.

The full UN report is here. Another example of the oppression of women is in Sudan, where women were flogged for wearing pants.

Another development in Afghanistan has to do with my mistrust of Karzai. It seems that the warlord Dostumkilled hundreds or thousands of captured Taliban troops back in 2002. The US government under President Bush actively campaigned against an investigation of Dostum since he was an ally (he was rewarded with a position as an official in Karzai’s government). You might argue that this is old news, but it’s relevant because Karzai has reinstated Dostum as a military chief of staff (he was suspended last year after being accused of confronting a political rival with a gun). I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Dostum has powerful allies in Afghanistan (and the CIA)?

Iran and Democracy

In some ways, the thing that makes what’s happening in Iran (The Lede has been a very good place to get information, but won’t put up anything new over the weekend) so bad is that Iran has more freedom than most of the countries in the Middle East. Women have many more rights and there is some democracy. That’s why there was some hope with this election, because there was the possibility of a peaceful transition to a country with even more freedom. That hope seems to be gone.

In general I think President Obama has reacted well to the situation. Given the history of the US in Iran he could not overtly support the opposition, but now that the suppression has become more violent he can speak more bluntly.

It’s also good to see old anti-war people weighing in, such as Joan Baez:

Obama and State Secrets

In this morning’s speech, President Obama mostly hit the right notes but basically called groups like the ACLU stupid:

We see that, above all, in how the recent debate has been obscured by two opposite and absolutist ends. On one side of the spectrum, there are those who make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view that can be summarized in two words: “anything goes.” Their arguments suggest that the ends of fighting terrorism can be used to justify any means, and that the President should have blanket authority to do whatever he wants – provided that it is a President with whom they agree.

This might sound better if his administration hadn’t argued in some cases that the entire case should be dropped because of ‘State Secrets’ even when the information was already out there.

And he uses the old Republican standby, that their policies will lead to deaths:

On the other hand, I recently opposed the release of certain photographs that were taken of detainees by U.S. personnel between 2002 and 2004. Individuals who violated standards of behavior in these photos have been investigated and held accountable. There is no debate as to whether what is reflected in those photos is wrong, and nothing has been concealed to absolve perpetrators of crimes. However, it was my judgment – informed by my national security team – that releasing these photos would inflame anti-American opinion, and allow our enemies to paint U.S. troops with a broad, damning and inaccurate brush, endangering them in theaters of war.

I really don’t understand this. He has basically said that the actions in the photos are terrible, won’t that information already inflame anti-American opinion (it is easier to exploit actual photos, but couldn’t people say something like: ‘the actions are so bad that the US won’t allow their release’?). Also, Obama has been arguing that the US will regain credibility if they’re open, but here he’s against it here because … umm … well it would look bad for the US. It’s not being open if you only do so when it looks good.

More on Binyam Mohamed

Back in February, the Obama administration had argued that a case against Boeing should be dropped because it might reveal state secrets. They lost that argument with an appropriate judicial rebuke:

The court said the government could ask judges to conduct a case-by-case review of whether the disclosure of specific documents would jeopardize national security. But allowing the executive branch to shut down an entire lawsuit whenever an official says its subject is classified would be a “concentration of unchecked power” and lead to abuses, it said.

“According to the government’s theory, the judiciary should effectively cordon off all secret government actions from judicial scrutiny, immunizing the C.I.A. and its partners from the demands and limits of the law,” wrote Judge Michael Daly Hawkins.

Now it seems the Obama administration has again mirrored the Bush administration, this time by threatening to withhold secret information if a British court makes US interrogation procedures public:

The letter warned that if the British government “is unable to protect information we provide to it, even if that inability is caused by your judicial system, we will necessarily have to review with the greatest care the sensitivity of information we can provide in the future.”

The letter also said the “seven paragraphs at issue are based upon classified information shared between our countries,” and that “public disclosure of this information reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the United Kingdom’s national security” if the United States withheld intelligence information in the future.

Since it would inevitably do damage to the US, the Obama administration is putting state secrets above public safety. This is all very weird for a president that says he wants transparency.

Now Obama is against release of photos

President Obama is now against the release of photos that show the abuse of prisoners:

President Obama declared yesterday that he would try to block the court-ordered release of photos showing US troops abusing prisoners, abruptly reversing his position out of concern the pictures would “further inflame anti-American opinion” and endanger American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

…

Obama, explaining his change of heart on releasing the other photos, said they had already served their purpose in investigations of “a small number of individuals.” Those cases were all concluded by 2004, and the president said “the individuals who were involved have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken.”

