1 Boring Old Man

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: Well, this is a process that we set in motion; the president signed the order yesterday. And basically, what it says is it sets up a procedure whereby he will make the decision in each case in terms of whether or not a particular suspect, individual who’s come into our custody is transferred, if you will, from the traditional sort of criminal procedural branch of our government through the courts over to the special military tribunals.

And the individuals that will be considered for that are, first of all, not American citizens — they have to be non-citizens — secondly, believed to have engaged in or be participating in terrorist attacks designed to kill Americans, or have provided sanctuary to those who are conducting terrorist operations against Americans. And when that’s the case, when we find somebody such as that — members, say, of the al Qaeda network, or others who may in fact come under our — come into our jurisdiction — then the president will be free to make that decision and move them over to that side.

Now some people say, "Well, gee, that’s a dramatic departure from traditional jurisprudence in the United States." It is, but there’s precedents for it. This is the way we dealt with the people who assassinated Abraham Lincoln and tried to assassinate part of the Cabinet back in 1865. They were tried by military tribunals. In 1942 we had German saboteurs land on the coast up in Long Island and down in Florida — eight of them, I believe, altogether — came into the United States to conduct sabotage against us during the course of the war. President Roosevelt signed an order, established a tribunal, had these individuals tried. They were given a fair trial, prosecuted under this military tribunal, and executed in relatively rapid order. And that procedure was upheld by the Supreme Court when it was challenged later on. So there’s ample precedent for it.

The basic proposition here is that somebody who comes into the United States of America illegally, who conducts a terrorist operation killing thousands of innocent Americans, men, women, and children, is not a lawful combatant. They don’t deserve to be treated as a prisoner of war. They don’t deserve the same guarantees and safeguards that would be used for an American citizen going through the normal judicial process. This — they will have a fair trial, but it’ll be under the procedures of a military tribunal and rules and regulations to be established in connection with that. We think it’s the appropriate way to go. We think it’s — guarantees that we’ll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve.

A Different Understanding With the President

^{… On the morning of Sept. 11, Addington was evacuated from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and began to make his way toward his Virginia home on foot. As he neared the Arlington Memorial Bridge, someone in the White House reached him with a message: Turn around. The vice president needs you. Down in the bunker, according to a colleague with firsthand knowledge, Cheney and Addington began contemplating the founding question of the legal revolution to come: What extraordinary powers will the president need for his response?}

^{Before the day ended, Cheney’s lawyer joined forces with Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel, linked by secure video from the Situation Room. Flanigan patched in John C. Yoo at the Justice Department’s fourth-floor command center. White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales joined later. Thus formed the core legal team that Cheney oversaw, directly and indirectly, after the terrorist attacks.}

^…

^{"Addington, Flanigan and Gonzales were really a triumvirate," recalled Bradford A. Berenson, then an associate White House counsel. Yoo, he said, "was a supporting player." Gonzales, a former Texas judge, had the seniority and the relationship with Bush. But Addington — a man of imposing demeanor, intellect and experience — dominated the group. Gonzales "was not a law-of-war expert and didn’t have very developed views," Yoo recalled, echoing blunter observations by the Texan’s White House colleagues.}

^{Flanigan, with advice from Yoo, drafted the authorization for use of military force that Congress approved on Sept. 18. [Read the authorization document] Yoo said they used the broadest possible language because "this war was so different, you can’t predict what might come up." In fact, the triumvirate knew very well what would come next: the interception — without a warrant — of communications to and from the United States. Forbidden by federal law since 1978, the surveillance would soon be justified, in secret, as "incident to" the authority Congress had just granted. Yoo was already working on that memo, completing it on Sept. 25.}

