Comment on: Comments: In Prosecutors Probe, a Detour Around Courts - washingtonpost.com on 7/27/2007 9:28 AM

Anyone who suffered through the House Judiciary Committee's examination of Messrs. Gonzales and McNulty and Ms. Goodling got a preview of what an "inherent contempt" proceeding in the House would look like and it's not pretty. Chairman Conyers is a courtly gentleman but no courtroom lawyer. Most of the members of the committee, the Democrats at least, have no idea how to ask a question that will produce a usable response. There are a couple of good courtroom lawyers on the committee, most notably Arthur Davis of California, and if Mr. Conyers or the Democratic majority of the committee had any sense, and if he and they thought it was more important to obtain useful information than to provide each member an opportunity to bloviate, they would have allocated all or most of the hearing time to Mr. Davis and perhaps Adam Shiff. Instead, we got the pathetic clown shows in which the clown were the congressmen rather than the culpable witnesses. John Conyers is no Peter Rodino (those of an advanced age will remember him from the House impeachment hearings on Watergate)and so far we haven't seen the contemporary equivalent of a Judge John Sirica to force the disgorgement of White House documentary evidence and the appearance of witnesses. So I fear that an inherent contempt proceeding in the House would be as edifying as the impeachment show the Republicans mounted against Bill Clinton, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." I think what we can expect is continued total fecklessness out the Democrats in the House and the Senate and maybe it's better that way. More's the pity.

Comment on: Comments: FBI Director Contradicts Gonzales Testimony - washingtonpost.com on 7/26/2007 10:18 PM

What does Andrew Card have to say about all this? What does John Ashcroft have to say about all this? How about Mrs. Ashcroft, if she was in the hospital room during the colloquy? If Gonzales is telling the truth, I would have expected Messrs. Card and Ashcroft to have come forth with some kind of statement taking issue with Mr. Comey's testimony and supporting the integrity and honesty of Mr. Gonzales. Instead, silence. Perhaps Messrs. Card and Ashcroft have stopped answering their telephones. All those annoying calls from Gonzales, calls from the White House, calls from reporters. Will they now say that BOTH Comey and Mueller are testifying falsely? Doesn't their silence say it all?

Comment on: P.X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner - War Crimes and the White House - washingtonpost.com on 7/26/2007 7:07 AM

Three cheers for P. X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner. I too am a former Marine officer and Vietnam veteran. Like the writers, I have been appalled by the actions of the Bush regime with respect to treatment of captives. The policies of "enhanced interrogation techniques" which cannot be described even generally in public could only emanate from men who did not themselves serve on regular active duty in the military and who never served in a combat zone, i.e., chickenhawks. General Kelley and Mr. Turner have expressed perfectly the results of the BushCheney decisions: (1) our national honor compromised, (2) our own servicemen and intelligence operatives encouraged to commit war crimes, and (3) the encouragement of those who capture our own servicemen and operatives to subject them to torture.

It is not by chance that a Marine commandant would head his list with a reference to “honor.” To Marines, and to soldiers, honor is more than a word; it is a reality of conscience that leads men, and now women, to willingly sacrifice life and limb rather than suffer its opposite, dishonor. It is dishonorable to torture captives. The Gestapo and SS engaged in torture, not Americans. The Japanese Imperial forces in WW II engaged in torture, not Americans. Of course captives were occasionally mistreated, but not as a matter of national policy. Bush and Cheney have changed all that.

Gen. Kelley and Mr. Turner also focus honestly on the reality of torture rather than the disingenuous and indeed utterly dishonest interpretation of the word “torture” by the Bush regime. George Orwell wrote an essay in 1946 entitled “Politics and the English Language.” He wrote:


“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.”

In our time, torture is called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Shame on us and thank you, Gen. Kelley and Mr. Turner, for calling a spade a spade.

Comment on: Comments: House Panel Votes for Contempt Charges in Firings Case - washingtonpost.com on 7/25/2007 2:15 PM

Jim Sensenbrenner, a/k/a Senselessbrenner in his own district, shows the same kind of judgment on the contempt issue as he showed in the Terry Schiavo matter and in trying to make all undocumenented aliens felons. Query: if the occupant of the White House were Bill Clinton instead of King George, would Sensenbrenner's position on the contempt citation be different? It's bad enough that the congressional Republicans have no shame in their support for Bush on most matters, but even worse that they can't take the Autocrat on even when it comes to protecting the prerogative of Congress itself. How disgraceful. Bend over, congressional Republicans. King George is approaching.

