The memo issued by the acting director of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel just five days before Barack Obama took office comes across almost as, among other things, a bit whiny.
Steven Bradbury wrote to officially retract a series of memos in which his former colleagues secretly rewrote the Constitution.
He acknowledged that their reasoning was at various points "unconvincing" and "not sustainable."
But Bradbury was also making excuses for them. They were afraid, he wrote: "The opinions addressed herein were issued in the wake of the atrocities of 9/11, when policymakers, fearing that additional catastrophic terrorist attacks were imminent, strived to employ all lawful means to protect the nation." They were rushed, confronting "novel and complex legal questions in a time of great danger and under extraordinary time pressure."
No excuse. Not even close.
Why is it that the Republicans get up in arms about Obama trying to fix their damage to our economy never get upset by erosion of our civil rights? Might I suggest that paupers are much easier to control and those that they cannot control economically they will do so with the police power of the government?
"Now, let's return to our last president's news conference and consider what he claims his 'chief economic advisors' told him in private last fall. His statement was, in fact, staggeringly worse than just about anything you can presently read in your newspapers or see on the TV news. What was heading our way, he claimed he was told, might be 'worse' or 'greater' than the Great Depression itself. Admittedly, John Whitehead, the 86-year-old former chairman of Goldman Sachs, suggested in November that the current economic crisis might turn out to be 'worse than the [Great] depression.' But on this, he was speaking as something of a public minority of one.
Stop for a minute and consider what Bush actually told us. It's a staggering thought. Who even knows what it might mean? In the United States, for example, the unemployment rate in the decade of the Great Depression never fell below 14%. In cities like Chicago and Detroit in the early 1930s, it approached 50%. So, worse than that? And yet in the privacy of the Oval Office, that was evidently a majority view, unbeknownst to the rest of us."
"What makes Obama a radical, albeit of the careful and deliberate variety, is his effort to reverse the two kinds of extreme individualism that have permeated the American political soul for perhaps four decades.
He sets his face against the expressive individualism of the 1960s that defined 'do your own thing' as the highest form of freedom. On the contrary, Obama speaks of responsibilities, of doing things for others, even of that classic bourgeois obligation, 'a parent's willingness to nurture a child.'
But he also rejects the economic individualism that took root in the 1980s. He specifically listed 'the greed and irresponsibility on the part of some' as a cause for our economic distress. He discounted 'the pleasures of riches and fame.' He spoke of Americans not as consumers but as citizens. His references to freedom were glowing, but he emphasized our 'duties' to preserve it far more than the rights it conveys."
"First, Congress should continue to pursue its document requests and subpoenas that were stonewalled under President Bush. Doing so will make clear that no executive can forever hide its misdeeds from the public.
Second, Congress should create an independent blue-ribbon panel or similar body to investigate a host of previously unreviewable activities of the Bush administration, including its detention, interrogation and surveillance programs. Only by chronicling and confronting the past in a comprehensive, bipartisan fashion can we reclaim our moral authority and establish a credible path forward to meet the complex challenges of a post-Sept. 11 world."Third, the new administration should conduct an independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities. Just this week, in the pages of this newspaper, a Guantanamo Bay official acknowledged that a suspect there had been "tortured" -- her exact word -- in apparent violation of the law. The law is the law, and, if criminal conduct occurred, those responsible -- particularly those who ordered and approved the violations -- must be held accountable.
Some day, there is bound to be another national security crisis in America. A future president will face the same fear and uncertainty that we did after Sept. 11, 2001, and will feel the same temptation to believe that the ends justify the means -- temptation that drew our nation over to the "dark side" under the leadership of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. If those temptations are to be resisted -- if we are to face new threats in a manner that keeps faith with our values and strengthens rather than diminishes our authority around the world -- we must fully learn the lessons of our recent past.
Strategy requires a plan which then requires ideas. When has the Bush Administration shown any of these talents in any sphere other than in gaining power and using it for their cronies?"That challenge is underscored by a report from a congressional oversight panel scheduled to be released today that hammers the outgoing Treasury Department for its handling of the financial rescue, including 'what appear to be significant gaps in Treasury's monitoring of the use of taxpayer money.' The report, moreover, faults the Treasury for failing to properly measure the success of the program or establish an overall strategy and skewers the department for not using any of the funds on foreclosure relief as Congress had directed."
A President Forgotten but Not Gone :"WE like our failed presidents to be Shakespearean, or at least large enough to inspire Oscar-worthy performances from magnificent tragedians like Frank Langella. So here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life."
