Chris Dodd

DB received an email from the Dodd campaign and this sentence was boldfaced:

The fight to restore the Constitution and stop retroactive immunity does not end with my Presidential campaign. FISA will come back in a few weeks and my pledge to filibuster ANY bill that includes retroactive immunity remains operative.

Thank you Sen. Dodd!

A suggestion

How about putting something like this in the Constitution?

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Rejected

(Cross-posted at Hullabaloo)

I was traveling last week and I'm still catching up on all the news I missed. Today, I read the Fourth Circuit's al-Marri opinion and is it a doozy (PDF).

If John Yoo and David Addington weren't done emptying out the liquor cabinet by p. 71, the conservative court's smackdown of the unitary executive theory here was probably enough alone to send them into a slurred-speech babble (emphasis mine):

In light of al-Marri’s due process rights under our Constitution and Congress’s express prohibition in the Patriot Act on the indefinite detention of those civilians arrested as "terrorist aliens" within this country, we can only conclude that in the case at hand, the President claims power that far exceeds that granted him by the Constitution. 17

We do not question the President’s war-time authority over enemy combatants; but absent suspension of the writ of habeas corpus or declaration of martial law, the Constitution simply does not provide the President the power to exercise military authority over civilians within the United States. See Toth, 350 U.S. at 14 ("[A]ssertion of military authority over civilians cannot rest on the President’s power as commander-in-chief, or on any theory of martial law."). The President cannot eliminate constitutional protections with the stroke of a pen by proclaiming a civilian, even a criminal civilian, an enemy combatant subject to indefinite military detention. Put simply, the Constitution does not allow the President to order the military to seize civilians residing within the United States and detain them indefinitely without criminal process, and this is so even if he calls them "enemy combatants."

A "well-established purpose of the Founders" was "to keep the military strictly within its proper sphere, subordinate to civil authority."

Marty Lederman had much more last week on the decision. TalkLeft had a series of posts on the case as well.

After the 2006 elections, the concern-troll Republicans warned the new majority they better not "overreach." Certainly, nobody will accuse them of doing that with a straight face.

But when future generations look back at the hubris and avarice of the Bush administration, the word "overreach" might be among the most appropriate. An overreaching view of authority. Overreaching in foreign policy. Overreaching in privatization. Overreaching in trying to control ideas and facts. Overreaching in expecting the military to fix everything.

Great news from the Fourth Circuit and incredible to see how roundly rejected the law-breaking of this president has been. After watching Congress abdicate their obligations for so long, the hearings these past few months have been nothing short of flabbergasting. Learning that the leaders of the Justice Department were, at one point, on the verge of resigning, and now seeing conservative courts saying "enough..." It makes me think this might be America, after all.

While we're on the subject of looking at Bush's place in history, I cannot wait to read Glenn Greenwald's new book, A Tragic Legacy, due to be released June 26.

We did not elect Tony Blair

(Cross-posted at Daily Kos)

Back in January, Senator Biden (D-DE) told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in no uncertain terms, that he felt the president did not have the Constitutional authority to go to war with Iran.

Secondly, I also want to make it clear, as chairman of the committee, that I feel very strongly that the authorization of the use of force in the provision that the Senator [Webb] read from it explicitly denies you the authority to go into Iran. Let me say that again: explicitly denies you the authority to go into Iran. We will fight that out if the President moves but I just want the record to show, and I would like to have a legal response from the State Department that if they think they have authority to pursue networks or anything else across the boarder into Iran and Iraq [Syria] that will generate a Constitutional confrontation here in the Senate, I predict to you. At least I will attempt to make it a confrontation.

On several occasions, Rice has been asked whether the president would come back to Congress for authorization, and each time she has refused to answer the question, other than to declare that she will not "circumscribe" or "constrain" the President's authority as Commander in Chief. Glenn Greenwald has documented some of those interactions here (on his old blog).

DB's contribution to this discussion was to remind people that the President already asked for the authority to attack Iran and Syria and was absolutely denied. Senator Hagel (R-NE) recently confirmed this to be true.

So that left us with a scary hypothetical. What if the Bush administration decides, for whatever reason, that they want to initiate a war with Iran? Will they go to Congress to ask for the authority? Will the president brazenly declare that he doesn't need the authorization? Or will there be some incident involving American troops or civilians, requiring an immediate military response, pulling us into a war, but saving the administration from having to deal with pesky old Congress?

While DB was on vacation in London, Iran captured 15 British sailors. Happily, the British have cooler heads than the people responsible for American foreign policy, and the situation was resolved without an unnecessary armed conflict escalating into God only knows what kind of war. I thought, as did many I'm sure, that it was a very good thing that those weren't American sailors. I had little doubt that our hypothetical would have been answered -- we would have had the incident the administration required to expand the war to yet another country, possibly with nuclear ramifications. Instead, it seemed, we will still have to wait for an answer and hope that nothing horrible happens.

As it turns out, we may already have an answer. If this story in last Saturday's Guardian is to be believed, the Bush administration was already prepared to go to war with Iran without asking Congress and without even using a threat to American troops or citizens to justify expanding the war.

The US offered to take military action on behalf of the 15 British sailors and marines held by Iran, including buzzing Iranian Revolutionary Guard positions with warplanes, the Guardian has learned.

In the first few days after the captives were seized and British diplomats were getting no news from Tehran on their whereabouts, Pentagon officials asked their British counterparts: what do you want us to do? They offered a series of military options, a list which remains top secret given the mounting risk of war between the US and Iran. But one of the options was for US combat aircraft to mount aggressive patrols over Iranian Revolutionary Guard bases in Iran, to underline the seriousness of the situation.