^{It was an extraordinary step, bypassing Congress and the courts, and its authors kept it secret from officials who were likely to object. Among the excluded was John B. Bellinger III, a man for whom Cheney’s attorney had "open contempt," according to a senior government lawyer who saw them often. The eavesdropping program was directly within Bellinger’s purview as ranking national security lawyer in the White House, reporting to Rice. Addington had no line responsibility. But he had Cheney’s proxy, and more than once he accused Bellinger, to his face, of selling out presidential authority for good "public relations" or bureaucratic consensus.}

^…

^{On Oct. 25, 2001, the chairmen and ranking minority members of the intelligence committees were summoned to the White House for their first briefing on the eavesdropping and were told that it was one of the government’s most closely compartmented secrets. Under Presidents George H.W. Bush or Bill Clinton, officials said, a conversation of that gravity would involve the commander in chief. But when the four lawmakers arrived in the West Wing lobby, an aide led them through the door on the right, away from the Oval Office.}

^{"We met in the vice president’s office," recalled former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.). Bush had told Graham already, when the senator assumed the intelligence panel chairmanship, that "the vice president should be your point of contact in the White House." Cheney, the president said, "has the portfolio for intelligence activities."}

^…

^{Two years later, at his Nov. 13 lunch with Bush, Cheney brought the president the ultimate "oh, by the way" choice — a far-reaching military order that most of Bush’s top advisers had not seen.}

^…

^{To pave the way for the military commissions, Yoo wrote an opinion on Nov. 6, 2001, declaring that Bush did not need approval from Congress or federal courts. Yoo said in an interview that he saw no need to inform the State Department, which hosts the archives of the Geneva Conventions and the government’s leading experts on the law of war. "The issue we dealt with was: Can the president do it constitutionally?" Yoo said. "State — they wouldn’t have views on that."}

^{Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was astonished to learn that the draft gave the Justice Department no role in choosing which alleged terrorists would be tried in military commissions. Over Veterans Day weekend, on Nov. 10, he took his objections to the White House. The attorney general found Cheney, not Bush, at the broad conference table in the Roosevelt Room. According to participants, Ashcroft said that he was the president’s senior law enforcement officer, supervised the FBI and oversaw terrorism prosecutions nationwide. The Justice Department, he said, had to have a voice in the tribunal process. He was enraged to discover that Yoo, his subordinate, had recommended otherwise — as part of a strategy to deny jurisdiction to U.S. courts. Raising his voice, participants said, Ashcroft talked over Addington and brushed aside interjections from Cheney. "The thing I remember about it is how rude, there’s no other word for it, the attorney general was to the vice president," said one of those in the room. Asked recently about the confrontation, Ashcroft replied curtly: "I’m just not prepared to comment on that." According to Yoo and three other officials, Ashcroft did not persuade Cheney and got no audience with Bush.}

^…

^{Three days after the Ashcroft meeting, Cheney brought the order for military commissions to Bush. No one told Bellinger, Rice or Powell, who continued to think that Prosper’s working group was at the helm. After leaving Bush’s private dining room, the vice president took no chances on a last-minute objection. He sent the order on a swift path to execution that left no sign of his role. After Addington and Flanigan, the text passed to Berenson, the associate White House counsel. Cheney’s link to the document broke there: Berenson was not told of its provenance.}

^{Berenson rushed the order to deputy staff secretary Stuart W. Bowen Jr., bearing instructions to prepare it for signature immediately — without advance distribution to the president’s top advisers. Bowen objected, he told colleagues later, saying he had handled thousands of presidential documents without ever bypassing strict procedures of coordination and review. He relented, one White House official said, only after "rapid, urgent persuasion" that Bush was standing by to sign and that the order was too sensitive to delay.}

^{On Nov. 14, 2001, the day after Bush signed the commissions order, Cheney took the next big step. He told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that terrorists do not "deserve to be treated as prisoners of war." [Read Cheney’s full remarks] The president had not yet made that decision. Ten weeks passed, and the Bush administration fought one of its fiercest internal brawls, before Bush ratified the policy that Cheney had declared: The Geneva Conventions would not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban fighters captured on the battlefield.} 

So many questions. Why was Cheney even thinking about such things on September 11th? Why, for that matter, was the Vice President involved in such things? Clearly, they were already in his mind [for him to be in full implementation mode so quickly]. He ramrodded these programs through without input from the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, or the National Security Advisor, Condaleeza Rice. Where did his ideas come from?