***
The ruins of his administration’s top policy priority can be found not only in Gaza but in the new “democratic” Iraq, where the local journalist who tossed the shoes was jailed without formal charges and may have been tortured. Almost simultaneously, opponents of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki accused him of making politically motivated arrests of rival-party government officials in anticipation of this month’s much-postponed provincial elections
***
The joke was on us. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded, and Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Americans essentially stopped listening to him after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn’t grasp the finality of their defection. Lately he’s promised not to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama once he’s in retirement — as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life.
***
The joke was on us. Iraq burned, New Orleans flooded, and Bush remained oblivious to each and every pratfall on his watch. Americans essentially stopped listening to him after Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, but he still doesn’t grasp the finality of their defection. Lately he’s promised not to steal the spotlight from Barack Obama once he’s in retirement — as if he could do so by any act short of running naked through downtown Dallas. The latest CNN poll finds that only one-third of his fellow citizens want him to play a post-presidency role in public life.
***
he man who emerges is a narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever. It’s that arrogance that allowed him to tune out even the most calamitous of realities, freeing him to compound them without missing a step. The president who famously couldn’t name a single mistake of his presidency at a press conference in 2004 still can’t.He can, however, blame everyone else. Asked (by Charles Gibson) if he feels any responsibility for the economic meltdown, Bush says, “People will realize a lot of the decisions that were made on Wall Street took place over a decade or so, before I arrived.” Asked if the 2008 election was a repudiation of his administration, he says “it was a repudiation of Republicans.”
So is that the question that plagues me most about Bush and the Republicans? That he purposefully acted only for himself and had no further, grander political plans?
If so, therein lies something we need to remember - Democrats and Republicans and any othe political party - from this Presidency. We must look beyond the candidate's lip service to our own political orthodoxy.
***
With this level of self-regard, it’s no wonder that Bush could remain undeterred as he drove the country off a cliff. The smugness is reinforced not just by his history as the entitled scion of one of America’s aristocratic dynasties but also by his conviction that his every action is blessed from on high. Asked last month by an interviewer what he has learned from his time in office, he replied: “I’ve learned that God is good. All the time.”
Once again he is shifting the blame. This presidency was not about Him. Bush failed because in the end it was all about him.
"The veil is lifted. We now know who is booked at Blair House, kicking President-elect Barack Obama and his family to the waiting list and across Lafayette Square to the Hay-Adams Hotel.
The only overnight visitor at the presidential guest manse is none other than John Howard, a former Australian prime minister and leading member of President Bush's coalition of the willing in Iraq."
***The incoming first family requested an early move-in at the 70,000-square-foot, 119-room mansion across the street from the White House so the children could settle in to start school this week at Sidwell Friends School. But the Obamas was told the residence had been booked, so they took a suite at the Hay-Adams.
At the time, the White House would not say which events were bumping the Obamas.
I cannot defend either FDR's treatment of Japanese-Americans or Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, but the Times overlooks one major difference between FDR and Lincoln and Bush. Neither Lincoln nor FDR repudiated the role of Congress as has Bush."So Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush managed to stop short of repeating two of the most outrageous abuses of power in American history — Roosevelt’s decision to force Japanese-Americans into camps and Lincoln’s declaration of martial law to silence his critics? That’s not exactly a lofty standard of behavior."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a California-based privacy group, filed a lawsuit against the National Security Agency (NSA), President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and several other administration officials on behalf of AT&T customers in an effort to stop the government's warrantless wiretapping program.
The lawsuit "is aimed at ending the NSA's dragnet surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans and holding accountable the government officials who illegally authorized it," according to a statement from EFF.
Especially for a President more interested in getting to his vacation in Crawford than reading National Intelligence Estimates. Even more worrisome is where Krauthammer goes from 9/11.For the past 150 years, most American war presidents -- most notably Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt -- have entered (or reentered) office knowing war was looming. Not so George W. Bush. Not so the war on terror. The 9/11 attacks literally came out of the blue.
AIG, Lehman Brothers, weak dollar, Katrina, executive signing statements, etc.But a wartime president he became. And that is how history will both remember and judge him.
9/11 conflated into the Iraqi debacle then the allusion of the surge to Lincoln's bringing Grant to fight in the East. Yeah, right. Not that we are all that clear that the surge has worked as advertised or if it was part of a wider change in Iraq, not it appears that the surge provided the space needed for political stability, not that it reduced our troops in Iraq, but none of this matters as Krauthammer worships his hero.It is precisely that quality that allowed him to order the surge in Iraq in the face of intense opposition from the political establishment (of both parties), the foreign policy establishment (led by the feckless Iraq Study Group), the military establishment (as chronicled by Woodward) and public opinion itself. The surge then effected the most dramatic change in the fortunes of an American war since the summer of 1864.
