The Foggy Bottom

They say it's impossible to determine what's true, half-true, bullshit, or outright false during battle (especially after the fact) due to what's called the 'fog of war.' And that as often as not the purveyors often themselves don't fully know the truth values of their statements.

Be that as it may, many are the number who use this fugue state of facts to hide their mendacity or as an excuse for their evil doing.

Be prepared for more of the same. On Monday, Jose Rodriguez's book Hard Measures will be coming out. The former chief of CIA clandestine operations is purportedly going to offer up his justification for the use of torture and near-torture during the Bush-era 'war on terror.'

Former VP Dick 'Darth' Cheney [aka 'Shooter'] has been the most vocal proponent of that thing which everybody in the world except those who stand to be convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for using it calls torture. The defense? 'Cause it works.

Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats have effectively shot down that utilitarian defense, having found a "lack of evidence" that "enhanced interrogations" played any "material role" in producing counter-terrorism "breakthroughs". [Pay attention to those terms in quotes; that's where all the wiggle room is.]

My sense is that we will never get to the bottom of this murk and that Dick Cheney's [pig's] heart will cease ticking before he's brought to anything resembling justice. He will most likely go to his grave believing he was right and his actions honorable and patriotic and justified—however delusionally. And that is the American shame of the 21st Century.

I've Tried Subtlety Before

If you've paid any attention at all to the sporadic political commentary on this non-niche-y blog, you'll know that seeing this article about former Pres. Geo. W. Bush canceling his fund-raising, book-selling trip to Switzerland because of his fear of criminal complaints being lodged against him alleging war crimes under international law gave no end of a certain sense of schadenfreude.

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Think Rumsfeld will dare venture abroad to monger his own revisionist dreck after this?

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I have held my tongue about Egypt because I'm just as in the dark as anyone else—elites and non—about what the true fault lines are here. Seems to me that if our currently hyper-militarized/corporatized neo-Empire truly held sway, both (or all) sides would be massively armed to the molars and blasting away to make room for more armings. That that's not happening has me baffled.

Is Bush:Iraq :: Obama:Egypt? (That is to say, did Obama just liberate 80 million Arabs?)

Again, has there been subtle persuasion of the undercover agitation and encouragement and organization type at work in Africa's Northern corridor? That is, is this an Obama-style invasion, or is he just butt-lucky? And if there were such subtle skullduggery at play, would we ever know about it?

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re: Egypt: When will former VP Dick Cheney (his own self) authoritatively declare the true causes of the Egyptian mess? Is he, like me, waiting to see how it all plays out before deciding where the laudat lies?

Over/under: Cheney himself, not his minions or relations or FoxNews allies (including any who may once have been a small-town Alaskan mayor) who've already been laying the groundwork, will make a definitive statement within one week of Mubarak's stepping down and its becoming clear how the chips will start to fall—if they start to fall in a positively democratic, pro-Israel, secular pro-Western direction he will declare victory for Boosh (Iraq blah blah blah, etc.); if they start to fall in an anti-Israel, Islamist-Caliphate, dictatorial direction, he will blame Obama.

Pints are herewith at stake!

Global Warming, Alien Life Forms, and Republicans

There's a U.N. Climate Change Conference going on now in Cancun, Mexico. You can follow developments here.

Early indications are that 2010 has been at least the third warmest year on record since records began in 1850 and that this has been the warmest decade.

Meanwhile, here at home, the incoming Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives has disbanded the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming created by Democrates in 2007 to focus on the causes and effects of continued climate change.

NASA has just announced that it has discovered a new form of life here on planet Earth. It is an arsenic-fueled life form. It is a type of bacteria that lives in California's poisonous Mono Lake and uses arsenic as the building block of its DNA. We are, of course, carbon-based life forms. Bottom Line: We have a competitor for life space on this planet.

