brainiac conspiracy

Today's Worst Person II

First runner-up: John Kerry.

I am am guessing we can game this out: Carpet-bomb Damascus, kill thousands of people, share Nobel peace prize with Russian counterpart, get hailed as elder statesman. It's worked out so well in the past. That is, unless you're on the receiving end of our Good Neighbor policy:

President Nixon lamented to Woods that the press blamed him for what was called "the Christmas bombing," when, in fact, it was Henry Kissinger who had been the greater advocate for bombing North Vietnam. Indeed, Nixon told Woods, the public view of how the decision had been made---that Kissinger was the advocate for more negotiations whereas Nixon had run out of patience and was eager to bomb Hanoi---was actually the reverse of what had happened. The President assured Woods that he had forced a reluctant Kissinger to continue the Paris negotiations when his national security advisor wanted to break off the talks and resume heavy bombing.

---Baron V

America's Secret History

As a rule, it's a curriculum of crackpot conspiracy theories. Unless, of course, it isn't.

To anyone who ever cracked open this book, this is not an earth-shattering revelation, but it should provide the members of Team Democrat with a teachable moment: Specifically, keep allowing Republican administrations to violate our nation's laws with impunity, and they're liable to think they can keep violating our nation's laws with impunity. Want to put a stop to it? Then don't emulate them---prosecute them instead. Just trying to be helpful here.

---Baron V

Hit Parade

You put your right leg in and your right leg out. You put your right leg in and you shake it all about. You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around 'cuz that's what it's all about:

There is evidence that Petraeus, when he commanded US forces in Afghanistan, oversaw the intentional bombing of funerals and civilian rescuers with drones, which constitutes a war crime according to The International Criminal Court.

For years the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) has reported on the use of the double tap---a strategy used by terrorists that involves bombing a strike site multiple times in relatively quick succession to maximize devastation---and there are documented instances that Petraeus employed this tactic as CIA director.

---Baron V

Why We Fight

Because liberty and justice for all:

A U.S. military judge angrily cut off a defence lawyer who tried to discuss torture on Monday during a debate on whether courtroom attendance was mandatory for five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks [...]

Mohammed's lawyer, Air Force Captain Michael Schwartz, said forcibly removing them from their cells and hauling them into court would subject them to physical and emotional strain reminiscent of their time in CIA custody.

"We have to talk about torture," Schwartz said.

"No we don't," the judge replied.

"I think we do," Schwartz said.

"I'm telling you I don't think that's relevant to this issue. That's the end of that," Pohl snapped.

When Schwartz persisted, Pohl said angrily, "Are you having trouble hearing me? Move on to something else!"

Maybe tomorrow night someone would care to ask our former Constitutional Law Professor-in-Chief, as well as his opponent, what they both think about the role of government in upholding the rule of law, and how this election presents voters with a clear choice in this regard. Would be interesting to know!

---Baron V

Collateral Damage

Funny how much of this senseless waste of lives has already been forgotten:

Navy Cmdr. Duane G. Wolfe was among the 719. He was not fighting the insurgency, but it was fighting him.

He was among the army of lawyers, engineers, contractors and others who paid a heavy price trying to put a broken Iraq and its shattered economy back together. Their deaths were recorded among the war's combat fatalities, but until now no one has carved out the "rebuilder" deaths as a subset of the overall casualty list.

Wolfe was killed on May 25, 2009, in a roadside bombing while returning to Baghdad after inspecting a waste water treatment plant under construction near Fallujah in Iraq's western province of Anbar. The $100 million project endured long delays and large cost overruns, and a U.S. federal audit last fall concluded that it probably was not worth the cost. The audit said "many" people died getting it built, but it did not say how many.

No one likes to consider the possibility that their departed friends or loved ones, you know, simply died in vain, but absent a Truth & Reconciliation Commission, that's about all that can accurately be said about them. It doesn't have to be that way, however. So why don't we try doing something to honor them instead of papering over the crimes of the perpetrators?

