Back in the summer, this summer, there was noise about the NIE and it not getting published, there were rumors that the intelligence had to be fixed, it was too dangerously secret. Congress was, by then, complaining about the lack of release.
Now a document directly refuting the BushCo rhetoric over the past six months is released. The NEI does not sort of contradict, it flatly refutes it. The President found out about this last Wednesday. Iraq stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
The questions surrounding this are mind-boggling and run the gamut of considerations. Why was this released? Whose decision was it to release it? Who knew about it? When did GeorgeII know? What does this mean to BushCo policy and who is running it?
NYT: Monday, Donald M. Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, said that since the new estimate was at odds with the 2005 assessment — and thus at odds with public statements by top officials about Iran — “we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available.”
That all sounds very responsible, but there is a distinct problem with it, it has been say upon for some time now while nonsense statements were being made. The thing is released and GeorgeII is on TV the next day stating, essentially that it is meaningless. Congress seems to be denying having pushed for release and if it were the Democrats they surely would claim credit. Hadley was not a happy camper during release press op. McConnell and Gates are keeping their heads down, so what - Darth Cheney? Did the intelligence agencies freak out and demand it? No answers forthcoming.
Now supposedly George found out last week that he has been FOS. There is nobody in BushCo who wins by having GeorgeII make a fool of himself. I understand that it is easy enough to accomplish once things become public but unless you can come up with a recently fired or resigned official with enough clout to know about this you are short of suspects. I'd speculate, but I have nothing to go on. I can think of all kinds of reasons to not release the NIE, but short of DoD realism regarding our military strength opposing the BushCo hasn't proved fruitful for anyone. If DoD had knowledge of this and opposition to poking at Iran, having it wait this long would be counter-productive.
Bush made it pretty clear that he figures Iran will try for nukes no matter what the NIE says about their evident agenda. His rhetoric showed no sign of easing and he seems to be pushing the same policy line. About as far as the President was willing to go was to acknowledge that the NIE even exists. This is all getting very tail chasing...
If there is a saving grace it is that the American people and much of the world are very dubious of BushCo claims, now. The biggest drawback is that it begins to look as though nobody is in charge and and no one knows what is going on.
Showing posts with label Secrecy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Secrecy. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Bush, Government Secrets, Chaos
***Previously Posted at Middle Earth Journal ***
Our government has secrets, always has had and in a real world should have some. It is in the nature of government to have some secrets, nobody would advocate wide dissemination of the design specifics of a hydrogen bomb. We understand that and get along with it. This administration has taken that understanding to greater lengths than any previous one.
There are times it has worked to the government's advantage in the legal arena, see Chuck for... to see how this worked for kidnapping and torturing the wrong person in the Supreme Court. The government should be able to wiretap because it says so, it's secret so you can't know why or even how much, just 'cause. Habeas Corpus gets to go away because, well it's secret, because the government asserts it is in its interest while saving us from those secret threats. A Portland lawyer wrongfully accused cannot have back his own documents because they are secret. A report on Iraqi government corruption compiled by the State Department is secret at the same time the administration is asking for hundreds of billions of dollars for Iraq. It certainly cannot be public, it would embarrass our government or maybe the corrupt Iraqis. We're headed down a rabbit hole here folks and the outcomes are all bad.
Laws are passed affecting our civil liberties without review, citizens can be disappeared, crimes cannot be defended against, the government engages in policies nationally and globally that we are responsible for and yet know nothing of. It gets deeper and deeper, the President asserts the authority to ignore or enforce laws in secret at his discretion. No one is allowed to know what the government is up to, you're allowed platitudes and "trust me."
So, we come to a certain pass that we should never have come close to, your vote is meaningless, your rights are meaningless, all that matters is what the Executive branch wants. That means that what exists is force. Reason and compromise are without import, the interests of the government are protected and projected through force and the countervening forces of legislation and judicial review are abrogated, so the citizen's interests are only protected by whatever level of force they are willing to avail themselves of.
