|
|
home / subscribe / donate / tower / books / archives / search / links / feedback / events
|
BUSH'S MELTDOWN AND THE US DEFEAT IN IRAQ He's on the floor, but can the Democrats Save Him? They're sure trying. Scorching reports on the "new jobs" myth and the end of America's housing bubble. Savage dissection of Council on Foreign Relation's Plan to "Contain" AIDS and Throw Money at the Drug Companies. Why the Military-Industrial Complex Wants U.S. Out of Iraq. What the US Press Missed about the War. Get the facts you're looking for in the subscriber-only edition of CounterPunch ... CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! or write CounterPunch, PO BOX 228, Petrolia, CA 95558 |
|
December 20, 2005 Dave Lindorff December 19, 2005 Mike Marqusee Gary Leupp Ron Jacobs John Blair Gideon Levy Kevin Zeese Missy Comley Beattie Don Santina Website of the Day
December 17 / 18, 2005 Cockburn /
St. Clair Gabriel Kolko Susan Alcorn Werther Ralph Nader Patrick Cockburn Fred Gardner Dave Lindorff Ned Sublette Lee Sustar Jason Leopold Laura Carlsen Jeff White Ray McGovern Chris Floyd William Loren Katz Rose Miriam
Elizalde Greg Moses Heather Gray Alison Weir St Clair /
Walker / Pollack Poets' Basement Website of
the Day
December 16, 2005 Tom Kerr Mark Engler John Bomar Patrick Cockburn Pierre Tristam William S. Lind Cyril Neville Robert Jensen Saul Landau Website
December 15, 2005 Oren Ben-Dor Stan Cox Joshua Frank Ben Terrall Patrick Cockburn Monica Benderman Walter A. Davis Vijay Prashad Website of
the Day
Patrick Cockburn Paul Craig
Roberts Lawrence R. Velvel Wayne Garcia John Sugg Gary Leupp Ray McGovern Alan Maass April Hurley, MD Kevin Alexander
Gray
December 13, 2005 Stephen T.
Banko, III Patrick Cockburn Laura Carlsen Karl Grossman Niranjan Ramakrishnan Kevin Zeese Norman Solomon Michael G.
Smith Stew Albert Bob Dylan Phil Gasper Website of
the Day
December 12, 2005 Paul Craig
Roberts Lawrence R.
Velvel Jessica Stewart George Bisharat Nate Mezmer Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Alison Weir Seth Sandronsky Patrick Cockburn Website of
the Day
Alexander Cockburn Landau / Hassen Ralph Nader Linn Washington, Jr Bill Christison Mike Ferner Elizabeth Schulte Neve Gordon / Yigal Bronner Linda S. Heard Ingmar Lee Ray McGovern John Chuckman John Ryan Dick J. Reavis Christopher
Brauchli Behzad Yaghmaian Aseem Shrivastava John Ross Ben Tripp St. Clair / Pollack / Vest
/ Despair Poets' Basement Website of the Week
December 9, 2005 Linn Washington,
Jr. Dave Zirin
/ Mike Stark Patrick Cockburn Alexander Cockburn Lila Rajiva Gary Leupp Jason Leopold Bruce K. Gagnon Andrew Cockburn Website of the Day
December 8, 2005 Kathy Kelly James Petras William S.
Lind Laura Carlsen Justin Akers Thomas Graham, Jr Norman Solomon Tariq Ali /
Robin Blackburn Website of
the Day
December 7, 2005 John Ryan Gary Leupp Fran Quigley Jeremy Brecher
/ Brendan Smith Joshua Frank William W.
Morgan Dave Lindorff Patrick Cockburn Harold Pinter Website of
the Day
December 6, 2005 Ron Jacobs Patrick Cockburn Yifat Susskind Mike Whitney Pat Williams Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
the Day
December 5, 2005 John Walsh Brian Cloughley Mokhiber /
Weissman Robert Jensen Norman Solomon Peter Rost, MD Lila Rajiva Website of the Day
Alexander Cockburn Lawrence R.
Velvel Rev. William Alberts Saul Landau Ralph Nader Paul Craig
Roberts Mike Whitney Allan Lichtman Dave Lindorff Brian Concannon,
Jr. Fred Gardner Manuel Garcia,
Jr. Carol Wolman St. Clair /
Vest / Walker / Pollack Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
December 2, 2005 Stan Goff Mike Ferner Christopher Brauchli Niranjan Ramakrishnan Manuel Talens Peter Phillips J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. Website of
the Day
December 1, 2005 John Walsh,
MD Ron Jacobs Jenna Orkin Joshua Frank Tiffany Ten
Eyck Missy Comley Beattie Eli Stephens Elaine Cassel Website of
the Day
November 30, 2005 Allen / D'Amato Mike Whitney Kevin Zeese Norman Solomon Ramzy Baroud Dave Lindorff Stephen Soldz
November 29, 2005 Phil Gasper Behzad Yaghmaian Joshua Frank Walter A. Davis Gary Leupp Len Colodny Jeffrey St.