• to secretly monitor domestic communications without getting warrants
• to detain Prisoners of War indefinitely with no access to the courts
• to deprive future Prisoners of War of the treatment guaranteed by the Geneva Conventions
• to lay the groundwork to allow torture of Prisoners of War

We would, of course, not fault him for getting to work on what to do in response to 9/11. But why did he come up with those particular things? Why didn’t he want the Cabinet to debate them? Why was he using political pressure to get them passed? Was this kind of stuff already part of his Project for the New American Century? It’s just odd stuff, that’s all. It doesn’t seem like the first order of business.

Why my executive order doesn’t apply to the unitary executive

by George W. Bush

… The President and/or the Vice President have roles, tasks, responsibilities, obligations and entitlements prescribed for them no less than 30 times in this document. [Note: This document being the one he says doesn’t apply to him].

TPM

The background details are surprisingly straightforward. In 1995, the Clinton White House issued an executive order establishing uniform rules for protecting classified information. In 2003, the Bush White House revised it. The order plainly includes any executive-branch agency, any military department, and "any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information." The entire branch of government, the order said, is subject to oversight.

This week, however, in light of revelations about the White House ignoring its own E.O., the Bush gang started spinning like a top.

The White House said Friday that, like Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, President Bush’s office is not allowing an independent federal watchdog to oversee its handling of classified national security information. An executive order that Bush issued in March 2003 — amending an existing order — requires all government agencies that are part of the executive branch to submit to oversight. Although it doesn’t specifically say so, Bush’s order was not meant to apply to the vice president’s office or the president’s office, a White House spokesman said.

Look, I can appreciate the fact that the White House is in a jam here. Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the gang repeatedly mishandled classified materials during a time of war, got caught, ignored their own rules, and is now struggling to rationalize their conduct. When the federal agency responsible for oversight tried to do its job, the Vice President reportedly tried to abolish the agency. This isn’t a fact-pattern that’s easy to spin.

Shadow Box

Well, that’s what happens when you lose your government and it’s smashed right in front of you. If there are any more self-righteous disbelievers out there who cluck their tongues at my mentally ill delusions about a smashed America blasted to the winds, please take a look at the behavior of the Vice President of the last week and truly stand there to tell me our government has not gone to total hell with berserk criminal delusory crackpots in charge. One can’t, we’re in soft fascist Cheney America with our ever-enabling “journalism” going right along again.

But again, why won’t Congress fight these felons head on with everything they have? An answer gradually trickled in, never of my own invention, of course, but in fragments Billmon wrote long ago for a Whiskey Bar post, topic forgotten, but the gist of his thinking was that the proposed Middle East solution he was writing about would never, ever happen because the scale of accomplishment to make it happen was simply far too vast for puny humans.

Middle East solutions require change in racism, nationalism, tribalism, materialism—just to start a very long list—so the solution will in fact never arrive or be attempted, it’s just too hard and too much. Any actions or concerted efforts at the issue are in fact fakes, jabs of shadow-boxing displayed to everyone in an attempt to give the appearance that something is actually being done. Some of the actors involved may even believe what they’re doing.

That’s why there are zero Senate investigations on Bush, why Waxman is glacially slow, why Anonymous Liberal thinks subpoenas will never work, why Democrats gave up on the war after only one round and why that wmd report was released on a god damn Friday afternoon: this is the shadow-box, this is the fake dance of denial for the next 18 months to wait Bush out until there’s another chance with a new President.

