Month: May 2012

Former NSA technical director William Binney: “…the real problem I see is that the DoJ is covering up for all the crimes that this administration and the previous administration has been committing against every one in the public.”

(h/t Kevin Gosztola)

The deal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing Likud party struck last night may be the slickest politicking in recent memory. After threatening to hold early elections, Netanyahu formed a unity government with the main opposition party, Kadima, that has to a certain extent neutralized opposition to his rule in the Knesset. Media reports mostly place the key to this deal on a promise from Netanyahu and Likud to acquiesce in Kadima’s proposal for military deferment for ultra-Orthodox Jews. Less is being said about what this would mean for a possible Israeli military strike on Iran.

It was widely believed that Netanyahu called for early elections because he had more a chance of winning now than later and would then have the freedom to maintain hawkish policies toward Iran, possibly a military strike, at a point when Obama would be paralyzed in his own reelection campaign. The reason this deal for a unity government is “slick,” as I say, is that Netanyahu seems to have pulled a fast one on Kadima, a party that has been critical of his hawkishness on Iran.

The deal gives Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz a spot as deputy prime minister. Mofaz, who happens to be Iranian-born, has voiced staunch objections to a unilateral strike on Iran and criticized Likud for avoiding peace talks with the Palestinians. But as Harriet Sherwood at the Guardian explains, this doesn’t mean an attack on Iran is less likely:

As a former chief of staff, Mofaz’s views inside the unofficial core group of ministers that takes key decisions – the Forum of Eight, now the Forum of Nine – will carry some weight. But, according to analyst Meir Javedanfar, he is unlikely to be a restraining factor on Netanyahu and Barak. “His influence will be limited. His hands will be tied because of the position of weakness from which he entered the coalition,” he said.

According to Anshel Pfeffer, who writes a blog on Israel-Iran for Haaretz, the move has also “taken the most senior security figure in the opposition out of the opposition and into the government”.

Mofaz served as military chief of staff under governments led by both Netanyahu and Barak. “He has a history of taking orders from Bibi [Netanyahu] and Barak,” says Pfeffer. “I think he will be very much in line [on Iran]. It will be a triumvirate.”

An analysis by IHS Jane’s suggests that Mofaz’s presence in the government will not alter the prospects of military action. “Whether a condition of the agreement between Kadima and Likud involves Mofaz assuming a position on Iran closer to Netanyahu remains to be seen, but there will be many observers who will view the reconstituted government as preparing the ground for an attack on Iran – a decision that some members of the government, including Netanyahu, think may need to be made in the second half of 2012,” it said.

Netanyahu seems to have promised Mofaz and Kadima some limited power in the new unity government, while also yielding to certain of Kadima’s domestic political demands, all while knowing that they would be outmatched on the Iran issue. Welcoming the main opposition party into the unity government essentially erases any harsh criticism Netanyahu would have faced if he does indeed decide to start an unprovoked war with Iran. To the public, it seems as if Netanyahu is giving into the objections to war on Iran by welcoming Kadima. But he knows Kadima’s objections to this are weakened by giving them more “power” in government.

Sherwood again:

National unity governments have usually been formed in Israel in times of crisis – “mainly under conditions of war”, said [Israeli political commentator Amit] Segal. “Many people will raise the question of whether Netanyahu, Barak and Mofaz have agreed on something much more significant than electoral reform or the enlistment of the ultra-orthodox.”

The Washington Post reported today that the U.S. has for years operated a secret program of releasing “high-level detainees from a military prison in Afghanistan as part of negotiations with insurgent groups.”

“We look at detainees who have influence over other insurgents — individuals whose release could have a calming effect in an entire area,” one U.S. official said. “In those cases, the benefits of release could outweigh the reasons for keeping him detained.”

When the insurgency appears to be gathering steam in certain provinces, for instance, prisoners have been released to alleviate mounting tension.

The Parwan detention center, which the Post describes as “the only American military prison in Afghanistan,” is special. The Obama administration has codified a system of indefinite detention without charge or trial at Bagram airbase and Guantanamo Bay, but apparently release from Parwan “does not require congressional approval and can be done clandestinely.”

This reasoning seems to illustrate two things: (1) the administration, at least in part, refuses to release or offer due process to many detainees for purely political reasons, and (2) the administration will do anything so long as it can be done unilaterally and secretly.

The release of Parwan detainees appears to be a strictly political decision as well. When the insurgency is “gathering steam,” Obama releases some prisoners to calm things down. It seems more a strategy to make the occupation appear stable than anything else (a goal that has failed miserably, like the war). The administration calls this their “strategic release” program. Strategic in the sense that temporarily alleviating some embarrassing insurgent violence may increase the likelihood of Mr. Obama’s reelection. But what strategic benefit this could have militarily is ephemeral at best, which indicates that the administration understands this is a lost war.