The Pentagon conducted 200 investigations into alleged abuse connected with the photos in question. The administration did not provide an immediate accounting of how they turned out.

I don’t see how this would hurt US military forces if Obama released the photos and said something like:

‘That this happened is shameful. This will not happen under my administration and I pledge to investigate these cases until the perpetrators and those who allowed this to happen are punished.’

The problem is that Obama has said he doesn’t want to look back. If the people who made this possible aren’t punished then it will probably hurt the US.

I do seem to criticize Obama more than I praise him, but I do think he has done a good job so far. He is pushing to: pass universal health care; is pushing for carbon trading and more renewable energy; is for ending the ‘war on drugs’; pass a credit card bill. These are all important things that I also support.

183 times in a month?

I have always thought that someone should go to jail for the torture by US agents, but I used to think it should only be the people who set it up. Now, I’m not so sure:

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.
…
The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

183 times in a month? Anyone should know that this is torture. It’s obvious, that’s why the FBI pulled back:

By mid-2002, several former agents and senior bureau officials said, they had begun complaining that the CIA-run interrogation program amounted to torture and was going to create significant problems down the road — particularly if the Bush administration was ever forced to allow the Al Qaeda suspects to face their accusers in court.

Some went to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, according to the former bureau officials. They said Mueller pulled many of the agents back from playing even a supporting role in the interrogations to avoid exposing them to legal jeopardy, in the belief that White House and Justice Department opinions authorizing the coercive techniques might be overturned.

Hmm, I guess the FBI knows that the Nuremberg trials had shown that ‘I was just following orders’ is not a defense. Emptywheel has more, including the facts that the agents used waterboarding more than they were supposed to and used a worse version than they were authorized to. President Obama has said he won’t charge any of these people? Why? Ex-CIA director Hayden and ex Attorney General Mukasey worry that CIA agents will fear recriminations. Agents should worry if they do something this obviously illegal.

Update: Harvey Silvergate has an editorial about this:

A CIA agent, operating in good faith, could readily consider such DOJ advice to be a binding legal opinion that he could safely follow. And in our legal system, based on an ancient Anglo-Saxon moral and legal tenet incorporated into our own criminal codes, a wrongdoer may be punished only if he knowingly and intentionally committed an act that he believed to be illegal.

Hmm, this might be a good point except the CIA agents went further than the legal advice allowed and the FBI refused to participate, showing that reasonable people could see that the memo’s argument might easily be wrong.

Bush Justice Department memos released

The memos written by the the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Council have been released by President Obama. This is a good thing, but Obama is still holding to this:

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

Let’s see, suppose a few years ago I went into a building and took some stuff acting on the guidance of a neighbor who said it was ok. Some people might think I should be charged with robbery, but not Obama–with the current economic problems, now is not the time to revisit old crimes that could cause dissension. Really, does that make sense? If a crime was committed, someone should pay–I agree that the people following the advice of the OLC probably shouldn’t, but someone should. Also, remember that the interrogations started before these memos came out.

I also like the unwitting irony with this statement:

Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cited his experience after taking part in the unpopular Vietnam War. “We in the intelligence community should not be subjected to similar pain,” he said.

If you take away the first sentence it would sound like he was saying that people in the intelligence community shouldn’t be tortured.

And, of course, people in the Bush administration are defending the practices:

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

You see they hope we have forgotten that the intelligence community had all the information needed to have an idea something like the 9/11 attacks were possible. The Patriot act and these ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques were not needed. And then they follow it up with the usual ‘they do it too’  and ‘it wasn’t that bad’ childen’s arguments:

Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage, and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies. Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl, and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the U.S. will no longer interrupt the sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens.

Of course, they ignore that the knowledge that the US tortures helped al-Qaeda get followers is ignored. And they ignore that people were tortured to death by the US (they pretend that allowing these rules for the CIA had nothing to do with what happened at Abu Ghraib, but the rules inevitably flowed down the chain–it was policy).

Of course, they can’t resist attacking those of us that wanted the disclosure:

In addition, there were those who believed that the U.S. deserved what it got on Sept. 11, 2001.

You know what Mukasey and Hayden can jump off a cliff. They’re the ones who are saying the US should act like the terrorists. Good riddance to them.

