Why We Have to Look Back

Why We Have to Look Back
Washington Post
By John Conyers Jr.
Friday, January 16, 2009; A19

This week, I released "Reining in the Imperial Presidency," a 486-page report detailing the abuses and excesses of the Bush administration and recommending steps to address them. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. popularized the term "imperial presidency" in the 1970s to describe an executive who had assumed more power than the Constitution allows and circumvented the checks and balances fundamental to our three-branch system of government. Until recently, the Nixon administration seemed to represent a singular embodiment of the idea. Unfortunately, it is clear that the threat of the imperial presidency lives on and, indeed, reached new heights under George W. Bush.

As this report documents, there was the administration's contrived drive to a needless war of aggression with Iraq, based on manipulated intelligence and facts that were "fixed around the policy." There was its politicization of the Justice Department; unconscionable and possibly illegal policies on detention, interrogation and extraordinary rendition; warrantless wiretaps of American citizens; the ravaging of our regulatory system and the use of signing statements to override the laws of the land; and the intimidation and silencing of critics and whistle-blowers who dared to tell fellow citizens what was being done in their name. And all of this was hidden behind an unprecedented veil of secrecy and outlandish claims of privilege.

I understand that many feel we should just move on. They worry that addressing these actions by the Bush administration will divert precious energy from the serious challenges facing our nation. I understand the power of that impulse. Indeed, I want to move on as well -- there are so many things that I would rather work on than further review of Bush's presidency. But in my view it would not be responsible to start our journey forward without first knowing exactly where we are.

We cannot rebuild the appropriate balance between the branches of government without fully understanding how that relationship has been distorted. Likewise, we cannot set an appropriate baseline for future presidential conduct without documenting and correcting the presidential excesses that have just occurred. After the Nixon imperial presidency, critical reviews such as the Church and Pike committees led to fundamental reforms that have served our nation well. Comparable steps are needed to begin the process of reining in the legacy of the Bush imperial presidency. I consider these three points crucial:

First, Congress should continue to pursue its document requests and subpoenas that were stonewalled under President Bush. Doing so will make clear that no executive can forever hide its misdeeds from the public.

Second, Congress should create an independent blue-ribbon panel or similar body to investigate a host of previously unreviewable activities of the Bush administration, including its detention, interrogation and surveillance programs. Only by chronicling and confronting the past in a comprehensive, bipartisan fashion can we reclaim our moral authority and establish a credible path forward to meet the complex challenges of a post-Sept. 11 world.

Third, the new administration should conduct an independent criminal probe into whether any laws were broken in connection with these activities. Just this week, in the pages of this newspaper, a Guantanamo Bay official acknowledged that a suspect there had been "tortured" -- her exact word -- in apparent violation of the law. The law is the law, and, if criminal conduct occurred, those responsible -- particularly those who ordered and approved the violations -- must be held accountable.

Some day, there is bound to be another national security crisis in America. A future president will face the same fear and uncertainty that we did after Sept. 11, 2001, and will feel the same temptation to believe that the ends justify the means -- temptation that drew our nation over to the "dark side" under the leadership of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. If those temptations are to be resisted -- if we are to face new threats in a manner that keeps faith with our values and strengthens rather than diminishes our authority around the world -- we must fully learn the lessons of our recent past.

The writer, a Democrat, represents Michigan's 14th District in the U.S. House and is chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Take U.S. Forces out of Iraq to Achieve Peace

The U.S. Bush administration is taking steps toward perpetuating the stationing of U.S. forces in Iraq ostensibly to forge cooperation with Iraq at Iraq’s “request.”

read the whole story here...

Bush Admin. Made 935 False Statements about Iraq Before War

by Joel Wendland

A recently published study by the Center for Public Integrity documents 935 false statements by officials in the Bush administration in the lead-up to the Iraq war.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

Since the summer of 2003 when US inspectors admitted finding no weapons of mass destruction and fabrications about Al Qaeda and Saddam were demonstrated false, Bush and his folks claimed that they too were the victims of faulty intelligence, which, I guess, is another false statement.

