May 14
Toledo Blade reporters Michael Sallah and Mitch Weiss have published a book called "Tiger Force", about a unit of that name, a unit of the 101st Airborne, which is accused of killing and mutilating no one knows how many Vietnamese civilians. One thing stuck out from the review in today's book section of the Star Tribune. In 1975, based on the report of Army investigator Gustav Aspey, the Army recommended to the Ford administration that 18 members of Tiger Force be tried for war crimes. The administration blocked any action. Ford's chief of staff was Dick Cheney. Yes, the current acting vice-president. The Secretary of Defense was Donald Rumsfeld. Yes, Rumsfeld was in the same job 31 years ago. I don't know what role Cheney had in blocking justice for war crimes victims, but since Chief of Staff is a powerful position, I have to think it was likely he had something to do with it. Rumsfeld, as defense secretary, must have been involved. The point not specifically mentioned in the review, but which mustn't be overlooked, is that these vile men were violating human rights in 1975 just like they are now, showing that for them, the only thing 911 changed was the available excuses. They were as callous in Vietnam as in Iraq. The behavior is the same. If you've been foolish enough to give credence to their excuses for Iraq that 911 changed things and the country is at war, please take note that in 1975 the war in Vietnam ended. The crisis had passed. The behavior was nonetheless as vile in their younger days as it is now. Cheney probably, and Rumsfeld for sure, became complicit in that earlier war's war crimes when they helped cover them up. Look at them now and tell me they've changed, especially since in 2004 they blocked prosecution again.
By pure coincidence, this afternoon I praised President Ford to a friend who mentioned that Ford was the last Republican presidential candidate he had voted for. I thought Ford deserved more credit for restoring confidence in the government and that was probably why he made the 1976 election closer than expected after Watergate. Now I want to know what Ford knew before I say nice things about him again.
Click here for the original Toledo Blade series on Tiger Force and the efforts to defeat the coverup.
May 12
If it would stop the next 911, would I be willing to let the government look at my phone records? Of course. If it would stop tomorrow's picnic from being rained out, would I let someone stomp on my foot? Sure. Except for one thing. I would stop to realize my foot pain wold have no effect on the weather. May I suggest such skepticism to the Bush defense that we should be willing to let the NSA snoop on us to stop Al Qaida. No examination of my phone records, nor dear reader of yours either unless by bizarre chance you are Al Qaida, will stop a terrorist attack.
Don't I know the country is at war? Of course. You know what else I know? The when the founding fathers added protection against unreasonable searches to the Constitution, they were addressing abuses of power that occurred during wartime. Note those last two words, "during wartime". Don't try to say the founders couldn't conceive of the war on terror. They had just been through the Revolution. Wartime abuses were exactly what they had seen and were thinking about. That's why there is no exception in the Bill of Rights for wartime. They intended that liberty be protected not just in peace, but particularly when it's most threatened -- during war. They actually did conceive that those expected to protect our freedom from threats might be the ones to threaten our freedom, and they meant to restrain the government from actions which the acting president has made routine.
I rarely make predictions, but I make a couple now. First, when all is known, they will have been not just collecting phone records, but listening in without warrants. Second, it will turn out the targets of the spying were not just suspected terrorists, but domestic political opponents. Both statements I'm sure sound like conspiracy theory. My reasoning for the first prediction is that I knew something domestic was coming when the international phone wiretaps were revealed, and Gonzales dodged questions about domestic calls. Also, large scandals tend to come out in dribbles, a revelation here and another there, so odds are we're early into this one. Moreover, the only reason I can see for avoiding FISA warrants when they can get them after the fact is they don't want a record, which suggests they are spying on people they shouldn't. In the second prediction, we know that anti-war groups have been spied on already. We know Bush is paranoid about leaks, except the ones he authorized, which leads to point three. We've already seen retaliation against domestic opponents in the Plame leak, the McCarthy firing, and the loss of access for uncooperative journalists. Naturally they don't want a court record of that.