Update: I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the writers of the memo lied about conclusions of a sleep study so they could say it was ok to use extended sleep deprivation.

You also won’t be surprised to learn that the Bush administration decided to turn to torture even though interrogation was working and:

A footnote to another of the memos described a rift between line officers questioning Abu Zubaydah at a secret C.I.A. prison in Thailand and their bosses at headquarters, and asserted that the brutal treatment may have been “unnecessary.”

Quoting a 2004 report on the interrogation program by the C.I.A. inspector general, the footnote says that “although the on-scene interrogation team judged Zubaydah to be compliant, elements within C.I.A. headquarters still believed he was withholding information.”

Typical, the bosses think they know more than the people actually doing the job. Of course the CIA types weren’t exactly great:

His interrogation, according to multiple accounts, began in Pakistan and continued at the secret C.I.A. site in Thailand, with a traditional, rapport-building approach led by two F.B.I. agents, who even helped care for him as his gunshot wounds healed.

Abu Zubaydah gave up perhaps his single most valuable piece of information early, naming Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, whom he knew as Mukhtar, as the main organizer of the 9/11 plot.

A C.I.A. interrogation team that arrived a week or two later, which included former military psychologists, did not change the approach to questioning, but began to keep him awake night and day with blasting rock music, have his clothes removed and keep his cell cold.

But I guess the higher ups just wanted to punish him more.

Nationalization

President Obama has forced the resignation of GM’s CEO and is requiring strict conditions before the government gives more money to GM and Chrysler. Here are two critiques in the article:

“This nationalization of business may prove to be folly,” warned Louis E. Lataif, dean of Boston University’s School of Management and a former president of Ford Eu rope, a division of the American automaker now based in Germany. “The notion that anybody in Washington knows how to run the auto industry in Detroit is laughable. And I don’t think they know how to run the banks either.”

This is the extension of the ‘but that’s socialism’ argument. As my father always used to say, I don’t care what you call a policy just whether it makes sense or not. This Washington Monthly article shows that government has successfully run businesses for short periods in the past:

But here’s the funny thing: any honest reading of history suggests that the federal government has quite an impressive record of rescuing institutions considered too big to fail. In addition to almost routine workouts of failed banks conducted in good and bad times by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and other regulators, the list includes many large industrial companies as well. In 1971, for example, Congress extended emergency loans to failing aircraft builder Lockheed and wound up not only saving a company vital to America’s national defense and export manufacturing base, but earning a net income for the Treasury of $5.4 million in loan fees.

The main example is Conrail, which took a company that had fallen apart and made it into one that was profitable and necessary.

The second type of argument is:

James G. Boyle, who runs a GMC truck dealership in Hudson and a Toyota dealership in Portsmouth, N.Y., said he believed government has a role as lender of last resort – but shouldn’t meddle in business. “If you’re going to lend the money, lend the money and get out of the way,” he said. “Aside from the US military, I can’t think of any part of the government that I’d want to solve any problem for me.”

Besides the fact that he thinks that things like food safety should be left up to the food industry as it was in the days of The Jungle, he doesn’t seem to know how private or public banks work. Does he think that banks don’t put conditions on loans? Has he ever looked at how the IMF works?

There’s a third argument that comes up in the comments to the Globe article: we should just let them go bankrupt. In theory I agree with this, but sometimes it’s more than a little problematic. The case of Penn Central (which became Conrail) gives a good example:

It all came crashing down in May 1970. Because of Penn Central’s creative bookkeeping, few on Wall Street saw it coming. The exposure to the company’s revolving loans was so great that it required a dramatic intervention by the Federal Reserve to prevent a meltdown of Wall Street’s commercial paper market. President Richard Nixon, after refusing to take a call from his panicked transportation secretary, allowed the company to go into bankruptcy. Eventually, however, he determined that it was too big to fail; hundreds of thousands of jobs, as well as key industries like steel and auto manufacturing, were at stake. And so Penn Central received bundles of emergency loans.

The idea is that if a company is really big, its failure will cause the failure of other companies that are healthy–they’re too big to fail. It’s hard to say if that’s true for GM or Chrysler, but it’s possible. Obama seems to be taking the middle road here. My one quibble here is that Obama (and Bush before him) seems to have no problem demanding that the employees of the car companies take big cuts in pay and benefits, but doesn’t see the need to do the same for the banks or AIG. This is despite the fact that financial workers make more than automotive workers.