It’s not a direct lie to the base or the people, it gives some honest members of Congress cover for their real patriotic sincerity, but anything that comes out of Judiciary or Waxman’s committee is going to have a powder-puff ending, a toothless verdict that will ultimately only show that in our time on the planet circa 2007 the Congress we got—for whatever reasons—just didn’t have the capability and character to take on the incredibly hard problems presented to them. With 40% of the populace not voting one can fairly see why their attempts would be so flaccid, after all.

So this is the government we get, good old human self-lying half-asssedness with a pathetic ruse of actually trying to do something for 18 months. That’s really the answer to live with the next year and a half, with this fantastic hope that somehow a Democratic president can start some kind of democratic recovery for the country in 2009.

In all the time I will have with the country will we ever stop this denial, this shadow-boxing of futility against the evil forces that stole our country? Probably not. Best case scenario would be the return to sanity in small ways, an incremental, decades-long evolution of recovery as perhaps the country stops lying to itself. Maybe then a real small victory can be celebrated after a life of trying, a burst of reality and justice in a small corner of the country that made all the work worthwhile after all.

• Expose the extent of the DoJ infiltration and prosecute wherever possible…
• Shut down their election influencing machine with a vengence…
• Continue to expose the duplicity of the pre-war intelligence…
• Continue to hammer at their secrecy, their signing statements, etc…
• Stand firm in September and make the continuation of this war difficult, if not impossible…
• Stop picking on the Democrats. They’re doing the best they can…
• Actively campaign against Republicans who have perpetuated [and perpetrated] this Administration…
• Never forget Bush’s perversion of our system, and build a bigger, better firewall to protect open government…
• Elect Digby, Marcie Wheeler, and Josh Marshall to the Congress…
• Help Bush and Cheney along on the road to infamy…
• Make sure that the Karl Rove/Newt Gingrich arm of the Republican Party is amputated…

This is the "shadow box" I thought of – the one from Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat:

For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Played in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.

We can lament what we can’t do, or do what we can. And think of where we were just six months ago. So lighten up, paradox. We’re all we’ve got right now. We’re dead in the water if we take ourselves too seriously and, as you say, "Maybe then a real small victory can be celebrated after a life of trying, a burst of reality and justice in a small corner of the country that made all the work worthwhile after all."

noun.

1. A way of escaping a difficulty, especially an omission or ambiguity in the wording of a contract or law that provides a means of evading compliance.

David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s current Chief of Staff, has been with Cheney for decades, serving as the Chief Counsel to the defense Department when Cheney was Secretary of Defense. He assumed his current position when Scooter Libby resigned in 2005. He’s a proponent of the Unitary Executive Theory, and has been involved in drafting most of the contraversial legal positions of the Administration. When he testified at the Libby Trial, he frequently went off into meandering legal arguments guaranteed to put people to sleep. He’s a master of loophole management, and is undoubtedly behind the Vice President’s claim that the Vice Presidency is not part of the Executive Branch.

Most of his legal manipulations seem to begin with a conclusion and work their way backwards. This one is a gem. The Vice President, at around the time of the Valerie Plame leak, decided he was no longer interested in archiving his papers, so he refused to have them included in the Executive records. Addington, obsessing around with the Constitution and the Laws found him a justification for what he wanted to do. Since the Vice President in the President of the Senate, they decided the Vice President isn’t in the Executive Branch and didn’t have to obey those requirements.Addington, likewise found ways to justify torture, invalidate Congress with Presidential Singing Statements, any and all kinds of secrecy, just about anything the Vice President sets his mind to.  He’s one of those lawyers who apparently delights in poring through legalese to find loopholes to evade the laws as written.

Mercer’s Non-Move

… – not an attempt to leave DOJ, but a move to make sure Mercer can stay at DOJ, even if only in his role as USA for Montana. And I find that interesting for a few reasons–it raises questions about why it was so important for Mercer to remain USA in Montana, when he really hasn’t been focusing on his job there for about 3 years.

