"We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop," Addington said.
An extraordinary must read piece appears on page 1 of today’s WaPo, provided by a true inside source, former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith, detailing activities of Cheney Cabal, and teaching the following lessons:
(1) There can be no compromise, and no quarter given these people – they will stop at nothing to implement their agenda, and any effort at compromise will be sneered at as weakness.
(2) The coming fights over the funding bills and FISA will be defining moments for the Democratic leadership – is Harry Reid the boxer/fighter he was in his prior life, or the pandering wuss the Cheney acolytes take him to be.
(3) It will take a higher power to stop them, and that power is collective will of the American people, as led by the activist community.
Iraq.
Politicization of the Justice Department.
And many more examples of misguided policies.
All summed up by these precious quotes.
We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop," Addington said .
In a February 2004 meeting, Addington said sarcastically: "We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court."
Regrettably, as well documented here, the threat of that bomb was enough to scare the leadership into caving on FISA- will round 2 be any different ? Only if we mobilize the larger force Addington fears.
David Addington. Cheney’s legal mind. KO’s worst person for 9/4. Labeled the most powerful person you never heard of, and by Maureen Dowd as "The Death Adder", although having dealt with him when he was in the private sector, any snake will do.
He, not Gonzo, and not Yoo, is the real architect of the terror policies whose primary results have been to destroy our nation’s moral authority in the rest of the world, and to terrorize those of us who believe that the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution are inviolable... but as Colin Powell said "It’s Addington. He doesn’t care about the Constitution."
From the WaPo:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Vice President Cheney's top lawyer pushed relentlessly to expand the powers of the executive branch and repeatedly derailed efforts to obtain congressional approval for aggressive anti-terrorism policies for fear that even a Republican majority might say no, according to a new book written by a former senior Justice Department official.
David S. Addington, who is now Cheney's chief of staff, viewed both U.S. lawmakers and overseas allies with "hostility" and repeatedly opposed efforts by other administration lawyers to soften counterterrorism policies or seek outside support, according to Jack L. Goldsmith, who frequently clashed with Addington while serving as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and 2004. "We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop," Addington said at one point, according to Goldsmith.
Addington is a central player in Goldsmith's new book, "The Terror Presidency." It provides an unusual glimpse of fierce internal dissent over the legal opinions behind some of the Bush administration's most controversial tactics in detaining and interrogating terrorism suspects.
"As I absorbed the opinions, I concluded that some were deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President," Goldsmith writes, referring to Justice Department memoranda issued in the two years following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "I was astonished, and immensely worried, to discover that some of our most important counterterrorism policies rested on severely damaged legal foundations."
The internal tensions peaked in March 2004 during the now-famous visit by then-White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales to the hospital room of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, whom Gonzales unsuccessfully pressed to approve a warrantless surveillance program that Goldsmith and other Justice lawyers had deemed illegal. Goldsmith, who was in the room, recounted in an interview yesterday that as Gonzales and then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. turned and left, "Mrs. Ashcroft sticks out her tongue" to express her "strong disapproval."
Anyone still think that his resignation should preclude impeaching Gonzo anyway ? Particularly since we have this juicy nugget - read serial Hatch Act violations in the DoJ...
Goldsmith also said in his book that -- like many other Justice Department hires -- he was quizzed about his political loyalties during his initial job interview. One of Gonzales's deputies, David Leitch, opened the conversation by asking him about an $800 campaign contribution Goldsmith had given to a law school dean who was a Democrat. "Why have you never given money to a Republican?" Leitch asked, according to the book. "Are you a Republican?"
Now anyone who thinks that Monica Goodling was the only person who crossed the line at DoJ is simply not playing with a full deck.
And John Conyers, Pat Leahy, Henry Waxman - do not let up for one second on these people because Gonzo and Rove is leaving and the DoJ has an internal investigation going. The cancer known as "Rovization’ metasisized through out the DoJ, indeed the entire government ...and ultimately you must serve as part of the higher power than stops the spread of this disease.