I cannot tell whether the Republicans' hyperbole comes from a genuine mistake of reality or they are just trying to cover for their intellectual errors that have jeopardized this country.That kind of resolve requires internal fortitude. Some have argued that too much reliance on this internal compass is what got us into Iraq in the first place. But Bush was hardly alone in that decision. He had a majority of public opinion, the commentariat and Congress with him. In addition, history has not yet rendered its verdict on the Iraq war. We can say that it turned out to be longer and more costly than expected, surely. But the question remains as to whether the now-likely outcome -- transforming a virulently aggressive enemy state in the heart of the Middle East into a strategic ally in the war on terror -- was worth it. I suspect the ultimate answer will be far more favorable than it is today.
"Whenever the television cameras pull back to show Beijing's stunning new architecture -- the Bird's Nest, the bubble-wrapped swimming center, the state television headquarters building that has a hole in the middle and no visible means of support for the upper floors -- it's impossible not to recall that our relationship to China is that of debtor to creditor. And the fact is that one tends to be polite to the bank that holds one's mortgage."
***Obama will probably talk more about engagement and the "international community," while McCain is likely to sound more confrontational. I'm pretty sure, though, that neither will come clean about a central truth: Our future is being decided not just in Washington but in Beijing and Moscow -- and in Riyadh, Islamabad, New Delhi, Dubai, Caracas, Abuja, Brasilia. . . .
We still have the wherewithal to lead. But we're deluding ourselves if we believe we won't have to adapt to the new reality.
"The House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on one of Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich's 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders in the chamber have signaled that they do not want the committee -- let alone the full House -- to take a vote on impeachment.
How's that?
The Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the president's abuses of power -- perhaps as soon as next week. Expert witnesses will be called. Kucinich says that a foreign official -- who he has not named -- is willing to testify regarding presidential wrongdoing. And Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers, the veteran Michigan Democrat who actually believes in presidential accountability but has had a hard time getting other top Democrats to embrace that belief, suggests that the hearing will review evidence of 'all the (Bush administration actions) that constitute an imperial presidency.'"
"Whatever happened to leadership and honesty as presidential traits? I happen to believe that the only leader in the West to have these two admirable qualities in droves is the leader of the free world: George W Bush.
Yes, we’ve all heard the Bushisms and laughed at them but do you really think somebody supposedly that thick can make it to the top of the most sophisticated political system the world has ever seen?
No, and that is because Mr Bush is far cleverer than most of his predecessors. He may not have been a Rhodes Scholar, but he has the ability to reach out to his people and read them."
***
Not much leadership from Europe here, as usual, just doublespeak. Once again, it is to Bush that we look for leadership.
Bush may not have the slickness of his predecessor, but he is a man you can trust and who prefers to tell it like it is.
This is refreshing, and very scary for us who are used to our politicians always talking grandly about principles and hiding behind political mumbo-speak.
The fact is you guys hate Mr Bush because he is not a hypocrite and you are used to hypocrites as your leaders. We hate what we don’t understand.
Yes, yes, all you bleeding heart liberals are cringing out there. I can just hear you. But the fact is, Mr Bush has had to take some very tough decisions and the world needs people who can not only talk but also act tough and admit mistakes.
By now, I am thinking what kind of drugs are you taking? Or from what mental hospital are you writing from? Bush has made a career of talking tough and letting others bear the brunt of his mistakes. Bush has never admitted any of mistakes. Then I get to the end:
And for those of you who still don’t buy into what I’m saying, look at the Middle East. Bush single-handedly managed to unite the Arabs in their hate for him.
Given how difficult uniting the Arabs is, it takes a special man with special skills to achieve this. He is just the kind of man to bring about peace in that region!
Satire? I should hope so.
"As for the other Evils, we know the story: Iraq is a bloody quagmire that has claimed more than 4,000 American lives, and Iran is more powerful than at any time since the fall of the shah. Bush's legacy on the world stage is defined by Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret CIA prisons and waterboarding. His successor will face an enormous task restoring America's image and moral standing.
But if Bush is chastened by failure or troubled by doubt, he doesn't show it. He has said that he expects to be vindicated by history. The danger is that he will decide to give historians more fodder by taking care of unfinished business -- especially business that the next president might want no part of."
"He said “history will judge whether or not, you know, more troops were needed earlier, troops could have been positioned here better or not.” But going in, he said, was right despite the “doubters.” “There is some who say that perhaps freedom is not universal,” he asserted, adding that he rejected as elitist the notion that “maybe it’s only, you know, white-guy Methodists who are capable of self-government.”