Two things, of course, come to mind. Jack Abramoff and Native American issues.

As I said, Bill Mercer hasn’t really been focused on day to day events in Montana for several years, since he first got a no-nomination acting appointment at Main DOJ. But one thing has been occurring–or not occurring–in Montana. The biggest beneficiary of Jack Abramoff’s largesse, Conrad Burns, has somehow managed to avoid the increasing scrutiny that John Doolittle and Bob Ney received. There has long been a question of whether Mercer has retained his appointment in Montana in an effort to protect Burns, and now it appears he can do little but that.

But Mercer is also a key anti-NAIS figure on the Native American Issues Subcommittee. As the email dumps showed, for example, Mercer was the person who heard Chiara’s appeal to retain a staffer for the Subcommittee. Which he promptly ignored and persuaded her not to make the kind of stink that might have resulted in her reversing that order. In other words, Mercer looks like precisely the kind of person the Administration has been stacking NAIS with in the last year. By retaining Mercer, even if only as USA of Montana, you ensure that NAIS retains its anti-Native American bias.

Interesting. I had that thought too, but supressed it. Not the thought about Abramoff or the NAIS, but the thought "something’s fishy here – he’s not really leaving." I supressed it, I thought, because he’s right – they’d murder him in the confirmation hearing and I’m afraid of being too paranoid about the wheelings and dealings of this Administration.

I haven’t yet internalized, as Marcy Wheeler has, that one cannot be too paranoid about the workings of this Administration. She took the thought one step further and got to the why of things. The Native American issue is a big part the U.S. Attorney story – Abramoff, Reed, Ney, Chiara, Heffelfinger, and now Mercer. I’m not clear if they’re after the Native American money, the Native American Land, or supressing the Native American vote – but following emptywheel’s lead, I’m betting on all of the above, and more we don’t know about.

Erik Erikson was a Psychoanalyst – a ego psychologist and a contemporary of Anna Freud. He conceived of development in an interesting way – as a series of developmental crises, unfolding throughout the life cycle. He presented these "stages" as a series of dichotomies. The goal of the whole process was middle adulthood [Generativity vs. Self absorption or Stagnation]. He saw late life this way:

Late Adulthood: 55 or 65 to Death

Ego Development Outcome: Integrity vs. Despair

Basic Strengths: Wisdom

Erikson felt that much of life is preparing for the middle adulthood stage and the last stage is recovering from it. Perhaps that is because as older adults we can often look back on our lives with happiness and are content, feeling fulfilled with a deep sense that life has meaning and we’ve made a contribution to life, a feeling Erikson calls integrity. Our strengt h comes from a wisdom that the world is very large and we now have a detached concern for the whole of life, accepting death as the completion of life.

On the other hand, some adults may reach this stage and despair at their experiences and perceived failures. They may fear death as they struggle to find a purpose to their lives, wondering "Was the trip worth it?" Alternatively, they may feel they have all the answers (not unlike going back to adolescence) and end with a strong dogmatism that only their view has been correct.

The significant relationship is with all of mankind—"my-kind."

He joined up with the Conservative Think-Tank, The American Enterprise Institute, and was one of the founders of The Project for the New American Century. In 1995, he did the first of several characteristically Cheney-like things. He had parlayed his way in the political arena before. This time, he did it in the private sector. When the Defense/Oil Drilling Conglomerate, Halliburton, consulted him about their search for a C.E.O., he said "what about me?" and they bought it. He would later do the same thing with the Bush 2000 campaign. When appointed to search for a Vice Presidential candidate, he found himself. But he spent his mid to late fifties with Halliburton, making several speeches about the Middle Eastern Oil fields being the way to the future of the energy business.