Goldsmith portrayed the senior officials with whom he regularly met as unremittingly fearful of another terrorist attack and determined "to act aggressively and preemptively." At the same time, he wrote, they feared that they could one day be prosecuted for engaging in tactics that pushed legal boundaries.
And when pray tell is that long overdue day coming.. do we have to go the Hague ?
The solution was for lawyers "to find some way to make what [Bush] did legal," .... Goldsmith for a time was in a unique position to do so, because OLC opinions carry unusual authority inside the government and are typically regarded as written in stone. Only a handful of OLC decisions have been altered by officials in successive administrations. But during Goldsmith's brief tenure, however, he wound up overturning numerous OLC decisions reached earlier in the Bush administration -- an unprecedented act.
Goldsmith's actions clearly surprised the White House....
Even though the lawyers who wrote that crap have been discredited, except in Berkeley, where the Pillsbury Doughboy, John Yoo, is proclaiming his Gospel of the Unitary Executive, BUSH still gets what he wants - called the FISA cave in - and if the telecoms get immunity in FISA Round 2- there should be impeachment- of the leadership that allowed it to happen.
Goldsmith depicted Addington, who served as "Cheney's eyes, ears, and voice" on counterterrorism matters and with whom he was present at roughly 100 meetings on the topic, as having little patience for views contrary to his own.
Of course. God said he was right.
"After 9/11, they and other top officials in the administration dealt with FISA the way they dealt with other laws they didn't like: they blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations," Goldsmith wrote, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs spying by U.S. agencies within the United States.
We don't like the law, so we'll change it - in secret - judicial activism, open hearings, full briefing = bad; executive branch activism secrecy, one point of view only = good. Thanks for teaching me that.
Goldsmith described Addington as "the chief legal architect of the Terrorist Surveillance Program," which bypassed the secret court that administers FISA and allowed the National Security Agency to spy on communications between the United States and overseas without warrants.
In a February 2004 meeting, Addington said sarcastically: "We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court."...
And how the hell does this not amount to high crimes and misdeamnors ?
Addington reacted angrily to many of Goldsmith's legal opinions, telling him in reference to one concerning detainees in Iraq: "The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections. You cannot question his decision," according to the book.
Pardon me while I genuflect to King George.
"He and, I presumed, his boss viewed power as the absence of constraint," Goldsmith wrote. "They believed cooperation and compromise signaled weakness and emboldened the enemies of America and the executive branch."
Here we go again- Cult of Bush- Gospel of the Unitary Executive - whatever you want to call it, the point is that these zealots are acting with a religious fevor, and that passion level must be matched by our side of the issues.
"Enemies of the executuve branch "- that means you Democratic leadership- until you show some cajones, and start playing hardball with the same fervor, your approval ratings will remain in the toilet.
The point of the "Thumpin of 2006" was to reign in The Reign of Error, not to try to make nice to bullies, who see this as a sign of weakness ... SO CUT THE CRAP ...
Even John Yoo and Addington know that Congress can defund this misguided policy, but for crips sake, can we be smart, and not just deal with the spin game but with the issues the American people want dealt with and shift the funding to going after Osama, the real Al Quida, and move intelligence resources to places where we can prepare to deal with the real threats represented by the instability in Pakistan, WHERE NOTE TO W – THEY HAVE WMD’s, as well as possible instability in Iran. This waste of intelligence resources is one of the untold stories of this sad saga.
.....according to Goldsmith. "It was said hundreds of times in the White House that the President and the Vice President wanted to leave the presidency stronger than they found it. In fact, they seemed to have achieved the opposite," he wrote.
I wish I could agree, but unless our leaders we show some guts, and win the battles over the funding and FISA, for starters that is – these people need to be called to account for what they have done – Goldsmith’s conclusion is wishful thinking – and so we, the people, the higher power, have a lot of work to do to steel the Congressional backbone. May the Force be with us, or we be the Force.