Does anybody in the Executive Branch stop to think about anything at all? Are they so divorced from reality that they do not understand that the limiting of options reduces action to its simplest forms? Democracy is a very complicated and somewhat delicate system, it operates through compromise achieved through informed debate, if you short circuit that process you stop it. If you remove information from the scheme debate becomes nothing but partisan power seeking and the public's interests vanish from the process. Why should any citizen consider himself represented? Why should any citizen consider themselves safe around their government? The rabbit hole is not where we want to be, we cannot go there without chaos ensuing at the very simplest point, the only reasonable approach for a citizen is to be armed and dangerous at all times in any contact with the government. What is that? The only possible redress from the government is revenge taken through force?
If someone proposed to set you on such a course you'd consider them lunatics and have them locked away for the protection of them and others. Is it incremental stupidity that afflicts them or an actual agenda? These people have to go and all their enablers with them. I include the Democratic Party weasels who cave to every BushCo whim. It is that, or chaos.
Our government has secrets, always has had and in a real world should have some. It is in the nature of government to have some secrets, nobody would advocate wide dissemination of the design specifics of a hydrogen bomb. We understand that and get along with it. This administration has taken that understanding to greater lengths than any previous one.
There are times it has worked to the government's advantage in the legal arena, see Chuck for... to see how this worked for kidnapping and torturing the wrong person in the Supreme Court. The government should be able to wiretap because it says so, it's secret so you can't know why or even how much, just 'cause. Habeas Corpus gets to go away because, well it's secret, because the government asserts it is in its interest while saving us from those secret threats. A Portland lawyer wrongfully accused cannot have back his own documents because they are secret. A report on Iraqi government corruption compiled by the State Department is secret at the same time the administration is asking for hundreds of billions of dollars for Iraq. It certainly cannot be public, it would embarrass our government or maybe the corrupt Iraqis. We're headed down a rabbit hole here folks and the outcomes are all bad.
Laws are passed affecting our civil liberties without review, citizens can be disappeared, crimes cannot be defended against, the government engages in policies nationally and globally that we are responsible for and yet know nothing of. It gets deeper and deeper, the President asserts the authority to ignore or enforce laws in secret at his discretion. No one is allowed to know what the government is up to, you're allowed platitudes and "trust me."
So, we come to a certain pass that we should never have come close to, your vote is meaningless, your rights are meaningless, all that matters is what the Executive branch wants. That means that what exists is force. Reason and compromise are without import, the interests of the government are protected and projected through force and the countervening forces of legislation and judicial review are abrogated, so the citizen's interests are only protected by whatever level of force they are willing to avail themselves of.
Does anybody in the Executive Branch stop to think about anything at all? Are they so divorced from reality that they do not understand that the limiting of options reduces action to its simplest forms? Democracy is a very complicated and somewhat delicate system, it operates through compromise achieved through informed debate, if you short circuit that process you stop it. If you remove information from the scheme debate becomes nothing but partisan power seeking and the public's interests vanish from the process. Why should any citizen consider himself represented? Why should any citizen consider themselves safe around their government? The rabbit hole is not where we want to be, we cannot go there without chaos ensuing at the very simplest point, the only reasonable approach for a citizen is to be armed and dangerous at all times in any contact with the government. What is that? The only possible redress from the government is revenge taken through force?
If someone proposed to set you on such a course you'd consider them lunatics and have them locked away for the protection of them and others. Is it incremental stupidity that afflicts them or an actual agenda? These people have to go and all their enablers with them. I include the Democratic Party weasels who cave to every BushCo whim. It is that, or chaos.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Qwest, Bush, Revenge, Immunity
Ex-Ceo of Qwest, Joe Nacchio on trial in Denver for insider trading attempted to present evidence showing that BushCo retaliated against Qwest in awarding contracts for Qwest's refusal to turn over to the NSA its customer's logs. The reason that would be important to Nacchio is that he had reason to believe Qwest had the inside track on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of secret network building contracts while staff was warning him Qwest might not make its numbers.
Partially redacted documents indicate that Federal Judge Edward Nottingham refused to allow a defense argument about retaliation, documents show that he had a Feb 27, 2001 meeting to discuss the $100 million contract and another topic, a request which he repeatedly refused as illegal and inappropriate. In May 2006 USA Today revealed that Qwest, unlike ATT and Verizon had balked at providing the NSA with its customer calling patterns. Rocky Mountain News has this story with more details.