But the CPI report shows that indeed the 935 false statements before the war and hundreds after the invasion was launched were not just statements reflecting bad intelligence. The intelligence was clear: there was no evidence for the certainty with which administration officials made their claims, no evidence to make the administration's case for war a "slam dunk." And certainly not worth the price of 4,000 US lives, as many as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and the trillions it will cost us and our next generation.

According to a press statement by CPI, Bush and Powell delivered the most false statements about the case for war with 260 and 254 respectively.

While for most people this information may not be new and many post-invasion accounts have exposed the administration's role in cooking intelligence and manipulating the media to help spread these 935 lies, it is a compelling study that documents the administration's systematic effort to start a war. It also will be a permanent page in the history of the Bush administration.

Part of what made this pattern of lying remarkably successful was the failure of the big media to dig into the stories, press sources, take risks, or demand to see real evidence. I don't know if the fifth estate as a whole was "complicit" consciously in starting the war, but they sure did nothing to stop it. They went with the flow. Don't make waves and you could get a book deal. Meanwhile, without access to official sources or to secret insider sources, the independent media seemed to have their finger on the pulse of the truth about the war.

So support your local independent media outlet: People's Weekly World and Political Affairs.

The Racist Edge of Bush's "Free Market" Agenda

Tax cuts for the wealthy and those who earn millions from capital investments, free trade and tax loopholes for companies who move jobs and production out of the country, federal investment in war and corporate cronies are the hallmarks of Bush's economic theory.

Reward your friends and punish your enemies.

This Bush axiom couldn't be more true in terms of the impact of Bush's economic fundamentalism on African Americans. The entire world saw the inhuman lack of concern and urgency Bush felt in responding to the humanitarian crisis following Hurricane Katrina, especially as it impacted areas where African Americans lived in large numbers. But the Bush economy has been grindingly and painfully eroding small economic African Americans were able to make in the 1990s and has widened the inequality gap.

The Center for American Progress recently published its analysis of economic trends in the African American community under the Bush regime using data culled from government sources. Among its findings were the following:

African Americans’ median income declined by an average of 1.6 percent per year under the current administration. In 2006, African Americans’ median income was $32,132, which is actually $2,603 lower than their median income of $34,735 (in 2006 dollars) in 2000. This is an annualized average growth rate of -1.6 percent. In contrast, this number increased at an annual average growth rate of 3.2 percent from 1992 to 2000. And African Americans’ median income is still substantially lower than Whites: In 2006, their median income was $32,132, as compared to $52,432 for Whites.

African Americans’ usual median weekly earnings have stagnated under Bush. In 2006, the usual median earnings of African Americans employed full-time was $554.00 per week—$136.00 dollars less than that of white Americans. In 2000, the usual median earnings of African Americans employed full-time was $553.14—in 2006 dollars—meaning that their usual median weekly earnings grew by just $0.86 under the current administration.

Under Bush, the percent of African Americans without health insurance has increased from 18.5 percent to 20.5 percent. In 2006, 7.9 million African Americans were not covered by health insurance. The rate of African Americans not covered by health insurance increased by an annual average percent point change of 0.30 between 2000 and 2006. This is a much different picture compared to the 1990s. From 1992 to 2000, the number of uninsured African Americans decreased from 20.1 percent to 18.5 percent, an average annual percent point change of -0.20.

The growth rate of the number of employed African Americans has been 4.2 times slower under the current administration than it was during the 1990s. Between 2000 and 2006, the number of employed African Americans grew on average by just 0.7 percent each year, which is markedly lower than the 2.8 percent annual growth rate experienced between 1992 and 2000. Additionally, this growth rate was noticeably faster than the 1.5 percent that Whites saw between 1992 and 2000, whereas under the Bush administration their growth rates have a difference of just 0.1 percent.

