Bush Fears for Nation's Soul

"The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects. . . .

"The science board critique comes as ethical concerns about harsh interrogations are being voiced by current and former government officials. The top commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, sent a letter to troops this month warning that 'expedient methods' using force violated American values.

"In a blistering lecture delivered last month, [Philip D. Zelikow,] a former adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called 'immoral' some interrogation tactics used by the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon. . . .

"The Bush administration is nearing completion of a long-delayed executive order that will set new rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. The order is expected to ban the harshest techniques used in the past, including the simulated drowning tactic known as waterboarding, but to authorize some methods that go beyond those allowed in the military by the Army Field Manual."

Law professor Marty Lederman blogs that the Times story buries the lede -- namely Zelikow's previously unreported statements and the imminent executive order.

Andrew Sullivan blogs for the Atlantic that "the interrogation methods approved and defended by this president are not new. Many have been used in the past. The very phrase used by the president to describe torture-that-isn't-somehow-torture -- 'enhanced interrogation techniques' -- is a term originally coined by the Nazis. The techniques are indistinguishable. The methods were clearly understood in 1948 as war-crimes. The punishment for them was death."

In Iraq

John Ward Anderson writes for The Washington Post: "The U.S. military announced Tuesday that 10 American soldiers were killed in Iraq on Memorial Day, making May the deadliest month for U.S. troops in 2 1/2 years, as insurgents continued attacks on government and civilian targets. . . .

"U.S. officials have warned that the strategy of putting more American troops on the streets and in small combat outposts, part of a security plan launched in February, would lead to higher U.S. casualties. But Tuesday's carnage suggested that the effort had not created a safer security environment."

Could Be Worse?

CBS reports: "In his first American television interview since the U.S. troop surge began in February, Iraq's prime minister told CBS News chief foreign correspondent Lara Logan on Tuesday that the additional forces have prevented an even greater catastrophe in Iraq.

"'If the Baghdad security plan had not been implemented, we would have a true civil war in Iraq,' Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said."

Iraq and the Party

Susan Saulny writes in the New York Times about interviews with voters, elected officials and others in Illinois, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania -- home to 4 of the 11 Republican congressmen who recently met with Bush and delivered a warning that conditions in Iraq needed to improve soon because public support of the war was crumbling.

Those interviews "suggest that more Republican voters are opposing the war, and that independents who might have voted Republican are moving toward supporting a Democrat."

Opinion Watch

Harold Meyerson writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "Of all the absurdities attending our unending war in Iraq, the greatest is this: We are fighting to defend that which is not there.

"We are fighting for a national government that is not national but sectarian, and has shown no capacity to govern. We are training Iraq's security forces to combat sectarian violence though those forces are thoroughly sectarian and have themselves engaged in large-scale sectarian violence. We are fighting for a nonsectarian, pluralistic Iraq, though whatever nonsectarian and pluralistic institutions existed before our invasion have long since been blasted out of existence. . . .

"Every day, George W. Bush asks young Americans to die in defense of an Iraq that has ceased to exist (if it ever did) in the hearts and minds of Iraqis."

Over the weekend, Andrew J. Bacevich, a prominent anti-war historian, wrote in the wake of the death of his son in Iraq: "The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as 'the will of the people.'"

Politicians, he wrote, listen only to money.

"Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought."

Valerie Plame Watch

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write for Newsweek: "In new court filings, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a 'covert' CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a 'cover identity' in order to disguise her relationship with the agency. . . .

"Libby's lawyers, and many conservative partisans of his cause, have argued that Libby should be spared prison in part because there was no underlying crime in the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's identity. . . .

"A major theme of Libby's defenders has been that, at the time of her outing, Valerie Wilson was little more than a desk analyst who was not covered by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act--the 1982 law making it a crime to disclose the identity of a covert officer. Fitzgerald was originally appointed to investigate whether this statute had been violated. But in two memos -- and in a document entitled, ' Unclassified Summary of Valerie Wilson's CIA Employment and Cover History' -- Fitzgerald attempts to shoot down the idea that the agent's job was mostly analysis."

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald links to some of the previous insistences from the "right wing noise machine" that Plame was not covert. "Many people who listen to right-wing commentators such as these get their 'news' about the world primarily, even exclusively, from these sources," Greenwald notes. "And these sources, knowing that, routinely create their own self-affirming though wildly warped realities, in the process denying the most established facts or asserting propositions for which there is no factual basis."