If there’s one thing W. and Cheney have proved, beyond a sliver of a shadow of a doubt, it’s that at least two white-guy Methodists are not capable of self-government."
Let's try for a moment to put ourselves in the mind of Brig. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. For it is the soft-spoken Soleimani, not Iran's bombastic president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who plays a decisive role in his nation's confrontation with the United States.Zbigniew Brzezinski and William Odom's A Sensible Path on Iran does its bit to puncture Ahmadinejad's importance:
***
Soleimani is confident about Iran's rising power in the region, according to an Arab official who met recently with him. He sees an America that is weakened by the war in Iraq but still potent. He has told visitors that U.S. and Iranian goals in Iraq are similar, despite the rhetoric of confrontation. But he has expressed no interest in direct, high-level talks. The Quds Force commander prefers to run out the clock on the Bush administration, hoping that the next administration will be more favorable to Iran's interests.
"To look at the issue another way, imagine if China, a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a country that has deliberately not engaged in a nuclear arms race with Russia or the United States, threatened to change the American regime if it did not begin a steady destruction of its nuclear arsenal. The threat would have an arguable legal basis, because all treaty signatories promised long ago to reduce their arsenals, eventually to zero. The American reaction, of course, would be explosive public opposition to such a demand. U.S. leaders might even mimic the fantasy rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the use of nuclear weapons."The best way I know of promoting a bombastic windbag is to keep giving them reasons to run their mouths. If they rant and rave about someone wanting to do them harm, let the other person give them every reason to believe they intend to do that harm. Talking past the blowhard, to the people he is intimidating with his rhetoric, and appearing rational but firm puts the demagogue on the defensive. Any bets that Obama is already thinking about this?
"The new power dynamic is clear in two developments over the past several weeks -- the Lebanon peace deal brokered by Qatar on May 21 and the Israel-Syria peace talks, with Turkish mediation, that were announced the same day. Both negotiations could help stabilize the region, albeit not on the terms the United States might prefer.
This independence from American tutelage is arguably one advantage of the new diplomacy: It is grounded in realism among the Middle Eastern nations about their own interests, rather than in wishful thinking about what the United States can accomplish. It reflects, as well, the growing strength of Iran and its radical allies, and the diminished clout of the United States -- and in that sense, it accords with the altered balance of power in the area.
The best explanation I've seen of this rebalancing came from Beirut-based Daily Star columnist Rami Khouri: 'We are witnessing the clear limits of the projection of American global power, combined with the assertion and coexistence of multiple regional powers (Turkey, Israel, Iran, Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas, Saudi Arabia, etc.),' he wrote. This new alignment, he added, 'is not a full defeat for the United States -- more like a draw.'"
***
The American-Israeli split on Syria has been widening for the past several years. One point of difference was what to do about the nuclear reactor the Syrians were secretly building at Al Kibar, in the northeastern desert, with help from North Korea. The Bush administration wanted to confront the Syrians last year with the intelligence and use the issue to pressure them to dismantle the facility. The Israelis decided they couldn't wait -- and bombed the suspected reactor site on Sept. 6.
***The Bush administration was dubious about the Turkish negotiating channel, just as it had balked at the airstrike. But here again, the Israelis ignored their superpower patron. They want to exploit tensions between Syria and Hezbollah, open at least a small gap between Syria and Iran -- and in the process enhance the clout of Turkey as an alternative to a rising Iran. In this intricate dance, Washington has been essentially irrelevant.
America isn't withdrawing from the Middle East, despite its recent difficulties -- that's an Iranian fantasy. And in the long run, it's surely to America's advantage if regional powers can create a stable security architecture -- even if it isn't precisely the one we would have designed for them. We've tried imposing our own solutions, and frankly that hasn't worked very well.
My point here is not to accuse Obama of more-than-standard political tailoring of positions or to urge him to commit hara-kiri by needlessly taking unpopular stands. The point is that he is largely right in arguing that new thinking is desperately needed in U.S. foreign policy -- but he is failing to show how an Obama presidency would produce and apply such thinking to the policy disasters he decries.But if Obama is less than bold about the Cuban embargo (and what American presidential candidate is either bold enough to propose a rational relationship with Cuba with all those electoral votes of Florida at stake?), is he also not a bit behind the times if one accepts the premise of the Ignatius article? Certainly, McCain appears behind the times in Jeffrey Goldberg's interview of McCain. See McCain on Israel, Iran and the Holocaust and this:
JG: What is the difference between an American president negotiating with Ahmadinejad and Ehud Olmert negotiating with the Syrians?