---Vitelius

We Still Need a Truth & Reconciliation Commission

Because we have still not been given an honest accounting of the true origins of the Global War on Terror™, though we are finding out in drips and drabs:

Perhaps most damning are the documents showing that the CIA had bin Laden in its cross hairs a full year before 9/11---but didn’t get the funding from the Bush administration White House to take him out or even continue monitoring him. The CIA materials directly contradict the many claims of Bush officials that it was aggressively pursuing al-Qaida prior to 9/11, and that nobody could have predicted the attacks. “I don’t think the Bush administration would want to see these released, because they paint a picture of the CIA knowing something would happen before 9/11, but they didn’t get the institutional support they needed,” says Barbara Elias-Sanborn, the NSA fellow who edited the materials.

If the failure to address the root causes of the financial crisis is the Obama administration's greatest policy failing, its conscious decision to run interference for---and sometimes, even doubling down on the worst practices of---a dissembling and self-serving gang of war criminals with the blood of thousands of innocent civilians on their hands is its greatest moral failing. It may be water under the bridge to the administration, but unless I'm mistaken, there is no statue of limitations for crimes against humanity.

---Vitelius

Slaughter We Can Believe In

Jesus Mary & Joseph:

You can be forgiven if you thought this was a story in The Onion when you first saw the headline. Too bad it wasn't.

Does the administration really believe that squeezing as much juice as it can from the "Tough On Terror" meme is going to win him the coveted warmonger vote, considering that most of those people are Republicans, Islamophobes, Greater Israelites, or a combination of the three? Also too, considering that most people in this country are sick to fucking death of these stupid wars and would kindly like them stopped?

Greenwald, as usual, provides context:

This, ladies and gentlemen, is your Democratic Party in the Era of Obama.

It has taken four decades of reverse engineering, but our nation has finally minted a liberal political party that is as militaristic as its conservatives.

---Vitelius

First as Tragedy

Thinking back on the days of my youth, I can remember watching the "body counts" from Vietnam being posted on the TV every Thursday night. There were typically four columns: one for Americans, one for ARVN (South Vietnam) troops, one for the NLF (North Vietnam) and one for "Vietcong", which was basically anyone we killed over there who wasn't wearing a uniform. The last column was always wildly inflated over the first three, and the implication either way was that, besides the fact that we were perpetually winning the war, that no innocent civilians were being killed in all this. Of course, eventually news leaked out over American atrocities such as My Lai, where dozens of innocent civilians were being killed, and the public's mood soured on the war, and rather quickly. So what's different now? We've had ample evidence of atrocities for many years in our current wars, and outside a few lefty/libertarian bloggers and scolds, no one seems to give a shit anymore. Why is this? Is this kind of outrage a discontent of affluence that people can't afford to vent in hard times, or has our collective conscience grown coarse to these things? Or have we simply bought into our own bullshit that American is the Greatest Nation Ever that can Do No Wrong because entertaining the alternative would pose the kind of moral challenge our leaders would rather avoid? Don't know the answer here, but it sure seems like people don't seem to be terribly bothered anymore that our leaders are killing people all over the world with only the foggiest idea of who they're killing, and why, other than insisting that they're all "militants." Seems to me if our prevailing national ethos was prevalent back in the '70s, we'd still be fighting in Vietnam today.

---Vitelius

Authoritarianism We Can Believe In

Sure seems to me that we can no longer be called a functioning liberal democracy:

The Obama administration is set to argue to a federal appeals court Friday that the government may breach, with impunity, domestic spying laws adopted in the wake of President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate scandal.

The case tests whether Americans may seek recourse or monetary damages when a sitting U.S. president bypasses Congress’s ban on warrantless spying on Americans---in this instance when President George W. Bush authorized his secret, warrantless domestic spying program in the aftermath of the September 2001 terror attacks.

The government . . . said it cannot be held liable under the spying law, and that Congress has not waived sovereign immunity---meaning the government has not consented to being sued for breaching its own laws.