Clair Bill Quigley Website of
the Day
November 28, 2005 Chris Reed David Isenberg Ron Jacobs Norman Solomon Justin E.H. Smith Mickey Z. Mike Whitney David Swanson Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
the Day
November 26 / 27, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Saul Landau Ralph Nader Brian Cloughley John Ross Gary Leupp Fred Gardner Christopher Brauchli Dave Lindorff P. Sainath Timothy J.
Freeman Lila Rajiva Eric Ruder Seth Sandronsky Joaquin Bustelo Lewis Alper Will Youmans Phyllis Pollack St. Clair /
Vest Barbara LaMorticella Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
November 25, 2005 David Price Brian McKenna Jeff Halper Ray McGovern Leigh Saavedra Ingmar Lee Website of the Day
November 24, 2005 James Petras Bob Shirley Mike Fox Niranjan Ramakrishnan Greg Moses Alexander Cockburn
November 23, 2005 Ramzy Baroud Mike Whitney Stan Cox Linda S. Heard November 22, 2005 Kevin Gray
/ Mike Hersh Ralph Nader Michael Donnelly Mike Ferner Pierre Tristam Marshall Auerback Website of
the Day
November 21, 2005 Mike Marqusee Josh Frank Mike Whitney Norman Solomon Russ Baker Robert Jensen Paul Craig
Roberts
November 19 / 20, 2005 Fred Gardner Rep. Cynthia McKinney Ron Jacobs David Vest J.L. Chestnut,
Jr. John R. Bomar John Ross Phillip Cryan Dave Lindorff Dick J. Reavis Jeremy Scahill Dan Wright John Stanton St. Clair / Vest / Walker Phyllis Pollack Dr. Susan Block Poets Basement
November 18, 2005 Michael Neumann Dave Lindorff Michael Donnelly Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer Don Monkerud Tom Kerr Trish Schuh
November 17, 2005 John Walsh Rep. John Murtha Brian J. Foley CounterPunch
News Service Dave Lindorff Mark T. Harris Cockburn /
St. Clair
November 16, 2005 John F. Sugg Noam Chomsky Dave Lindorff Evelyn Pringle Sam Husseini Pierre Tristam Greg Bates Farrah Hassen Bill Christison Website of
the Day
November 15, 2005 Todd Chretien Leah Caldwell Frederick Hudson Harry Browne Jason Leopold Ingmar Lee Diana Barahona Tom Andre Website of the Weekend
November 14, 2005 Diana Johnstone Paul Craig Roberts Conn Hallinan Joshua Frank Christopher
Reed
November 11 / 13, 2005 Alexander Cockburn Gwyneth Leech Elmas Mallo Michael Neumann Saul Landau Sam Husseini Brian Cloughley Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Michael Donnelly Joe Allen Roland Sheppard Justin E.H.
Smith Ben Tripp St. Clair /
Vest Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
November 10, 2005 Peterside,
Ogon, Watts and Zalik Pat Williams Steve Higgs Jimmy Massey Lucson Pierre-Charles Anthony Newkirk Lawrence R.