The odd part, unless you find the idea of BushCo exacting revenge odd, is that today George II threatened to veto a House wire tap authorization bill unless it contained retroactive immunity from civil action for telecoms involved in NSA wiretaps. Nacchio was convicted of 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million worth of stock sales last spring, this fall ATT and Verizon have the President of the US going to bat for them while they face a whole raft of law suits, for illegally disclosing private customer data. If it's any consolation to Qwest, I dumped ATT for this crap and went back to Qwest and upgraded my account - a lot. Small change in that world, but it was an action I could take.
Much of what we can do in response to events is small change, but in aggregation it could amount to something, but it is, at least, taking action, a positive force. This blog is small change, my readership numbers amount to a neighborhood, not an end of town, just a neighborhood, but it is an action taken. My readers take that much action, the reading, and that is something. Some take very active parts in issues, some write their own blogs, just the action of reading this stuff is engagement and a willingness to think for one's own self.
I refuse to knuckle under to BushCo's terrorism tactics, I am neither afraid of their 'enemies' nor of them. What they can take away from me I can afford to lose, what they cannot ever get is what is important to me. Sure, giving my business to Qwest is a small act of defiance, this blog isn't much more, but what I actually do to them isn't what's important, it is important - to me - that I remain self actualized and defiant. I will define my relationship to the world, not them.
And, thanks for sharing in my defiance, for being one of those people.
Partially redacted documents indicate that Federal Judge Edward Nottingham refused to allow a defense argument about retaliation, documents show that he had a Feb 27, 2001 meeting to discuss the $100 million contract and another topic, a request which he repeatedly refused as illegal and inappropriate. In May 2006 USA Today revealed that Qwest, unlike ATT and Verizon had balked at providing the NSA with its customer calling patterns. Rocky Mountain News has this story with more details.
The odd part, unless you find the idea of BushCo exacting revenge odd, is that today George II threatened to veto a House wire tap authorization bill unless it contained retroactive immunity from civil action for telecoms involved in NSA wiretaps. Nacchio was convicted of 19 counts of insider trading for $52 million worth of stock sales last spring, this fall ATT and Verizon have the President of the US going to bat for them while they face a whole raft of law suits, for illegally disclosing private customer data. If it's any consolation to Qwest, I dumped ATT for this crap and went back to Qwest and upgraded my account - a lot. Small change in that world, but it was an action I could take.
Much of what we can do in response to events is small change, but in aggregation it could amount to something, but it is, at least, taking action, a positive force. This blog is small change, my readership numbers amount to a neighborhood, not an end of town, just a neighborhood, but it is an action taken. My readers take that much action, the reading, and that is something. Some take very active parts in issues, some write their own blogs, just the action of reading this stuff is engagement and a willingness to think for one's own self.
I refuse to knuckle under to BushCo's terrorism tactics, I am neither afraid of their 'enemies' nor of them. What they can take away from me I can afford to lose, what they cannot ever get is what is important to me. Sure, giving my business to Qwest is a small act of defiance, this blog isn't much more, but what I actually do to them isn't what's important, it is important - to me - that I remain self actualized and defiant. I will define my relationship to the world, not them.
And, thanks for sharing in my defiance, for being one of those people.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
The Supreme Court, Torture, and Secrets
If you were not scared of what the government could do to you and get away with it, there's a new dodge in town - it's called states secrets privilege. Exactly right, the government, according to the Supreme Court can kidnap someone and have them detained and tortured and there's no civil remedy if the Administration asserts that it is a state's secret involved. Apparently kidnapping and torture aren't bad enough, they also managed to get the wrong guy.
Kahled al-Masra, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was kidnapped in Macedonia and taken to Afghanistan by the US were he was tortured. He was held for five months and then released in Albania after apparently having been mistaken for someone with a similar name. He sued the government and lost today in the Supreme Court on the basis of the state's secrets doctrine established in 1953 to keep lawyers for survivors of three civilians killed in a secret plane test from getting the official accident report which contained design elements. What the specific design elements of an airplane not being handed out has to do with kidnapping and torturing a guy seems to miss a whole bunch of legal observers. Me too.
