Advice For Obama About Iraq: Voices From The Past

President Barack Obama has made clear that, while he isn't going to do anything rash, he intends to make a clean break from many Bush administration policies, and in particular those regarding the Iraq war. That sounds like great news to me.

But, I'm a believer in history, and in the lessons of context that it teaches. It's a good idea to listen to voices of experience, from the past, and Obama should heed them. Here are a couple:

"If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein, you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's current there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?"
Then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, in 1991.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different -- and perhaps barren -- outcome."
Former President George H.W. Bush and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, in their book "A World Transformed" (1998).

It all seems a bit confusing. But I am hopeful that President Obama is a student of history and can learn from it. Clearly, our rulers of the past eight years have been astonishingly oblivious to its lessons.

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Cheney Not Merely Evil, He's A Confessed War Criminal

Now that Christmas is over, so is my brief spirit of holiday forgiveness. Some things are unforgivable. "Vice President" Dick Cheney is one of those things.

It's obscene that this man isn't in prison by now, let alone that he's still in office. It's not a mystery, though. The abilities of, and inclination for, investigation of the executive branch for high crimes and misdemeanors have been greatly diminished.

Cheney has essentially admitted that he lied the U.S. into the Iraq invasion, which resulted in over a million deaths. So he's now a confessed mass murderer.

Here's video of Keith Olbermann on this subject, plus the vicious beating of the shoe-throwing Iraqi journalist. (So much for nation-building.)



In this second video, also from Olbermann's Countdown on MSNBC, constitutional law Professor Jonathan Turley indicates that not only Cheney, but Il Doofus himself, could perhaps be vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes in their authorization of waterboarding. Cheney has just about flatly confessed:



I'll be blunt. I understand it's going to be hard to get a lot of people excited about bringing this rogues gallery to justice in coming years. Memories are short. Also, the vast majority of people who were victims of these policy decisions were brown-skinned and not Americans.

But, to quote Professor Turley, what has been undermined in the past eight years has to do with who we are, as Americans. The Obama administration should put prosecutions of this kind on a burner, even if it has to be a back one.

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Cheney Torture Toady, And CIA Director, General Michael Hayden Puts A Horse's Head In The Bed Of The CIA Inspector General

From today's New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.

A small team working for General Hayden is looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.

The review is particularly focused on complaints that Mr. Helgerson’s office has not acted as a fair and impartial judge of agency operations but instead has begun a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs.

Any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would be unusual, if not unprecedented, and would threaten to undermine the independence of the office, some current and former officials say.

Frederick P. Hitz, who served as C.I.A. inspector general from 1990 to 1998, said he had no first-hand information about current conflicts inside the agency. But Mr. Hitz said any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would “not be proper.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Mr. Hitz, who now teaches at the University of Virginia. “Under the statute, the inspector general has the right to investigate the director. How can you do that and have the director turn around and investigate the IG?” ...

Ok, lets start off with the admission that I can actually envision a situation where CIA Director Michael Hayden's argument could have some validity. I would think covert foreign intel operations are a very difficult thing to apply standard Inspector General protocols to. But I don't see any validity whatsoever in the situation described here. In the first place, the detention and interrogation (torture) programs are not transitory spy v. spy James Bond deals. They are static programs and locations, really no different than military prisons and interrogations, or FBI work and Federal Prisons, in general character. Tailor made for an independent Inspector General. Secondly, who in the world doesn't believe that seriously malevolent and criminal activity hasn't been the rule, not the exception, in the detention and interrogation programs. The United States Supreme Court has even said so on several aspects; not to mention every monitoring body in the world.