The Pentagon was offering military options. Was Congress notified? Did Senators Biden or Hagel know this? Was anybody outside of the Cheney cabal told that it was up to Tony Blair to decide whether or not America would be involved in a new war?

If you live in Delaware or Nebraska, you should call Biden or Hagel and find out if they knew this was happening and, if not, if they plan on asking President Bush to explain why the Prime Minister of England has more say in the lives of their constituents and U.S. troops than they do. If there was ever a reason for Congress to ask questions, this is it.

UPDATE: Greenwald reminds us, via TPM, that Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) had been unsuccessful at getting "a clear response" from Condi. Does he have his answer now?

No line-item veto

DB went to bed last night thinking that the last post wasn't clear enough, so here is the point in a nutshell:

In the case of the signing statement regarding the opening of Americans' mail, Attorney General Gonzales claimed no Constitutional conflict. Not only did he claim the department never did an "analysis" of the president's Constitutional authority in this realm (a dubious claim, indeed), but he defended the statement by embracing other limits on the president's authority ("to preserve the authority we believe exists under FISA, under other statutes.")

So where does he get off claiming the power to accept certain grants of authority from Congress, but not further definitions of that same authority? Bush's only legitimate course of action would be to veto the entire bill. Instead, he's pretending that he has a line-item veto and instructing his subordinates to violate the law by ignoring specific parts of it.

Gonzales -- what a witness

DB continues to be slammed with work, but managed to catch some of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee today. It wasn't easy, though. Right from the get-go, the Attorney General was making a mockery of our legal traditions.

Other bloggers have captured the essence of the hearings, particularly the egregiousness of Gonzales' claim that the Constitution doesn't guarantee all citizens the right of Habeas Corpus. I never thought I would live to see the day when an Attorney General would say such a thing.

The highlights for this blogger were when Leahy let loose on Gonzales for shipping Canadian citizen Maher Arar to Syria to be tortured, and Sen. Feingold's entire dialog today.

But here's the first exchange between Leahy and Gonzales. This is the first of the hearing and it tells you all you need to know about the obfuscation that the Bush Administration embraces:

SEN. LEAHY: Does the president believe he has the inherent Constitutional authority to open Americans' mail without a warrant?

AG GONZALES: Sir, that... Now, you're asking me to get to an analysis, quite frankly, that the department has not done and what I would point you to is the Justice Jackson's analysis under Youngstown in terms of looking at the inherent authority of the president, looking at the inherent authority of Congress...

SEN LEAHY: But if you take...

AG GONZALES: ...and weighing those.

SEN LEAHY: If you take Youngstown, we laid out pretty clearly what the authority is following the Church Committee and FISA and everything else. Do you think the president has the authority under the AUMF, notwithstanding the requirements of the FISA Statute?

AG GONZALES: Sir, I'm not prepared to answer that question. I think for purposes of today's hearing, I think it's important for everyone to note that the pres... as far as I know... there is no ongoing physical searches of mail under the authorization...

SEN. LEAHY: So there hasn't been?

AG GONZALES: And there... to my knowledge, there hasn't been any kind of authorization to...

SEN. LEAHY: Would you know if there was?

AG GONZALES: I suspect that I would know, sir. Yes, sir.

SEN. LEAHY: Then why in heaven's name did the president feel he needed to issue this signing statement?

AG GONZALES: Sir, he issued that signing statement to preserve the authority we believe exists under FISA, under other statutes. So, when you've got the president signing a statute saying this is the only way you can engage in physical searches, the president wanted to preserve the authority you gave to him under the other statutes. That's the purpose of the signing statement.

Are we to believe that the Justice Department -- the same department that claimed the president had Constitutional and AUMF authority to tap phones -- looked at this statute, determined that it narrowed the authority Congress previously granted the president with regards to opening mail and recommended a signing statement without undertaking any analysis at all with regards to other sources of authority for the president?

And where did Gonzales get the idea that the president could "preserve" authority granted by Congress? How could he claim the president has the power to prevent a statute that says "this is the only way you can engage in physical searches" from superseding previous Congressional statutes? Unless he doesn't recognize Congress' authority to place those limits on the president. But they never did an analysis about that, right?

These signing statements are bullshit, anyway. But this tortured logic and evasiveness is just too much. And this is how the day got started.

It will take a lifetime to clean up the mess Bush has created in this country.

The AUMF that never was

While Mitch McConnell continues to whine about "micromanagement" and the Bush Administration moves closer to war with Iran and Syria, DB once again feels it is time to remember an essential part of the Iraq story.

Despite the Administration's claims that the Authorization to Use Military Force in Iraq gives them the justification to expand the war throughout the region, the truth is that Bush already asked Congress for that authority and was totally rejected.

Sec. Rice told Congress today, as she did back on Oct. 19, 2005, that the administration basically has the authority to fight in other countries in the region. In 2005, she did not want to "circumscribe" the president's Constitutional authority. Today, she did not want to "abridge" his authority. Biden stated as clearly as he could that he was certain Bush was never authorized to attack Syria or Iran.

While most Americans will recall that in 2002*, just as then-NSA Rice was falsely telling the American people that Iraq was helping al-Qaeda with chemical weapons, the Bush Administration asked Congress to authorize military action in Iraq.

But that's not the entire story. What has been largely forgotten by the media is that that particular request sent to Congress was the second draft. The first draft was sent to the Hill a week earlier and never even made it as far as a vote.

Why was the first attempt to get permission to go to war rejected so quickly? Well, for starters, it didn't even ask Bush to pretend like he cared about getting U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq. The second draft did, and Bush operated on his usual level of bad faith, kicking those weapons inspectors out to rush us into this unfortunate disaster.

