Bush's Brazen Request

Question: "On Iran, why should the American public trust that the administration isn't making a case laying the groundwork for military action, when you have the President and the Vice President talking about World War III and the possibility of the country facing serious consequences if they don't stop their nuclear pursuit?"

Fratto: "Look, the President and the Vice President, Secretary Rice, Secretary Gates, have all been incredibly clear and consistent in our message on Iran, and that is that we first seek a diplomatic solution. . . ."

Question: "So it's a coincidence the President and Vice President both step up their rhetoric in days of each other?"

Fratto: "I wouldn't call it stepping up rhetoric. And in fact, what the Vice President said I thought was a very clear review of the situation in the Middle East. And by the way, it's not at all different from what he has said before and what the President has said before and what Secretary Rice has said before in very clear ways."

George Packer, blogging for the New Yorker, tracks the genesis of Cheney's theory, asserted in his speech on Sunday, that Iran is promoting violence in Iraq because it is "[f]earful of a strong, independent Arab Shia community emerging in Iraq."

I wrote yesterday that it seemed like a novel argument, but Packer writes that the underlying theory dates back to at least four years before the invasion.

And how does the theory hold up? Terribly, writes Packer: The invasion and occupation have "brought politicians to power in Baghdad who are closer to Tehran than to Washington. The leading Shiite party, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, whose No. 2, Vice-President Adel Abdel Mahdi, remains a favorite of Cheney's office, was created in Iran, by the Khomeini regime; its armed wing, the Badr Corps, is an offspring of the Revolutionary Guard. Every Shiite party and militia in Iraq has ties to and gets money and other support from some Iranian faction."

Packer concludes: "Certain corners of the Administration seem to exist in order to provide employment security for wrong theories and exploded assumptions that can live on without fear of the sack, insulated from facts, providing language for a Vice-Presidential speech and continuing to inform policy at the highest level. This is a working description of ideology, and it is a dangerous thing, whether in Tehran or in Washington."

FISA Watch

Ellen Nakashima writes in The Washington Post: "Senate Judiciary Committee members yesterday angrily accused the White House of allowing the Senate Intelligence Committee to review documents on its warrantless surveillance program in return for agreeing that telecommunications companies should get immunity from lawsuits.

"Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the ranking Republican, said any such agreement would be 'unacceptable,' signaling that legislation granting immunity to certain telecom carriers could run into trouble. Leahy and Specter demanded that the documents, which were provided only to the Intelligence Committee, be turned over to the Judiciary Committee as well. . . .

"On Friday, White House press secretary Dana Perino said that Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and ranking member Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.)'s staff 'showed a willingness' to include immunity in their legislation. 'Because they were willing to do that, we were willing to show them some of the documents that they asked to see.' . . .

"Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said yesterday that what the White House did was 'not exactly' a quid pro quo but that the intelligence panel 'expected to legislate on the liability' and so 'we've been accommodative on sharing information.'"

The Washington Post editorial board writes that "it is important for lawmakers to understand precisely what conduct they are immunizing. The Bush administration seems to be taking the indefensible position that it will only share this information with those who have already agreed to agree with it."

Mukasey Watch

Adam Liptak wrote in the New York Times over the weekend that, in his two days of testimony last week, Bush Attorney General Nominee Michael B. Mukasey made it clear that he "believes presidential power to be robust, expansive and sometimes beyond the power of Congress to control.

"That is perfectly aligned with the Bush administration's views, and if Mr. Mukasey was initially a refreshing presence to the Senate Judiciary Committee, it was only because he justified in plain terms what other administration lawyers have said in secret memorandums often cloaked in obfuscation."

Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld writes in a New York Times op-ed today: "At his confirmation hearings last week, Michael B. Mukasey, President Bush's nominee for attorney general, was asked whether the president is required to obey federal statutes. Judge Mukasey replied, 'That would have to depend on whether what goes outside the statute nonetheless lies within the authority of the president to defend the country.' . . .

"[B]efore voting to confirm him as the nation's chief law enforcement officer, the Senate should demand that he retract this statement. It is a dangerous confusion and distortion of the single most fundamental principle of the Constitution -- that everyone, including the president, is subject to the rule of law. . . .

"What he said, and what many members of the current administration have claimed, would radically transform this accepted point of law into a completely different and un-American concept of executive power.

"According to Judge Mukasey's statement, as well as other parts of his testimony, the president's authority 'to defend the nation' trumps his obligation to obey the law. . . .

"If Judge Mukasey cannot say plainly that the president must obey a valid statute, he ought not to be the nation's next attorney general."

Bruce Fein writes in a Washington Times opinion column: "Mr. Mukasey denounced torture as unconstitutional, but declined to rebuke President Bush's signing statement issued in conjunction with the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 claiming inherent constitutional power to torture to gather foreign intelligence. Indeed, Mr. Mukasey expressed no qualms about hundreds of Mr. Bush's signing statements declaring his intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law that the president believes are unconstitutional. . . .

"Mr. Mukasey has asserted that the government deserves a presumption of trust and honesty despite the notoriety of the executive branch -- including the Bush administration -- of lying to aggrandize power. . . .

"The attorney general-designate supports every dubious premise that President Bush has trumpeted since September 11, 2001, to cripple checks and balances: that the conflict with international terrorism constitutes permanent war in which every square inch of the United States is an active battlefield where military force and military law can be employed at the president's discretion; that global terrorists must be subject to a special system of military or quasi-military justice that shortchanges procedural protections against government abuses or overreaching; that transparency should be subservient to government secrecy under the twin banners of national security or the confidentiality of presidential advice; and, that congressional oversight is a needless vexation to the executive branch because legislators are motivated by petty and partisan ambitions.