My take on this story is that Cheney reached the doorway to late life a frustrated man. He was at the age where he was being consulted as something of a wise elder statesman, but instead of  accepting that role, he inserted himself into the game. Confirming that idea, in 1994, he mounted a preliminary campaign for the Presidency. His adult life had not taken him as far as he would like to go and he was still jockeying for position. So, a few weeks before his 60th birthday, he was inaugurated Vice President of the United States. At the time, I think a lot of us were comforted that a wise old man was accompanying George W. Bush to the White House. Even though Bush was in his mid 50’s, many of us saw him as a child, an adolescent at best, elected by a wave of Conservative and Religious Right sentiment rather than on his own merits. Perhaps Cheney would bring "wisdom" to the Administration. Certainly, Cheney’s demeanor was that of a wise older man. Like most of us, I didn’t know about Halliburton, the Oil thing, The Project for the New American Century. I didn’t know about Cheney, the opportunist, the ultra-conservative Congressman. Like most of us, I only knew about his tenure as the Secretary of Defense.

We didn’t get a wise old man in Dick Cheney. We got us a genuine curmudgeon. As I look back over Cheney’s career, I see an ambitious, opinionated man who never made it to the top – as least the top he aspired to. I suspect that his wife, Lynn, was a part of that ambition – a projection of her own. Cheney’s planned trajectory was cut short repeatedly by "bad luck" – Nixon’s fall, Ford’s defeat, George Bush Sr.’s defeat. It’s tempting to suggest, as others have, that Cheney’s bad luck was partly the result of his own failings, but that’s speculative. More to the point, Cheney has hardly entered late life a symbol of Integrity, focusing on "man-kind." He’s a self absorbed, bitter old curmudgeon – "A crusty irascible cantankerous old person full of stubborn ideas." I guess he wanted to be President all along, and he couldn’t get there on his own – so he’s pretended to be President [as second in command to a fool]. Our country has been run from the background by a sneering, disdainful, frustrated old man who likely hates George W. Bush for occupying an office he could never achieve for himself. Dick Cheney is a tragic figure who has steered us down a tragic path.

In 1941, the year of Cheney’s birth, RKO released one of the classic films of all times, Citizen Kane. It is the story of a man corrupted by ruthless ambition – a modern tale in the tradition of Shakespearean Drama and Aristotle’s Poetics – a tale that well fits the life of Dick Cheney.

Well, there we have it. The Vice President is not part of the Executive Branch because… Well, nevermind about that. Waxman bringing it up is ridiculous because… Well, it’s because the President said it was okay. Anyway, Dana Perino doesn’t want to talk about it very much…

Why Does Cheney Still Have Access To Secrets?
by Steve Soto

With the revelation over the last several days that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) has argued that it is not bound by Executive Branch rules on the handling of classified information, and Cheney’s retaliation against the National Archives for requesting an accounting from him on the matter, there are many questions that the media and the Democratic leadership should pursue immediately.

• If the OVP now argues that it is not bound by executive branch rules, then how can the OVP argue that it is covered by executive privilege?
• If the OVP is not entirely an Executive Branch entity, does this not undermine its legal defense in the Cheney Energy Task Force case?
• IF the OVP argues that it is not bound by executive branch rules governing the handling of classified information, then why hasn’t President Bush pulled the security clearances of Cheney and all his staff?
• How can Congress and the American people have confidence that the Bush Administration is protecting our national security and our classified assets and secrets as long as the OVP exempts itself from protecting those secrets and those assets?
• …

DoJ Purge Figure Withdraws Nomination

It’s Friday afternoon. You know what that means: it’s time for a senior Justice Department official to resign.

This time it’s Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer, who, not so coincidentally, was due to have a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee this coming Tuesday. Mercer is one of the senior DoJ officials Kyle Sampson claims to have consulted about the firings.

But rather than undergo an unpleasant round of questioning, Mercer has withdrawn his name from consideration and will return to his other job; he’s the U.S. Attorney for Montana. Mercer — much to the chagrin of the chief judge in his district — has been pulling double duty since 2005…