Comment on: Comments: Gonzales, Senators Spar on Credibility - washingtonpost.com on 7/25/2007 8:35 AM

When I was in high school 50 years ago, we had a goofy cheer when our football team was on defense: REPEL THEM, REPEL THEM, MAKE THEM RELINQUISH THE BALL. I thought of it as I read the story about Gonzales' perjury (let's call it by its proper name). IMPEACH HIM, IMPEACH HIM, MAKE HIM RELINQUISH THE BALL! As I watched Sens. Leahy, Spector, Schumer et al. working over Gonzales I was reminded of hunters clubbing a baby harp seal, with the big difference being that, unlike Gonzales, the baby seals did nothing to deserve the beating. However, the chance of getting a special prosecutor appointed and an indictment returned against Gonzo is nil. Under the BushCheney unitary executive theory of plenary presidential power, Bush himself could simply instruct DOJ and the US Attorney for the District of Columbia not to seek charges against his criminal buddy Fredo. Even if the Decider doesn't do the job himself, the Solicitor Geneneral and USA could decline to do so for any of a variety of reasons. The only practical way for the Senate to address the challenge posed by Gonzales' perjury is to start an impeachment inquiry in which the 'high crimes or misdemeanor' are perjury and contempt of Congress. The Democrats have been so feckless since they gained power in January that it is hard to believe that they will have the cajones to start and pursue impeachment proceedings, even if they can get over the hurdle of Republican opposition. Failure to act decisively in the face of such obvious perjury and contempt of the Judiciary Committee can only serve to drag Congress even lower in the estimate of the American public, including Democratic supporters and independents, and embolden BushCheney and their supporters who believe that Congress is indeed beneith contempt.

Comment on: The Phony Debate - washingtonpost.com on 7/21/2007 2:08 AM

Your editorial stance is clearly correct: the position of the Senate Democratic leadership is irresponsible, a disgrace in fact. Senator Reid's refusal to offer any comment on the bloodbath that is almost universally agreed to be inevitable once the Americans pull out is indefensible. Shame on him. Shame on Senator Durbin and Leader Pelosi. Shame on the lot of them. We created the horrible situation in Iraq and it would be immoral, grossly irresponsible to simply pull out and let the blood run through the streets. But please, Editorial Board, let's not forget or ignore where within our government the greater culpability lies, which is to say, in the White House. The Bush/Cheney recklessness and wilfulness in initiating and prosecuting this war has been disastrous for the United States and catastrosphic for the Iraqis. Bush's religiously ecstatic otherworldliness about the war, and Cheney's unwavering Machiavellian imperialism in stoking the war fires have driven opponents of the war to countering extremes of irresponsibility. Our country, and the poor Iraqi 'Joe and Jane Doe's' are left with what we have now: gross irresponsibility on the part of both the Bush regime and the Democratic majority in the Congress. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "I tremble for my country when I remember that God is just."

Comment on: Comments: Mahdi Army, Not Al-Qaeda, is Enemy No. 1 in Western Baghdad - washingtonpost.com on 7/16/2007 9:02 AM

Every senator and congressman who reads this article needs to ask him/herself "How can I justify American servicemen and women dying and being mutilated to police this fight between Baghdadi Sunnis and Shiites?" This is national madness, not just in Iraq, but in the United States. If we were sending draftees over there instead of volunteers, the streets of America would be running with blood. College campuses would be ablaze and our National Guard units would be deployed (a) to control American demonstrators and rioters instead of the Mahdi Army and Sunni insurgents and (b) to protect induction centers and other government buildings. Remember Kent State? The bombed Army Math Center in Madison, Wisconsin? Thousands of "Hell, no, we won't go" demonstrations across the land? What American mother or father would want their son or daughter to sacrifice their life or their limbs or their future emotional peace of mind to get gasoline to Sunnis who can't buy it from the Shiites? We need a March on Washington to bring tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans to the Mall to drive home to the politicos that the Bush Madness must stop. God help us; Bush wont, and the Congress won't unless they are forced to.