“In sum, there is no waiver of sovereign immunity here permitting the district court’s multi-million dollar damages and attorney fees judgment against the government. For this reason, the judgment of the district court must be set aside as a matter of law on this sovereign immunity ground alone, and this court need not proceed any further to dispose of this appeal,” Justice Department attorney Thomas Bondy wrote in a court filing. (Emphasis added.)

Hmmm. Okay, if our government can't be held accountable for its misdeeds unless it consents to it, how is our government ever to be held accountable for anything? Shit, if I had that kind of authority, I'd never agree to be sued in court, either.

It's rich irony that our leaders recently chose to honor a man who once reminded us that even the President of the United States sometimes must stand naked since, well, they no longer even pretend to believe it.

---Vitelius

Preemptive War We Can Believe In

Regardless how it's waged, it's still a violation of the UN charter and the Geneva Conventions:

The United States government only recently acknowledged developing cyberweapons, and it has never admitted using them. There have been reports of one-time attacks against personal computers used by members of Al Qaeda, and of contemplated attacks against the computers that run air defense systems, including during the NATO-led air attack on Libya last year. But Olympic Games was of an entirely different type and sophistication.

It appears to be the first time the United States has repeatedly used cyberweapons to cripple another country’s infrastructure, achieving, with computer code, what until then could be accomplished only by bombing a country or sending in agents to plant explosives.

Amazing, isn't it? Just imagine the reaction that would be elicited from our leaders if some other country engineered a similar attack on our infrastructure. At the very least there would be threats of retaliation, calls for sanctions, and shoe-pounding speeches in front of the Security Council. There might even be a drone strike or two thrown in for good measure. And to think we're not even doing this for our own national security, but for the sake of another country, which continues to show its gratitude in the oddest ways:

“We think there was a modification done by the Israelis,” one of the briefers told the president, “and we don’t know if we were part of that activity.”

Mr. Obama, according to officials in the room, asked a series of questions, fearful that the code could do damage outside the plant. The answers came back in hedged terms. Mr. Biden fumed. “It’s got to be the Israelis,” he said. “They went too far.”

Heaven forbid that anyone in our government should ever have informed the government of Israel that a preemptive military strike on Iran would automatically trigger a suspension of foreign aid and a call for UN sanctions. This would have cost zero taxpayer dollars, and as a special added bonus, it would be have been in accord with international law. But I guess those legal formalities only apply to the little countries, not to a global hegemon and its problem child in the Middle East.

On the other hand, it's good to know the Republic is otherwise in good health, with a thriving economy and ample jobs for all who want them. Otherwise, how could our leaders justify devoting precious resources to such a tangential endeavor? Oh, wait.

---Vitelius

It's High-Fives All Around

Whenever serial human-rights violators get together to swap war stories. Good times!

Personally, I think this rendition of Dubya is much more lifelike than the painting.

---Vitelius

Honoring Our War Dead

It's something to be mindful of in the midst of all the holiday barbecue and beer:

Biden, like Obama, said U.S. combat troops have returned home from Iraq, the conflict in Afghanistan is winding down and American commandos killed al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

"Those warriors sent a message to the world that if you harm America, we will follow you to the end of the earth," Biden said.

Meanwhile, why we fight:

A suspected NATO airstrike killed eight civilians---including six children---in eastern Afghanistan, a provincial spokesman said.

The airstrike took place Saturday night in Paktia province, said Rohullah Samoon, spokesman for the governor of Paktia. He said an entire family was killed in the strike.