Even as the Libby case was about to go to the jury, the Washington Post published a scathing opinion piece by Victoria Toensing in which she charged Fitzgerald "with ignoring the fact that there was no basis for a criminal investigation from the day he was appointed" because he "should have known (all he had to do was ask the CIA) that Plame was not covert, knowledge that should have stopped the investigation right there."

U.S. Attorney Watch

McClatchy's Hutcheson got one question in to Bush about the U.S. attorney firings in yesterday's interview. Bush's answer, not surprisingly, was entirely nonresponsive.

"Q How central a role did Rove play in the U.S. attorney business? That's what everybody wants to know. Was he the main guy drawing up the list?

"THE PRESIDENT: Just look at the facts as they've come out.

"Q It's unclear.

"THE PRESIDENT: There has been plenty of testimony, plenty of hearings, plenty of statements. And one thing is for certain, that there was no wrongdoing done."

The USA Today editorial board writes today: "While the department has never been entirely insulated from politics, its backbone of career lawyers and 93 U.S. attorneys, whom once appointed are rarely fired, can ensure a high level of independence -- but only if the attorney general and the president keep political meddling in check. Gonzales and President Bush have failed to do this.

"Despite bipartisan calls for Gonzales' resignation, he clings to his job, supported by Bush, who says the attorney general hasn't done anything wrong. So far as is known, Gonzales hasn't broken any laws, but to say he has done no wrong is to say that it's fine to treat the Justice Department as an agent of White House political operations. The nation's chief law enforcement officer should be held to a higher standard than that."

The Sacramento Bee editorial board wrote over the weekend that "it seems more and more apparent that behind the U.S. attorney scandal is a blatant effort of the Justice Department to tamper with the U.S. election process, trumping up voter fraud as an issue to intimidate voters and suppress voting in the United States.

"The mention of voter fraud conjures up images of deceitful voters knowingly and willingly voting illegally, or of sleazy political operatives stuffing ballot boxes and paying voters for toeing the party line. But in this instance, the phrase seems to refer to high-level officials in the Bush administration using the machinery of government to corrupt the electoral process.

"This is a serious matter calling for investigation by an outside special counsel. But there's the rub. Since the independent counsel act expired in 1999, it's up to the attorney general to order an investigation. . . .

"If the attorney general and the White House can't put such an appointment in motion, Congress will have no choice but to consider all the tools at its disposal -- including the impeachment of the attorney general."

FISA Rebuttal

Democratic Rep. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, responds to a May 21 Washington Post op-ed by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, which was full of falsehoods about the nation's wiretapping laws.

( Glenn Greenwald exposed McConnell's dishonesty that same day.)

Here are two follow-up questions for McConnell: How did those falsehoods appear in your article? What does this episode do to your credibility?

Destroy the Data

Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: "A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states. . . .

"The Justice Department filed the letter Friday in a lawsuit by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited Cheney at his official residence. . . .

"The letter regarding the vice president's residence was in addition to an agreement quietly signed between the White House and the Secret Service a year ago when questions were raised about visits to the executive compound by convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff.

"That agreement, which didn't surface publicly until late last year, said White House entry and exit logs were presidential records not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act."

Cheney's Bad Record With Predictions

ThinkProgress notes that it's been exactly two years since Cheney declared that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes" and predicted "the level of activity that we see today from a military standpoint, I think, will clearly decline."

So what is Cheney, the ace prognosticator, predicting these days?

From a speech on April 27: "The reality is that if our coalition withdrew before Iraqis could defend themselves, radical factions would battle for dominance in that country. The violence would spread throughout the country, and be very difficult to contain. Having tasted victory in Iraq, jihadists could look for new missions. Many would head for Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban. Others might set out for capitals across the Middle East, spreading more sorrow and discord as they eliminate dissenters and work to undermine moderate governments. Still others could find their targets and victims in other countries on other continents."

Nothing to Get Alarmed About

Laura McGann writes for TPM Muckraker: "When a presidential directive appeared on the White House's Web site on May 9, seemingly expanding the president's powers after a catastrophic attack, readers began emailing us asking why there had been no uproar in the media or amongst civil liberties groups.

"The consensus amongst experts seems to be that the directive, aimed at establishing 'continuity of government' after a major disaster, is not new nor does the policy seem to expand executive power.

"In fact, Mike German, the policy counsel to the ACLU's Washington office told me that an executive continuity plan actually might 'not be that bad of an idea.'"

Cartoon Watch

Ann Telnaes on the Libby-Cheney connection (see yesterday's column); Tom Toles on talking with Iran.