Defense Budget Shell Game

Defense Budget Shell Game
On April 15, large, angry and somewhat wacky crowds of Republican-backed and Fox News-supported "tea party" protesters joined the usual groups of more sedate and earnest peace activists to demonstrate against President Barack Obama's proposed 2010 budget

Whether they were mad about deficit spending and high taxes or military spending, Obama's budget of $3.55 trillion is a lot of money.

Much of those trillions are oriented toward trying to fix the problems of almost a decade of corporations-can-do-no-wrong profligacy. There is a lot to applaud in the budget, like increased spending on healthcare, education and developing sustainable energy. But there are still huge military outlays. Obama's first Department of Defense budget requests $534 billion in spending, continuing a decade-long trend of uninterrupted increases. (Indeed, under Bush, the Pentagon's baseline budget rose by 82 percent between FY 2002 and FY 2009, adjusted for inflation.) On April 6, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced the detailed budget with a small bit of fanfare, declaring that his budget is intended to "reshape the priorities of America's defense establishment," and that his recommendations will "profoundly reform how this department does business."
Devil's in the details

Despite those buzzy action words, Gates' announcement was pretty cut and dry--a white-haired man reading from a sheaf of paper and responding to questions. For the most part, the cuts he proposed were not dramatic in that they were "budget neutral." Savings from deciding not to order any more F-22 Raptors goes towards production of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. There is (maybe) one fewer DDG-1000 Zumwalt destroyer, but no change in funding for the Virginia Class attack submarine.

There were some actual cuts to big ticket items. Star Wars missile defense programs were cut by $1.4 billion, retaining more than $9 billion a year in spending on what is left of Reagan's fantastic promise to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." The Army's Future Combat System (FCS)--the troubled system of systems designed to link together armed soldiers, robotic sensors and combat vehicles with a sophisticated communications network--will be cut by $770 million, as Gates axes the vehicle component. Voicing his frustration about cost over-runs and setbacks, Gates did raise the specter of canning the whole $87 billion program if significant restructuring was not successful.

Looking carefully at the Pentagon budget, Miriam Pemberton, a military budget expert with the Institute for Policy Studies, estimates that the proposals shave between $8.6 and $10.3 billion from weapons procurement funds. If those cuts can be sustained, and if whole programs like FCS are canceled, the savings could total $98 billion eventually. That would actually edge us towards the sweeping rhetoric that accompanied the announcement.
Congress up in arms

But between here and there is a hornet's nest of Congressional parochialism, with Democrats and Republicans lining up behind their friendly neighborhood military contractor and predicting fundamental compromises to our national security as a result of these cuts. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), called Gates' budget the "disarming of America." The axed vehicle in the FCS was supposed to be partially built in Oklahoma. Inhofe received $121,700 in defense industry campaign contributions in the 2007-2008 election cycle.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) accuses Gates of being "willing to sacrifice the lives of American military men and women for the sake of domestic programs favored by President Obama." Parts for the F-22 Raptor are built in Georgia. Chambliss received $140,300 in campaign contributions from the defense industry in the 2008 cycle.

Six senators sent Secretary Gates a letter protesting the proposed missile defense cuts and predicting they "could undermine our emerging missile defense capabilities to protect the United States against a growing threat." Together, the senators received more than $855,000 from the defense industry in the 2008 cycle.

All of these protesting members of Congress cite the jobs supported by weapons programs. But according to the University of Massachusetts' Political Economy Research Institute, an investment of $1 billion in defense creates 8,555 jobs and $564.5 million wages and benefits. That same amount, invested in education, creates 17,687 jobs and $1.3 billion in wages and benefits. A Lockheed Martin machinist can't become a social studies teacher overnight, but transitioning people from military production to more useful sectors of the economy is not rocket science, and the benefits are lasting.
GWOT becomes 'Overseas Contingency Operations'

Not only is this budget larger than the Bush administration's last budget; it is just part of the picture. It does not include the full costs of ongoing wars. At the end of March the Washington Post reported that the Defense Department's office of security review sent a memo to Pentagon employees saying, "this administration prefers to avoid using the term 'Long War' or 'Global War on Terror' [GWOT.] Please use 'Overseas Contingency Operation.' " Members of the Obama administration quickly fell in line, with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag winning the prize for using it most often. But whatever one calls it, it is expensive.

As of October last year, total costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan totaled $864 billion. Now it is President Obama's turn to add to that number. In Obama's first and--he insists in the OMB release--last "planned war supplemental" before these "costs are accounted for in the budget" the White House is requesting $83.4 billion for ongoing military, diplomatic and intelligence operations. Of this, $75.5 billion is for costs related to military operations and intelligence activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Added into this mix are funds for four more F-22 Raptors (which extends the life of the weapons program that Secretary Gates just axed to save money). The rest--$7.1 billion--is allocated for international affairs and stabilization activities in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the globe, including economic assistance to Georgia, counter-narcotics programs in Mexico, security assistance in Lebanon and many other budget lines.

Once passed, Obama's war supplemental will bring the total cost of "overseas contingency operations" since President Bush's October 7, 2001, invasion of Afghanistan to $947 billion.

The Facts Thwart Rehab of Colin Powell

The Facts Thwart Rehab of Colin Powell
Watching retired Gen. Colin Powell refer to the parable of the Good Samaritan during Sunday's Memorial Day ceremonies on the Mall in Washington, it struck me that Powell was giving hypocrisy a bad name.

Those familiar with the Good Samaritan story and also with the under-reported behavior of Gen. Powell, comeback kid of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM), know that the two do not mesh.

Powell's well-documented disregard for those who have borne the brunt of the battle places him in the company of the priest and the Levite - in the Good Samaritan parable - who, seeing the man attacked by robbers on the side of the road, walked right on by.

Sadly, Powell has a long record of placing the wounded and the vulnerable on his list of priorities far below his undying need to get promoted or to promote himself. Powell's rhetoric, of course, would have us believe otherwise.