Now I know what the standard rejoinder is, that The Enemy® uses these poor and unfortunate wretches as Human Shields™, and while collateral damage is always unfortunate, incidents like these are further proof that the Islamonazis hold no value for human life and we must redouble our efforts, etc., but I think it underscores the reason why so many people of my generation can't get too amped up over this particular holiday. Not because we don't care about honoring those who have fallen in battle on our behalf, but because too many of those who have fallen in our lifetime---in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and before them in Vietnam---died for no fucking reason whatsoever; because the leaders who lied to the nation and sent them off to their deaths have evaded all accountability for their actions; and because hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, from Haiphong to Fallujah to Kandahar, have been slaughtered over decades so one President or another could emerge victorious in some geopolitical dick-swinging contest. This sure is not the kind of change I voted for four years ago, but I guess in the realm of foreign policy, it scarcely matters who's President anymore. The hegemony of the Empire must be ever upheld, and never questioned. Only deeply unserious persons would deign to think otherwise.

---Vitelius

Not Rocket Science

As a rule, most people do not appreciate it when you bomb their villages and kill their civilian population, no matter how noble your stated objectives may be. Why is this concept so difficult for our leaders to grasp?

[U]ltimately, it was in the US interest to have a stable, democratic and prosperous Pakistan, Obama said, adding it was in the interest of Pakistan to work with the US to ensure it is not consumed by extremists.

Not that we'd ever have to worry about that here. Oh, wait.

---Vitelius

They Hate Us For Our Freedoms

Also too, for our criminal justice system that's the fairest in all the world:

The court heard how:

• Abbas Abid, a 48-year-old engineer from Fallujah in Iraq had his fingernails removed by pliers.
• Ali Shalal was attached with bare electrical wires and electrocuted and hung from a wall.
• Moazzam Begg was beaten, hooded and put in solitary confinement.
• Jameelah [Hameedi] was stripped and humiliated, and was used as a human shield whilst being transported by helicopter.

The witnesses also detailed how they have residual injuries till today.

Moazzam Begg, now working as a director for the London-based human rights group Cageprisoners said he was delighted with the verdict, but added: “When people talk about Nuremberg you have to remember those tried were all prosecuted after the war.

“Right now Guantanamo is still open, people are still being held there and are still being tortured there.”

In response to questions about the difference between the Bush and Obama Administrations, he added: “If President Bush was the President of extra-judicial torture then US President Barak Obama is the President of extra-judicial killing through drone strikes. Our work has only just begun.”

Good to know that we'll be able to marry whomever we want in the future. It's how we Americans set an example to the world as a champion of human rights.

---Vitelius

Marriage Equality is Fine & Dandy

And bravo for our President for taking a principled stand for human rights.

Unfortunately, some human rights are apparently superior to others:

[I]t is the waterboarding of Zubaydah that has now become the centre of fresh controversy triggered by Newsnight's investigation.

The CIA recorded Zubaydah's detention and interrogation---and that of other detainees---on 92 video tapes.

Twelve of them covered the application of the "enhanced interrogation techniques", including waterboarding.

On one or more of them, I understand Zubaydah is shown vomiting and screaming.

John Rizzo, the CIA's top legal counsel who oversaw the legalisation of the techniques in an exchange of memoranda with the Department of Justice, wanted to be certain that what was happening at the black site was in accordance with what had been legally agreed.

He had not anticipated that waterboarding would be used as often as it was. And he sent one of his most experienced colleagues to the black site, believed to be in Thailand, to find out.

Rizzo's colleague viewed all the 92 hours of video and concluded that the techniques were being legally applied, but he was uncomfortable about what he saw.

"He did say that portions of the tapes, particularly those of Zubaydah being waterboarded, were extraordinarily hard to watch," Rizzo told me.

"He [Zubaydah] was reacting visibly in a very disturbing way.

"It's not a pretty sight when you are waterboarding anybody or using any of these techniques, let's be perfectly honest.”

So was he being sick?

"He was experiencing some physical difficulties, I'll just leave it at that... 'tough to watch in places' was his term."

