Either It's Getting Closer or It's the Illusion of Getting Closer

Accountability for the torture used by the Bush administration in the "war on terror" might have come one step closer to being actualized, or the leaks to the press might be making it look like tortured, hard decisions are about to be made within the Obama administration.

I can't tell the difference yet. Newsweek's Daniel Klaidman reported in a long and very "personal" look into the character and family of Eric Holder, Jr., Attorney General of the United States, that four separate sources claim he is struggling with the decision whether to go after the Bush administration officials responsible for authorizing torture.

Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision.

Citing the two recent extremes of attorneys general--Janet Reno who was fiercely independent and therefore not an insider of the Clinton administration and Alberto Gonzales, a mere "yes-man," Newsweek claimed that since Holder was the White House liaison during the embattled Reno years, he is extremely sensitive to the balance he needs to bring to his job--enforce the law yet also support the President's agenda. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, is the constant reminder of just what that Presidential agenda is. But according to these sources, what Holder has learned about what occurred during the Bush years is moving him closer to opening an investigation.

Then there is the New York Times story this morning by Scott Shane. What began as a disingenuous attempt by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to wiggle out of responsibility for knowing that the CIA was waterboarding has turned into admissions that the CIA, under orders of the evil mentor of Bush, that's vice president Dick Cheney, to prevent Congressional oversight committees from being briefing on a yet unnamed CIA program: extraordinary rendition, more wiretapping, assassinations, torture of detainees?

According to the Times: The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.

This is major news. Surely the Sunday morning talking heads will be all abuzz. We have to find out what happened, and hold people accountable. That is the essence of the rule of law. Yes, Obama's popularity around the world has restored much of America's lost credibility. But the only way to restore our credibility at home, among the voters and citizens, is to undo the corruption to the rule of law and restore government to its foundations in the constitution.

President Obama as Frodo?

What we now know is that Dick Cheney was at the heart of the smear campaign against Joseph Wilson, former ambassador, and husband of Valerie Plame, CIA operative, after Wilson wrote that the Bush administration cooked documents about Niger and yellow cake to substantiate a claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to make a nuclear bomb.

Despite Obama's attempts to block the release of the interview between Dick Cheney, then Vice President, and Patrick Fitzgerald, special prosecutor, some aspects have been made public. Truthout.org by Jason Leopold has an interesting piece, and leaves one wondering: now that President Obama has the "ring" like Frodo, is he being tempted?

What is the extent of appropriate executive privilege? One of the most frightening aspects of the Bush administration was the insistence by Cheney that the office of the presidency be shrouded in secrecy, so much so that policy making avoided the channels of the State Department and Pentagon, and the White House pulled the Office of Legal Counsel way off course.

Will Obama have the strength to return the balance?

Ubiquitous Dick

Dick Cheney is everywhere! When he was in office, he was nowhere, and now, when he has no power except for the power of celebrity, he is spouting off on everything from terrorism to Guantanamo to gay marriage.

While in office his party used gay marriage as a wedge issue that brought out conservative voters by placing eleven anti-same sex initiatives on ballots in 2004. All of them won and Bush was reelected. The strategy won.

Dick Cheney is also self serving. His daughter is gay and a mother, so now he is claiming that he supports gay marriage but considers it a matter for the states to decide. The hypocrisy, of course, is that the Republican Party under the direction of Karl Rove used state ballot initiatives to ban legislatures from considering the issue.

Yesterday during an interview with President Obama on NPR radio, he was asked whether he considers Cheney's speeches an obstacle to America changing course especially in the Muslim world. Always gracious, this is what President Obama said in response to a question by Michelle Norris:

Obama suggested that though he believes Cheney's analysis is flawed, the former vice president has every right to weigh in on important national security issues.

"He also happens to be wrong, right?" Obama said. "Last time, immediately after his last speech, I think there was a fact check on his speech that didn't get a very good grade.

"Does it make it more complicated? No. because I think these are complicated issues, and there's a legitimate debate to be had about national security."

Obama added: "I don't doubt the sincerity of the former vice president or the previous administration in wanting to protect the American people."