May 11
Remember this day. If there's a day on which it all went bad for the acting president, when even honest conservatives were ready to remove him, this might be it. Even some conservatives seem mad as hell about the NSA collection of domestic phone records. Joe Scarborough for one let loose on his own party tonight (no transcript posted yet). The core is the grotesque violation of the Fourth Amendment, exacerbated by the obvious lie (please, you didn't believe it at the time, did you?) when the warrantless wiretapping of international calls was exposed that only international calls were the target of the spying program. The lie couldn't be exposed in a much more blatant way. Add in the dreadful excuse that the NSA collected just phone numbers with no names attached. They're just abstractly interested in when 333-3333 talked to 555-5555 with no interest at all in who owns those numbers. That's right up there with "everybody believed Iraq had WMD" (because we kept telling them and they trusted us, the fools). Bush later denied he was mining data, when that's exactly what you call it when you collect a big pile of data and look for patterns. He also said no calls were listened to without warrants, just like he had said before the international calls part of this scandal broke.
Bush's approval ratings were already hitting the low 30s. Even before this broke, he had already lost Democrats and independents, leaving him just the Republican base. There was already disaffection among the libertarian and fiscal conservative sort of Republicans. It feels safe to say that will get worse. Bush has lost something else too. The NSA scandal had been spun by the spin machine into a positive, as they had some success playing it as Democrats opposing spying on terrorists. Stubborn refusal to acknowledge this was about warrants and law worked for them, and the GOP seemed to think it had found an issue. That just got blown away.
The saddest thing of course is this might put the kibosh on my theory that the Plame leak would be the scandal that brings Bush down. This appears likely to do the job first. OK, you can put away the tiny violin. But don't rub your hands in eager anticipation of the upcoming election. Not while the security of Diebold voting machines has been found to be even worse than thought. The Oakland Tribune mentioned that things are used everywhere in Georgia. Georgia has had weird outcomes in recent elections. That's just a coincidence of course.
May 9
It's been a while since I've addressed a 3G (God, Gays, Guns) issue --- the acting president's government won't stop imploding long enough for a breather --- but I'll force a breather to point out a story about a study that confirms the obvious: homosexuality isn't a choice. The study, and an earlier one referenced in the article, provide empirical evidence for what is logical. Even without confirming science, it makes sense that no one chooses to be art of a despised minority. No one chooses to remove themselves from the normal life they grew up expecting to live just on whim. No one makes themselves unequal under the law just because it looks fun. There's a bit if a "duh" factor here, but for as for conservatives, I hope a few can look at evidence that doesn't come from their gut, their disgust, or their religious text.
I don't expect to change plans, but just so something stupid doesn't pass without a word of protest, I can't believe the Guthrie Theatre is being torn down. This perfectly good theater which is a local landmark is being torn down for a sculpture garden by the Walker Art Center. If a sculpture garden for the Walker sounds familiar, it's because they have one right across the street. They didn't want to renew the Guthrie's lease, so a new theater is being built on the Minneapolis riverfront. The company will survive and apparently have a brand new facility, and I recognize that the Walker helped to convince Tyrone Guthrie to build his theater in Minneapolis instead of competing cities, but come on. Other than inadequate restrooms that theater is perfectly good. Find another company, start another company, but taking it down is idiotic.
May 8
Does it strike anyone as odd that the sudden resignation of Porter Goss came the day after the story broke about Patrick Kennedy? The reason it's odd is the acting president's bumbling boys are master campaigners. Sad as it may be that campaigning is all they're good at, they've usually had that. So every instinct must have told them the Kennedy story would dominate the news for a week. All they had to do was not reveal any big story they could control. Sure they might be hit by something like that biological labs story again, or someone might link the talk of the "Salvador Option" in Iraq with the growth of death squads, or the Enron trial might remind the public of Bush's connection at an inopportune moment, but these guys usually excel at controlling the news. Therefore, I don't buy that this was the only time Goss's resignation could have been released, or that the timing was perfectly innocent. These guys are sometimes naive, but they've shown that naivete and innocence are quite separable concepts. So why the coincidental timing, giving something to compete with Kennedy and the pill problem?
- There's talk of a conflict between Goss and John Negroponte, future war crimes defendant if the Nicaraguans ever get a hold of him. Maybe Negroponte wanted to move fast on removing Goss and wouldn't wait for a better time. This assumes Negroponte could have more influence on the timing than Rove. Let's try something else.
- Goss has royally screwed up the CIA, and Bush is removing him for poor performance. No, I don't believe that either.
