Crimes Against The U.S. Not An Option

Maybe having to take time off is a good thing, though I promise this isn't the beginning of an excuse to do it again right now. I come back to reading the news and writing posts with a new sense of outrage at the crimes being committed against this country.

Watching unelected State Department Senior Advisor Satterfield before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Middle Eastern affairs under close questioning Tuesday refuse to acknowledge any obligation of the president to get agreement with Congress in order to go to war is past bearing. With Justice Department rulings that Diane described a couple of days ago, that a president accepting bad advice is not prosecutable, this warns us that we can wind up in yet another undeclared illegal war.

Is it possible that our Democratic presidential candidates are being too agreeable about a tragedy that is happening in the history of our nation? We have the moral underpinnings of our country being cast off like last week's garbage, and what we are hearing about is delegate counts? I think the danger we are in with a presidential candidate declaring he'll happily send all our treasure abroad for 100 years, I may need more than declarations that enemies abroad will be confronted. I need to hear that the crimes in high office will be brought to an end, and enemies at home will be defeated.

I would be the last person to think that a Democratic candidate should throw the race to express what is bottom line, but I feel like I'm seeing too little of the issues of reawakening our country to what is important. At left wing blogs, we talk with indignation about the indignity of the Constitution being turned into so much "paper". I believe that our whole country is ready to end that, with their votes. Will they be enough inclined actually to do that, which we all desperately need, if they don't get the message that that's what is happening.

Diane and I both visited WaPo this a.m., so I guess she's feeling more strength, but where I went leaves me aghast. Instead of referring to the disgrace of our country choosing to torture its suspects, and then avoiding trial for that abuse by a plea of security interests, I read an oblique and fleeting admission of "rendition" that quickly got glossed over.

THE BUSH administration has been sued by groups and individuals claiming to have been illegally spied on or subjected to "rendition" to foreign countries. Yet the great majority of these lawsuits have been thrown out of court because of administration claims that the litigation involved classified information that could damage national security if released. Too often, judges have merely rubber-stamped the administration's petitions, leaving the important underlying civil liberties questions unexplored and unresolved.

A bill introduced by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and scheduled for debate today in the Senate Judiciary Committee addresses those concerns. It would give plaintiffs a fighting chance to litigate their grievances but would respect the needs of the executive to keep certain information out of the public square.
(snip)
The executive branch deserves deference in matters of national security, but not absolute deference. This bill would go a long way toward ensuring that a judge would strike the right balance.

Well, there, that ends that issue ... NO, not in this life. We have to make the horror of this violation of decency the point. We shouldn't accept an editorial gesture to keep the subject open in the back of our minds (just in case legislative process makes it less easy to cover up), eventually.

My comment was one of only four, as of @ 7:45 CT this morning. I kept going back to this editorial, fully expecting more reaction to the blandness of the treatment, the equanimity about the several outrages. I will include what I wrote, but it's standing pretty alone at this point in any degree of indignation.

jocabel wrote:
That the administration uses immoral tactics, including torture, with impunity is an indictment of our basis as a society. That the WaPo editorial board gives this a passing nod but obscures the real horrors as 'rendition' is one more journalistic sideshow. It is almost laughable. But at least Hiatt's follies registered something. The earthquake of executive debauching of our underlying principles registered a blip on the WaPo news scope. Eventually the immensity of our national tragedy may appear as a historical footnote in one of their pieces, if the present trend continues. The footnote will get it wrong.

With the present downward trend in judge appointments, the worst administration in history will have provided grounds for refusing judicial review of their criminal behavior, on the guise of security as well - on the grounds of incompetence.

Torture preceded 9/11, but nothing that we turned up by it gave us any defense against it. Why is 9/11 being used an excuse for continuing to torture? Only by the grossest misrepresentation of facts. We are less safe because of the actions of the torturers.

Then-CIA director George Tenet testified before the 9/11 Commission that there were more than 80 renditions before September 11, 2001. We found information on 29 cases of extraordinary and ordinary rendition prior to 9/11. Of the 14 that qualify as extraordinary renditions, 12 were to Egypt.

Prisoners who remained in American custody generally were accused of involvement with terrorist actions, such as the 1985 Egypt Air hijacking, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and the 1998 African embassy bombings.

A chart follows of the tortured preceding 9/11 in the article linked. Later in the same article, another chart of detainees following 9/11 is featured.

The outrage cannot be shoveled away, pitched into a dump of conscience. The stark disaster we are faced with if we don't get this bunch of war criminals out - by keeping the country aware of what we have to do - is continuing dissent from the autocratic destruction of everything of value that is going on.

No more timeouts. We need to rub the national nose in this stench. We need to wake up our national conscience.

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Found this late entry (1:00 CT) at WaPo, in comments;

lensch wrote:
You might be interested in the very first case when the US asserted the state secrets priviledge:

In United States v. Reynolds (1953), the widows of three crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told that to release such details would threaten national security by revealing the bomber's top-secret mission. The Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could bar evidence from the court which they had deemed a threat to national security. In 1996, the accident reports in question were declassified and released, and when discovered in 2000 were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor state of condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case. Many legal experts have alleged government misuse of secrecy in the landmark case.

This would confirm other stories I've heard about the use of 'classified' on info, but haven't done the research.

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h/t eli at multi-medium

Later letter from State confirmed what had been stated, that the worst administration in history doesn't think it needs to consult with Congress.

According to yesterday's statement, the administration's interpretation of the 2002 resolution is that "Congress expressly authorized the use of force to 'defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq.' "

In a letter to Ackerman, Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey T. Bergner said that authority exists with or without a U.N. mandate. In addition to the resolutions, he wrote, "Congress has repeatedly provided funding for the Iraq war." Democrats have failed in several attempts to curtail funding for the Iraq war.