But there was another, crucial reason why the first go at an AUMF didn't stand a chance: It was not limited to Iraq.

Even U.S. lawmakers who support authorization of use of force said they do not like the last line of the draft resolution, which says that "force" should be used against "the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region."

That line, say some members of Congress, is too vague and could allow the president to use force in other Mideast nations beyond Iraq.

"That is probably a bit ambitious," said Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Indiana. "Would this authorize an invasion of Iran? Or how about Syria? They're in the region. I think we ought to stay focused here, and that is staying focused on Iraq."

The language could lead to a "miniature Armageddon" or "potential World War III," claimed Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings, who said he will write an alternative resolution with fellow liberal Rep. Barney Frank, D-Massachusetts, that would place more pre-conditions on Bush before he could use force in Iraq.

The Bush Administration recognized that they were not going to be authorized to use force wherever they wanted and they conceded in the draft that actually passed.

Here's what John Kerry, for example, had to say about the AUMF as he explained, on the floor of the Senate, why he would vote for it:

I am pleased that our pressure, and the questions we have asked, and the criticisms that have been raised publicly, the debate in our democracy has pushed this administration to adopt important changes, both in language as well as in the promises that they make.

The revised White House text, which we will vote on, limits the grant of authority to the President to the use of force only with respect to Iraq. It does not empower him to use force throughout the Persian Gulf region.

And sure enough, the AUMF allows Bush to take action against Iraq and "international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorists attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001."

Is Rice going to start telling us that Iran was behind 9/11? It's amazing how often this administration asks for something, is denied, and then just pretends that they had the authority all along.

* Corrected typo in date (originally typed 2005)

The Client

Will somebody please explain to Alberto Gonzales that he is working for the American people now and his days of getting George Bush out of jury duty are over?

Protect us with the powers you have

(Not the ones you want)

Fantastic. The Bush administration and their rubber stamps in Congress have been trying to figure out how they can spy on Americans with no oversight whatsoever and today we learn that they're more interested in our phone calls than the ones being placed by people who have actually tried to blow up the World Trade Center.

WASHINGTON - Convicted terrorists locked up in U.S. prisons can still use mail and verbal communications to conduct terrorist or criminal activities, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Department of Justice's inspector general.

The inspector general launched a review after a series of NBC News Investigative Unit reports in February and March 2005 revealed that jailed terrorists — even those responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center — were continuing to support jihadists and encourage violence around the world.

"We found that the BOP (Bureau of Prisons) has not effectively monitored the mail of terrorist and other high-risk inmates," concludes the 122-page report.

In 2005, Lisa Myers and the NBC News Investigative Unit reported that, while behind bars at the Administrative Maximum Penitentiary in Florence, Colo., the 1993 World Trade Center bombers continued their terrorist activities, writing letters to other suspected terrorists and brazenly praising Osama bin Laden in Arabic newspapers. The prison, also known as "Supermax," houses the largest number of and most dangerous terrorist inmates.

According to confidential Spanish court documents obtained by NBC, at least 14 letters went back and forth between the Trade Center bombers at Supermax and members of a Spanish terror cell. One example, from February 2003: Trade Center bomber Mohammed Salameh writes: "Oh, God! Make us live with happiness, make us die as martyrs, may we be united on the day of Judgment."

The recipient, Mohamed Achraf, later allegedly led a plot to blow up the National Justice Building in Madrid. In July 2002, a letter Salameh sent from prison was published in the Al-Quds Al Arabi newspaper, proclaiming, "Osama bin Laden is my hero of this generation."

And we're supposed to trust Bush? He doesn't seem willing to use the powers he already had to protect us. His entire presidency has been about getting more.

America deserves a real discussion

Following up on the post about fascism, the reason DB will go to sleep feeling pretty good is that today we saw two examples of influential people (Rocky Anderson and Keith Olbermann) speaking not just truth to power, but reclaiming our right as Americans to speak, period.

Sure, there have been moments in the last few years when it felt so good to hear somebody tell it like it is. But all the while there has been a constant effort to keep America from having an honest debate about the direction of the country.

Forgive the late-night rant, but it cannot be a secret to anybody that the GOP and its supporters have made it a mission to stifle dissent and prevent debates from taking place.

It happened when Kerry was swiftboated. In their wildest dreams, those liars couldn't have imagined that the charges would stick, that the Kerry campaign would be so slow to respond, that the media would be so complicit in the attacks. John O'Neill was on practically every cable news show.

John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural speech said "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." But in the 2004 campaign, we were robbed of our right to a real national debate. While the problems facing our and future generations were looming, we were forced to rehash a debate that aired on the Dick Cavett Show a generation earlier. That was the swiftboaters' goal: To distract the nation and steal our chance to have a real candid discussion about our future. The damage to Kerry's candidacy was just gravy.

Bring up the question of warrants for wiretaps and watch them turn the debate to the effectiveness or necessity of tracking terrorists. Nobody in America -- nobody -- thinks we shouldn't track terrorists and everybody in America knows it. But the media doesn't play host to the debate we deserve.

Bring up the question of oversight and watch them change the subject to the seriousness of fighting terror. The media puts up the poll numbers and, again, refuses to play host to the debate we deserve.

Bring up any alternate plan for Iraq -- phased withdrawal, benchmark withdrawal, partitioning, etc. -- and listen to the howls of "cut-and-run" and "cowardice" instead of any oversight or constructive discourse.

You're either for drilling for oil in Alaska and off the coasts or you're for continuing our dependence on foreign oil. Raising our fuel-efficiency standards doesn't make it into the debate at all because the GOP way isn't the best way, it's the only way.