At the Memorial Day event, Powell hailed our "wounded warriors" from Iraq and Afghanistan as the cameras cut to several severely damaged veterans. Lauding the "love and care" they receive from their families, Powell noted in passing that some 10,000 parents are now full-time care providers for veterans not able to take care of themselves.

It was a moving ceremony, but only if you were able to keep your eye on the grand old flag and stay in denial about thousands of wasted American lives, not to mention tens and tens of thousands wasted Iraqi lives - as well as many thousands more incapacitated for life - and not ask WHY.

"Noble Cause?"

The wounded warriors' former commander in chief, President George W. Bush, argued that the deaths were "worth it." They were casualties suffered in pursuit of a "noble cause."

Some claim that to suggest that those troops killed and wounded were killed and wounded in vain is to dishonor their memory, belittle their sacrifice, and inflict still more pain on their loved ones.

But Bush never could explain what the "noble cause" was, despite months and months of vigils by those camping outside the Bush house in Crawford asking that question. Our hearts certainly go out to the wounded, and to the families of the killed or wounded.

But I think that the surest way to dishonor them all is to avoid examining the real reasons for their loss, and to use lessons learned so that their own sons and daughters will not be sacrificed so glibly.

I lost many good Army colleagues and other friends in Vietnam. Back then, generals and politicians - the military and civilian leaders who promoted Powell and the careerists like him - helped to obscure the real reasons behind that carnage, too. And that was even before the corporate media became quite so fawning.

As the hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan drag on and the casualties continue to mount, I feel an obligation to do what I can to help spread some truth around - however painful that may be. For truth is not only the best disinfectant, it is the best protection against such misadventures happening again...and again.

It is, I suppose, understandable that only the bravest widows and widowers - and parents like Cindy Sheehan whose son Casey Sheehan was killed in Sadr City on April 4, 2004 - have been able to summon enough courage out of their grief to challenge the vacuous explanations of Bush and people like Powell.

You can see it in microcosm in the Sheehan family. Casey's father, Pat Sheehan, cannot agree that Casey's death was in vain. Pat told me that Casey met an honorable death, since he was sent to rescue comrades pinned down by hostile forces in Sadr City.

No one can be sure what was going through Casey's mind. And only later did it become clear that, rather than "volunteering" for an ill-conceived rescue mission, Casey, a truck mechanic, was ordered onto that open truck by superiors unwilling to risk their own hides. (This is what one of Casey's comrades on the scene later told his mother.)

But let us assume that Casey was nonetheless eager to rescue his comrades. This still begs the question that I asked Pat Sheehan: Why were Casey and his comrades in Iraq in the first place? What was the "noble cause?" Pat's reaction, or lack thereof, almost made me regret having asked him. Remembering it almost makes me want to stop this essay here. Almost.

With ministers, priests and rabbis officiating at funerals and other memorial services for "the fallen" and spinning their own renditions of "Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori" - "it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country" - small wonder that even those who should know better choose this escape from reality. There is so much pain out there...and if denial helps, well...

It does not help when it comes to charlatans like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell - the latter now trying to re-establish his poster-boy status with an eagerly cooperative FCM.

Aside from those whose TVs are stuck at Fox News and radios at Rush Limbaugh, fewer and fewer Americans now believe the lingering lies. Even funeral directors and preachers tread sparingly with the once-familiar rhetoric - used cynically in Washington to facilitate further careless carnage - that these dead "must not have died in vain."

Isaiah on the Mall

Besides the Good Samaritan parable, Powell quoted from Isaiah about bringing comfort to the people. Surely Isaiah did not mean this to be done with lies on top of lies. Isaiah was no shrinking violet. He got himself killed for speaking out bluntly against lies that in his time justified the oppression of those on the margins.

I imagine this is what Isaiah would say to us now:

"Hear this, Americans. It is time to be not only sad, but also honest. You must summon the courage to handle the truth, which is this: our young warriors and (literally) countless Iraqis died in vain, and there is no excuse for their needless sacrifice. Nothing will bring them back - least of all meretricious rhetoric that is an insult to their memory.

"Their sacrifice was in vain, hear? Our task now is two-fold: (1) Bury the dead with respect and care for the wounded and their families; and (2) ensure that the truth gets out, so that a war built on lies will not soon happen again."

Isaiah, I think, would add that this is also precisely why we owe it to the "fallen" and their families to hold to account those responsible for sending them into battle "on false pretenses," to quote then-Senate Intelligence Committee head, Jay Rockefeller last June.

After a five-year investigation and a bipartisan vote approving the Senate Intelligence Committee report, Rockefeller summed it up:

"In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent." As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."

There is plenty of blame to go around - to be shared by an adolescent president who liked to dress up and call himself a "war president," and openly savored presiding over what he called "the first war of the 21st Century."

Not to mention the power-hungry, sadistic bent of the men he chose to be vice president and secretary of defense and the treachery of CIA seniors George Tenet and John McLaughlin.

The Enabler

But there would have been no war, no dead, no limb-less bodies, no loved ones for whom to recall Isaiah's words of comfort or mention the Good Samaritan, if Colin Powell had a conscience - if he had not chosen to "walk right on by."

Let's face it; neither the Texas Air National Guard's most famous pilot nor the five-times-draft-deferred former vice president had the credibility to lead the country into war - especially one based on a highly dubious threat.

They needed the credibility of someone who had worn the uniform with some distinction - someone who, though never in command of a major Army combat unit, had been good at briefing the media while Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the glorious Gulf War in 1991, which most Americans have been led to believe was virtually casualty-free.

Actually, since we are trying to spread some truth around, this is worth a brief digression.

The Casualty-Lite Gulf War

According to Powell's memoir, My American Journey, before the attack on Iraq Powell was warned by his British counterpart, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, Sir David Craig, about the risks involved in bombing Iraq's so-called "weapons of mass destruction" installations. After Powell told him that this was indeed part of the plan, Craig expressed particular worry about release of agents from biological installations: "A bit risky that, eh?"

Powell writes that he told Craig the attendant risk of release was worth it and: "If it heads south, just blame me."