Memorial Day

Yesterday my daughter and I went to the New York City Ballet, and before the performance, wandered around the Upper East Side in search of fun street crafts. That's when we saw them: young men and women in uniform enjoying Fleet Week.

Our country is at war and certainly looking at their faces close up, we both understood that we send children to fight our country's battles.

They were so young, no matter how white their uniforms.

Last year I grabbed my camera and went into town to photograph Oyster Bay, NY's annual Memorial Day parade. I asked permission to take the images of people, saying I was an amateur photographer. Lining the main street, which is not called "Main Street," were the residents of this small hamlet, some of whose families have lived here for generations: white, black, Hispanic, old, young. The residents of the assisted living center, with a memory unit, sat outside with their attendants. People brought their children and their dogs. Oyster Bay has two volunteer fire departments; they are around the corner and down the block from each other. I've heard different stories as to why, including that one was Protestant and the other Catholic. The parade was short, our country was at war. Only one veteran of the current war in Iraq wore anything to indicate that he had fought there. Most of the veterans were from Korea, when I toured the American Legion Post, the men complained that the Viet Nam vets rarely came to the Post. I spoke with a World War II vet who was seated in a lawn chair in the shade.

We are still at war although under the leadership of another president. I don't think I want to go to the parade this year. I think I just want to hand water my garden, weed out the far right side in preparation for planting the sun flowers I have growing in pots, and pretend for a day, just a day, that things weren't set in motion eight years ago, if not before, that brought out the utter worst in our country and in our leaders. We allowed those leaders--George Bush and Dick Cheney--to do reprehensible things in our names. President Obama, I suspect, has learned just how reprehensible our treatment of the men held in Guantanamo Bay was, making anything looking like a trial for their crimes nothing like a trial at all.

So although I thank the men and women who are sacrificing their lives and youth for our country, I still deplore that they are and despise the men who brought us to this moment in history. Dick Cheney shouldn't be on television; he should be in prison for war profiteering and failing to uphold the constitution of the United States. George Bush shouldn't be retired in Dallas, but condemned because of his failure to understand the nature of the job of president, the structures of government, and the history of this nation. We shouldn't be making waterboarding into a bet between television pundits, but remember that we tried and convicted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding during World War II. This isn't a day for fireworks and parades, it should be a day of national mourning.

Boys Blowing Things Up

As someone who missed Star Trek the first time around, I recall the fun of skipping my Marriage and the Family class in college to get high and watch old reruns in the later 1960s. I was a big Spock fan, so wild myself that the idea that logic might be able to calm me seemed, well, calming.

I never got into the sequels, mostly because I never remember what night or which station shows play on, and still to this day do not know how to program a VCR, TiVo, or whatever comes with our cable service now.

I'm a Luddite when it comes to audio visual equipment.

This week I attempted to watch two boys blowing things up movies: Quantum of Solace, the latest James Bond adventure, and last night, Star Trek.

Neither made any sense to me. And I'm not the kind of person who requires a straight narrative. I read a lot of out of sequence literature, see many plays that play with time and space, and have a high tolerance for fantasy.

Although visually beautiful, even my husband who can watch just about anything that blows up, Quantum of Solace was edited without regard to coherence. Actually, the only thing that made sense was the burn marks on Camille, the "Bond girl's" back. (She is gorgeous and was played by Ukrainian born Olga Kurylenko.) (Spoiler alert!) While the hotel was blowing up, I called out for Denis Leary from Rescue Me to get there! (Now that is a television show worth watching: funny, cynical, brilliant like The Sopranos in mixing humor with drama. )

Going to the movies now requires a half hour of commercials, not just previews, which I love, if you want to get a good seat. We watched a lot of boys blowing up things so when Star Trek actually began I was already exhausted. Maybe I was getting my explosions mixed up, but frankly, I only got the main part of the story: how Jim Kirk meets up with the eventual Enterprise crew--Uhura, Spock, Bones, Scotty, Sulu, and Chekov. And the bad guy was a Romulan. And there was some romance, too, and of course, rivalry. Sulu is played by the actor John Cho who is the "Harold" in the "Harold and Kumar" series of high times films. And Eric Bana, the heart throb from Munich, plays Nero, the insane, heartbroken Romulan.