Why go through all this “strategic alleviation”? The insurgents fight for an end to war and military occupation, not international terrorism or a Caliphate over Washington. Why not just leave? Ah, well that is political too.

Sen. John McCain, perhaps the leading figure pushing for intervention in Syria, was interviewed by Jake Tapper on ABC’s “This Week”:

TAPPER: Is — is there not — do you not have any concern — there are reports that some of the rebels in Syria are affiliated with Al Qaida, are extremist. Are you not concerned at all that arming these rebel groups in Syria could end up having a horrible blowback effect?

MCCAIN: Well, I don’t know what horrible blowback effect there would be, besides the fact that extremists may take it over.

McCain went on to claim this chatter about extremist elements among the opposition is an old song he doesn’t really buy. “I heard this same story in Libya. I heard it in Tunisia. I heard it in Egypt.” To conflate these three countries and Syria simply demonstrates McCain’s oversimplified worldview and terrible foreign policy ineptitude. Syria is not Libya or Tunisia. And intervention would be an utter disaster.

[See here for some discussion of the likely unintended consequences of arming the rebels and here for some on the extremist elements fighting in Syria]

But extremists did in fact benefit from our intervention in Libya and the Jeffersonians people like McCain rallied behind are virtually non-existent in Libya.

McCain is way off on Tunisia and Egypt, if for no other reason that a military intervention was never even on the table to my knowledge. Nevertheless, Islamists political blocs are a very strong force in each country. And besides, those revolutions were in part the blowback to our propping up puppet dictators. So his starting point is all wrong.

It was nice to see McCain, though, at least partially acknowledge that the policy he’s advocating could bring extremist militants to power. You can see the video of the exchange here.

Jose Padilla, the American citizen kidnapped by the Bush administration and detained and tortured for years without charge or trial, has been trying to sue John Yoo for a while now. Yoo of course was in the Bush administration’s office of legal counsel who crafted legal opinions around what the Bush administration wanted to do to so-called enemy combatants, a notion they basically invented in order to deny detainees their rights.

But this week, a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected Padilla’s case, declaring Yoo immune from such prosecution. Unfortunately, this is the reality of the country we live in: those in elite political and intellectual circles exist in a special bubble where they can commit radical, far-reaching crimes of the highest order and never be subject to prosecution or punishment. The rest of us poor saps are lorded over by this law.

The Bush administration’s torture regime not only involved the infliction of systematic torment and agony for hundreds and hundreds of detainees, many of whom were guilty of nothing, but it is now known that several (perhaps over 100) detainees died or were killed while in custody. All of this was done without the due process mandated by the Constitution. There can be no doubt that these practices were illegal, then and now. The law is very clear that torture is prohibited and very clear on what qualifies as torture. The Supreme Court additionally found in 2006 in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that the Geneva Conventions does apply to terrorist detainees. Here is a Convention, passed by Congress and signed by Ronald Reagan, against torture, which specificies that “no exceptional circumstances whatsoever . . . may be invoked as a justification of torture.” The question, then, of whether or not the Bush administration committed crimes is also not up for debate.

Notably, even the New York Times finds this decision by the Ninth Circuit “misguided and dangerous” and, as they wrote in an editorial today, the standard of qualified immunity from the law is “an unworkable standard.” The editorial details the legal reasoning for declaring Yoo immune from the law:

In 2009, a Federal District Court in California ruled that Mr. Yoo was not immune from the lawsuit: the violations of rights Mr. Padilla alleged were “clearly established at the time of the conduct” and any “reasonable” federal official would have understood that.

…Until a year ago, the law gave officials so-called qualified immunity to shield them when they performed responsibly. In holding them accountable for exercising power irresponsibly, it required simply that a reasonable person would have known about the right he violated. Last May, however, the Supreme Court ruled that “existing precedent” must put any question about such a right “beyond debate.”

That is an unworkable standard and the Ninth Circuit decision shows why. The Bush administration manufactured both “debates” — about torture and enemy combatants. Any future government can rely on this precedent to pull the same stunt as cover for some other outrage.

It’s the complete breakdown of the rule of law. At virtually every turn, Bush administration officials have been shielded by this system of protecting society’s betters through selective immunity. And while this kind of state lawlessness was in its most extreme practice during the Bush years, it continues to this day. Barack Obama’s refusal to entertain investigations of Bush era crimes is a prime example, but so are his policies of continued indefinite detention in Guantanamo Bay and torture and mistreatment in U.S.-run prisons in Afghanistan lo these many years of Hope & Change.

These realities are bad enough, but now I’ve got to prepare myself for the presidential election season which gushes to gratuitous and effusive degrees with the hero-worship and celebrity-reverence of everybody’s favored tribal figure on Team Red and Team Blue. Talk about salt on the wound.