Powell writes he was "less concerned" about chemical exposures. He should have been more concerned, not less. As the hostilities ended, U.S. Army engineers blew up chemical agents at a large Iraqi storage site near Kamasiyah. About 100,000 U.S. troops were downwind.

Many of those troops are now among the 210,000 veterans suffering from nervous and other diseases - and FINALLY now receiving disability payments for what came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome.

Far from his pre-war posture of "just blame me," Powell joined Pentagon and CIA efforts to cover up this tragedy. When reports of the horrible fiasco at Kamasiyah hit the media, he erupted in macho outrage saying that, were he still on active duty, he would "rape and pillage" throughout the government to find those responsible. Of course, Kamasiyah happened during his watch. Typically, the FCM reported his macho remark, and then gave him a pass.

Despite numerous veterans' pleas for support, Powell, in effect, went AWOL on the issue of Gulf War illnesses, never acknowledging that he shared any of the responsibility.

He took no interest and, in effect, made a huge contribution to the unconscionable delay in recognizing Gulf War illnesses for what they are. One out of every four troops deployed to the Gulf in 1991 are now receiving the benefits to which they have long been entitled - no thanks to Gen. Powell.

You didn't know that? Thank the FCM and its persistent romance with Gen. Powell. Sorry for the digression; just had to get that off my chest.

Useful Uniform

Back to the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld quest for someone to sell the attack on Iraq, someone whom the media loved, someone with military credentials who would do what he was told.

Perhaps they had read Powell's memoir, in which he brags about his subservience to the "wisdom" of those up the line. They needed someone who was not too bright but could be eloquent - someone who was so used to taking orders that he would squander his own credibility for his boss, if the boss would just ask.

Not too bright? Apparently, during the three years between when Powell and I, as fledgling infantry officers, had been instructed at Fort Benning on counterinsurgency, the Army's understanding of how to fight it had improved. Either that, or Powell was not able to master the key learnings of the course.

Here is what Powell writes in his memoir about how he bought into his superiors' notion about how to win hearts and minds - what Powell calls "counterinsurgency at the cutting edge":

"However chilling this destruction of homes and crops reads in cold print today, as a young officer I had been conditioned to believe in the wisdom of my superiors, and to obey. I had no qualms about what we were doing. This was counterinsurgency at the cutting edge. Hack down the peasants' crops, thus denying food to the Viet Cong...It all made sense in those days."

"Duty, Honor, Country" is what I remember made sense in those days. That was the watchword for young Army officers in the early Sixties - not supreme faith in the wisdom of superiors and blind obedience. But most of the rest of us did not make it beyond colonel.

Easy Prey

Small wonder that the hapless Powell was easy prey for Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld. They needed him to sell the war to the American people and, they hoped, to the rest of the world.

It is hard to fathom what "wisdom" Powell saw in his superiors' decisions; what is clear is that he lacked the courage to challenge them, whether out of blind faith, a highly exaggerated - and dubiously moral - notion of obedience, a lack of conscience, or simple cowardice.

Tell lies to support the White House decision for war on Iraq? No problem. As was his wont, Powell saluted sharply, even though four days prior to his Feb. 5, 2003 U.N. speech he and his chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, had decided that some of the "intelligence" the White House had conjured up to "justify" war was pure "bull---t," according to Wilkerson. Powell ended up using it anyway.

Powell and his handlers were acutely aware that war would be just weeks away after Powell spoke. One small but significant sign of this was what seemed to me the earliest cover-up related to the soon-to-begin attack on Iraq.

It was a literal cover-up, accomplished even before Powell conducted his post-speech press briefing in the customary spot in front of the Security Council wall adorned with a reproduction of Picasso's famous anti-war painting, Guernica.

Prior to the press conference, that wall hanging had been covered up by another fabric. Some PR person had recognized the impropriety of trying to justify a new war of aggression with Guernica as backdrop. As usual with Powell, the speech and press conference went swimmingly, and the gullible or shameless (your choice) FCM was embarrassingly generous with their accolades.

Blame-Shifting

Once it became clear -- by mid-2003 -- that there were no WMD stockpiles or mobile bio-weapons labs or anything else that had been conjured up in the U.N. speech, Powell smoothly shifted the blame to the CIA, and his fans in the FCM transformed Powell into a noble victim, now tragically suffering from a "blot on my record" for no real fault of his own.

Though it is abundantly clear that then-CIA Director George Tenet and his accomplice/deputy John McLaughlin did play a treacherous role, no CIA director has ever made a secretary of state worth his salt do anything - and certainly not help start an unnecessary war.

Besides, it is a safe bet that what was already clear to us Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) was at least equally clear to Powell. On the afternoon of Powell's U.N. speech, we formally warned President Bush that the evidence adduced by Powell fell far short of justifying an attack on Iraq and that such an attack would be a huge fillip to terrorism around the world.

And since it was obvious that Powell had thrown in his lot with those rolling the juggernaut to war, we urged the president to "widen the circle of your advisers beyond those clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason, and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."

Suave Martinet

Why Powell simply saluted, in full knowledge that his imprimatur would grease the skids to a highly dubious war can be debated. It may be as simple as the clues he provided in his memoir about honoring the "wisdom of superiors" and his penchant to obey, even when it made little sense and even when lots of folks would lose their homes and their lives.

Who was the colonel in Vietnam who insisted he was duty bound to destroy a village in order to save it from the communists? Powell was cut from similar cloth, albeit with a greater sense of subtlety and a much better knack for PR.

In April 2006, Powell admitted to journalist Robert Scheer that top State Department experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the president followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim.

It may simply be that by the time other generals promote you to general (the current system) you have distinguished yourself first and foremost by saluting smartly - by obeying and not asking too many questions.

The Right's Crazy ACORN Conspiracy Theories

OF USEFUL IDIOTS, AND USELESS ONES.

