Suffice to say, it was an exciting week!
While I was expecting Olbermann and Maddow's report on April Fool's Day about Mukasey's verbal trainwreck to be a sick prank on my mind, the public glimmer of, and even if it was just a temporary mirage in the sea of election politics, of a Bush administration so incompetent it was criminally negligent for failing to prevent 9/11 served as a stark reminder to everyone that, if anything, this man is still in office!
Two huge stories fused together this week, like one storm system being absorbed by another to create an even bigger storm, this of an administration rife and gutted with total incompetence.
Much debate ensued over Mukasey's remarks to the Commonwealth Club in San Jose last week over just what he meant by his remarks. While speculation ranged from a horrible and politically charged gaffe to possibly admitting criminal malfeasance for the Bush administration's actions or lack thereof for preventing the attacks of 9/11, two other certain plots became apparent.
The first: the new boss is just like the old boss -- much like Mukasey's predecessor Alberto Gonzales, he has no problem politicizing sensitive issues of national security and using fear to score political points for the administration and to protect his master. Secondly, especially disgusting within the context of politicization is that Mukasey did not seem to have a grasp of the FISA law, which stated that they could have listened into this supposed international call from a safe house in Afghanistan to America without a warrant so long as they go to the FISA court afterwards to demonstrate that they had a reason to eavesdrop in the first place. We're face with the frightening possibility that the Attorney General doesn't know the FISA law, or knowingly fudged the law to continue the pursuit for telecom immunity, or that he's so in the dark on matters even he isn't aware of what is going on.
Any of these situations clearly disturbed the House Judiciary, who along with Glenn Greenwald over at Salon, have written to Mukasey and the DOJ to ask for an explanation. 9/11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow knew of no such phone call, nor did John Conyers. The DOJ did respond to Greenwald's letter:
In a question-and-answer session after his Commonwealth Club speech last week, Attorney General Mukasey referenced a call between an al Qaeda safe house and a person in the United States. The Attorney General has referred to this before, in the letter he sent with Director of National Intelligence McConnell to Chairman Reyes on February 22, 2008. In that letter, contained in this link [.pdf], the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence explained that:
"We have provided Congress with examples in which difficulties with collections under [Executive Order 12333] resulted in the Intelligence Community missing crucial information. For instance, one of the September 11 hijackers communicated with a known overseas terrorist facility while he was living in the United States. Because that collection was conducted under Executive Order 12333, the Intelligence Community could not identify the domestic end of the communication prior to September 11, 2001, when it could have stopped that attack. The failure to collect such communications was one of the central criticisms of the Congressional Joint Inquiry that looked into intelligence failures associated with the attacks of September 11. The bipartisan bill passed by the Senate would address such flaws in our capabilities that existed before the enactment of the Protect America Act and that are now resurfacing."
This call is also referenced in the unclassified report of the congressional intelligence committees' Joint Inquiry into the 9/11 attacks.
We should all show some love to Greenwald for extensively covering these developments better than I possibly could. He writes that the DOJ explanation was not sufficient to explain that pre-9/11 FISA practices were adequate:
The pre-9/11 failures, as the Joint Inquiry itself concluded, were failures resulting from how the NSA used its legal authorities, not from insufficient legal authorities or excessive legal restraints. Even if this were the call that Mukasey was describing -- and that is very dubious -- none of that has anything to do with FISA. Such an incident would not even have justified loosening the pre-9/11 safeguards, let alone -- after seven years of endless erosion of such safeguards -- justify any further erosion now.
This morning I interviewed Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies and one of the nation's foremost surveillance experts. She pointed out that even prior to 9/11, the NSA commonly intercepted international communications into the U.S. and -- in numerous, broadly defined circumstances -- was authorized to disseminate what they learned to the FBI and other domestic agencies. If they failed to intercept calls involving Al Qaeda and/or failed to disseminate information to the FBI about looming terrorist attacks, it wasn't because FISA or any other laws prohibited them from doing so.
So if FISA was adequate before 9/11, why the need to make permanent the changes? What's the big deal about this?
Clearly, the establishment has been playing with FISA like it's a political toy. Mukasey needs to be brought under oath to the HJC and/or the SJC, because if he, as I see it, has a different interpretation of how FISA should operate, we are in serious doo-doo.
A quick aside before I go on to John Yoo's torture memos, Glenn also had this piece this morning about the state of the media:
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:
"Yoo and torture" - 102
"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73
"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16
"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043?!
"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607
"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079
And as Eric Boehlert documents, even Iraq -- that little five-year U.S. occupation with no end in sight -- has been virtually written out of the media narrative in favor of mindless, stupid, vapid chatter of the type referenced above. "The Clintons are Rich!!!!" will undoubtedly soon be at the top of this heap within a matter of a day or two.
It's a sad state of sorry affairs in the Mainstream Media, but if we keep plugging we can make these serious matters overcome the drivel. It would be most helpful too, perhaps, if the candidates were asked to comment on the matter to demonstrate their leadership capacity.
We go on to John Yoo and the torturous task of untying the mess of what he has wrought with his torture memos. Glenn again has the money quote:
John Yoo's Memorandum, as intended, directly led to -- caused -- a whole series of war crimes at both Guantanamo and in Iraq. The reason such a relatively low-level DOJ official was able to issue such influential and extraordinary opinions was because he was working directly with, and at the behest of, the two most important legal officials in the administration: George Bush's White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, and Dick Cheney's counsel (and current Chief of Staff) David Addington. Together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, by all measures, very serious war crimes.
This makes me randomly wonder about Monica Goodling's job title: White House liaison? Clearly, the orders to create and use the torture memo came from inside the White House and was not signed off by then Attorney General John Ashcroft! If anybody recalls that map diagram of how the Bush DOJ worked, this would go right here. Apparently the administration went through back channels to get these memos done, and asserted wartime powers to get anything they wanted from 9/11 on. Jonathan Turley seems to think that as a result of all of this, Bush ordered his administration to commit war crimes!
I agree that in addition to putting Michael Mukasey under oath, we should also be putting John Yoo under oath to testify on this matter. Furthermore on the torture issue, and I know it will come off as ridiculous, but why not call Kiefer Sutherland himself to testify? This would accomplish two things: we'd find out if there was any sort of government consulting to the show and the extent and nature of it, and secondly, to make a media spectacle out of the hearing just to get the issue attention! Ironically enough the first episode of the new season has Jack Bauer testifying before congress on torture!
We are certainly on the right track as far as pursuing legal recourses and the right paths. The administration has been doing anything possible in order to leave office in January scot-free. Certainly, this coming Wednesday a flashpoint for public opinion will come in the form of David Petraeus's update on the surge. Hopefully this will be an unavoidable indictment on the failure of the war, and the costs we have endured in a human toll, our loss of respect around the world, the weakening of our military, and the utter waste of money that has come from contracting substandard armor and bad ammunition from eastern European cold war dumps in a contract awarded to 20-something brodudes who sold it to our military and the Afghani military, and widespread reports of rape with impunity by those in KBR and Halliburton, amongst an endless stream of failed diplomacy and corruption.
The tsunami of shit from this administration is enveloping us all, and juxtaposed with an inept leader who won't be able to stave off a recession, severe economic downturn or depression, we are all victims of this reign of idiocy. Bailing out the banks but not the people? Surely, this isn't a recipe for disaster!
A perfect storm is coming, folks! The crimes of the administration are far too many to ignore for people to not demand impeachment relatively soon!
Now if we can only get the media to stop talking about Barack's horrible bowling skills!