"When the Senate confirms Mr. Mukasey, it will have confirmed its own reduction to an inkblot among the Constitution's checks and balances."

University of Missouri-Columbia law professor Frank Bowman writes in Slate that Mukasey "is wrong about the fundamental moral question of whether reasons of state can justify or excuse the official embrace of torture. And he is even more wrong--dangerously, subversively wrong--about the place of the president in American constitutional government. If the senators on the judiciary committee really listened to what Mukasey said, and listened as senators and citizens rather than as nervous party politicians, they would reject his nomination on constitutional principle and as a matter of institutional self-defense. . . .

"All other considerations aside, any person who cannot say, plainly and unambiguously, that water-boarding is torture and is both immoral and illegal should not be the attorney general of the United States. Period."

Torture Watch

The American Civil Liberties Union yesterday announced the publication of a new book: Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond.

According to the ACLU: "Based on thousands of government documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, the book supplies substantial evidence that the torture and abuse of prisoners was systemic and resulted from decisions made by senior U.S. officials, both military and civilian."

Among several details in the book "that warrant public attention and further inquiry," the ACLU said, is this one: "Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who asked the Pentagon to approve more aggressive interrogation methods for use at Guantanamo, claims to have received 'marching orders' from President Bush."

Federal Government Incompetence Watch, Part I

Leslie Eaton writes in the New York Times: "A federal judge declared a mistrial on Monday in what was widely seen as the government's flagship terrorism-financing case after prosecutors failed to persuade a jury to convict five leaders of a Muslim charity on any charges, or even to reach a verdict on many of the 197 counts. . . .

"The decision is 'a stunning setback for the government, there's no other way of looking at it,' said Matthew D. Orwig, a partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal here who was, until recently, United States attorney for the Eastern District of Texas.

"'This is a message, a two-by-four in the middle of the forehead,' said Mr. Orwig, who was appointed by President Bush and served on the United States attorney general's advisory subcommittee on terrorism and national security. 'If this doesn't get their attention, they are just in complete denial,' he said of Justice Department officials, who he said might not have recognized how difficult such cases are to prosecute.

"David D. Cole, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, said the jury's verdict called into question the government's tactics in freezing the assets of charities using secret evidence that the charities cannot see, much less rebut. When, at trial, prosecutors 'have to put their evidence on the table, they can't convict anyone of anything,' he said. 'It suggests the government is really pushing beyond where the law justifies them going.'"

Greg Krikorian writes in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush announced in December 2001 that the Texas-based charity's assets were being seized, and in a Rose Garden [ announcement] accused the organization of financing terrorism. Monday's outcome, however, raised serious questions about those allegations as well. . . .

"Juror William Neal, 33, who said his father worked in military intelligence, said that the government's case had 'so many gaps' that he regarded the prosecution as 'a waste of time.' . . .

"Neal said it seemed that the government 'really used fear' to try to sway the panel, but in the end the case came down to weak evidence."

Federal Government Incompetence Watch, Part II

Eric Schmitt and David Rohde write in the New York Times: "A pair of new reports have delivered sharply critical judgments about the State Department's performance in overseeing work done by the private companies that the government relies on increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out delicate security work and other missions.

"A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraq assails the department for poor coordination, communication, oversight and accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA, according to people who have been briefed on the report. . . .

"[I]n presenting its recommendations to Rice in a 45-minute briefing on Monday, the four-member panel found serious fault with virtually every aspect of the department's security practices, especially in and around Baghdad, where Blackwater has responsibility. . . .

"At the same time, a government audit expected to be released Tuesday says that records documenting the work of DynCorp, the State Department's largest contractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say 'specifically what it received' for most of the $1.2 billion it has paid the company since 2004 to train the police officers in Iraq."

Candidate Watch

Where do the presidential candidates stand on rolling back Bush's executive-power grab? I'll try to keep an eye on their statements.

Michael Tomasky writes in the Guardian: "Hillary Clinton would launch a policy review as president with an eye towards giving up some of the executive powers accumulated by George Bush, she tells Guardian America in an interview today. . . .

"On the accumulation of White House power under the current administration, Ms Clinton said the president and Dick Cheney both had taken actions 'beyond any power the Congress would have granted' and - even when congressional authorisation was possible - chosen not to pursue it 'as a matter of principle' . . . .

"Ms Clinton stated it was 'absolutely' conceivable that, as president, she would give up executive powers in the name of constitutional principle.

"'That has to be part of the review I undertake when I get to the White House, and I intend to do that,' she said."

Plame, Revisited

David Corn takes a self-congratulatory look back at the Valerie Plame leak case in his final column for The Nation and writes: "The bottom line: this episode demonstrated that the Bush White House was not honest (the vice president's chief of staff was even convicted of lying to law enforcement officials), that top Bush officials had risked national security for partisan gain, and that White House champions outside the government would eagerly hurl false accusations to defend the administration.

"So is anyone apologizing? For ruining Valerie Wilson's career? For perhaps endangering operations and agents? For lying about the leak? For misleading the public about [Karl] Rove's role? For placing spin above the truth? [Deputy secretary of state Richard] Armitage did apologize (via a media interview) to the Wilsons. But no one else involved has. And no one--not Bush, not Cheney, not their aides, not their neocon confederates--has admitted any wrongdoing in this saga.

"It's like the war: false statements, false cover stories, and failure to concede the errors in judgment and action that have caused harm to national security. But the meta-narrative of Bush and his neoconservative allies is one of no apology, no surrender. They say and do what they must to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. Reality be damned. What matters is what they can get away with. In the case of Valerie Plame Wilson, they did escape retribution. In the larger case of the Iraq war, they are still hoping to."

Cartoon Watch

Garry Trudeau on Bush's compassion; Signe Wilkinson on Bush and Congress; Tom Toles on diplomacy.