Matthew Vadum of the American Spectator calls me a "useful idiot" for not believing that ACORN caused the mortgage crisis, radicalized the president of the United States, and conspired to steal the election from John McCain and Sarah Palin. These were the "allegations" I was referring to when I wrote this piece last fall, in which I had the gall to speak to both the people filing charges against ACORN and the folks who work inside the organization. As I noted quite clearly at the time, "ACORN is in many ways a troubled organization," going on to list their various problems--but conservative bloggers like Vadum aren't content to confine their criticisms to ACORN's actual issues with taxes, embezzlement, and voter registration fraud. These problems aren't as sexy or sensational as a secret plot to subvert American democracy. So folks like Vadum simply make things up in order to prove ACORN is part of some vast conspiracy to do evil--Vadum himself previously mused on one occasion whether ACORN should be labeled a "terrorist" organization.

At any rate, Vadum argues that ACORN's "allies" such as myself are "scheming to distract from corruption allegations." That hardly seems accurate, given the reporting and blogging I've done on allegations against ACORN. It's true that unlike Vadum, I've actually made efforts to determine whether certain allegations against ACORN were based in fact, such as when the entire right wing blogosphere decided that ACORN was "infiltrating" tea party protests based on a post in a web forum from a bot selling pepper spray (the post has since been removed). The problem may be that Vadum can't tell the difference between an allegation and conviction, much the same way that he can't tell the difference between voter fraud and registration fraud. Not having concluded that ACORN is guilty of the charges filed simply because charges have been filed makes me an "ally."

That post may explain Vadum's hostility toward me personally. Following the nomination of David Hamilton to the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Vadum described ACORN in part as a "radical direct-action group" that "resurrects the dead and gets them to the polls every election." At the time, I challenged Vadum to name a single instance of ACORN having registered someone through a dead person's name who then successfully cast a ballot. At the time, he kept quiet, because he didn't have any evidence whatsoever to support his assertion. That may have been a wise decision.

-- A. Serwer

Colin Powell Is not far Right enough for the GOP?

IraqTortureGate: Powell Denies Knowing He Used Tortured Evidence for UN Case

The most damning credible allegation to emerge regarding the Bush Administration is arguably that Dick Cheney and other Bush Administration officials ordered the use of torture to produce false evidence of a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff at the State Department under Colin Powell, recently wrote,

as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 - well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion - its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

Wilkerson cited the case of detainee Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose tortured testimony was crucial for building the case for war, and was cited in Powell's speech to the UN.

when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts.

About this case, Human Rights Watch has recently written,

Al-Libi was sent by the CIA to Egypt for interrogation in early 2002. A declassified CIA cable later described how al-Libi told the CIA that the Egyptian interrogators had said they wanted information about al-Qaeda's connections with Iraq, a subject "about which [al-Libi] said he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story."

The cable went on to say that al-Libi indicated that his interrogators did not like his responses and then "placed him in a small box" for approximately 17 hours. When he was let out of the box, the cable states that al-Libi was given a last opportunity to "tell the truth." When al-Libi's answers did not satisfy the interrogator, al-Libi says he "was knocked over with an arm thrust across his chest and he fell on his back" and was then "punched for 15 minutes." It was then that al-Libi told his interrogators that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological weapons, information that was later used in Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council to justify war with Iraq.

A bipartisan report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that that al-Libi "lied [about the link] to avoid torture."

The Senate Intelligence Committee knows that al-Libi's false, tortured testimony was part of Colin Powell's speech to the UN. Human Rights Watch knows it. Lawrence Wilkerson knows it. And you know it.

But supposedly Colin Powell doesn't know it. Is this credible?

Journalist Sam Husseini caught Colin Powell outside the Sunday chat shows in DC, and asked him about the al-Libi case and the use tortured evidence to make the case for war, leading to this breathtaking exchange:

Sam Husseini: General, can you talk about the al-Libi case and the link between torture and the production of tortured evidence for war?

Colin Powell: I don't have any details on the al-Libi case.

SH: Can you tell us when you learned that some of the evidence that you used in front of the UN was based on torture? When did you learn that?

CP: I don't know that. I don't know what information you're referring to. So I can't answer.

SH: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.

CP: So what? [inaudible]

SH: So you'd think you'd know about it.

CP: The information I presented to the UN was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA and they stood behind all that information. I don't know that any of them believe that torture was involved. I don't know that in fact. A lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings, but I'm not aware of it.

"Speculation by people who never attended meetings"? Who is Powell trying to discredit? The Senate Intelligence Committee? Or his own former chief deputy?

Chris Wallace Stunning Display of Lies

Memo to Chris Wallace: Military officials say Gitmo has been a "recruiting tool" for terrorists

SUMMARY: Ignoring statements from military officials and reports, Chris Wallace suggested that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has not been used by terrorists as a "huge recruiting tool."



During the May 22 edition of Fox News Radio's Brian & The Judge, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said, "I'd love to know the specific proof that the Obama administration or anyone has that Guantánamo is a recruiting tool" for terrorists and added: "I have never felt that Guantánamo was this huge recruiting tool and the main reason for -- that -- the reason they hate us." Wallace also claimed, "I think on the list of things that gets people, you know, so crazy that they want to blow up bombs and kill themselves and kill innocent people, I think Guantánamo is about 10th on the list." However, as Media Matters for America has documented, military officials and reports have stated that terrorists have successfully used the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as a major recruiting device.

For instance, using the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, an Air Force senior interrogator who was in Iraq in 2006 wrote in The Washington Post: "I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Moreover, as the blog Think Progress noted, in June 17, 2008, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Alberto Mora, former Navy general counsel, said: "[T]here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."

Indeed, the Center for Strategic & International Studies concluded in a September 2008 study that "the United States has been damaged by Guantánamo beyond any immediate security benefits. Our enemies have achieved a propaganda windfall that enables recruitment to violence, while our friends have found it more difficult to cooperate with us."

Further, a June 17, 2008, McClatchy Newspapers article reported, "A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam -- thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them -- and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists."

Media uncritically aired Cheney claim that "EITs" were used after other techniques failed

Media uncritically aired Cheney claim that "EITs" were used after other techniques failed

SUMMARY: Four evening news programs uncritically aired discredited claims Dick Cheney made suggesting that detainees provided information after -- and only after -- "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used.