They don't want us to have a real debate about anything. They've already hatched their schemes and there is no point to any discussion about it. They are never persuaded to follow any other course because when they are sworn into office, they carry with them a mandate, regardless of the margin of their electoral victories.

And the bought-and-paid-for media just doesn't care. When events in the world spark inquiries into the administration's capabilities or the soundness of their decisions, a terror alert or reminder that we should be afraid and quiet is enough to prevent any real engagement with the issues. It doesn't even need to be a remotely good reason; warnings of wandering black holes in the galaxy or super-volcanoes on Earth had to suffice this week.

Or some tabloid garbage supersedes all reason. The media was supposed to have learned its lesson when 9/11 came on the heels of non-stop Gary Condit coverage. Then Katrina hit during Aruba-vision. This month, in the midst of two costly wars and tremendous developments in the wiretapping case, we were asphyxiated with John Mark Karr. Even if he had been the real murderer of Jon Benet Ramsey, enough is enough. The fact that he lied is just salt in the wound.

And then, there are the Democrats who enable the scoundrels who steal our right to a real dialog.

"I, too, disagree with the president on every major domestic issue from taxes to Social Security. Yet I believe those issues are trumped by the overriding need to defeat international terrorism, the biggest threat to our freedom."

Thank you, Ed Koch. And thanks, Joe Lieberman, for the concern about "undermining the president's credibility."

And on the floor of the Senate or in the halls of Congress, the debate is just as easily avoided. John Murtha makes a proposal and the GOP puts a bogus, superficial rip-off up for debate, just so it will be voted down with prejudice.

Minimum wage comes up for a vote and instead we get to hear a debate about whether it should be paired with the proposed repealing of the estate tax.

Important legislation about our nation's health care or energy policy is written in secret and passed without a chance for the public to evaluate it. Instead of debating Kerry's health care plan on its merits... instead of criticizing any flaws in the plan and offering America a chance to consider and possibly improve it or legitimately decide against it, the GOP said we should all fear a complicated government takeover of our medical decisions. That was the extent of the debate on the future of our health care system: Should we have a giant bureaucracy or not?

Practically nobody read the Patriot Act. How can we call this a true democracy when we don't even get to hear about our possible choices? They don't want us to have any choices.

During the campaign, they said Kerry had no plan. When he published his plan, it was automatically a horrible plan that would cost trillions. There is nothing in between "no ideas" and "horrible, dangerous ideas." There's no reason to expect more from the political operatives, but the media is supposed to fill that void. Tragically, the media is just not interested in presenting us with the information we need to make informed decisions and force accountability on our leadership.

Even when our most statesmanlike Senators have an actual debate, there are always reasons why something shouldn't even be considered. While Sens. Feingold, Boxer and Kerry were trying to get their amendment to begin withdrawing troops from Iraq considered, we heard this:

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I say to my colleague that I agree fundamentally with the premise that the Iraqi people, in the final analysis, are the ones who are going to be able to bring about their own measure of democracy and enable this Government to exercise sovereignty.

Other Senators want to participate, so I will soon yield. I know both of us have had the opportunity to serve in the military. There is nothing more painful than the loss of a brother member of the service. I don't know about you, but it has been difficult for me today to contain my absolute outrage about what happened, Mr. President, to these two young soldiers who raised their right arms and volunteered for this service in Iraq, to have been captured and brutally mauled and executed.

[snip]

What did you feel when we lost these two individuals? I know you felt it probably as badly as I did. I cannot understand why they could be saying over there that, see what we did, we beheaded two, and what did the Congress do? It passed this law that said our troops would be redeployed by July 1, 12 months from today.

Senator, timing in life is everything. The timing for this concept you have has not arrived, I say to my good friend.

Ripeness is all, as Shakespeare wrote. But as respectful as Sen. Warner was to Kerry, his message is infuriating. Our nation lost 63 brave soldiers in Iraq in the month of June. Sixty-three. Those deaths occurred on 20 of the 30 days in the month. That means the chances were twice as great that the amendment would be brought to the floor as a soldier was giving his or her life for this country. Not only is it shameful to use their deaths to evade the responsibility of the Senate to practice oversight, those morbid details and numbers are even more of reason to actually consider alternatives to the failing strategy of staying the course.

America deserves a real debate. Had we been allowed a real debate before going to Iraq, we might not have been stuck in this horrible war. We were entitled to that debate, but were denied.

We were denied because we were only given facts that supported the decision Bush had already made. We were denied because the media and pundits didn't respect their role in our society and didn't give an adequate platform to those who rejected the party line.

We were denied because too many career politicians in both parties made calculated political decisions instead of representing a diverse electorate.

We, as Americans, are entitled to a real debate about our future. We've been denied in the past, and Donald Rumsfeld upped the ante on Monday by, as Olbermann said, "question[ing] the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask just for the receipt for the Emporer's New Clothes."

It's about time the people in this country say they've had enough of this. Yesterday was a tremendous day for America because two men with a well-crafted message, a microphone and a huge crowd or prime-time audience finally did. Let's make sure that tomorrow there are even more people demanding respect for ideas and free expression. Someday we just might be able to go back to taking our rights for granted.

War powers

Glenn Greenwald writes today about the attention that needs to be given to the explicit constitutional statement that it is Congress who has the authority to determine where and when our armed forces are to be directed by the President.

It's a great reminder. I'd only add that this administration doesn't seem to care at all whether they've been authorized to invade other countries. After all, they specificially asked Congress for the authority to wage war anywhere in the Middle East, and when they were denied that authority, they told Congress they had it anyway.