And the real Spock comes in and out of the plot whenever he wants to.

Which brings me to two other boys blowing things up: Dick Cheney, who thankfully no longer has his finger near any red buttons, and Barack Obama who does. As John Meacham said last night on Bill Maher, it seems like Dick Cheney is really having a continued argument with those members of the Bush administration--Stephen Hadley and Condi Rice--who insisted that the torture and paranoia of the first Bush term be stopped in the second Bush term. Cheney is arguing against what happened when some sense of lawfulness returned to the conduct of war. He isn't really fighting with Obama, but it seems that no one is getting that. Cheney is a desperate man, one who understands that unless he politicizes the "war on terror" he will be indicted. As it is, he may never leave the US again.

With God on My Side

GQ magazine published on its website yesterday a series of covers used by the Pentagon in the daily international security reports, personally carried to the White House by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, that included Biblical statements as captions on optimistic photographs of the initial attack on the sovereign state of Iraq.

The First Amendment establishes a nation state that neither has a religious mission nor interferes with anyone's right to practice his or her religion.

This is the danger of violating that Amendment, this is the danger of turning Iraq into a holy war, if only to manipulate George W. Bush, then president. GQ suggests a cynical manipulation at work orchestrated by Rumsfeld.

Read the story and then decide whether we must have a fair and open hearing about how the Bush administration operated.

Every time Dick Cheney opens his mouth, every time we get distracted as to what and when Nancy Pelosi was told (we all knew something was wrong when the Washington Post leaked the story in 2003), whether a court forces Obama to release the interrogation photos or he does voluntarily, whether torture was used to establish a false link between Iraq and the team who planned 911, the case is being made that we have to create a structure and process for learning who, what, where, and how.

Sorry, Christine, I wanted to write something light and gardeny, but the news this morning, after a wonderful dinner last night, well, I couldn't help myself!

Did America Just Get Smarter?

John Medina is a neuro researcher and the author of Brain Rules, a sensational book about what we know (very little) and what we need to know (an enormous amount) in order to understand how the human brain works. The book is cleverly organized and has a corresponding website so that after one reads a chapter, there is an interactive segment to help remember, since memory is often reinforced by repetition and a switch in how one is processing incoming information.

The chapter I am currently reading (on my Kindle while I work out) is about the impact of stress on cognition. Stress makes us stupid.

Adults experiencing high levels of stress performed 50% worse on certain cognitive tests. Children perform even worse. Any school teacher who has watched an A student descend into failure knows that something is happening at home. Stress pushes people into depression, too, another ailment that makes us stupid by shutting down entire aspects of human creativity.

"Stress alone is neither harmful nor toxic," according to Medina. Allostatis is the word to describe this state. How our bodies reaction to stress depends on three factors that affect the allostatic load: the type of stress, its length, and severity.

Now let's go back to the post-911 Bush era. Do you recall? Constant and relentless stress caused by incessant, strategically timed warnings that the next terrorist attack was just around the corner. And we believed them, because they had failed to prevent the first attack, something the Bush administration officials always failed to acknowledge.

Enter President Obama with his cool, precise tone. My goodness, the President reminded us to wash our hands and to keep our sick kids home from school during the week-long type A H1N1 influenza scare. (It worked, too! People acted responsibly, and the flu didn't spread as virulently as one might have expected.)

He didn't add to the crisis; he was cool. We can blame cable news for the hysteria, not the President.

So yesterday, being Mother's Day, I declared a moratorium on Sunday news shows and obsessive website reading, because I had gotten to this chapter in Brain Rules. And I knew Dick Cheney was back on the airwaves again, trying to scare us. This man who was virtually invisible during his term in office, sequestered in secret bunkers, making more and more money on his investments while descending into his paranoid state, can't get enough air time now that he is free from the stress of being in office.

And we know why! He is afraid of investigations and prosecutions. He dodged the Valerie Plame investigation, but he can't dodge the responsibility for torture.

Mother's Day: On a lighter side! Did you see "Dicks in the Box," an off-color and delightfully funny video done by Justin Timerberlake and Andy Samberg on Saturday Night Live sometime in the fall. They did a sequel Saturday night called "Motherlove" in honor of Mother's Day. Watch them in order and laugh! That's a great antidote to stress, by the way.