There really is no moral justification for abetting this behavior. If some assholes in the CIA were threatening a coup if the President decided to pursue war crimes prosecutions, he should have done his duty as Defender of the Constitution, dared them to try it, and thrown a few of them in jail on charges of treason if they did. For the pure sake of argument, perhaps torture may have helped us to win precious victories in our War Against Terror (but how the hell would we ever know?), but even if this dubious thesis is proved true, in the process America has mortgaged something far more valuable than a battlefield victory or even its national security: Its moral authority as the last best hope on earth for people fleeing torture and persecution in distant lands. Even worse, we have unleashed a malign spirit of state-sanctioned sadism into our political bloodstream, and if we really think it can simply be wished away with platitudes and pleas to our better angels, we are fooling themselves into thinking we're immune from the harsh correctives of history.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: we will regret one day the moral cowardice that our two most recent Presidents have displayed here. The decision to provide legal countenance to torture, and then to flush all accountability for it down the memory hole, are two of America's gravest moral failings, and the fact that they were made by a conservative Republican and liberal Democrat in succession have now bestowed the practice with the veneer of bipartisan legitimacy. Our leaders may prefer that we look forward, not backward, but people in other parts of the world have longer memories than ours---and we should not be surprised to learn one day that someone, somewhere is building an explosive with Ali Zubaydah's or Khalid Sheik Mohammed's name written on it. And if it is intercepted, or it doesn't work, someone else, somewhere else, will build another and another.

So I'm delighted that the President has decided to embrace the LGBT community that worked so hard for his election. But sooner or later, the euphoria we feel for the cause of human rights must yield to some definitive and level-headed criticisms.

---Vitelius

Amazing How They Do That

The best way to ensure a steady stream of terrorists to justify our Perpetual War on Terror is to, well, invent them:

The would-be suicide bomber dispatched by the Yemen branch of Al Qaeda last month to blow up a United States-bound airliner was actually an intelligence agent for Saudi Arabia who infiltrated the terrorist group and volunteered for the suicide mission, American and foreign officials said Tuesday.

In an extraordinary intelligence coup, the double agent left Yemen, traveling by way of the United Arab Emirates, and delivered both the innovative bomb designed for his air attack and critical information on the group’s leaders to the C.I.A., Saudi and other foreign intelligence agencies.

After spending weeks at the center of the terrorist network’s most dangerous affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the agent provided critical information that permitted the C.I.A. to direct the drone strike on Sunday that killed Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso, the group’s external operations director and a suspect in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000.

Niiiiiiiiice.

You wonder if the geniuses in our intelligence community had ever considered the possibility of a double-cross. Not that our Friends in Freedom™ would ever contemplate this.

Also too, one wonders what the colleagues, friends and family members of Fahd Mohammed Ahmed al-Quso are doing tonight: Singing the praises of American Exceptionalism, or something rather less charitable?

Honestly. There is one simple thing our government could do, right now, that would cost no money and add no dollars to the deficit, that would virtually eliminate the threat of Islamic terrorist attacks on our shores forever. In fact, it would likely save us billions of dollars in money we wouldn't need to spend on our ever-growing security-industrial complex. So why in hell don't we do it?

---Vitelius

Did Someone Give a Speech Last Night?

I remember a time when I actually got excited over them, and planned my dinners and evening-related program activities around them. Now, they come and go without much notice anymore. Why is this? Is it because I've become an irrational leftist malcontent, or is it simply because I'm weary of listening to eloquent defenses of policy initiatives that have sucked, like, forever?

Snark aside, I was never genuinely sold on Afghanistan as the "good war" since, to my definition, such a conflict needs to be waged for loftier reasons than simply the desire to kick Islamic ass---which, let's face it, was our leaders' prime motivator for many months, in fact years, after 9/11---and also, because such a war also needs to be winnable, i.e., against an identifiable enemy in uniform that can be vanquished. But there no uniforms in Afghanistan, and you can't dispatch an army to fight an idea (like global jihad), and because of this, the first reason---even if justifiable---did not absolve our policy professionals from pondering the second. And they never did ponder it, not even for a minute, even though anyone with the slightest knowledge of the Soviet experience there in the 1980s might have counseled an alternative approach to a full-scale invasion.

So now we will be sending them billions in money and munitions---and who knows, maybe "advisers"---through 2023 at least, while an army of permanently unemployed people at home go begging for jobs and mortgage relief. Someone tell me again why I shouldn't write in Rocky Anderson on my ballot next November.