Comment on: Comments: Why Bush Will Be A Winner - washingtonpost.com on 7/15/2007 9:36 AM

Not that I would wish it so, but if ours were a nation that experienced cataclysmic and violent changes of government, Mr. Kristol would be among the first lined up against a wall. Through his magazine and his innumberable television appearances and his other avenues of political influences, he has been as responsible as anyone for the disaster in Iraq and the threats to the Constitution in the United States. He, and those whose views he shared and helped to create, were dangerous, bellicose, jingoists who pulled the strings on George W. Bush from the time he started to run for office. Bush claimed not to be interested in "nation building" and wanted a "more humble" foreign policy but from the moment he was (kind of)l elected, he was hellbent on invading Iraq as is made abundantly clear in the book by Paul O'Neill, W's first Treasury Secretary and member of his National Security Council and in other sources. The excuse for the invasion and occupation came on September 11, 2001, and the whole world knows the catastrophic consequences. Mr. Kristol knows the consequences too, as does Mr. Bush, but they just can't get themselves to admit that they could be responsible for so many deaths, so many devastating injuries, so much suffering by so many people, with so little good to show for it. So they make stuff up, stuff like the delusional nonsense that appears in this OpEd piece. "Bush will be viewed as a winner" and "we will win in Iraq" and the Medicare drug program is a good program and on and on. This is the sort of stuff that only he and Fred Barnes and the FoxNews deludniks could believe.

He's right about one thing, however. The Republicans clearly have a chance of retaining the White House in the 2008 election. This is so not because of the strength of the Bush regime's record, but because, when push comes to shove on Election Day 2008, neither Mrs. Clinton nor Mr. Obama nor Mr. Edwards is likely to draw enthusiastic support from the electorate. Alas.

Comment on: White House Denies Request for Documents in Ex-NFL Player's Death - washingtonpost.com on 7/14/2007 8:42 AM

You know, for those of us old enough to have lived through the Nixon Era as adults and young enough to still remember it, this Bush/Cheney drama with Congress is awfully familiar. The parallels between Bush and Nixon are clear, one big difference being that Nixon was a lot smarter than Bush is and, thank God, not deluded by thoughts that he was an instrument of the Divine Will. On the other hand, Bush (and Cheney) is clearly the more dangerous of the two evildoers (sorry, couldn't resist it.)
What is hard to figure out is the issue of for whom we should have the greater contempt: the arrogant though incompetent Republicans running the Executive Branch or the cowardly though incompetent Democrats running the Legislative Branch. One wonders just what Bush and Cheney would have to do to get Nancy Pelosi to withdraw her infamous dictate: impeachment is not on the table. Perhaps if the Vice (how appropriate that is) peed on Henry Waxman's shoes? Maybe if Mr. Bush simply repeated to Harry Reid Mr. Cheney's memorable statement to Senator Leahy about what he should do to himself? Perhpas having Alberto Gonzales stand on the Mall, drop trou and moon the Capitol? Just what would it take?
There were three Article of Impeachment against Nixon: Obstruction of Justice, Abuse of Power, and Contempt of Congress. Although the specifics would differ, all of these headings would apply with equal vigor to articles filed against Bush/Cheney. With the refusal to turn over documents relevant to the NSA intercepts, the US attorney scandal, the order to Sara Taylor and the order not to even appear at the hearing to Harriet Meirs, and now the Tillman coverup, it's helpful to recall the language of Nixon's contempt of congress article:

Article 3: Contempt of Congress.
In his conduct of the office of President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, contrary to his oath faithfully to execute the office of the President of the United States, and to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, had failed without lawful cause or excuse, to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives . . .

Does this remind us of anyone?

Comment on: Comments: Going Over The Edge With 'Precipitous' - washingtonpost.com on 7/13/2007 9:00 AM

Wow. Our Leader, the Decider, the Commander Guy speaking words of four and five syllables! I clearly have minunderestimated him. What the Uniter-not-a-Divider fails to realize however is that, as he himself put it with respect to the Gonzales controversies, "this process has drug out too long." The problem is not precipitousosity but quagmiricity. On top of that, Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rice and the neocons have been telling us too long that 'progress is being made' and things would be really awful if we leave (unlike the current situation.) As our articulate Embarassment-in-Chief reminded us "There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, fool me once, shame on . . . shame on you. Fool me . . . you can't get fooled again." Who could put it better?