- This could have been a fluke. Even masters of managing news make mistakes. Things have gone badly quite a while, but it's been outside influences doing that: Democrats who found their spine, the press remembering why "All the President's Men" got them into journalism, and the effects of policies being felt (OK, that one is self-inflicted). So maybe they goofed once in not letting the Kennedy story have the headlines.
- It could be they've lost their touch. Could be that was why Rove was taken off policy, not just so he has time for his grand jury appearances. I'd like to believe the propaganda machine has sand in the gears. I kind of prefer this over what is being widely speculated, namely the next bullet point,
- Something big is about to break, and it's a bit less embarrassing to have the embarrassed no longer part of the administration. Most speculation is variations on what the embarrassment could be. So let's go into subbullets, if that's a word.
- The sudden retirement of Kyle ``Dusty'' Foggo, the CIA's number three and allegedly a jump up from the middle ranks thanks to cronyism, will lend credence to his former boss Goss being tied up with defense contractor Brent Wilkes, who bribed Rep. Cunningham. Foggo is under investigation for steering contracts to Wilkes.
- Foggo and Goss may have been attending Wilkes' parties at the Watergate Hotel. The word "prostitute" is being whispered about, and in a more literal sense than government officials selling themselves to lobbyists. Wilkes and Cunningham may be singing like canaries. The sad thing is that with all the Bush administration has pulled, it may take a sex scandal to finally get through to the faith-based about who they've been backing.
- Mary McCarthy isn't being mentioned much, but may I be the first to coin the term Plamegate II. OK, I see why no one else coined it. Anyway, it took CIA employees rocking the boat to get the exposure of Valerie Wilson's identity investigated, and I wonder if they're doing the same now. Maybe the bald-faced attempt to intimidate by firing a senior employee ten days from retirement on a specious charge has backfired; maybe the good ship CIA which Goss described as being on a "very even keel" has a mutinous crew. On a side note, notice in that last link that IBD still says she was fired for leaking information on prisoners. On the main note, notice how after being promised confidentiality, McCarthy's identity was leaked about as quick as she could close the door behind her. An anonymous source leaked personal information selected to make her look partisan. Who leaked? Why did the government source need to remain anonymous? When will we learn that when anonymous government sources are trying to discredit Bush critics, they're lying?
May 2
This comes from someone who doesn't follow pop music. I'm not sure I knew who Pink was, and I'm reasonably sure I've never heard her before. So let that attest to how powerful a protest song she has written in Dear Mr. President. The link is to the video. I quoted part of it there in the quotes column, and other lines are worthy. Don't ask me about any of her other work because I haven't a clue, but this one song is likely to be one of the strongest songs to come out of this troubled era. Some of the song is quite specific to Bush, but most is pretty universal.
May 1
This is one of those times when I'm up too late already, but this needs clearing up. The right wing is trying to make a huge issue over Nuestro Himno, a Spanish song set to the tune of The Star-Spangled Banner. I chose my words carefully in that last sentence, because it's being portrayed as the national anthem in Spanish. It isn't. New words have been set to a familiar tune. Know who else did that? Francis Scott Key. Yes, The Star-Spangled Banner was written to a tune Key already knew, Anachreon in Heaven. It is a drinking song that was the hymn of the Anachreonian Society in England. That's right, it's not even an American tune. Key did what was common then though much less common now, making up new lyrics to familiar tunes that may have no similarity to the original lyrics. So this is the origin of our national anthem, and while I'm sure some conservatives will get their knickers in a twist over these lyrics, I write this as a defender of our national anthem against attempts to replace it with America the Beautiful or God Bless America:
To Anachreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee,The Liberty Song was set to Heart of Oak, Free America was set to British Grenadiers, and what should especially make the gnashing of teeth look like nonsense, Our Country Tis of The is set to the tune of God Save the Queen, which happened to already be another country's national anthem.
A few sons of harmony sent a petition,
That he their inspirer and patron would be,
When this answer arrived from the jolly old Grecian:
Voice fiddle and flute, no longer be mute,
I'll lend you my name, and inspire you to boot.
And besides I'll instruct you like me to entwine
The myrtle of Venus in Bachus's vine.