Thanks to my daughter for sending me the link as a Mother's Day present!

The Devil is Celebrity

Americans can barely read and write, so it seems like the best employment option is celebrity, especially if one has really messed up.

Take Bristol Palin, the unwed daughter of Sarah Palin, and a mother herself. With her infant on her lap and her telegenic father seated next to her, she espoused "abstinence only" on morning talk shows this week, just months after she told Fox News that abstinence doesn't work. Quite obviously, with a child in hand, and inarticulately, I might add.

At the same time, Levi Johnston, the estranged father of Bristol's child, was admitting on Larry King Live that abstinence doesn't work. Duh!

Who wants to listen to them? They are high school drop outs who didn't use birth control, and are now fighting on separate flat screen televisions. But there is the lure of celebrity.

Yesterday Joe the Plumber decided to leave the Republican Party in another inarticulate explanation. Although he said that he was leaving because he couldn't take all of the spending, he added that he didn't support spending cuts in "defense, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid -- which, along with debt payments, would put more than two-thirds of the budget off limits."

He was a featured guest with Congressional staffers as a political strategist. He is an unlicensed plumber, let's not forget that! But he was a celebrity!

Elizabeth Edwards can't get out of the spotlight either. She has written a book and is on the humiliating book tour speaking about the betrayal of her husband, John Edwards, who had an affair, one that lasted longer than a one-night-stand, while running for president and she was ailing from breast cancer. And is that baby his? Ah, the lure of the microphone, the attention, the clothes, the narcissism!

And finally there is Dick Cheney. The guy hid out during the eight years he was vice president and now everyplace you turn on the conservative spectrum of radio and television, there he is, Darth Vader himself, defending his administration and criticizing Obama for cleaning up the mess. Can't come out of the limelight, eh, Dick?

How did this happen! At least Molly, the wayward cow who ran away from the slaughter house got the real reprieve: a quiet life on an organic farm in New Jersey with a steer who loves her. And hopefully, we will never hear about her again.

Corrupting the Character

In his press conference last night, President Obama spoke about the corrupting of the character of America because of waterboarding, which he stated unequivocally was torture.

Here is a link to the briefing and to the press conference itself.

To date it's the strongest statement he has made although he avoided speaking about accountability, at least last night. In prior statements, he said it would be a decision for Attorney General Eric Holder. That's where it belongs, too: it should be a prosecutorial decision not a political one.

But back to the waterboarding, in Spain, five former prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, have joined in the case where a judge has authorized an investigation into the circumstances of American interrogations. According to an interview with Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, on WBAI last evening, if indictments result, so will arrest warrants against those found to have authorized and implemented torture. Since we can't expect that the United States will extradite those US officials, there will be arrest warrants issued. The impact of those will be that Bush, Cheney, and any others will not be able to travel to any European country.

That might not effect Bush, who never likes to leave Texas anyway, but will impede Cheney and Rumsfeld and their capacity to make more money through speaking fees.

That Rumsfeld is making yet more money through the swine flu spread is making me sick. He is one of the founding directors of Gilead Sciences, which owns the world wide patent for the anti-viral.

Pressure is certainly mounting on the United States to act itself, to purge itself, to correct itself. The discussion about whether torture works is a distraction. Imagine what George Washington might think! Let's see how true to the constitution those "originalists" really are.

Sidebar: There was something quaint, and I never thought I would use the word "quaint" about his directions on how to avoid the swine flu: wash your hands, cover your mouth, stay home if you or your children are ill.

He said it twice.

No One is Innocent

Last night I might have convinced a friend that criminal prosecutions of those who authorized the use of torture on detainees in the “war on terror” are not just feasible, but perhaps necessary. The way I got him to listen was by telling him that it appears that then Secretary of State Colin Powell was intentionally kept out of the loop on issues of torture in the aftermath of September 11th.

Powell’s absence from the decision making is raised by the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report, issued on Wednesday, April 22, 2009. According to the chronology in that report, key principals in the White House—John Ashcroft, then Attorney General; Condoleezza Rice, then National Security Adviser; and of course, Darth Vader himself, Vice President Dick Cheney—purposefully kept Secretary of State Colin Powell outside the meetings. Not surprising either.