JM: You don’t see him sitting down opposite Bashar, do you? (Bashar al-Assad is president of Syria.) I mean, that’s the point here. It was perfectly fine that Ryan Crocker spoke with the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad. The point is you don’t give legitimacy by lending prestige of a face-to-face meeting, with no preconditions.
I am not so sure that Obama has not got a great idea here. It gets McCain's knickers in knots and that has to give it some points. Bush talks about an Axis of Evil and refuses to talk to Iran. Which provides nothing but support for Ahmadinejad (yeah, remember the nutjob gets elected). I seem to recall that the Iranian economy is going sour, the president was unpopular until our George W. began running his mouth. Don't talk to them and we get the situation described in Ignatius' column: we, the United States, become irrelevant.
Presidential Candidate McCain opposes Senator McCain on Hamas. Political expediency from the straight talk express.The Obama campaign was right to criticize the president for his remarks and for engaging in partisan politics while overseas. Many presidents have said things abroad that could be construed as violating this unwritten rule of American politics. But it is hard to remember any president abusing the prestige of his office in as crude a way as Bush did yesterday. Charging your opponents with appeasement and likening them to Neville Chamberlain in the Knesset is a brutal blow. It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.
McCain, meanwhile, is guilty of hypocrisy. I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton and believe that she was right to say, about McCain's statement on Hamas, "I don't think that anybody should take that seriously." Unfortunately, the Republicans know that some people will. That's why they say such things.
Usually, I think Chris Matthews is more talk than substance but he proved himself full of substance when discussing appeasement with some right wing talk show nut. If you do not know what I meant take a look at A QUESTION OF APPEASEMENT? and watch the video. I am torn between worrying over the state of America's educational system and a worry that this was not a display of ignorance but a cowardly lie.
I was laid up yesterday and got too much of panel discussions about Bush and McCain and Obama and our foreign policy. There was some interesting stuff but a couple things I did not hear:JG: Why do you think Ahmed Yousef of Hamas said what he said about you?
BO: My position on Hamas is indistinguishable from the position of Hillary Clinton or John McCain. I said they are a terrorist organization and I’ve repeatedly condemned them. I’ve repeatedly said, and I mean what I say: since they are a terrorist organization, we should not be dealing with them until they recognize Israel, renounce terrorism, and abide by previous agreements.
JG: Were you flummoxed by it?
BO: I wasn’t flummoxed. I think what is going on there is the same reason why there are some suspicions of me in the Jewish community. Look, we don’t do nuance well in politics and especially don’t do it well on Middle East policy. We look at things as black and white, and not gray. It’s conceivable that there are those in the Arab world who say to themselves, “This is a guy who spent some time in the Muslim world, has a middle name of Hussein, and appears more worldly and has called for talks with people, and so he’s not going to be engaging in the same sort of cowboy diplomacy as George Bush,” and that’s something they’re hopeful about. I think that’s a perfectly legitimate perception as long as they’re not confused about my unyielding support for Israel’s security.
When I visited Ramallah, among a group of Palestinian students, one of the things that I said to those students was: “Look, I am sympathetic to you and the need for you guys to have a country that can function, but understand this: if you’re waiting for America to distance itself from Israel, you are delusional. Because my commitment, our commitment, to Israel’s security is non-negotiable.” I’ve said this in front of audiences where, if there were any doubts about my position, that’d be a place where you’d hear it.
When Israel invaded Lebanon two summers ago, I was in South Africa, a place where, obviously, when you get outside the United States, you can hear much more critical commentary about Israel’s actions, and I was asked about this in a press conference, and that time, and for the entire summer, I was very adamant about Israel’s right to defend itself. I said that there’s not a nation-state on Earth that would tolerate having two of its soldiers kidnapped and just let it go. So I welcome the Muslim world’s accurate perception that I am interested in opening up dialogue and interested in moving away from the unilateral policies of George Bush, but nobody should mistake that for a softer stance when it comes to terrorism or when it comes to protecting Israel’s security or making sure that the alliance is strong and firm. You will not see, under my presidency, any slackening in commitment to Israel’s security.
In what will be a significant challenge to US Navy dominance and to countries ringing the South China Sea, one photograph shows China’s latest 094 nuclear submarine at the base just a few hundred miles from its neighbours.I heard Rush Limbaugh ranting about how President Clinton sold us out to the Chinese. I say nothing compares to how George W. Bush has hocked this country to the Chinese to pay for his Iraqi obsession and now this makes me wonder if George W. is not the Manchurian Candidate. Nah. The Chinese would never have hired the mediocrity from Crawford.