---Vitelius

Bipartisanship

Its such a rare thing in these highly charged and polarized times, so it's such a relief when we find an example of policies that both Republicans and Democrats alike can agree are essential to the healthy functioning of a civil society:

Lesley Stahl: How does the water boarding that you engaged in, how did that work?

Jose Rodriguez: The detainee was strapped to an inclined board with his feet up so that no water would go--

Lesley Stahl: So his head was back.

Jose Rodriguez: So his head was back. And a cloth was placed over the mouth and nose. And water was applied to it.

Lesley Stahl: Oh he couldn't breathe through his nose.

Jose Rodriguez: So when he was saturated, then the air flow would be stopped.

Lesley Stahl: And he'd have the sensation of drowning.

Jose Rodriguez: And he would have the sensation.

Lesley Stahl: And was he naked?

Jose Rodriguez: In many cases, nudity was used extensively. And it worked well.

Lesley Stahl: Why is nudity effective?

Jose Rodriguez: It is effective because a lot of people feel very vulnerable when they're nude. And also because of the culture. Nudity, it is not something that is common...

Lesley Stahl: Was it waterboarding that broke the dam with Abu Zubaydah?

Jose Rodriguez: I think he was more taken aback by the insult slap.

Lesley Stahl: Oh, what's the insult slap?

Jose Rodriguez: It's just slapping somebody with an open hand so that you don't hurt 'em.

Lesley Stahl: By "hurt," you mean you don't break his jaw?

Jose Rodriguez: We don't break his jaw. And the objective is not to inflict pain. The objective is to let him know there's a new sheriff in town, and he better pay attention.

Because if there wasn't complete bipartisan consensus among our leaders in Washington, someone in a position of authority might deign to interrupt the White House Correspondents Dinner or some other vital function of state with some intemperate remarks about Geneva Conventions and war crimes and messy stuff like that. Thankfully, the Real Americans and the Kenyan Kommies have finally found something they can agree on: That the ritual brutalization of foreigners who don't like our policies deserves the full protection of the state. If that's not the purest expression of American Exceptionalism, I sure don't know what the hell is.

So congratulations to all the parties involved for Keeping Us Safe & Defending Our Freedoms™. We only had to adopt the standards of the Soviet legal system to do it.

(Via NoSpoon.)

---Vitelius

HIndsight's 20/20

One of the most important reasons why I was a little leery about supporting Hillary Clinton in 2008 was my fear that, once elected, she would feel the need to prove to the Washington foregn-policy establishment that as our first female commander-in-chief, she could be as Tough, Steadfast & Resolute® as any man in waging America's never-ending war on brown people in distant lands: Margaret Thatcher 2.0, in other words. Barack Obama, I reasoned, would take a more measured approach towards exercising our military might. After all, he had even lived among brown people in distant lands, and was even raised by some of them.

Obviously, things didn't turn out the way I envisioned.

---Vitelius

Peace is Our Profession

Administrations come and go in Washington, but be they Democratic or Republican, their awesomest policies are evergreen:

A U.S. Congressional report reveals that the America military has stockpiled in Israel $800 million worth of Israeli weapons for emergencies, and the amount may grow by 50 percent.

The report from the U.S. Congressional Research Service was obtained by Israel Defense.

The equipment in the emergency reserves includes Israeli-made missiles, armored vehicles, and artillery ammunition.

The report noted that Israel and the United States have agreed to increase “strategic cooperation” since the 1980s, with the United States storing military equipment in Israel.

The equipment was transferred to Israel for use by the United States in case of war, and Israel may use the weapons in case of emergency and with American approval.

Sure glad here that we've gotten back to full employment and paid down the deficit and repaired our infrastructure and made college affordable and enacted universal health care and stopped crooked banks from stealing people's houses so now we can turn our attention to helping our Friends in Freedom on the other side of the world.

---Vitelius