Of all of the people making the decisions as to whether to use torture on detainees in the “war on terror,” only Colin Powell had served in the military and only Colin Powell had seen action. He knew the importance of the rules of engagement and more particularly, he knew the origins of the SERE training, which provided the basis for the Office of Legal Counsel’s memos permitting cruel and inhuman treatment and torture. Claims that the lack of historical understanding of SERE’s origins were somehow unintentional are disingenuous, since the person who would have balked immediately was left out of the bloody party.

Some people believe that Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld, although not at some of these early Principals meetings, was indeed in the loop and knew from the start that torture was being used by the CIA and private contractors. Hence his dismissal of the images from Abu Ghraib that led to the court martial of Lynndie England (who is serving 36 months in the brig and who speaks up in a December 2008 article in Marie Claire) and Charles Granner, her then fiancé (who is serving a ten year sentence), as a “few bad apples” needs to be questioned.

However, as Glenn Greenwald reminds us today, the Washington Post in a December 26, 2002 story by Dana Priest and Barton Gellman exposed the use of “harsh interrogation” techniques by the CIA, so we knew what was going on. If we did, so did Colin Powell, which leads us once again down a familiar path: Did Powell have the moral courage to stand up in opposition to the Commander in Chief?

I hope that because both Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld profited financially from their time in public office that this adds to the level of outrage—authorizing wholesale disregard for American and international law, violation of individual rights and liberties, and ordering torture—and that the American public insists on investigations and prosecutions of those responsible.

Read the Los Angeles Times April 23, 2009 story by Greg Miller and Julian Barnes.

However as we grow angrier, we can’t forget that this use of torture is not new to American history. Ask Sister Dianna Ortiz about her kidnap and torture in Guatemala, and the numerous other people throughout Latin America who suffered at the hands of, if not CIA conducted or ordered, CIA trained and supervised torture of those believed to be political opponents to some of the worst tyrants in history.

8:30 pm Update: The Washington Post just obtained a document from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which runs the SERE program that trains U.S. military personnel to resist torture and also helped train interrogators in the methods that were used on terror suspects under former President Bush. Read Alex Koppelman's post in Salon.com.

If the agency with the most knowledge about how SERE worked and whether torture worked, too, said it didn't, the issue remains, did the White House Principals know, or like other information they didn't like, did they disregard this?

Sunday, April 26, 2009 Update: Frank Rich in today's New York Times elaborates on just what I have written here: no one is innocent, especially not the American people, who knew before the 2004 presidential election, when Bush-Cheney scared people into voting for them, that the United States was engaging in torture, had abandoned its public commitment to international treaties, and was using pragmatism as the rationalization.

Dick Cheney is Ruling My Mind

OK, we might already be 100 days into the Age of Obama, but Dick Cheney is still ruling my mind! I spent all day yesterday immersed in these torture memos, and this morning, I woke up to hearing his gravel, Darth Vader voice defending the use of torture, as effective.

He had been speaking on Fox News last night. Now he is calling for the release of all the CIA memos to prove that torture works!

In 2009, in the United States of America, where the Rule of Law was born, nurtured, and then overtly discarded, I can't believe we are having this conversation.

And remember, Dick Cheney made millions while serving as vice president of the United States. He profited from his position, from his decisions, and from the decisions of the Bush administration.

But last evening I went to hear women read their stories at an opening ceremony for Herstory, a womens writing workshop. Some of the women had begun to tell their stories while serving in prison. I heard about the cruelty of punishing women for self-medicating by taking them away from their children, far more humiliating than taking away their freedom. I heard about the desperation, of cutting, of blinding drunks, of loving the wrong men for too long. These are the prisoners who are afforded due process.

Waterboarding Used 266 Times on Two Detainees

Sickening, and done in our names. Read The New York Times.

Yesterday I wrote that comparisons to Nazis were hyperbole. I still agree, but. Two suspects, Abu Zubaydah, was waterboarded 83 times (he was known to be crazy, had been cooperative, and was also known not to be a high placed al Qaeda operative) and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,the purported mastermind of the September 11 attacks, was waterboarded 183 times.