Velvel Website of the Day November 9, 2005 Gary Leupp Tariq Ali Chris Floyd Elaine Cassel Joshua Frank Alison Weir Diana Johnstone
Paul Craig
Roberts Roger Burbach Ron Jacobs Ralph Nader Jim McGrath David Bloom Stan Goff
Subscribe Online
|
December 20, 2005 How Bush Flouted the ConstitutionTrifler, Fibber, Sophist, SpyBy PIERRE TRISTAM James Bamford is a codebreaker in his own right, an investigative reporter of the Seymour Hersh kind. His latest is the profile of John Rendon and the Rendon Group, chief flackers for the Bush administration and wag-the-dog manipulators of world opinion (the Rendon Group's bogus storylines helped sell the Iraq war to a too-trusting American public). But six years ago, in the waning days of the Clinton administration, Bamford wrote a stunning short piece for the Washington Post about the NSA, the National Security Agency that, as the New York Times revealed on Monday, has been spying on Americans, on Bush's orders, since 2001, and to the tune of perhaps 500 eavesdrops at any given time. Bamford (who later published one of the only books on the NSA) begins his Post piece by describing a massive NSA installation in Yorkshire, England, the largest of the agency's many eavesdropping operations around the world. By 1999, the cold war long over, it should have been shrinking. Instead, it was expanding vastly. (By then the NSA, by far the largest intelligence agency in the western world, numbered 38,000 employees to the CIA's 17,000). "People in Europe and the United States are beginning to ask why," Bamford wrote in 1999. "Has the NSA turned from eavesdropping on the communists to eavesdropping on businesses and private citizens in Europe and the United States?" The question was answered a few days ago, and confirmed by the president in the last two days. But how. Monday's White House news conference showed President Bush at his craven worst. He defended his decision to authorize spying by citing his reliance on--as he put it--"the constitutional authority to protect our country. Article II of the Constitution gives me that responsibility and the authority necessary to fulfill it." That's the sort of misleading inaccuracy you'd expect from a fast talker in a high school debating match. You don't expect it from a president, though this president has lowered the bar of credible discourse so much that American political discourse usually reeks of barroom skank. Article II does not give the president a blank check to do as he will, in time or peace or war. Article II is pretty specific. It lays out electoral law, qualifications, matters of su! ccession. It states with unequivocal clarity that "President shall communicate to Congress" by various means. It spells out the Oath of Office, which maybe the president had in mind when he referred to the "responsibility and the authority necessary" to protect the country. The Oath, however, says nothing about abrogating all other constitutional powers in deference to the presidency, no matter what the circumstances. To the contrary: "I do solemnly swear(or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." President Bush is confusing protecting his power and self-fulfilling prerogatives (see "enemy combatants," secret prisons, open-ended detentions without charge, etc.) with protecting and defending the Constitution. Note that Article II considers the president's responsibility toward the Constitution to be supreme--beyond his responsibility to the nation: Principle above immediacy, law above e xpediency. In his news conference Monday Bush simply rewrote the Constitution to suit, soothe and sanction his crimes. Section 2 of Article II does refer to the president's role as Commander-in-Chief. But here's where this president, like every president since Ronald Reagan, has expressly misread this clause, which says nothing about the president being Commander-in-Chief of the nation--of people like you and me, of the school bus driver, of Exxon's employees, of anybody not wearing a military uniform. "The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into actual Service of the United States." That's all. Grant him the Air Force and the Marines on top of that. But no one, and nothing, else is under his military command. (John Lukacs, the historian, wrote in 2003 of the "unnecessary and unseemly habit" of president's "quite wrong" salutes as they step off planes or choppers, "especially George W. Bush, who steps off his plane a! nd cocks a jaunty salute.") What Section 2 of Article II does require the president to do is seek the advise and consent of Congress son various matters in executive and foreign policy purviews. Blank checks? Extraordinary powers in time of war? Executive privilege? Executive prerogative? Nada, nada, nada, nada. One last thing Article II does address: presidential impeachment in case of conviction of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." So much for the president taking cover behind Article II. But if his constitutional cover was so poorly thought out, you can imagine what his lesser defenses amounted to. He claimed, in the second prong of his papier maché defense, that "of course, we use FISAs." That's a reference to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. "But FISA is for long-term monitoring. What is needed in order to protect the American people is the ability to move quickly to detect." FISA allows secret monitoring and surveillance as long as a secret court set up under FISA's authority provides warrants for such surveillance. The secret court has received 19,000 requests for such warrants since 1979. It has honored all but five of them. It's not difficult to get a warrant, immediately, or to apply a warrant retroactively--an absurd allowance in the FISA law that renders it almost toothless as a tool for oversight, but let that one pass. To Bush, even FISA's rickety requirements wer! en't loose enough. He wanted it all, complete authority to spy, untrammeled, because "What is needed in order to protect the American people is the ability to move quickly to detect." So he ordered it. "Now, having suggested this idea," Bush said, "I then, obviously, went to the question, is it legal to do so? I am--I swore to uphold the laws. Do I have the legal authority to do this? And the answer is, absolutely. As I mentioned in my remarks, the legal authority is derived from the Constitution, as well as the authorization of force by the United States Congress." We've already dealt with his claim that the authority is derived from the Constitution. What of the U.S. Congress? He answered the question himself. He won "authorization of force," not--again--a blank check to override the nation's domestic laws. Otherwise, why even bother with a Patriot Act, with FISA? Bush's reliance on FISA (both as an obscure acronym from which he can derive a bit of authority, thanks to Americans' strange trust of acronyms, but as a legal buttress, too) should have raised red flags in anyone's memory. What, exactly, is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and why was it adopted in the first place? Here, James