Now if you follow the periodic table of elements' "two-down-one-over" theory for finding the complete elemental poison (such that arsenic is the complete poison for carbon-based life) [see Evolution], then, as this blogger suggests, if the Republicans continue to deny global warming and block scientific analyses and solutions for it, we'd better stock up on polonium (the element two down and one over from arsenic) before these microorganisms start evolving which, contrary to biblical theorists, they will—especially as the environment becomes increasingly more hospitable to them.

Who else, I ask you, is continually making Star Trek allusions:


or keeps coming back to silly Monty Python skits:


Speaking of Republicans, this guy (he who must not be named) apparently fell for one of the oldest cons in the world, the so-called Nigerian Prince scam (aka the Spanish Prisoner), to the tune of $180 million.

The Big Lie

Let's get something straight right here and now: Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution reads, in part, as follows: "The Congress shall have Power ... To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water." This authority does not reside in the Executive (the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, etc.) or the Judicial branches of the government. The Legislative and only the Legislative branch of our government has the power to declare war.

The leaders of the Republican Party—Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney—do not seem able or willing to grasp this basic fact, but persist in the lie that it is the President who declares war.



Palin suggests that a declaration of war by President Obama would be a political maneuver, designed to achieve re-election. Some of us felt that G.W. Bush used the Iraq invasion for that very purpose, having seen how his father's failure to keep his own Gulf invasion going through the 1992 elections brought about his electoral defeat. Make no mistake about it, Palin is signaling her minions that if she is elected she will not hesitate to play the 'war card' to retain her (and by inference their) grip on power. This is the way she thinks. She is dangerous. This, of course, is one of the reasons why the founders of this country vested power to declare war in the legislature, and not the presidency.

Cheney's lie is even more insidious if only because it attempts to re-write history using the sloppy argot of conventional wisdom. On ABC News's This Week of Feb. 14, he made the following remarks:

CHENEY: Well, my reference to the notion that the president was trying to avoid treating this as a war was in relation to his initial response when we heard about the Christmas underwear bomber...

KARL: Right.

CHENEY: ... up in Detroit, when he went out and said this was the act of an isolated extremist. No, it wasn't. And we found out over time, obviously -- and he eventually changed his -- his assessment -- but that, in fact, this was an individual who'd been trained by Al Qaida, who'd been part of a larger conspiracy, and it was closer to being an act of war than it was the act of an isolated extremist.

It's the mindset that concerns me, John. I think it's -- it's very important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and then looking at 9/11 and saying, "This is not a criminal act," not when you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.

KARL: Well -- well...

CHENEY: And what the administration was slow to do was to come to that -- that recognition that we are at war, not dealing with criminal acts. And as I say, my response there dealt specifically to the fact the president called it an isolated extremist. It was not.

He is claiming that the U.S. is at war. That is a lie. No WAR has been declared by the U.S. Congress since 1942. Cheney and Bush never sought a declaration of war against anyone. They sought an authorization to use force, against Iraq and Afghanistan. And they talked about a 'war on terror'—a virtually meaningless phrase which they used to authorize, as Cheney says in his interview, tactics recognized historically and world-wide as torture and to engage in illegal domestic surveillance, among other things. Many feel they used the rhetoric of war to frighten the populace and justify the consolidation and expansion of Executive powers, not vice versa.

This opinion is bolstered by their fiscal sleight-of-hand in keeping their military adventures 'off the books.' They didn't include the costs of the Iraq and Afghanistan military actions in their official budgets, nor did they make any effort to finance those actions. That's just an old accounting trick (they called themselves the 'CEO administration') concocted by business bosses to make their company's finances look better to shareholders/owners than they really are—in the case of politics, to get re-elected. The consequences of such chicanery usually don't come due until after the boss has collected his/her bonus and moved on, leaving the next administration to clean up their mess and attempt to right the ship.