This is torture. This is disgusting. This is what George Washington refused to do when British soldiers were captured, back when we were first becoming a country. How could we allow Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld--and their lackey lawyers Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and Steven Bradbury-- to destroy over two hundred years of history?

Use the Rule of Law to End the Lawlessness

Four more Bush era memos authorizing the use of torture on detainees held by the US in the "war on terror" were released yesterday by the Obama administration. Download the memos here. Before the documents were distributed, only one of which was redacted to any real measure (taking out mentions of agents who participated in the inhuman and degrading behaviors), Obama differentiated between the agents who did the dirty work, and it was disgusting, and the officials who promoted and authorized it:

According to the New York Times: "Mr. Obama said that C.I.A. officers who were acting on the Justice Department’s legal advice would not be prosecuted, but he left open the possibility that anyone who acted without legal authorization could still face criminal penalties. He did not address whether lawyers who authorized the use of the interrogation techniques should face some kind of penalty."

Reading through one of the memos yesterday, written by now federal appeals court judge Jay Bybee, I was horrified at the detailed descriptions of the techniques--walling, sleep deprivation, stress positions, slapping, confinement in small cages, use of insects, and of course, waterboarding. That the Office of Legal Counsel was hijacked to write particularized authorizations for the use of inhuman and degrading interrogation techniques is evidence enough of the abuse of authority conducted by Dick Cheney, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld, at a minimum. The role of George Bush himself is less clear.

Consider the Bybee memo on sleep deprivation, which held that it wasn't torture to keep Abu Zubaydah, an allegedly high-ranking al Qaeda member (but he wasn't and they knew he wasn't) awake, so long as it didn't last for more than eleven days: Sleep deprivation may be used. You have indicated that your purpose in using this technique is to reduce the individual's ability to think on his feet and, through the discomfort associated with lack of sleep, to motivate him to cooperate. The effect of such sleep deprivation will generally remit after one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep. You have informed us that your research has revealed that, in rare instances, some individuals who are already predisposed to psychological problems may experience abnormal reactions to sleep deprivation. Even in those cases, however, reactions abate after the individual is permitted to sleep. Moreover, personnel with medical training are available to and will intervene in the unlikely event of an abnormal reaction. You have orally informed us that you would not deprive Zubaydah of sleep for more than eleven days at a time and that you have previously kept him awake for 72 hours, from which no mental or physical harm resulted.

One memo admits that the technique of waterboarding was used too often and too violently: Waterboarding was used “with far greater frequency than initially indicated” and with “large volumes of water” rather than the small quantities in the rules, one memo says, citing a 2004 report by the C.I.A.’s inspector general.

Immediately Senator Patrick Leahy called for a full investigation. America needs more. We need investigations and prosecutions of the principals who authorized and promoted the use of torture. I agree that the agents themselves shouldn't be prosecuted; they should lose their jobs, however. We don't need those kinds of men and women working for our country. But the officials responsible for ordering the abuses, well, they deserve the full force of the rule of law, which they denied to others, in search of the truth.

Mandatory Reading

As painful as it is to read these books, as citizens who desire a more humane and egalitarian world, we must know what has been done in our names. At least three books are mandatory: Philippe Sands "Torture Team"; Jane Mayer "The Dark Side"; and Naomi Klein "The Shock Doctrine."

Each points a finger at top members of the Bush Administration for taking the reigns of our government and turning our resources to defiling America, eroding a commitment to civil and human rights, devastating the efficacy of government, and all the while making exorbitant profits. The hundreds of thousands of lives destroyed by the Bush Administration during the course of its "war on terror" is horrifying in and of itself. However, the profits made by American corporations as the functions of government here and abroad were privatized add another dimension to the last eight years, especially when one sees just how much Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and George Bush, Sr. made through the war in Iraq and the more pervasive "war on terror."

As informed citizens of this country and of the world, we must insist that the Obama Administration take the steps necessary to investigate, prosecute, and undo the damage done by the ideologues of the last presidency. We have no choice. This information is out there, and to choose not act is an act of such hubris and arrogance that I doubt the rest of the world will ever respect the United States again. No matter how popular Obama might seem today.