What this really seems to say is that the government can do just exactly as it wishes to you and walk away scott free as long as it says the magic words - secret secret secret. Makes you wonder about a few things, like pursuing redress of grievances. You see my real problem with this kind of crap is that by making the government legally unaccountable you encourage an account taking of another sort. There are people who if treated in this fashion wouldn't take "tough" for an answer, they might decide they wanted just a bit more. I can assure you that in my case ever letting me go would not be particularly smart. Very much not smart. You make your own call.
Kahled al-Masra, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was kidnapped in Macedonia and taken to Afghanistan by the US were he was tortured. He was held for five months and then released in Albania after apparently having been mistaken for someone with a similar name. He sued the government and lost today in the Supreme Court on the basis of the state's secrets doctrine established in 1953 to keep lawyers for survivors of three civilians killed in a secret plane test from getting the official accident report which contained design elements. What the specific design elements of an airplane not being handed out has to do with kidnapping and torturing a guy seems to miss a whole bunch of legal observers. Me too.
What this really seems to say is that the government can do just exactly as it wishes to you and walk away scott free as long as it says the magic words - secret secret secret. Makes you wonder about a few things, like pursuing redress of grievances. You see my real problem with this kind of crap is that by making the government legally unaccountable you encourage an account taking of another sort. There are people who if treated in this fashion wouldn't take "tough" for an answer, they might decide they wanted just a bit more. I can assure you that in my case ever letting me go would not be particularly smart. Very much not smart. You make your own call.
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Lead Guantanamo Prosecutor Quits
The military commissions in Guantanamo got messy again this week, after being shut down by federal court, ruled un-Constitutional by the Supremes, and re-authorized by Congress, shut down again by military court it has entered a new difficulty. The lead prosecutor, AF Col. Morris Davis has resigned over an issue of independence. AF Brig Gen Thomas Hartmann has asserted the right to supervise aspects of the prosecution as legal advisor to the administrator overseeing the trials.
McClatchy's Miami Herald has the story which is murky at best surrounded by the secrecy so prevalent in BushCo. Nobody is really talking other than Bryan Whitman, Pentagon spokesman, and that came down to Hartmann has the authority and no problems will ensue with Davis' resignation. Take your best guesses what's going on.
McClatchy's Miami Herald has the story which is murky at best surrounded by the secrecy so prevalent in BushCo. Nobody is really talking other than Bryan Whitman, Pentagon spokesman, and that came down to Hartmann has the authority and no problems will ensue with Davis' resignation. Take your best guesses what's going on.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Trade Deal, Democrats, Bush
May 10th a handful of Democrats announced approval of a trade deal with BushCo, the details of which are secret, except evidently from the Lobbyist's - you know, the official political party in power. The nations apparently involved are Panama, Peru, Korea, and Columbia which supposedly was to be excluded for its human rights violations and its government's linkage to right wing death squads, targeting among others, union organizers. Some of the happy noise comes from National Association of Manufacturers, the Financial Services Forum, Microsoft and the Emergency Committee on Trade and BushCo. Every time labor and actual small business has taken a hit from trade deals these have been amongst the cheerleaders.
There certainly are questions that can be asked, first and foremost, why the secrecy? There is exactly one reason to do things in secret - you don't want people to know what you're up to. Just exactly who is most affected by trade deals? The people who don't get to know what is going on. How is it that the BUSINESS lobby is so happy about secrets? Evidently because it's not secret if you're one of those who gets to profit and gets to 'do' the public. How is it the Democratic leadership is happy and unions and environmental groups don't know what's going on?
There are warning signs all over this "deal," first and most emphatic is that BushCo likes it, this says something clearly, the average American is going to get screwed and the wealthy elite and mega-corps will get a gift on the back of the average American. If the Lobbyist Party likes it real well, rather than tolerates it, the average Americans take it in the neck. Secrecy should scream "sell-out," there is no other good reason for it. The exclusion of those with an agenda other than the well-fare of the mega-corp and wealthy elite states clearly the agenda in operation.
There certainly are Democratic reps who won't sit still for this, but there is still in operation the pukes who'd sleep with the Republicans on something like this. The political sell-out of the ordinary citizen still goes on and this time the Dems are a part of it, like the bad old days before you had only Republicans to blame for it. Will the Left lay down on this? Why not, they've turned into the working person's worst enemy in the issue of amnesty and illegal hiring and the plutocrat's tool.