The crux of the issue here though is, even if there was a legitimate argument (again, that just doesn't hold water here), this is an outrageously wrong, improper, unethical, immoral and illegal way to go about addressing it. There are no provisions that permit a subject agency to investigate it's own Inspector General; moreover, the very concept is completely antithetical to the nature and purpose of an IG. The Times article says it is unprecedented; that is probably an understatement. This action by Hayden, undoubtedly undertaken under the direct authority of Vice-President Dick Cheney, is malicious and beyond the pale. With no attempt to use the designated avenues of recourse provided for agencies against their IGs, it is nothing short of putting a severed horse's head in Inspector General Helgerson's bed to let him know the score. A pure attempt to chill, obstruct and threaten the IG's work at the behest and direction of the subjects being investigated.

General Michael Hayden self servingly says not to worry, this is perfectly proper and above board, “His only goal is to help this office, like any office at the agency, do its vital work even better,” For the foregoing reasons, that is a laughable pile of horse manure. One other thought; since when did the jurisdiction of the CIA get expanded to investigation of domestic governmental agencies and officers? Is that part of another secret Bush/Cheney executive order we don't know about? It seems like a new concept, and a pretty malevolent one at that. There is simply no limit to the outrageous, unprecedented and unethical extremes the Bush/Cheney Administration will go to to obstruct and avoid accountability and responsibility for their immoral and illegal conduct. It is time for this to stop.

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Addendum Re: Waxman Letter to Cheney

Repeated elsewhere, as well.

The assertion of the uniqueness of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) is old news, mentioned in 2004 in the 'United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions' (Plum Book):

APPENDIX NO. 5

OFFICE OF THE VICE PRESIDENT

The Vice Presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch, but is attached by the Constitution to the latter. The Vice Presidency performs functions in both the legislative branch (see article I, section 3 of the Constitution) and in the executive branch (see article II, and amendments XII and XXV, of the Constitution, and section 106 of title 3 of the United States Code).

The annual legislative branch appropriations act (see, for example, Public Law 108–83) and the annual transportation-treasury appropriations act (see, for example, Public Law 108–199) provide funds for the Vice President to hire employees to assist him in carrying out his legislative and executive functions. Executive branch employees also may be assigned or detailed to the Vice President (see 3 U.S.C. 112) and the Vice President may employ consultants (see 3 U.S.C. 106(a)). The Office of the Vice President (OVP) consists of the aggregation of Vice Presidential employees whose salary is disbursed by the Secretary of the Senate from the Vice President’s legislative appropriation, Vice Presidential employees employed with the Vice President’s executive appropriation, employees assigned or detailed to the Vice President, and consultants engaged by the Vice President.

The numbers, titles and salaries of OVP personnel change with some frequency. The salaries of Vice Presidential employees whose salary is disbursed by the Secretary of the Senate from the Vice President’s legislative appropriation cannot exceed a maximum specified by law (see 2 U.S.C.60a–1). The salaries of Vice Presidential mployees whose salary comes from the Vice President’s executive appropriation also cannot exceed a maximum specified by law (see 3 U.S.C. 106).

The authority to appoint, administratively determine the pay of, and discharge Vice Presidential employees rests with the Vice President.

The Office of the Vice President is listed under the Executive Branch heading in the online Plum Books for years 1996 and 2000, but not 2004, the year in which the above excerpted statement appears.

More here, from ABC's Justin Rood.

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Wolf, What Happened To Your Boys?

Ok, my guess is that we have all seen the Blitzer/Chaney cage match. It is one of the ugliest events I have ever seen recorded.

But my complaint is not with Cheney. After all we should know from the start Cheney is going to lie his tail off. No, what amazed me was Blitzer’s pathetic weenie-bound attempt to plant a wet one on Chaney’s rear.

After Cheney attempted to cut Blitzer off at the knees, “Frankly, you're out of line with that question.” Wolf fell silent, then stammered, and then did everything up to volunteering to father Mary’s next child in order to appease the raging VP.

Go ahead, watch the clip if you can bare to. If you must, mute everything but the last 10 seconds. Observe how a so-called news anchor willingly becomes a eunuch on national TV. Sad, so very very sad.

Updated link (thanks BGRS):
Chaney/Blitzer on youtube

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