What Spain is Doing for the United States

Since President Obama doesn't seem to quite have the stomach yet, a Spanish Court last week began a criminal investigation into charging six former Bush administration officials with war crimes. The six under the prosecutorial microscope are: Douglas Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy; former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer, infamous for the torture memos that tortured legal analysis, precedent, and international law; and David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Why Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and President Bush aren't on the list bewilders me.

According to Jane Meyer, the National Book Award author of "The Dark Side," the basis for the investigation is the work of Philippe Sands, the British professor whose book "The Torture Team" blazed the way through the lame excuse that those pictures we saw from Abu Ghraib were the result of a "few bad apples." According to Sands' research, what horrified us in those photographs of degradation was the result of high level authorizations from either the White House or very close by. There is an incredible interview conducted by Bill Moyers of Sands that shouldn't be missed.

Read Jane Mayer's short piece in the April 13, 2009 The New Yorker.

Here is why, no matter what, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush should be investigated. At least Cheney and Rumsfeld made money while in office. Cheney held onto his Halliburton stock and influence, and guess what: Halliburton got a helluva lot of no-bid contracts in the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion. Rumsfeld made himself richer, too, because he held onto his Gilead stock, which just so happened to own the patent for Tamiflu, the alleged antidote to Avian Flu. Remember that?

As I am finishing Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, the crimes of the Bush administration become more heinous and urgent. It's one thing to be incompetent. It's another thing to make mistakes. But it is indefensible to run government for private enrichment, and that's what Cheney and Rumsfeld did. There is no evidence in Klein's book that Bush did directly benefit, but the doors he opened to privitizing everything will welcome him in his post-White House days.

Dick Cheney is the Axis of Evil

According to an April 6, 2009, article investigated and written by Seymour Hersh that will appear in The New Yorker, Dick Cheney disparaged Obama to Israeli officials during the transition period. Read this previewed post about the changes in Middle Eastern strategy underway in the Age of Obama.

Like a possible treaty between Israel and Syria.

And if you ever had any doubt that the Israeli invasion of Gaza at the tail end of the Bush administration was sanctioned by the outgoing Bush-Cheney madmen, here it is:

According to the former senior intelligence official, who has access to sensitive information, “Cheney began getting messages from the Israelis about pressure from Obama” when he was President-elect. Cheney, who worked closely with the Israeli leadership in the lead-up to the Gaza war, portrayed Obama to the Israelis as a “pro-Palestinian,” who would not support their efforts (and, in private, disparaged Obama, referring to him at one point as someone who would “never make it in the major leagues”). But the Obama team let it be known that it would not object to the planned resupply of “smart bombs” and other high-tech ordnance that was already flowing to Israel. “It was Jones”—retired Marine General James Jones, at the time designated to be the President’s national-security adviser—“who came up with the solution and told Obama, ‘You just can’t tell the Israelis to get out.’ ” (General Jones said that he could not verify this account; Cheney’s office declined to comment.)

So all of the gloves are off. Since when does the prior administration attack the current one just days after an election? Because Bush-Cheney have a lot at stake: everything is political in an attempt to make their decisions in the "war on terror" look benign and patriarchal, and not illegal and subject to indictment.

60 Minutes

President Obama on 60 Minutes tonight made me feel less hysterical, more confident, and reassured me that while he is only human, he is the best person to have in the White House at this time. I couldn't imagine John McCain giving the interview that Obama gave tonight. Relaxed, intelligent, clear, and determined, without being combative or partisan. Here is a link to the first portion of the interview by Steve Kroft, which wasn't hardball, although Obama had the opportunity to show his stuff.

Obama really is the "decider." When asked how many decisions he has to make daily, he couldn't say. The only people who get a meeting to see him are people who are faced with really difficult decisions, ones that need his input. His biggest frustration is that too many decisions are based on bad and worse options, because of decisions that were made before he got to the White House. He wasn't any more specific than that. Here is a link to the second part of the interview.