The employment to population ratio for African Americans has declined faster than that of the Whites under the current administration. In 2007, the employment to population ratio —the percentage of the civilian population that is employed—for African Americans stood at 58.4 percent compared to 63.6 percent for white Americans. Between 2000 and 2006, the employment to population ratio for African Americans declined by an average of -0.4 percent each year after increasing by 0.8 percent on average between 1992 and 2000. The employed share of the African-American population grew faster than the employed share of the White population throughout the 1990s, but has shrunk faster than Whites since then.

Unemployment levels for African Americans increased by an average of 0.2 percent each year under the current administration after declining in the 1990s. In 2007, the unemployment level of African Americans stood at a distressing 8.3 percent while white Americans hovered at 4.1percent. This is a sharp contrast to the movement of these levels throughout the 1990s, when African Americans' unemployment averaged an annual decline of -0.8 percent between 1992 and 2000. Importantly, Whites saw a slower decline in unemployment between 1992 and 2000 with an average growth rate of -0.4percent.

The increase in African-American homeownership has been slower under Bush than the 1990s. The homeownership rate for Whites increased three times faster than the homeownership rate for African Americans between 2000 and 2006. During this time, the homeownership rate for African Americans increased by an average annual growth rate of just 0.1, from 47.2 percent to 47.9 percent, whereas Whites’ homeownership rate increased by an average annual growth rate of 0.3 percent. This trend is in part because African Americans have actually seen their rate decline since 2004. Compare this to the 1990s, when African Americans’ homeownership rate increased by an average annual growth rate of 0.8 percent from 1994 to 2000. Whites' rate was 0.6 percent during this time (homeownership data by race are not available before 1994).

More African Americans are in poverty under Bush. More African Americans were in poverty in 2006 than in 2000, just after we saw a vast improvement the 1990s. In 2006, 24.2 percent of African-American individuals were in poverty. Compare this to 2000, when 22.5 percent were below the poverty line, a percentage point change of 0.28. Poverty among African Americans decreased substantially from 1992 to 2000, going from 33.4 percent to 22.5 percent, or an annual average percent point change of -1.36.

Bush Denounces the "Ruling Class" of Cuba!

By Norman Markowitz

George Bush has just made a speech denouncing socialist Cuba as a "dying order," a "totalitarian" house of horrors, and looking forward to the coming "victory" of the "democratic movement," the dissidents of today, who should remember whom their friends were (namely the old Bay of Pigs crowd in Washington). Bush also called for an "international fund" to help Cuba establish a "free market society" aka a capitalist economy which will be at the beginning subsidized by foreign investors the way that Pinochet's brutal fascist regime, which overthrow the socialist government of Salvador Allende (which by no means had at the time of the counter-revolution built a socialist society, as Cuba has today).

The UN General Assembly is going to vote soon on Cuba's resolution to end the U.S. embargo against Cuba, which has existed since 1960. The resolution has been passed with large majorities in recent years and the U.S. government has ignored it in a cavalier fashion. The Bush comments today are clear evidence that his administration is launching a preemptive strike against the resolution, which will no doubt pass with a substantial majority again.

Americans of all political persuasions willing to listen should know something about the history of Cuban-American relations. Cuba was a slave colony of the Spanish empire which some from slavery elements dreamed of annexing to the U.S. before the Civil War. The U.S. intervened in Cuba's war of independence against the Spanish Empire ostensibly to liberate Cuba ("Cuba libre" was the cry, and it lived on so to speak in the mixed drink of rum and coca cola by the same name). But the U.S. kept its army of occupation in Cuba until the Cubans wrote into their constitution a clause giving the U.S. the right to intervene in order to preserve Cuban independence(which meant the U.S. could intervene as it saw fit) U.S. governments then served U.S. companies in turning the island into a semi-colony and supporting brutal dictatorial regimes for the next sixty years.

When Fidel Castro refused to knuckle under to the Eisenhower administration in 1960, took the revolution in a socialist direction, and turned to the Soviet Union for assistance, the embargo was enacted followed by the failed CIA organized Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which almost led to a nuclear World War III between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there were no invasions of Cuba, but CIA directed attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro and acts of sabotage against the Cuban economy continued for many years (one is not certain that they have completely ended today).