In May 21 reports on former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech that day at the American Enterprise Institute, the CBS Evening News, Fox News' Special Report, CNN's The Situation Room, and ABC's World News all uncritically aired discredited claims Cheney made suggesting that detainees provided information after "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used, and had not provided it before being subjected to those methods. As Media Matters for America has noted, former FBI agent Ali Soufan -- who interrogated Abu Zubaydah -- testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 13 about the success of standard interrogation methods, which he contrasted with "ineffective" harsh techniques.

The CBS Evening News and The Situation Room uncritically aired Cheney's claim of harsh interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration: "The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts had failed."

Similarly, World News and Special Report uncritically aired Cheney's claim later in the speech that, with regard to "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and a few others": "[W]ith many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all." After airing the clip from Cheney's speech, Fox News' chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle reported that Cheney "said enhanced interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed and that they were legal, essential, justified, and successful."

Soufan stated in his written testimony that "the Informed Interrogation Approach outlined in the Army Field Manual is the most effective, reliable, and speedy approach we have for interrogating terrorists. It is legal and has worked time and again." He continued: "It was a mistake to abandon it in favor of harsh interrogation methods that are harmful, shameful, slower, unreliable, ineffective, and play directly into the enemy's handbook."

Soufan pointed to "[t]he case of the terrorist Abu Zubaydah" as "a good example of where the success of the Informed Interrogation Approach can be contrasted with the failure of the harsh technique approach." Soufan then presented a "timeline" of the Zubaydah interrogation, which he said showed that "many of the claims made in the memos about the success of the enhanced techniques are inaccurate." He added: "For example, it is untrue to claim Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before August 1, 2002. The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him."

Soufan also testified about other uses and successes of the informed interrogation approach. He stated that his interrogation of Osama bin Laden's former chief bodyguard, Nasser Ahmad Nasser al-Bahri, also known as Abu Jandal, was "done completely by the book (including advising him of his rights)" and that, from it, "we obtained a treasure trove of highly significant actionable intelligence."

From the May 21 broadcast of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric:

BILL PLANTE (White House correspondent): Answering what he called the president's mischaracterization of his administration's war policy, former Vice President Cheney began by defending the use of harsh interrogation tactics.

CHENEY: The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts had failed. They prevented the violent death of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people.

PLANTE: Cheney argued that the proof of the strategy is in the result.

From the May 21 broadcast of ABC's World News with Charles Gibson:

JONATHAN KARL (senior congressional correspondent): Cheney said the interrogations accomplished their one and only goal: getting specific information on terrorist plans.

CHENEY: Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogation. To call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives and to cast terrorists and murders as innocent victims. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe.

KARL: Cheney offered an unapologetic defense of the CIA's most controversial tactic.

CHENEY: You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists. One of them was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11, who's also boasted about his beheading of Daniel Pearl. We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country, things we didn't know about Al Qaeda. We didn't know about Al Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.

KARL: He was especially critical of President Obama's decision to release top-secret memos detailing the CIA's interrogation program.

From the May 21 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:

DAN LOTHIAN (White House correspondent): Standing in front of a copy of the Constitution, President Obama delivered a defense for his national security policy, from banning so-called enhanced interrogations like waterboarding to closing the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

OBAMA: Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantánamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies.

LOTHIAN: While the president admitted some detainees could wind up in U.S. prisons, he tried to calm fears that it would put Americans at risk.

OBAMA: We are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security.

LOTHIAN: But both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill want proof. They rejected funding to close Gitmo until more details about what will be done with all detainees are provided. In his speech, the president did not fill in all the blanks. But he did blame the Bush administration for creating a, quote, "mess."

OBAMA: Our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight. And all too often, our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.

LOTHIAN: In what felt like a Republican response, former Vice President Dick Cheney struck back in his own speech, defending harsh interrogation techniques.

CHENEY: The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts had failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.

LOTHIAN: And criticizing the Obama administration for trying to close Gitmo without a plan.

From the May 21 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier:

ANGLE: President Obama argued that enhanced techniques were not necessary, were illegal, and did not work.

OBAMA: I know some have argued that brutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more.

CHENEY: You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists.

ANGLE: Including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of 9-11. Cheney didn't flinch on enhanced interrogation, saying he was a strong proponent.

CHENEY: We didn't know about Al Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.

ANGLE: He said enhanced interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed and that they were legal, essential, justified, and successful. But President Obama sees another effect.

OBAMA: They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America.

Did White House OK Earliest Detainee Torture

Did White House OK Earliest Detainee Abuse
It is clear that increasingly abusive interrogation techniques were used on Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee, in the months between his capture and the first Justice Department memo authorizing harsh interrogations. But the legal guidance that authorized those early interrogations remains shrouded in secrecy.

Zubaydah was picked up on March 28, 2002. The Justice Department issued its first memo on torture four months later on Aug. 1.

Zubaydah's lawyer, Brent Mickum, believes documents and testimony in the public record establish "beyond question that Abu Zubaydah was subjected to torture before the issuance of the Aug. 1 memorandum."

'Harsher and Harsher Methods'

The public record includes testimony from Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator who was with Zubaydah during April and May of 2002. Soufan told Congress last week that "contractors had to keep requesting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods."

Soufan testified that in the first two months of Zubaydah's interrogation, a CIA contractor used nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and extreme temperatures during interrogations. That contractor has been identified as a psychologist named James Mitchell. Mitchell has not commented publicly in recent years, and he could not be reached for this story.

Soufan told senators of describing Zubaydah's treatment to FBI supervisors as "borderline torture."

The use of "borderline torture" against Zubaydah months before the first Justice Department memo authorizing harsh interrogations raises the question of whether Mitchell had legal permission to use abusive techniques.

The CIA suggests that he did.

"The Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Department of Justice was not the first piece of legal guidance for the interrogation program," according to agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano.

But the CIA will not describe what the first legal guidance was.

Top-Secret Cables

One source with knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA's counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration's legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

A new document is consistent with the source's account.