It is a truly strange time when an advocate of the worker gets lumped in with the Right wingnuts and the tools of the elite claim the badge "progressive." Ever hear of "Co-option?" It is the tool of the political elite which involves using non-germain issues to bring ordinary opponents into the fold in defiance of their own interests. If you have some idea that Ted K and Hillary are so worried about being nice to "illegals" you ignore the interests they serve and who donate large amounts to them. Crushing the economic interests of the American worker benefits just exactly whom? My liberal friends, you've become hopeless, "the man" has sucked you in and purchased your allegiance with cheap lying rhetoric and emotional propaganda. You've pretty much abrogated any legitimacy in this trade deal issue, so just keep quiet while you watch the sell-out. I won't.
There certainly are questions that can be asked, first and foremost, why the secrecy? There is exactly one reason to do things in secret - you don't want people to know what you're up to. Just exactly who is most affected by trade deals? The people who don't get to know what is going on. How is it that the BUSINESS lobby is so happy about secrets? Evidently because it's not secret if you're one of those who gets to profit and gets to 'do' the public. How is it the Democratic leadership is happy and unions and environmental groups don't know what's going on?
There are warning signs all over this "deal," first and most emphatic is that BushCo likes it, this says something clearly, the average American is going to get screwed and the wealthy elite and mega-corps will get a gift on the back of the average American. If the Lobbyist Party likes it real well, rather than tolerates it, the average Americans take it in the neck. Secrecy should scream "sell-out," there is no other good reason for it. The exclusion of those with an agenda other than the well-fare of the mega-corp and wealthy elite states clearly the agenda in operation.
There certainly are Democratic reps who won't sit still for this, but there is still in operation the pukes who'd sleep with the Republicans on something like this. The political sell-out of the ordinary citizen still goes on and this time the Dems are a part of it, like the bad old days before you had only Republicans to blame for it. Will the Left lay down on this? Why not, they've turned into the working person's worst enemy in the issue of amnesty and illegal hiring and the plutocrat's tool.
It is a truly strange time when an advocate of the worker gets lumped in with the Right wingnuts and the tools of the elite claim the badge "progressive." Ever hear of "Co-option?" It is the tool of the political elite which involves using non-germain issues to bring ordinary opponents into the fold in defiance of their own interests. If you have some idea that Ted K and Hillary are so worried about being nice to "illegals" you ignore the interests they serve and who donate large amounts to them. Crushing the economic interests of the American worker benefits just exactly whom? My liberal friends, you've become hopeless, "the man" has sucked you in and purchased your allegiance with cheap lying rhetoric and emotional propaganda. You've pretty much abrogated any legitimacy in this trade deal issue, so just keep quiet while you watch the sell-out. I won't.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
You Could Make This Up
If you were to try to write a novel about it, you'd have to look no farther than Kafka's The Trial. The NYT tells about two cases, one in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals with the ACLU challenging wiretaps outside FISA and the other in Portland, OR a civil case before Federal District Judge Garr King asking for damages for the charity al Haramain Islamic Foundation for wiretapping.
Justice Dept has asked that the Cincinnati case be ruled moot since the Dept is now 'operating' under FISA (oh sure, but we don't get to know how), that hasn't been ruled on yet. The odd part, is how the Justice Dept is operating, they are filing their court papers, in their own building, filing with themselves. The court isn't very happy.
The Oregon case is weirder still. The FBI accidentally sent the charity's lawyers a copy of the wiretap authorization, copies of that then went to several people in the US and some in foreign countries. The case resulted from that document. The FBI demanded the copies back and got them from the US but made no attempt to get back those out of country. The government even "scrubbed" the computer of a lawyer. Somehow a copy was filed with the court by plaintiffs, the FBI went to the judge and demanded it back, he refused, they insisted, it's filed in a Bureau safe room. The plaintiffs are not allowed to use the document in court. In fact, the government took the position that their memories belonged to the government. The Judge finally ruled that the document was out, memories in. One of the government's lawyers refused to disclose to the judge whether he had a certain security clearance saying that was classified, the judge invoked Alice in Wonderland. When Judge King wanted to know who the document was secret from considering how it had gotten around, Justice said, "form anybody who hasn't seen it." I kid you not.