Just like when they asked Tom Daschle for the authority to wiretap without a warrant and that request was also denied.

In their minds, there is nothing to prevent them from carrying out whatever schemes they've dreamt up.

DB is off for a weekend in a very red state. Hope yours is just as great.

Thanks for the nod, Digby.

The Human Behavior Experiments

It's 3:00 a.m. and this blogger should be asleep. But by complete happenstance, DB discovered that Sundance Channel is showing a documentary entitled The Human Behavior Experiments.

Suffice it to say DB is completely stunned right now because the documentary reveals with absolute clarity exactly what was written here in the last post -- that the crimes at Abu Ghraib were certain to occur in the environment created by Rumsfeld, Cheney and his crew. It even shows the testimony of our leaders calling the crimes the acts of "a few bad apples."

You must watch this documentary. At the end you will have no doubt that it has been common knowledge to anybody who could be in charge of prisons and intelligence gathering that even the most moral individuals would abuse prisoners in the sort of environment the Bush administration encouraged.

It will air again, on Sundance, on the following dates:

Saturday 06.03.06 at 02:00 PM

Monday 06.05.06 at 07:45 PM

Monday 06.12.06 at 10:00 PM

Wednesday 06.14.06 at 12:00 AM

It is a real eye-opener.

A failure of leadership

DB has no idea if the Haditha allegations about a handful of Marines are true (although the evidence appears to be significant) and there is no dispute that these charges are shocking. Especially because we know that our troops are performing so heroically and living up to our high American values. But while it may surprise us to hear something like this has happened, it is the responsibility of our leaders to be actively ensuring that they never do.

It is their responsibility because they have accepted it. It is their responsibility because there is a clear history from which they must learn.

Are war crimes inevitable? When there is an absence of active leadership, these crimes are extremely likely.

In 1971, Dr. Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment at Stanford University, The Stanford Prison Experiment. A fake prison was set up and student volunteers were arbitrarily selected to be either prisoners or guards. In almost no time at all, the inexperienced guards became abusive to the prisoners, who became emotionally unstable and quickly began losing their own identities.

I ended the study prematurely for two reasons. First, we had learned through videotapes that the guards were escalating their abuse of prisoners in the middle of the night when they thought no researchers were watching and the experiment was "off." Their boredom had driven them to ever more pornographic and degrading abuse of the prisoners.

Second, Christina Maslach, a recent Stanford Ph.D. brought in to conduct interviews with the guards and prisoners, strongly objected when she saw our prisoners being marched on a toilet run, bags over their heads, legs chained together, hands on each other's shoulders. Filled with outrage, she said, "It's terrible what you are doing to these boys!" Out of 50 or more outsiders who had seen our prison, she was the only one who ever questioned its morality. Once she countered the power of the situation, however, it became clear that the study should be ended.

And so, after only six days, our planned two-week prison simulation was called off.

A bunch of highly intelligent students at an outstanding college... reduced to barbarians with less than one week's worth of absolute power. Visit the experiment's web site for a fascinating read (and video). [UPDATE: Watch The Human Behavior Experiments on Sundance this month.]

As difficult as it is to accept the truth, the facts speak for themselves. Perfect citizens will react in horrible ways in extreme situations if they are allowed to. The abuses at Abu Ghraib were bound to happen without strong leadership. The fact that they happened means, without any doubt, that our leaders were either criminally negligent or, even worse, they wanted it to happen. These abuses shock the public, but there is no way our leaders could claim to be surprised when they occur. It is a textbook certainty that they will occur without preventative measures in place [edited this sentence].

Abu Ghraib is a controlled environment. Haditha was not. It would seem to this blogger, on the surface, that preventing an Haditha is a much taller order. But let's look at the greater context. Take this exchange on "Hardball" yesterday (emphasis mine):

MAJOR GEN. JOHN BATISTE, U.S. ARMY (RET): I think the alleged atrocity at Haditha, the national disgrace at Abu Ghraib and the three years uncontrollable violence and chaos in Iraq can all be traced back to the bad decisions and leadership of our secretary of defense in 2003 and early 2004.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Is this the action of somebody who's been over there too many tours?

BATISTE: This is the action, if it's true, again, it's alleged, of some frustrated Marines, could have been soldiers. We deployed without sufficient capability, without sufficient numbers of troops on the ground, to not only take down the regime, but then to do the hard work of building the peace in Iraq. We missed the boat on this totally.

MATTHEWS: How would more troops have prevented this?

BATISTE: You know, when you go in to this kind of peace enforcement operation and when you build the peace, it takes a large number of troops. It takes a mix of high technology and boots on the ground. The strategy that we had worked out within the military since 1991, which was not the plan to go back if to the Gulf War a la 1991. But this wonderful plan called for over 380,000 Americans, in addition to the Iraqi security forces to help build the peace, to stabilize the country, to secure the borders, to intimidate the insurgency, to get control of the place.

Why? Because you need to change attitudes. You need a secure environment to give the people of Iraq alternatives to the insurgency.

MATTHEWS: But when Marines in action, especially as you say, those on subsequent tours, second and third tours like they were here, who have seen their buddies shot up, killed, by these IED's, by the roadside bombs and they look around and see a nearby house.

I am just putting this together, all the reporting on this, so they went on this rampage to get even, basically. Is that part of the military culture that if you're hit, you hit back, wherever there's a target? That's my big question. Is this something that happens a lot in war, where you just get so ticked off at an ambush on your people, that you decide to ambush somebody else, even if they're not fighting people?