Cuba has survived. It has established in the context of a state of siege a society that is qualitative more advanced than the one that the revolution inherited in 1959. Its achievements, given the social circumstances that it has faced, are well beyond what any nation in Latin America has achieved (and in terms of equal rights and equal treatment in regard to education and health care, along with other basic human needs, beyond what the U.S. has in reality achieved for all of its people).For thirty years the rationale for the embargo against Cuba was its relationship with the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union ceased to exist nearly sixteen years ago, yet the embargo if anything becomes more repressive. Since U.S. capitalist domination of Cuba began nearly two decades before the Russian revolution and essentially ended thanks to Soviet aid to the Cuban revolution, there is no reason to continue this blockade, except hatred by the U.S. ruling class both of any state that dares to establish socialism and also, in Cuba's case, a former de facto colony that dared take back its sugar plantations, mills, and casinos from their U.S. owners.

"For Cuba's ruling class," Bush said, "its grip on power is more important than the welfare of its people." If ever there was an example of Freud's principle of projection, that is, ascribing to someone you see as an enemy what you yourself are either doing or want to do and then using that as a rationale for your aggressive thoughts or actions, that statement certainly is it. "Life will not improve for the Cubans under their current system of government,"Bush went on to say (another example of projection). But life would certainly not improve for the majority of Cubans if the austere and egalitarian socialism that they have created would be replaced by a restoration of capitalism, one in which the the casinos and the bordellos of Havana would live again, sharp class divisions would become apparent through the society, and a new Cuban class of compradors serving the interests of the U.S. and other foreign investors would spring up as the majority of Cubans looked on, unwelcome "visitors" in their own country. This is Bush's prescription for "Cuban freedom" aka counter revolution.

Taking Freud's principle of projection and throwing it back at Bush, one might say that "For the U.S. ruling class, its grip on power is more important than the welfare of its people." One might might also say that "life will not improve for the Americans under the current corrupt political system, where corporations and the rich spend hundreds of millions of dollars to buy politicians and the Republican Party undermines basic democratic rights at home and advances militarism and war abroad."

Ending the blockade against Cuba should be a matter of conscience for Americans, given what successive U.S. government have done to Cuba and its people starting long before the Cuban revolution. It would also gain respect for the U.S. in the United Nations and in the larger world community, a respect that the Bush administration has done more to undermine than any administration in modern U.S. history.

I Blame Mattel and Bush

This week's recall of millions of Mattel manufactured toys laced with lead paint has raised a lot of finger-pointing – almost exclusively at China.

Mattel executives blamed subcontractors in China for refusing to follow its "strict" guidelines on product safety. One executive, in a report on MSNBC last night, said the privately-owned subcontractor sought to cut corners and bought paint that was not on a Mattel approved list. Media accounts went on to blame the Chinese government for lack of oversight and enforcement of safety standards.

Well, I blame Mattel. And I blame safety rules weakened here by a right-wing administration that hates "big government" interference and has instituted a voluntary process of allowing big business to regulate itself.

We don't live in China. While we can talk with China, impose tough trade barriers, and the like, we can't really make China do anything. Sure the Chinese government has an obligation to do its best to ensure product safety, and that hasn't been successful of late. Recently beefed-up safety and health regulations and enforcement procedures there, however, is a good start. And the country's effort to strengthen workers rights to join and organize unions might also be a good step forward.

The point is that Mattel, one of the largest and most profitable multinational corporations in the world, has the main responsibility for the safety of the products it decides to sell. And that doesn't end by providing a list of guidelines to subcontractors.

The fact is Mattel put those products on shelves in toy stores in the US. Mattel failed to test its products (as far as we know) to ensure safety and put our children at risk. Mattel sought to cut corners and increase profits by turning production over to unscrupulous subcontractors who pay low wages to non-union, underpaid workers and who flout environmental and health rules. It went to far away places specifically to avoid whatever is left of public safety and health standards here in the US.