In BushCo-land life is a strange thing, things the Constitution says the government can't take away get taken away because the Constitution didn't say specifically you have them, secrecy is the order of the day unless it's your own privacy that's bothered, no words mean what dictionaries say they mean, only what the Decider says they mean, and the Cheshire Cat is a terrorist. I'd just about bet that if you had an internet pal in Saudi Arabia you could get a copy of this super secret document, the one the lawyers can't look at, but you could never sell a novel based on it, everyone would say the premise is stupid. Life in these United States...
Justice Dept has asked that the Cincinnati case be ruled moot since the Dept is now 'operating' under FISA (oh sure, but we don't get to know how), that hasn't been ruled on yet. The odd part, is how the Justice Dept is operating, they are filing their court papers, in their own building, filing with themselves. The court isn't very happy.
The Oregon case is weirder still. The FBI accidentally sent the charity's lawyers a copy of the wiretap authorization, copies of that then went to several people in the US and some in foreign countries. The case resulted from that document. The FBI demanded the copies back and got them from the US but made no attempt to get back those out of country. The government even "scrubbed" the computer of a lawyer. Somehow a copy was filed with the court by plaintiffs, the FBI went to the judge and demanded it back, he refused, they insisted, it's filed in a Bureau safe room. The plaintiffs are not allowed to use the document in court. In fact, the government took the position that their memories belonged to the government. The Judge finally ruled that the document was out, memories in. One of the government's lawyers refused to disclose to the judge whether he had a certain security clearance saying that was classified, the judge invoked Alice in Wonderland. When Judge King wanted to know who the document was secret from considering how it had gotten around, Justice said, "form anybody who hasn't seen it." I kid you not.
In BushCo-land life is a strange thing, things the Constitution says the government can't take away get taken away because the Constitution didn't say specifically you have them, secrecy is the order of the day unless it's your own privacy that's bothered, no words mean what dictionaries say they mean, only what the Decider says they mean, and the Cheshire Cat is a terrorist. I'd just about bet that if you had an internet pal in Saudi Arabia you could get a copy of this super secret document, the one the lawyers can't look at, but you could never sell a novel based on it, everyone would say the premise is stupid. Life in these United States...
Saturday, January 06, 2007
None of Your Darn Business
I suppose that my readers may have noticed that the BushCo regime has a penchant for secrecy, like classifying more documents than any other administration. The Prez likes to sign bills and then out of the public eye write out just exactly how they do not apply to him, this particular noblesse oblige is called a signing statement and I've complained about that before. But really this one has to stand alone, a five page document dated May 17th states that all documents detailing entry to and exit from the White House are no longer the property of the Secret Service, but that of the White House as Presidential records - thus BushCo property.
Seem arcane? Nope, this means that as Presidential Papers they're confidential, you know secret. It seems that the Abramoff visits sparked some fires, like the WaPo suing under the FoIA for the Secret Service records from the period. The White House didn't really know the dude, he was only there a few times for photo ops ...a House committee found 485 contacts with Presidential aides and at least 10 with Karl Rove over the three year period.
It is of course not just about Abramoff, there's the little issue of who has been visiting Dick Cheney, something they don't want getting around either. Isn't there just a touch of irony in this piece of news so closely following on the mail opening signing? Your mail is subject to Presidential whim, but it's none of your darn business who visits your White House.
Seem arcane? Nope, this means that as Presidential Papers they're confidential, you know secret. It seems that the Abramoff visits sparked some fires, like the WaPo suing under the FoIA for the Secret Service records from the period. The White House didn't really know the dude, he was only there a few times for photo ops ...a House committee found 485 contacts with Presidential aides and at least 10 with Karl Rove over the three year period.
It is of course not just about Abramoff, there's the little issue of who has been visiting Dick Cheney, something they don't want getting around either. Isn't there just a touch of irony in this piece of news so closely following on the mail opening signing? Your mail is subject to Presidential whim, but it's none of your darn business who visits your White House.
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