BATISTE: Chris, I don't think we should second guess the investigation that's going on, but what I am saying is that --

MATTHEWS: I'm just asking about war. In war, when the other side -- I guess this war is tricky, because you don't know what the Hell you're fighting. I can't figure out to this day weather we're fighting insurgents, people that don't want us in their country, out of town fighters who come in with al-Qaida, with Zarqawi. Or we're fighting Shias because they are really working against us, or we're fighting Sunnis who don't like the Shias taking over.

Do these soldiers or Marines who do want to get even, do they pick a target with that kind of intelligence or just pick a target?

BATISTE: No, they're very precise with their intelligence, I know they are. But look we went to war with the wrong plan. We should go to war to win, outright, no questions asked and we didn't do that. We didn't go to war with the proper capability and numbers of soldiers to build the peace in Iraq after we took down the regime. And to say that we didn't anticipate that insurgency is absolutely unacceptable. That was a certainty that that was going to happen.

MATTHEWS: So your point based upon military and history, just history generally, especially countries that are fighting asymmetric wars, like we're fighting in Iraq and a big power like the United States or the French or British. When you're in this kind of asymmetric fighting these kinds of incidents occur. You can expect them. You can expect an insurgency against the occupying power. You can expect this kind of terrorism against the occupying power and you can also expect this kind of anger on the side of our troops against that kind of asymmetric attack, right? It's all predictable.

BATISTE: Particularly in a country like Iraq, where the tribal, religious and ethnic complexity is amazing. Remember the Brits tried this back in the last century, in the '10s and the '20s and were not very successful either.

There is a lot of history in this part of the world. The people in Iraq don't think of themselves as Iraqis first. They're first a member of a tribe and then they're either Arab or Kurd and then they're either Shia or Sunni -- very complex. We went into something without really understanding the complexity and what it would take to finish the job.

So there's the foundation of the problem. Too few troops and inadequate planning. But what about the troops and day in question?

GEN. WAYNE DOWNING (RET.), NBC NEWS MILITARY ANALYST: I don't think it is. I don't think it's necessarily bad people. I think this was a good unit and by the way, this is alleged.

MATTHEWS: I want the perspective, stepping back from the crime.

DOWNING: Certainly there's a high degree of frustration. This unit had been there for a long time, apparently the young Marine that got killed was very, very popular guy. Sometimes troops do snap.

MATTHEWS: Anybody can snap.

DOWNING: Anybody can snap. You could snap or I could snap under the right conditions. That's why you need a strong chain of command and strong leaders to stop that kind of stuff from happening. There's a lot of parallels here if it in fact happen with My Lai and other incidents like that that occurred in Vietnam: an extreme frustration, an unseen enemy, something happens and then finally things go out of control.

Strong chain of command, strong leaders... It sounds like all of that was missing. After all, how has the Pentagon dealt with the mental health of our troops? The answer is absolutely horrifying.

The U.S. military is sending troops with serious psychological problems into Iraq and is keeping soldiers in combat even after superiors have been alerted to suicide warnings and other signs of mental illness, a Courant investigation has found.

Despite a congressional order that the military assess the mental health of all deploying troops, fewer than 1 in 300 service members see a mental health professional before shipping out.

A complete lack of leadership by the DOD. And then they pour gas on the fire:

Interviews with troops, families and medical experts, as well as autopsy and investigative reports obtained by The Courant, reveal that the emphasis on retention has had dangerous, and sometimes tragic, consequences.

Among The Courant's findings:

• Antidepressant medications with potentially serious side effects are being dispensed with little or no monitoring and sometimes minimal counseling, despite FDA warnings that the drugs can increase suicidal thoughts.

• Military doctors treating combat stress symptoms are sending some soldiers back to the front lines after rest and a three-day regimen of drugs - even though experts say the drugs typically take two to six weeks to begin working.

• The emphasis on maintaining troop numbers has led some military doctors to misjudge the severity of mental health symptoms.

Effexor, Zoloft, Celexa... pump 'em up with drugs, hand 'em a rifle and send 'em back to the front line. Anybody can snap? Who knows how many other incidents there have been. The new Iraqi ambassador introduced himself to America by revealing that he believes his cousin was intentionally and unnecessarily killed. One can only pray that these incidents are few and far between. The fact that they are happening at all does not bode well for the entire system.

Troops with serious psychological problems, drugged without proper monitoring, forced to remain in combat with inadequate gear and weak international support... all because of poor planning and an inexcusably unexpected insurgency... combined with an apparent lack of a strong chain of command... This kind of tragedy was bound to happen.

DB has no idea if these particular soldiers were on medication. But as Batiste said to Matthews, history shows that in this type of war, this kind of anger and these kinds of reactions are much more likely. It is clear that the mental health of all soldiers is not being monitored even to minimum standards and the main objective of the Pentagon is simply to keep the troop levels at a specific number. It is an absolute failure of leadership by both Rumsfeld and President Bush, who apparently learned about Haditha from Time Magazine.

Back in 2004, right before the election, when weapons were discovered missing at Al QaaQaa, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift wrote a column predicting a big Kerry win. While she was clearly wrong about the outcome, she was dead-on when she described the standard tactic of the right wing: Deny, Slime, Spin.

The Bush team's response is also emblematic. First, they deny a charge that is undeniably true, that they went into Iraq with insufficient forces. Second, they slime the person telling the truth. Kerry wasn't faulting U.S. troops for not finding and securing the missing weapons, as Bush asserted. Kerry was attacking the chicken-hawk civilians who brushed aside pleas from the military for more manpower. Third, Bush falls back on the tried and true, pointing to evidence of a cache of deadly explosives to say this proves Saddam really was dangerous.

And the same formula is in effect today. First, the denials:

MURTHA: Well, what I worry about, Wolf, is that this happened six months ago.