Mattel shouldn't pretend that, like US consumers, it too has been victimized by a small-potatoes subcontractor in China. That's nonsense. Mattel has to accept responsibility for its actions. So far it has refused to do so. Class-action lawsuit anyone?

Additionally, at least part of the blame rests on the shoulders of the Bush administration for creating a climate in which our government, which we rely on to tell us when products are unsafe or unhealthy, just doesn't do its job anymore. Recalls have been made voluntary. Health alerts are advisory. Industry insiders have been put in charge of oversight.

Meanwhile, our own food supply has been tainted by E. Coli and mad cow disease and other dangerous contaminants. Miracle drugs like Vioxx that were approved by our own agencies have proven dangerous. Pesticides made by Dow Chemical and used by multinational corporations like Dole Fresh Foods and Standard Fruit on their plantations in Latin America have quietly contaminated the US food supply with little clamor from the US media or pundits who in recent days have become concerned about product safety.

So before we go pointing fingers at China, let's take a look at what we can control: what happens in this country. We need an administration less worried about pointing fingers at China, and more focused on the job of testing imported products, regulating the use of poisonous materials, and forcing corporations to play by the rules.

When Even Republicans Reach a Breaking Point

Richard Carmona, who served as Surgeon General of the United States from 2002 to 2006 testified yesterday before a House Committee about his experiences as Surgeon General during those years. Hopefully, his story will be more than a blip in the news, as accounts of the Bush administration's abuses of power often have been.

Hopefully, people will not simply shrug their shoulders and treat huge and expanding quantity of such accounts as mind numbing. They should be as outraged as Carmona, whose record as a decorated Special Forces Vietnam Veteran, SWAT Team leader, Trauma Surgeon, a business leader would make him under most conditions a model Republican citizen, even a hero in an old John Wayne movie.

Carmona's testimony is shocking even by the standards of this administration. He was, he as testified under oath, ordered to mention President Bush at least three times on every page of his speeches, make speeches in support of Republican political candidates and attend political strategy sessions as if the duties of the Surgeon General of the United States were no different than those of Karl Rove or Scooter Libby. This sort of thing is what one usually finds in secular or clerical dictatorships.

But that is in some ways even less important than what Carmona, in his sworn testimony, claims that he was ordered not to do. First, he couldn't make statements or present scientific findings concerning stem cell research, which is a taboo for this administration. He couldn't deal with issues of sex education and contraception, because that also was not acceptable to the administration and its right-wing clerical supporters, for whom abstinence is the only real sex education (a point which Carmona, in his testimony contended was not a scientific position).

Carmona was also told by administration officials not deal with the public health implications of global warming because that was a "liberal cause." Furthermore his was ordered not to address the huge public health crisis in U.S. prisons (which house over two million people) because the administration had no desire to have any policy on this question.

Carmona also had to fight against administration censors who sought to block and then water down a study of the negative public health effects of second hand smoke, because it was an embarrassment to their tobacco industry supporters.

As a final, very petty indignity (again, one that might make sense in an open dictatorship) Carmona was ordered to have nothing to do with the Special Olympics (which supports the athletic activities and other issues
of handicapped people) because of the Kennedy family's longtime support for the Special Olympics.

Carmona was treated regularly as a stooge and he knows it. He was as he said brought in to talk about "science" to people who didn't know anything themselves about science and then ordered him to do or not to do things regardless of the scientific implications. While other former Surgeons General testified, including Reagan's Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, and mentioned political interference, there was nothing in previous administrations that even approached this level of abuse of power against what is supposed to be a professional office in both quantity and quality.

There has been since the early 1960s a Surgeon General's warning on every cigarette package about the health dangers of smoking, but that doesn't mean anything to the presidential clique attempting to block a report on second hand smoke. That there are huge public health issues involved in global warming means nothing to an administration which rejects on ideological grounds the very concept of global warming, so in Bush think it makes sense that studying the issue should be forbidden.