The problem they faced was that there was no one to declare war on. The perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001 atrocities were, as far as anyone can tell, a stateless group of operatives. It was not the act of an enemy state. If it had been, I have no doubt we would have declared war on that state. And, quite frankly, I feel it would have been justified. Bush/Cheney, however, made the ill-conceived, ill-advised, ill-justified decision to invade Iraq. It solved certain problems for them (which Cheney proceeds to enumerate in his This Week interview) and gave Bush the gravitas of being a 'War President' when it came time to stand for re-election, but it was never war.

The Tea Party protesters and Republican fundamentalists rail against Democrats for straying from the Constitution and claim that all they want is a limited government which hews closely to the original Constitution. But it was Bush/Cheney, more than any administration in my lifetime, which abused the Constitution in general and the War Powers Clause in specific, inter alia, for their own political ends. They continue to insist that their actions were wholly constitutional and that they successfully prosecuted war. And they persist in calling President Obama weak because he does not recognize a war that they themselves refused to recognize officially and constitutionally by seeking a declaration of war from Congress (which they might not have been able to obtain) and including these war-like activities in their financial statements (which would show the electorate just how they were bankrupting the country).

Moreover, the Tea Partiers brought in Sarah Palin to give the keynote address at their convention a week or so ago, yet her lack of grasp of the Constitution is so breathtaking that even Cheney slapped her down on this point in his interview on This Week. Yet—and here is where the danger to the country lies—the issue has been joined: arguably the two top Republicans in the country are debating whether the President should use war as a political tool. Palin says yes. Cheney says Palin should be careful what she says; presidents should never think this way—out loud. (Though many believe that is precisely the sort of political calculation Cheney and Karl Rove used in "persuading" Bush to make the decision to invade Iraq. For Cheney to admit such a thing would be for him to admit to an even worse war crime than he admits to in this interview w/r/t torture.) Nevertheless, the issue is out there in plain sight. Clearly, they think about these things. And that should give us all pause.

"What makes you think they'll print it?"

Here's a quick follow-up post to this post from a couple of days ago about the "counterterrorism program" former VP Dick Cheney ordered not be reported to Congress. TIME magazine reports that "CIA Director Leon Panetta was told of the program's existence on June 23, four months after he took over the agency."

Why is that particular sentence jarring? It seems to suggest that Mr. Cheney, was running some sort of rogue, stay-behind, shadow operation within the intelligence community (the actual agency is not specified, only that Mr. Panetta of CIA is the one who discovered it) for something like six months after he left office (someone had to be running it) and six months after President Obama's took office. Nothing has been positively stated as to whether the program was dormant at the time of Mr. Panetta's discovery or to whom within or without the intelligence community the agents involved reported. Doesn't that sound just a little fishy? Doesn't that sound a little like Treason? Does it make, as I suggested in my previous post, the extension of the Secret Service "protection" Mr. Obama ordered for Mr. Cheney sound more plausibly like a house-arrest type situation?

One further thought: a "program" may indicate more than simply an information-gathering capacity—the kind of thing others have been speculating about. It could include an operational capability.

Questions: Did this program have anything to do with the mass graves that have been discovered recently in Afghanistan?

Did this program have anything to do with the manipulation of the American mass media that the Bush administration engaged in over the years? That is to say, was it a psy-ops or propaganda operation. It's not just spying on Americans—we know they were doing that to varying degrees of FISA legality. It has to do with disinformation and misinformation activities through various witting fools, plants, and cutouts in the media: Judith Miller and Ahmed Chalabi, Armstrong Williams and Maggie Gallagher and Michael McManus, Hannity & Beck & Doocey & the whole Murdoch gang at FOXNews, the Wall Street Journal editorial staff, Limbaugh, Jeff Gannon, Tim Russert, etc. On that note, did you hear that Rupert Murdoch got busted for bugging a number of celebrities and politicians and publicists. Tip of that iceberg? Was someone within this let's call it CIA within the CIA actually running an op through Murdoch and his far-flung media empire?

Hey! And what about George Tenet's and Porter Goss's roles in all this?

Pay attention, folks. I'm sure we haven't seen the last of this. It could be nothing. Still, watch for other seemingly unrelated intelligence-related expositions in the next few weeks and months as this thing unravels behind the scenes.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

It's getting interesting now.