And nothing -- you heard nothing about it. As a matter of fact, the original story was that an IED killed these 15 people. It became very confusing to the public. "TIME" magazine came out with an article, and they still tried to cover it up.

Now, there were payments made to victims, which aren't made unless we kill them, one way or the other. And, secondly, they knew about it the day afterwards. So, there's no excuse for not having this be more open and know exactly what -- and the longer it goes, the worse it is for us, because it looks like it's the policy of our troops to do something like this.

But the Marine Corps itself told me, there were 24 people killed. There was no other enemy action, except the one explosive device. Now, they are under tremendous pressure, Wolf. You -- you have heard me say this before. They are stressful. They go out every day. They see arms blown off, legs blown off. There's inadequate number of forces.

So, I understand what happened. But you can't excuse it. And the cover-up is inexcusable. So, the chain of command, the chain of command, somebody in the chain of command said, we don't want to talk about this. It's so devastating that we don't want it to be made public.

Well, it's going to be made public at someplace. The Iraqis already knew about it. The Marines knew about it. It was going to come out. And they should have been very open about this from the very start.

Next, comes the sliming:

What Murtha did is a disgrace to the men and women that are serving and putting their lives on the line. I'm sorry. --Fox News' Sean Hannity, joined by none other than Swift Boat Veteran for Truth, John O'Neill

Those people who oppose the war and want to make those who supported it pay with shame, embarrassment and a complete loss of credibility and reputation, want desperately for this massacre — if it turns out to be what happened — to be the name this war is known by forever. Haditha — My Lai — Iraq — Vietnam: it all fits together neatly in a slime fest designed to win elections and set the direction of the history books. -- Fox News' John Gibson

And finally, the spinning:

If Iraqis know their own history they know this is true. Massacres have been committed in Iraq by warring parties for millennia piled on millennia. This is the part of the world that was in on the massacre game early, played it often and the last character to be up to his eyeballs in massacres was the very guy we went in to regime change: Saddam Hussein himself.

...

The Iraq War may not be the best war we ever fought. When the dust settles we'll know for sure. But it accomplished a great goal that no one else had managed for the last 15 years at least: ridding the world of Saddam. No matter what the political spinners say, that was a great thing. -- John Gibson [edit: called him Josh by mistake]

But it's just -- it is factually incorrect and also, I think, somewhat irresponsible to make judgments about all the Marines or everyone in the United States forces serving in Iraq or Afghanistan based on what a few Marines may have done. -- Torie Clark

So to Gibson, hey, massacres happen all the time over there. The point is Saddam is gone. Hooray! Bill O'Reilly tried to tell Wesley Clark the same things happen all the time in our military history.

Torie Clark points out that only a few Marines were involved in this incident and she is absolutely correct. This should not be an indictment of our troops, 99 percent of whom are performing heroically. But the "few bad apples" meme is a calculated response by Clark because it also provides cover for the leadership, the same way it kept Rumsfeld employed after Abu Ghraib. Once again our failed leaders are hiding behind the troops.

We should be grateful to our troops for their sacrifices. We should punish the few who commit war crimes. Above all, we should hold our leaders accountable for their horrible failures.

We were looking really, really hard

The Boston Globe reports today that the government has the capability and has been actively monitoring millions of international communications:

WASHINGTON -- The National Security Agency, in carrying out President Bush's order to intercept the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans suspected of links to Al Qaeda, has probably been using computers to monitor all other Americans' international communications as well, according to specialists familiar with the workings of the NSA.

The Bush administration and the NSA have declined to provide details about the program the president authorized in 2001, but specialists said the agency serves as a vast data collection and sorting operation. It captures reams of data from satellites, fiberoptic lines, and Internet switching stations, and then uses a computer to check for names, numbers, and words that have been identified as suspicious.

"The whole idea of the NSA is intercepting huge streams of communications, taking in 2 million pieces of communications an hour," said James Bamford, the author of two books on the NSA, who was the first to reveal the inner workings of the secret agency.

"They have a capacity to listen to every overseas phone call," said Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, which has obtained documents about the NSA using Freedom of Information Act requests.

Forget the implications of Big Brother for a minute and think about this: Is it possible that the same White House that is capable of monitoring every single piece of international communication leaving the United States was unable to find an email from Karl Rove to Stephen Hadley about Joe Wilson and Niger, when they were exclusively searching his mailbox for exactly that topic?

More on wishful thinking

In an article in the Washington Post, Tom Daschle confirms that Congress refused to give Bush the broad powers he wanted.

As DB noted here and here, they have a habit of pretending they have authority they asked for and were denied by Congress.

UPDATE: Here's the story straight from Daschle.

Some key parts (emphasis mine):

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of authority.

The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.

Hey, it's me! How are you?

Even when DB is on the road, it's always clear enough when the power has gone out at home or the computer has crashed or is waiting for some error message to be dismissed. Not psychic... it's just that the two dozen junk emails that slip through the spam program running on the home PC turn into about two or three hundred.

Hard to believe that these emails really generate any revenue for anybody, but they must, otherwise there wouldn't be a zillion of them, right?

But then there are the ones that try to trick you into thinking that they might be from a friend ("Haven't talked to you in a while!"), only to turn out to be peddling some penis drug. They start off with a deception and then ask you to trust them with your penis.

Which brings DB to the president.

Dahlia Lithwick really nailed it yesterday, when she wrote the following:

In the days after Sept. 11, everyone agreed that we needed to recalibrate the delicate balance that had been struck between security and civil liberties. It now appears, however, that while the American people thought they were bargaining in good faith with their president, he was nodding and smiling and taking what he wanted in secret.