The CIA sent the ACLU a spreadsheet late Tuesday as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The log shows the number of top-secret cables that went from Zubaydah's black site prison to CIA headquarters each day. Through the spring and summer of 2002, the log shows, someone sent headquarters several cables a day.

"At the very least, it's clear that CIA headquarters was choreographing what was going on at the black site," says Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who sued to get the document. "But there's still this question about the relationship between CIA headquarters and the White House and the Justice Department and the question of which senior officials were driving this process."

Gonzales did not respond to a request for comment through his lawyer.

'A Complete Charade'?

Attorneys who have worked in the White House counsel's office describe it as "highly unusual" for the White House to tell interrogators what they can and cannot do. Bradford Berenson worked in the counsel's office under President Bush, though he had no role in authorizing harsh interrogations.

"These were highly unusual and extraordinary times after 9/11," says Berenson, "but ordinarily the White House counsel's office is not in the business of providing advice to anyone outside the White House itself."

All through the summer of 2002, top officials across the government were trying to sort out the ground rules for legal interrogations.

"I can't believe the CIA would have settled for a piece of paper from the counsel to the president," says one former government official familiar with those discussions.

"If that were true," says the former official, "then the whole legal and policy review process from April through August would have been a complete charade."

Gingrich GOP's Biggest Liar and Media Loves Him

Media declare Gingrich GOP's "ideas man," ignore his frequent falsehoods
Falsehoods offered by Gingrich include:

* During the May 10 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Gingrich claimed that Democrats have "had control since January of 2007. They haven't passed a law making waterboarding illegal. They haven't gone into any of these things and changed law." However, the Democratically controlled Congress did pass a bill in 2008 that would have banned the use of waterboarding, had President Bush not subsequently vetoed the measure. Gingrich further suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who according to a recently released CIA document was first briefed about harsh interrogation techniques in September 2002, could have threatened "to pass a law cutting off the money" for the techniques if she objected to them. But Democrats were not in power until January 2007; Pelosi was the ranking member of the House intelligence committee and a senior minority member of the House appropriations committee in 2002, and House minority leader from 2003 to 2006.

* During a March 25 appearance on Fox News' Hannity, Gingrich falsely claimed that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner proposed to "take over non-bank, non-financial system assets" and that "Congress had passed the authorization in the stimulus bill" to pay bonuses to AIG executives. According to Gingrich, those policies "absolutely moves you towards a political dictatorship."

* In a March 3 Twitter post, Gingrich wrote that his wife, Callista, "pointed out flying into [S]anta [B]arbara you can see the oil rigs off shore," and asserted, "Ironically they have had no spill since 1969." In fact, in just the few months preceding Gingrich's post, there had been at least two oil spills reported in or near the Santa Barbara Channel, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, including one spill in mid-February and another in December 2008 that required a coordinated cleanup effort by the Coast Guard, the California Department of Fish and Game Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR), and the company responsible for the spill.

* In a February 22 New York Times article, reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote that Gingrich "sees the stimulus bill as his party's ticket to a revival in 2010, as Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh-mouse preservation. 'You can imagine the fun people will have with that,' he said." In fact, the bill does not contain any language directing funds to the salt marsh harvest mouse, or its San Francisco wetlands habitat, a fact that the House Republican leadership aide who reportedly originated the claim has reportedly acknowledged.

* During the February 17 edition of Hannity, Gingrich falsely claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains "$30 million to save a mouse in San Francisco" and "$8 billion for a high-speed rail to Las Vegas for Harry Reid," adding, "[I]f those aren't set-asides, I don't know what you'd call them."

* During the January 22 edition of Fox News' On the Record, Gingrich referred to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) initial "analysis" of the recovery package and purported that it analyzed the entire bill, stating: "Look, the Congressional Budget Office has reported that less than 10 percent of the bill will be spent the first year. Some of it would not be spent for 10 years. This is a bill -- this is not a stimulus package, this is a bigger government, more bureaucracy, more powerful politician package in the guise of a stimulus." In fact, as the initial Associated Press report on the CBO "analysis" noted, it did not take into account all aspects of the recovery plan. While the CBO write-up found that "only $26 billion out of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by the Sept. 30 end of the budget year," it did not "cover tax cuts or efforts by Democrats to provide relief to cash-strapped state governments to help with their Medicaid bills," among other provisions.

* On the January 19 edition of Fox News' Happening Now, referring to President Obama's support for the Employee Free Choice Act, Gingrich claimed that Obama was "going to be for the labor unions taking away your right to a secret-ballot vote before being forced to join a union," echoing a common distortion employed by opponents of the legislation.

* Gingrich has repeatedly criticized Pelosi for using a military jet to travel to and from her congressional district, and has also falsely claimed that former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) "did not get a private plane" following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, following 9-11, the House sergeant-at-arms, the Defense Department, and the White House agreed that military planes should be made available to the speaker of the House for national security reasons, and Hastert was the first speaker to use one.

* During the November 16, 2008, broadcast of CBS' Face the Nation, Gingrich said that Republicans "who are about to face this question of, how do you get the economy growing again" should ask Republican governors Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Jon Huntsman of Utah, "[H]ow did they get to the lowest unemployment rate in their respective regions?" However, the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics records at the time showed that Gingrich's claim was false. In fact, neither Utah nor Indiana had the lowest unemployment rate in its region, and several states with lower unemployment rates were governed by Democrats.

* During the July 31, 2008, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Gingrich repeatedly mischaracterized Obama's energy policy, falsely suggesting that Obama's only "energy strategy" was to encourage people to keep the tires on their vehicles properly inflated and asserting that Obama "suggested if we all inflated our tires, that we would solve the problem."

* On the October 10, 2006, edition of Hannity & Colmes, Gingrich falsely claimed that Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) "promise[d] to raise taxes" if Democrats were to take over the House of Representatives in that year's midterm elections. In fact, as Media Matters noted, during a September 26, 2006, interview with host Neil Cavuto on Fox News' Your World, Rangel, who was in line to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee if Democrats gained a majority in the House, stated that a House controlled by Democrats "would not raise taxes" and "would not roll back" Bush's tax cuts enacted by Congress and set to expire in 2010.