The New York Times is reporting that former Vice President Cheney ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years. (In situations involving Cheney, it's often wise to use the term 'counterterrorism' advisedly.)

What was it?

Could it have been the secret "'executive assassination ring' that reported directly to Vice President Dick Cheney?" Can you say "Blackwater"? No, now you have to say Xe—which is basically unpronounceable. And do the names Wellstone and Benazir Bhutto ring a bell? How about Mel Carnahan or Bruce Ivins? Ever hear of a guy named Gus Boulis or Ken Lay? How about David Kelly?

Could it have had anything to do with Cheney's limited admission of his personal authorization of the use of torture of at least one suspected terrorist at Guantanamo Bay? Cheney stated he "was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it." If he's admitting to this much, you just know there's more there that he's hiding.

Could it have been the collection by AT&T (and other telecoms) and its turning over of "tens of millions of telephone and Internet records to the NSA in what it calls a "massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications."

Could it have been the authorization and use of the so-called "Pinwale e-mail database" that improperly accessed the emails of millions of Americans, including former President Bill Clinton. And could this program, which was at the heart of the crisis at the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft in 2004, have been extended to spy on, let's say, domestic political challengers such as, e.g., Democratic members of Congress or the Senate or national presidential candidates, or Republican rivals of the Bush administration who were wobbly on Cheney's ambitious plans? Who knows who all Cheney was keeping tabs on? Remember, Rumsfeld (who was particularly tight with Cheney) practically set up his own in-house intelligence office—the Office of Special Plans—in order to stovepipe intel directly to the warmongers in the White House. Was there an ops side to this as well?

Could it have had anything to do with the illicit program of spying on U.N. delegations in the run-up to the U.N. Security Council's "vote" on Bush's plan to invade of Iraq? Or the Bush administration's "fixing the intelligence" referred to in the so-called "Downing Street Memo"?

Cheney has been the master of the use of classified information as both a sword and a shield. He has used it to advance his political aims, e.g., to destroy political enemies (Valerie Plame, anyone?) and he has hidden behind it and lied about its contents when it suited his purpose and he knew no one could challenge his lies without revealing classified information (does the name Rockefeller ring a bell).

Frankly, it's all speculation at this point. We just don't know now. But somebody does. Do you think this had anything to do with it: "Obama extends Cheney's Secret Service Protection? Bear in mind, the Secret Service not only guards and protects their charges, but they also 'keep an eye on'. Could Cheney be under some sort of super-secret house arrest at this point?

Interesting times.

Who's bringing the popcorn?

Who's Next?

In case you were looking for fingerprints (and I knew you were—inquiring minds want to know) for this (classic honey trap), this (exotic honey trap), and this (fish in a barrel), I say look no further than this guy.





Remember: Back last November, I made the following prediction:

One last point re: Sarah Palin in 2012. Sarah Palin will never be president—in 2012 or ever. Mark my words. There are too many big boys lying in the tall grass waiting their chance. To name two: Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush. They will take her down before they take on each other. And as I often counsel my friends, never get in the middle of an elephant-f*ck.

And what secretive ally of his (and his family) was responsible for vetting and compiling dossiers on the leaders of the elephant party (i.e., potential rivals)? That would be this guy. And who's heading up the PR front? You guessed it.

Picking them off one by one. Who's next?

Outrage

Where's the outrage?

Having most likely irritated my literary readers with my political/legal posts, I wanted to follow up a thread I began almost from the beginning regarding the potential war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the current American administration. First, here's an excerpt from a recent interview with the Vice President of the United States conducted by Jonathan Karl of ABC News:



Some key points: After WWII, at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, conducted by the U.S. and its victorious allies, Japanese soldiers were convicted of war crimes for the specific act of what we now refer to as 'waterboarding'. It was a crime then, when it was committed against members of our military, despite the claims of protecting the homeland, and it's a crime now. Recall, the Doolittle Raid was a direct assault by Americans on Japan.