At the start of this "war," Congress thought it was authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan. But now we've learned that in so doing it also gave the president limitless powers to break the law. Congress thought it was passing the Patriot Act. But it was actually giving the government broad and seemingly open-ended new surveillance authority. We believed the executive branch to be bound by the rule of law—by the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and the ancient writ of habeas corpus. But the president was redefining torture, disregarding international conventions, and granting himself broad discretion to name and imprison enemy combatants for years on end.

Americans believed they were bargaining in good faith with their government over the original deal struck in 1978 when Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA was supposed to represent a compromise between security and civil liberties, by making it illegal to spy on Americans without judicial oversight but setting the bar for such oversight quite low. Even as amended by the Patriot Act—which further lowered the standards for a FISA warrant—the statute still purported to adhere to the fundamental bargain: Americans would not be spied upon by their government without basic constitutional checks in place.

Exactly right. Americans all understood that there would have to be some sacrifices. The president told us that he understood the importance of protecting our civil liberties. He didn't ask us to sacrifice them. In fact, he didn't ask us to sacrifce anything. He told us to go shopping.

In the face of this great tragedy, Americans are refusing to give terrorists the power. Our people have responded with courage and compassion, calm and reason, resolve and fierce determination. We have refused to live in a state of panic or a state of denial. There is a difference between being alert and being intimidated, and this great nation will never be intimidated.

People are going about their daily lives, working and shopping and playing, worshipping at churches and synagogues and mosques, going to movies and to baseball games.

Life in America is going forward, and as the fourth grader who wrote me knew, that is the ultimate repudiation of terrorism.

And something even more profound is happening across our country. The enormity of this tragedy has caused many Americans to focus on the things that have not changed, the things that matter most in life: our faith, our love for family and friends, our commitment to our country and to our freedoms and to our principles.

All the president's defenders this week, like DB's favorite Bay Buchanan, have been trying to say that Bush was just talking about the Patriot Act, when he was talking about wiretapping in 2004:

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretaps, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

The president may have been talking about the Patriot Act, but he looked us in the eye and told us that he understood our concerns. He told us that the checks we expect to be there will still be there. He told us that our understanding of our Constitutional protections is shared by the White House.

Now, we are told that he's got methods to protect us, secret methods that every American knows can be abused. Methods that many suspect have already been abused. But he asks us to trust him to do the right thing. He starts with a deception and then asks us to trust him with our civil liberties.

DB's message to spammers in all offices: Take your penis drug and stick it in your ear!

UPDATE: This (CanOFun) wmv video clip of MSNBC's David Schuster reeling off Bush's speeches on civil liberties really says it all.

If at first you don't succeed, just say you did (The Sequel)

DB is so pissed off about the fact that Bush has broken the law and is spying on Americans with no oversight that there hasn't been a post here about it yet.

And this won't be an auspicious beginning to the rants here. But one thing begs for immediate blogging because it's something that has appeared here before.

DB pointed out that the White House asked for authorization to use force in Iraq, not once, but twice. The first request was worded so broadly that the president would have been able to do just about anything he wanted. It never made it to a vote; instead a more narrow version passed. But that didn't stop the administration from acting as if the first one made it through, no problem.

Well, the White House is arguing that the authorization for use of force in Afghanistan is what gives Bush the legal authority to reinterpret the only law governing the process of spying domestically.

Guess what they're talking about in USA Today?

The congressional debate and vote took place Sept. 14, 2001, as the nation reeled from the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. It was the day Bush went to Ground Zero and, using a borrowed bullhorn, told workers there that "the people who knocked down these buildings will hear all of us soon!"

On Capitol Hill, the White House proposed a resolution that would give the president authority to "deter and prevent any related future acts of terrorism and aggression against the United States." Members from both parties objected that the language was too broad.

"It would have given him authority to do anything he wanted, anytime, anywhere," recalls Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. The wording was revised.

Just like Iraq. They asked for a blank check and acted as if they got it.

Plamegate vs. Secret Prisons

DB may eat these words later, but a first knee-jerk reaction here is that the Washington Post's Dana Priest was right to go with her story about the secret prisons in Eastern Europe and would be right to protect her sources.

It's important to know what our government is doing in our names.

On the other hand, it was of no benefit whatsoever to learn that Valerie Plame was a covert agent. Zero. That wasn't whistleblowing, that was revenge.

Absolutely Unforgivable

Another thing that was so poignant in Lawrence Wilkerson's speech was his admonition for the Bush administration regarding the inhumane treatment of prisoners by some of our soldiers.

And I’ll finish just by bringing it down screechingly to the ground and tell you that the detainee abuse issue is just such a concrete example of what I’ve just described to you, that 10 years from now or so when it’s really, really put to the acid test, ironed out and people have looked at it from every angle, we are going to be ashamed of what we allowed to happen.

...

And we knew that things weren’t the way they should be, and as former soldiers, we knew that you don’t have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you’ve condoned it – unless you’ve condoned it. And whether you did it explicitly or not is irrelevant. If you did it at all, indirectly, implicitly, tacitly – you pick the word – you’re in trouble because that slippery slope is truly slippery, and it will take years to reverse the situation, and we’ll probably have to grow a new military.

It really is unforgivable. Not only should all of our leaders be aware that it is human nature to follow orders even when they may be immoral (see Stanley Milgram's "The Perils of Obedience" and also here), but it was demonstrated quite clearly in the Stanford Prison Experiment that abuse would almost automatically take place if there were no constraints against it. In other words, it was our leadership's responsibility not to let this happen and, to the contrary, we hear now, from an insider, that they actually condoned it.