Rep. John Boehner Claimed CIA was out to get Republicans

Rep. Boehner: Now and Then

John Boehner Now

John Boehner: "I've dealt with our intelligence professionals for the last three-and-a-half years on an almost daily basis, and it's hard for me to imagine that our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress. [Boehner Press Availability via The Hill, 5/14/2009]
John Boehner Then:

December 9, 2007:

Wolf Blitzer: "Are you suggesting, as I think you are, that you don't necessarily have confidence in this new NIE?"

Rep. John Boehner: "Either I don't have confidence in what they told me several months ago or I don't have confidence in what they're telling me today." [CNN, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, 12/9/2007; emphasis added]

Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner

Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner
Dick Cheney Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images Former NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem reports that the vice president’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner who was suspected of knowing about a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam.

Robert Windrem, who covered terrorism for NBC, reports exclusively in The Daily Beast that:

*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.

*Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees.

At the end of April 2003, not long after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi who Bush White House officials suspected might provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi was the head of the M-14 section of Mukhabarat, one of Saddam’s secret police organizations. His responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.

Two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard an Iraqi prisoner came from the Office of Vice President Cheney.

“To those who wanted or suspected a relationship, he would have been a guy who would know, so [White House officials] had particular interest,” Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraqi Survey Group and the man in charge of interrogations of Iraqi officials, told me. So much so that the officials, according to Duelfer, inquired how the interrogation was proceeding.

In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”

Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. Cheney, of course, has vehemently defended waterboarding and other harsh techniques, insisting they elicited valuable intelligence and saved lives. He has also asked that several memoranda be declassified to prove his case. (The Daily Beast placed a call to Cheney’s office and will post a response if we get one.)

Without admitting where the suggestion came from, Duelfer revealed that he considered it reprehensible and understood the rationale as political—and ultimately counterproductive to the overall mission of the Iraq Survey Group, which was assigned the mission of finding Saddam Hussein’s WMD after the invasion.

“Everyone knew there would be more smiles in Washington if WMD stocks were found,” Duelfer said in the interview. “My only obligation was to find the truth. It would be interesting if there was WMD in May 2003, but what was more interesting to me was looking at the entire regime through the slice of WMD.”

But, Duelfer says, Khudayr in fact repeatedly denied knowing the location of WMD or links between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda and was not subjected to any enhanced interrogation. Duelfer says the idea that he would have known of such links was “ludicrous".

Detainee Who Gave False Iraq Data Dies In Prison in Libya

Detainee Who Gave False Iraq Data Dies In Prison in Libya

A former CIA high-value detainee, who provided bogus information that was cited by the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war, has died in a Libyan prison, an apparent suicide, according to a Libyan newspaper.

A researcher for Human Rights Watch, who met Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi at the Abu Salim prison in Tripoli late last month, said a contact in Libya had confirmed the death.

Libi was captured fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001, and he vanished into the secret detention system run by the Bush administration. He became the unnamed source, according to Senate investigators, behind Bush administration claims in 2002 and 2003 that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to al-Qaeda operatives. The claim was most famously delivered by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in his address to the United Nations in February 2003.

Powell later called the speech a "blot" on his record, saying he was not given all available intelligence and analysis within the government. The Defense Intelligence Agency and some analysts at the CIA had questioned the veracity of Libi's testimony, which was obtained after the prisoner was transferred to Egyptian custody for questioning by the CIA, according to Senate investigators.

Bush The Loser Preisdent

Poll: Bush Getting Even More Unpopular Out Of Office
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that former President Bush's popularity has dropped since he left office.

When he left office in January, 31 percent of American's viewed him positively. That number has now dropped to 26 percent.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is more popular than the past two presidents at this point during their first terms.

According to the poll, 61 percent approve of Obama's job -- that's compared with George W. Bush's 56 percent and Bill Clinton's 52 percent at this same juncture in their presidencies.


Also, 64 percent view Obama favorably versus 23 percent who see him in a negative light -- once again, higher than Bush's and Clinton's scores on this question.

Additionally, 64 percent of Americans also "feel more hopeful about the direction of the country with Obama in office," and a full 59 percent feel he has accomplished a "great deal" or a "fair amount."

House Speaker Pelosi Praises Military Spouses

House Speaker Pelosi (D)Praises Military Spouses
House Speaker Praises Military Spouses: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi hosted a roundtable discussion at the Capitol yesterday highlighting the successes and challenges of military spouses. Speaker Pelosi invited the National Military Family Association and Blue Star Families to share spouses’ personal stories with Members of Congress and White House staff. Military spouses spoke about their struggles with employment, access to mental health providers, the unique nature of National Guard and Reserve deployments, the importance of continued resources for survivors, the isolation felt by Individual Augmentees, and the need for increased dwell time. Invited panelists also discussed their pride for their country and their willingness to serve along with their service member spouse.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-4th/MO), Representative Susan Davis (D-53rd/CA), Representative Kay Granger (R-12th/TX), Representative Gwen Moore (D-4th/WI), Representative Chet Edwards (D-17th/TX) and other Members of Congress joined with Speaker Pelosi in acknowledging the sacrifices made by military spouses and children. They pledged to do more to show their appreciation and to expand the Nation’s support.

TNR and the Anonymous Smears Against Sonia Sotomayor

TNR and the Anonymous Smears Against Sonia Sotomayor
Jeffrey Rosen's New Republic smear of Sonia Sotomayor's intellect and character -- based almost exclusively on anonymous, gossiping "sources" -- is such a model of shoddy, irresponsible, and (ironically enough) intellectually shallow "journalism" that it ought to be studied carefully. Standing alone, it reveals quite a bit about anonymity-dependent "reporting" generally, The New Republic specifically, and how much of our political discourse is conducted.