I cannot begin to tell you the number of slippery quasi-excuses the VP just gave to justify this illegal act. Let's throw out the defense that waterboarding has prevented any further attacks on the homeland. This is the classic 'ends justifying the means' argument. In point of fact, they don't. But the claim itself is specious—it is only on the basis of Mr. Cheney's say-so that the cause-effect connection between the two is asserted. This is the most secretive administration we've ever had. The VP's office employs truckloads of shredders to keep documentation of its actions from ever seeing the light of day. We have no way of knowing whether anything that we (America) did prevented another attack, or whether, for example, the bad guys are just laying low and planning something else. In fact, there seems to be specific evidence to the contrary presented in this article in this month's Vanity Fair. Notwithstanding, success is not a legal justification

Cheney claims: "On the question of so-called torture, we don't do torture. We never have. It's not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously. We checked. We had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross."

Try this on for size: I go into a bank, hold it up with a gun, take the money and run. Then I get my highly-paid lawyer to write an opinion, a "Memo to File," stating this is not armed robbery. After I get caught and charged with armed robbery, I produce my memo and claim I don't do "so-called armed robbery." Does my claim have any legitimacy? No. A crime is a crime, whether I know it or not, whether I admit it or not—no matter what you call it. I can't redefine criminal behavior and have it be legal. A semantic distinction doesn't negate a legal concept. This is classic CEO-think: 'I want to do something. Have the lawyers draw me up a memo telling me that I can get away with it. What? They say it's illegal. Fuck them! Fire them all and get me some other hired guns who will.' As a litigator, I saw this maneuver so many times it was laughable—a CYA ('Cover Your Ass') memo is often a tacit admission; you just have to look deeply enough. An opinion from an in-the-bag, toadying flunky in the Office of Legal Counsel of your own corrupt Justice Department (the department this self-proclaimed 'CEO Administration' used as its corporate counsel) is not a "Get out of jail free!" card. Torture is torture, no matter what John Yoo, or even Alberto Gonzales, says.

Cheney further asserts: "And I think those who allege that we've been involved in torture, or that somehow we violated the Constitution or laws with the terrorist surveillance program, simply don't know what they're talking about." How could we? You've tried to destroy all the evidence.

The fact is, the man admitted to war crimes in this interview: he admits he was aware of and supported and authorized the use of a method that has been defined by U.S. and international war crimes tribunals as torture: "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."

This interview, against interest and in no stretch of the imagination under duress, should be Exhibit A at his war crimes trial.

His argument in support of unconstitutional surveillance against Americans is much more subtle and is the sort of thing a CEO would use to justify something he'd been caught at red-handed. It is often referred to as 'remediation'. That is, getting a subsequent justification for something done illegally and asserting that the justification applied retroactively. FISA, whether or not it is constitutional in whole or in part, cannot retroactively justify this administration's illegal actions. Let's say an automobile company discovers the brakes in one of its cars are causing deaths in its purchasers. So, without telling anyone, it fixes the problem in subsequent models. In a subsequent lawsuit, the company can claim there is no evidence its brakes are causing deaths. It's true, but only because it is in the present tense. If investigators then discover the fix, the prosecutors can show the company had guilty knowledge of the problem and undertook to remediate it—which effectively served as a cover-up. It is a tacit admission against interest of its guilt.

Cheney tries to make the point that these tactics are essential and specifically tailored to deal with specific threats. This is mere political rhetoric, without any shred of supporting evidence: the bald assertion of a known, compulsive liar.