Bamford's 1999 piece is a vital dot-connector: In the mid-1970s, the Senate and House Select Committees on Intelligence were created in part as a result of NSA violations. For decades, the NSA had secretly and illegally gained access to millions of private telegrams and telephone calls in the United States. The agency acted as though the laws that applied to the rest of government did not apply to it. Based on the findings of a commission appointed by President Ford, the Justice Department launched an unusually secret criminal investigation of the agency, known only to a handful of people. Senior NSA officials were read Miranda warnings and interrogated. It was the first time the Justice Department had ever treated an entire federal agency as a suspect in a criminal investigation. Eventually, despite finding numerous grounds on which to go forward with prosecution, Justice attorneys recommended against it. "There is the specter," said their report, which the government still considers classified, "in the event of prosecution, that there is likely to be much 'buck-passing' from subordinate to superior, agency to agency, agency to board or committee, board or committee to the President, and from the living to the dead." As a result of the investigations, Congress in 1978 passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which stated in black and white what the NSA could and could not do. To overcome the NSA's insistence that its activities were too secret to be discussed before judges, Congress created a special federal court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, to hear requests for warrants for national security eavesdropping. In case the court ever turned down an NSA request, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Appeals Court was created. It has never heard a case." In other words, President Bush on Sunday and Monday--like his many defenders in the punditocracy and the bloggosphere--has been relying on FISA to defend his warrantless domestic spying; relying, that is, on the very law created in order to counter exactly this sort of abuse back in the 1970s. It doesn't stop here. To further dig his grave while seemingly adding a brick or two to his schlepping on a hill, Bush used the McCain tactic: It's a new world out there, everything changed with "September the 11th," it is therefore necessary to stay ahead of the terrorists by getting ahead of some of the immediate constraints. He makes that argument in what was the most incoherent and self-defeating response of Monday's news conference, after he was asked "why, in the four years since 9/11, has your administration not sought to get changes in the law instead of bypassing it, as some of your critics have said?
Not exactly. The Standard Times in new Bedford, Mass., reported on Dec. 17 that agents of the Homeland Security Department showed up at a Dartmouth University Students' home to inquire about an inter-library loan request he'd made for Mao's Little Red Book. Two professors who reported the incident to the paper "said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a watch list,' and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further." If Homeland Security agents are devoting that much attention to an innocuous student's term paper, it is unlikely that the NSA, with its history of acting above the law, and President Bush, with his messianic sense of being the law, are limiting the surveillance's scope to foreigners. Bush concedes as much in his next sentence, when he slouches toward his incoherent self-defense on legal grounds and invokes the make-it-up-as-you-go edicts of Alberto Gonzales: And if there was ever any need to monitor, there would be a process to do that. I think I've got the authority to move forward, Kelly. I mean, this is what--and the Attorney General was out briefing this morning about why it's legal to make the decisions I'm making. I can fully understand why members of Congress are expressing concerns about civil liberties. I know that. And it's--I share the same concerns. I want to make sure the American people understand, however, that we have an obligation to protect you, and we're doing that and, at the same time, protecting your civil liberties. Secondly, an open debate about law would say to the enemy, here is what we're going to do. And this is an enemy which adjusts. We monitor this program carefully. We have consulted with members of the Congress over a dozen times. We are constantly reviewing the program. Those of us who review the program have a duty to uphold the laws of the United States, and we take that duty very seriously. But there's another problem with the NSA that the president naturally and conveniently won't go into, because it demolishes his allegation that "we are constantly reviewing the program" on legal grounds and for civil libertarian reasons: The NSA operates under constraints established by Congress in the late 1970s, long before the age of email, faxes, the Internet. "For example," Bamford wrote in 1999, "the 1978 FISA prohibits the NSA from using its electronic surveillance' technology to target American citizens. But that still leaves open the possibility that Britain's GCHQ or another foreign agency could target Americans and turn the data over to the NSA." If the United States can use rendition of prisoners, sending them to foreign prisons for a work-un in exchange for the information, why wouldn't rendition work in reverse, with information, and with such compliant allies? "Another problem," Bamford wrote, "is that the FISA appears not to apply to the NSA's monitoring of the Internet. While covering such things as wire' and radio' communications, there is no mention of electronic communications,' which is the legal term for communicating over the Internet as defined by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986. Worse, FISA applies only under circumstances in which a person has a reasonable expectation of privacy.'" In sum, Bush is once again relying on the law, when he relies on it at all, by what the law omits. The rest, he merely invents. And when he's asked the one thing that would give all these liberty-busting theatrics at least some credibility--has this netted any arrests, any worthy investigations, any leads in the war on terror?--he punts. It was one of the last questions of the dismally well-behaved news conference: "Could you tell us about the planned attacks on the U.S. that were thwarted through your domestic spying plan?" The president's answer: "No, I'm not going to talk about that, because it would help give the enemy notification and/or, perhaps, signal to them methods and uses and sources." One question was not asked. Who, Mr. President, is the enemy? The NSA's ears have the answer: Everyone. Pierre Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer
and author of Candide's
Notebooks. Reach him at ptristam@att.net.
|
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann  Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair          Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.                |