Most of the gaping flaws in Rosen's piece have been fully highlighted by others. While most of those criticisms have focused on Rosen's horrendous use of anonymous sources -- one of the most apt reactions to Rosen's piece comes, appropriately enough, in the form of well-earned derision from Wonkette -- I highly recommend this post from Law Professor Darren Hutchinson. As Professor Hutchinson conclusively documents, one of the only issues raised by Rosen that was anything other than anonymous gossip -- a claim that one of Sotomayor's judicial opinions was harshly criticized in an "unusual" footnote by another Second Circuit judge -- is totally false. In fact, it's so obviously false that, as Hutchinson suggests, it could be the by-product only of Rosen's extreme sloth or (ironically enough again) his lack of intellectual capacity. Just read Hutchinson's post for an idea of how vapid, bereft of worth and downright misleading is Rosen's attack on Sotomayor.

I don't really have an opinion about whether Sotomayor would be a good pick for Obama -- I haven't done anywhere near the work to formulate a meaningful judgment about that -- but, in my prior life as a litigator, I had some personal experiences with her. I had at least two, possibly three, cases in which she was the judge -- including a Second Circuit appeal for which she wrote the opinion (reversing the District Court) on behalf of a unanimous panel. At Oral Argument in that case, she was, by far, the most active questioner.

Based on those experiences, I'm genuinely amazed at how -- overnight -- she's been transformed in conventional wisdom, largely as a result of Rosen's piece, into a stupid, shrill, out-of-her-depth Puerto Rican woman who is being considered for the Supreme Court solely due to anti-merit, affirmative action reasons. The New Republic thus fulfills its principal function in life: to allow the Right to spout any sort of invective and bile and justify it by reciting the "even-the-liberal-New-Republic-agrees" defense.

In the last 24 hours alone, Rosen's article has been used by three different National Review writers -- who, I'd be willing to be lots of money, know virtually nothing about Sotomayor -- to declare her to be "dumb and obnoxious." That's a phrase they've revelled in repeating three times now (and counting), culminating with this: "I'm sure Mark H. is right about Sotomayor's being dumb and obnoxious, just as Derb is right about her being female and Hispanic is all the matters." The amazing speed with which so many people who know absolutely nothing about her are willing, indeed eager, to assume that she's stupid and doesn't deserve her achievements -- based on the fact that she's Puerto Rican and female and Rosen published some trashy, unaccountable gossip feeding that perception -- is really remarkable.

My perception of Sotomayor is almost the exact opposite of the picture painted by Rosen. I had a generally low opinion of the intellect of most judges -- it's one of the things I disliked most about the practice of law -- but I found her to be extremely perceptive, smart, shrewd and intellectually insightful. The image that has been instantaneously created of her as some sort of doltish mediocrity, based on nothing but Rosen's water-cooler chatter, is, at least to me, totally unrecognizable. Of the countless federal judges with whom I had substantive interaction over more than ten years of litigation, I would place her in the top tier when it comes to intellect. My impressions are very much in line with the author of this assessment of Sotomayor, who had much more extensive interaction with her and -- unlike Rosen's chatterers -- has the courage to attach his name to his statements.

It's certainly true that she was very assertive and aggressive -- at times unpleasantly so -- in how she presided over her courtroom. In the first case I had with her, when she was still a District Court judge and I was a second- or third-year lawyer, I committed some sort of substantial procedural mistake (my recollection is hazy of my specific transgression, but I believe papers I submitted violated her rules and necessitated an adjournment of a hearing), and she very harshly excoriated me in a courtroom packed with lawyers from other cases (the scolding lasted roughly five minutes, though it seemed at the time like five hours). I certainly did not enjoy that, and at the time harbored negative sentiments towards her (who wouldn't?) , but that behavior -- for judges -- is the opposite of uncommon.

Justice Souter's Jurisprudence

Justice Souter's Jurisprudence
Equally persuasive, and pleasurable to read, is the series of dissenting views that Justice Souter has filed in so-called "federalism" cases, in which the Rehnquist Court crafted ex nihilo new constraints on Congress's power under both the original constitutional and Reconstruction-era amendments to remedy state-level discrimination. In opinions alive to the travails of discrimination's victims, Souter traces a convincing account of our national commitment against the subordination of others. In an era in which Justices can blandly claim to see no difference between Jim Crow and affirmative action, this lively awareness will be sorely missed.

Rather than cede the ground of "original meaning," Justice Souter has filed persuasive accounts of constitutional origins to rebut the reductionist offerings of Justice Scalia in particular. In the school prayer case of Lee v. Weisman, Souter wrote a compelling rebuttal of Scalia's account of the origins of the Religion Clause that will long merit study.

Modesty means that Justice Souter has not obtained the high public profile of some of his peers. Souter has not leveraged his position at the nation's legal apex as have fellow Justices who moonlight as memorialists. Souter even declined to speak with political scientist Tinsley E. Yarbrough, who wrote a biography of the Justice. His response to the prospect of cameras in the High Court? "The day you see a camera come into our courtroom, it's going to roll over my dead body."

Does CNN's Tucker realize UAW's "straight payback" includes loss of COLA, bonuses, dental?

Does CNN's Tucker realize UAW's "straight payback" includes loss of COLA, bonuses, dental?

CNN's Bill Tucker reported that "some economists" say the Chrysler restructuring deal is a "straight payback" to the UAW from the Obama administration. But Tucker did not note any of the numerous concessions the union has reportedly made as part of a related deal.

Eight days of silence since Hannity volunteered to be waterboarded: Is he chickening out

Eight days of silence since Hannity volunteered to be waterboarded: Is he chickening out
Over a week ago -- on Thurs., April 22 -- Fox News' torture enthusiast Sean Hannity agreed to be waterboarded for charity to prove that it is not torture. Though he dismissed waterboarding as simply taking someone's head and "dunk[ing] it in water," he has remained notably silent on his promise ever since, perhaps regretting that he volunteered to subject himself to the intensely terrifying suffocation experience. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann offered last week to donate $1,000 to military families for every second Hannity is waterboarded. In the face of Hannity's silence, Olbermann repeated the offer this week:

OLBERMANN: Sean, my offer still stands, 1,000 dollars a second. This is not a stunt nor game. Prove to those families you are a man of your word. In fact, prove you are a man.