Yet, all this begs the question: why did VP Cheney make these statements? Well, either he has balls the size of Wyoming and is thumbing his nose at the American people and the entire legal system (domestic and international) and the incoming Congress and Administration or he's deluded. He seems to be saying: 'so what?' And to quote Nabokov from my previous post (in another context) there's no rational response to 'so what?' He must believe there is insufficient political will to bring him down by forcing a trial on these issues. He may think there is no jurisdiction or forum where these claims can be successfully heard, much less prosecuted. He may feel there is no one who has standing or political clout to bring these claims, certainly not KSM. Or else he might well believe his actions were heroic and patriotic and, thus, justifiable and above reproach: "It's not illegal when the [Vice] President does it."

Either way, it is a sad day for this country and, indeed, for humanity.

'Thomas Bernhard' Is Such A Loser

I just finished reading Bernhard's novel, The Loser, and I've got to tell you what a loser that guy is. It's a good thing he published his book in German first, he could never get it published in America today—especially if it was his first novel. I started reading it because so many people I respect and admire had told me 'Oh, you've got to read Bernhard. He's brilliant.' And all the reviews of his book I could find said what an amazing writer he was. So, I read it.

What a waste! Here's what happens: Nothing. Or, next to it. The whole story is about this guy who doesn't even have a name (let's call him 'Thomas Bernhard' in single quotes). On the way home from a friend's funeral he stops off at a country inn where he stands around and waits for the innkeeper to notice him. When she finally does, he debates in his mind whether to tell her if he will want to have dinner that night at the inn. He unpacks his bag, has a cup of tea, and watches some men unload a beer truck then goes further off into the country to visit the house of his deceased friend. He chats for a few minutes with the groundskeeper at the house and then listens to a record. That's it. That's all that happens, and most of it in the last twenty pages or so.

No self-respecting literary agent in this country would agree to represent this work and no editor would risk taking a chance on publishing it because it doesn't have anything resembling a plot. Most, if not all, the 'action' (if that's what you want to call it) takes place in 'Thomas Bernhard's' head. And that is all back-story. The dead guy, Wertheimer, never appears except in 'Thomas Bernhard's' remembrance of him. The other main character (who never appears either) is Glenn Gould, the famous 20th Century piano artist. [You will find a video of him playing Bach's Goldberg Variations, an important piece in the book, in an earlier post on my blog.] American publishers run away from this kind of stuff like moderate Republicans from Dick Cheney.

[Disclaimer: The reason I know this is I'm currently trying to find representation for my own novel and I've encountered exactly these sorts of criticisms about one relatively minor character in my book. By contrast, nearly all of Bernhard's book is back-story.]

Never mind the brilliance of the social satire and the complex development of themes. Never mind the remarkable portrait of the power and, indeed, the cruelty of the pure artist and the ressentiment it engenders. Never mind the respective psychologies of the two musicians who gave up their art and sold their pianos because of their deep feelings of inferiority and insecurity. Never mind the Chekhovian ending and the pathos of one friend confronting the way he abandoned another in the face of their mutual loss. No. These are not the stuff of contemporary American fiction. Such things simply will not suffice.

No, I'm pretty sure Bernhard could not get The Loser published in the U.S. market today. No agent would agree to represent him because they couldn't simply "fall in love" with it. It's not upbeat or hopeful or bittersweet or even sentimental. No one would "like" the sad, bitter main character; they wouldn't be able to "identify" with such a loser (whether that's Wertheimer or 'Thomas Bernhard', I think, is an open question.). The book wouldn't sell because it might offend some people when the author makes fun of stupid people. It would probably turn a lot of readers off, too, because all the sensuous detail is pretty oppressive and depressing. What's more, there's no sex in the first hundred pages and there's no violence whatsoever—who's going to buy that? What's more, there's no redemption in the main character from what anybody can tell and he doesn't really seem to change. And, in terms of MFA criteria, the whole thing is 'told' not 'shown' and the author continually repeats himself.

Oh yeah, and nothing happens. The whole thing takes place inside the head of some guy who lost his only two friends. Besides, no one would want to read it because the whole book is one long paragraph. There simply are no places for bathroom breaks.

So, bottom line: Great writing? The translation seems appropriate. Great literature? Who's to say. A salable commodity in the current U.S. market? Doubtful.