While the administration is perfectly happy to spend more and more money to build more and more prisons and and put more and more people in them, it will not even address prison public health issues (even though
they may involve communicable diseases that constitute a threat to the general population) because that may constitute a move toward more "socialized medicine"(my conjecture).

To this administration everyone is either a political hatchet man or a political enemy. The cliques around Bush and Cheney and their allies in the various cabinet departments make no distinction between the functioning of the departments in enforcing existing laws and addressing questions of public health and welfare in all areas of life and the administration's immediate ideological dictates or the direct economic interests of its backers.

As a postscript, the administration showed its complete contempt for both Congress and their former Surgeon General by having a representative of the Department of Health and Human Services issue the following statement "it has always been the position of this administration that public health policy be rooted in sound science." Oh, Yeah. In what country, on what planet, and in what solar system?

Also, a White House spokesman, speaking as if she were a character in Heller's Catch 22 Orwell's 1984, contended that the Surgeon General was "the leading voice for the health of all Americans. It is disappointment to us if he failed to use this position to the fullest extent in advocating for policies that he thought were in the best interests of the nation."

Policies like support for sex education and contraception, investments in a huge upgrading of health facilities in the prison system, studies examining the health hazards that come from global warming and second hand smoke? Maybe even a yet unforeseen health hazard that may emerge from having to mention GW Bush three times on the page of every speech?

Carmona's testimony should be given very wide circulation. It should be used to further display the extent to which this administration has violated its oath of office. It should lead both the left and the center and even some who consider themselves "conservatives" but don't believe in the exercise of arbitrary power by presidential cliques to work together expose this administration and defeat all of its initiative today, which will pave the way for its general defeat and repudiation in the 2008 elections.

--Norman Markowitz

Australia: Howard Government Admits Oil is Motive for Supporting Bush's War on Iraq

As US Republican lawmakers in droves are abandoning the Bush administration on the Iraq war (or least trying to give the impression they are), Australia's Defense Minister Brendan Nelson on July 5 made a startling confession.

Nelson admitted that Australia's potential access to Iraq's oil reserves lay at the heart of the Liberal Party (Australia's "Liberals" approximate US neo-cons) government's support for Bush's war on Iraq. The Liberal Party government is headed by John Howard, who has served US interests in the Middle East and the Far East avidly.

Nelson further listed protection of the "prestige of the US and the UK" as factors, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

The newspaper quoted Nelson as saying:

"The entire (Middle East) region is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world. Australians and all of us need to think well what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq?"

In this statement, Nelson strips away the West's pretense of concern for Iraq's security, the escalating civil war, the failure to make substantial progress in reconstruction efforts after 4 years, the economic plight of Iraqi's facing massive unemployment, or even for Iraq's national sovereignty over its resources.

Nelson gets straight to the point: continuing the occupation is about securing access to Iraq's oil.

But today Australia's ultra-right government's story is different.

The opposition Labor Party spokesperson Robert McClelland called the Howard government out:

"Oil was a factor in their considerations. It's taken them four years to acknowledge the fact."

So today, Howard government spokespersons denied Nelson's statements and insisted that democracy is the real reason they have supported the Bush administration's war on Iraq.

But then Howard himself proceeded to include Australia's access to Middle Eastern oil as among "key reasons Australia needed to remain involved in the Middle East," according to today's Sydney Morning Herald.

Aren't there ways to "be involved in the Middle East" without militarily occupying Iraq? The Australian government needs to make a decision about why they are in Iraq.

I suspect Nelson spoke the truth. I suspect the Bush administration's big push to privatize Iraq's oil, allowing foreign companies to control up to two-thirds of that country's oil resources, is one of the big reasons the Bush administration is refusing to end the occupation of Iraq. And countries like the UK, Australia, and Japan are staying in lock-step (without actually risking many military casualties) with the policy to ensure, at least in part, their share of the oil dividend.