When asked about Dick Cheney's comments that his decision to close Guantanamo and to end "enhanced interrogations" is making America less safe, Obama was unambiguous in standing firm to American ideals of justice and international law. Cheney is obviously trying to turn the issue of whether he and Bush, along with Rumsfeld, Bybee, Yoo, and Rice, committed war crimes and violated American law, into a political issue and not one of criminal liability.

Signs of the Times

This morning on WNYC there was a call to unemployed attorneys from the New York County Attorney's Office asking them to come in for training so that they can represent the City at depositions.

For free.

While I was in San Diego on Friday, 26,000 pink slips were issued to employees in the ten school districts located in the County.

26,000 newly unemployed.

Former President George W. Bush announced that he would be writing a book about his twelve toughest decisions and being "authoritarian" about what really happened.

And Ariana Huffington asks: What would the Dick Cheney interview have sounded like if "fake" journalist Jon Stewart and not "real" journalist John King on CNN's State of the Union had done the questioning?

Finally the daffodils are pushing their way up through the soil in a sign that spring is coming!

He's So Damned Smart

On the same day that I deflated over the news that the Obama Department of Justice used the same state secrets defense in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to prevent a full airing in a rendition case that the Bush administration had used, I rushed home tonight to watch the news conference Barack Obama promised this evening. And although I have issues with some of his appointments and some of his policies to date, I have no problems with how he conducted himself at this press conference: intelligent, charming, integrity.

Or is it that we are so relieved that it isn't Bush?

What I focused on was his refusal to talk down to people. Without sounding like a policy wonk, or a professor, Obama spoke clearly about his intentions for the stimulus package and how he would assess its success: creating jobs, loosening credit, stabilizing the housing market, and stopping the job contraction. When asked about foreign policy, Obama was unflinching in his commitment to diplomacy and multilateralism.

Can I exhale yet? Well, not quite.

Without sounding like he was still on the campaign trail, but sounding like he is the President of the United States, Obama refused to answer questions he wasn't ready to answer: like whether there are nuclear arms already in the Middle East, whether Patrick Leahy's "truth and reconciliation" proposal was something he could live with, and whether he had nixed the idea of prosecuting Bush administration officials for violating American law and the traditions we hold dear.

He asked for some time to review Bush era policies and put his own in place. I hope that's true regarding the use of state secrets to defend against rendition, to end warrantless wiretapping of American citizens, including news media, and holding everyone--FBI, CIA, NSA, and the military--to using humane techniques of interrogation.

Dick Cheney is a "has been." He's gone. We need to stop paying attention to his cries of "the sky is falling." He is setting up a defense of "it's a political witch hunt" in the event Obama decides to prosecute Cheney, Addington, Gonzales, and Bush himself for war crimes.

Fear makes people stupid, and it will take time, we must have patience, but I suspect we can change our culture to be more engaged, more cognitive, and more tolerant.

If iPods and iPhones can change how people communicate with each other, don't you think we can change our culture to bring out the best not the stupidest in each other?

Shut Up, Dick Cheney!

Two weeks into the Obama administration, and Dick Cheney gave an interview yesterday to Politico.com in which he warned the country that if there is another terrorist attack, and he suggested that there will be one and that this time it will be nuclear or biological, we can blame Obama.

“When we get people who are more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry,” Cheney said.

Protecting the country’s security is “a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business,” he said. “These are evil people. And we’re not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek.”

Listen to Darth Vadar himself.

Of course, he is self-serving. In addition to the bad taste of criticizing his successor two weeks into the administration, Cheney is defending his policies as a way of pushing back against cries for accountability: prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized wiretapping, surveillance, rendition, torture, and war crimes.

I've always found it amazing that Bush and Cheney begin their defense after the 911 attacks. They speak about protecting America for the seven remaining years of their administration. However, they had nine months to listen to Bill Clinton and Richard Clarke's warnings that Al Qaeda was the threat to the country. They did nothing. Bush cleared bush. Cheney had secret meetings to assure that his oil and energy guys made lots of money. Remember Enron? So the only attack on America's continent since the War of 1812 occurred during the Bush Cheney administration. Let's not forget that.

Read The New York Times editorial blog that debunks each of Cheney's scary and untrue assertions.