Arlen Specter abandons GOP

The defection of Arlen Specter from the increasingly schizophrenic GOP is truly good news for the future of this country. With his presence in the Democratic Senate caucus, and the inevitable addition of Al Franken to the Minnesota seat, the Democrats will have the filibuster-proof 60 seats in the Senate. While this doesn't mean that Specter will always vote with the Democrats it does mean that it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the Republicans to block Obama's agenda. This is crucial because it is also the time when Obama is pushing through the Congress two major initiatives of his presidency and the Democratic party's agenda in general: health care reform, and an energy bill. Both of these bills are essential to the fulfillment of Obama's campaign promise to provide affordable health care to all Americans and weaken our dependence on foreign oil while at the same time crafting a sound environmentally-friendly energy policy. Obama's rock-star popularity even in the heartland of the country, the increasing signs of the economy's stabilization (or at least moderate thawing), and the filibuster-proof of Senate majority for the Dems means that Obama will get his way on almost all of his agenda items. And this is good news for all of us, even the Republicans who will benefit from getting more affordable health care and breathing less polluted air.

At the same time, GOP's response to Specter's defection shows the depth of their insanity and points to the probability that the Republicans are going to stay in the crazy wilderness for election cycles to come. The GOP commander in chief, Rush Limbaugh said "good riddance" to Specter and told him to take McCain and his daughter with him. The GOP nominal chairman Michale Steele said that Specter was doing this for self-preservation and that somehow his defection was inevitable due to Specter's "left voting record." And finally, this morning in his WashP op-ed Bill Kristol (the venerable ideological "brain" behind the GOP and who has been wrong on every single issue!) said that this is good for the Republican party!

What this collective response shows is the GOP's continuing belief in some imagined "purity" of the party's ideology. Reacting to any challenge to their right-wing narrow-mindedness with aggressiveness that reminds one of middle-school gym locker fights (even if the challenge comes from McCain's daughter), the Republican ideologues have really resigned themselves to being the far right-wing party of the South. Their argument that Specter is doing this for survival is so blatantly shallow that it really merits now comment, but I can't help it: of course he is doing this for self-preservation! He was facing an impossible Republican primary challenge in Pennsylvania and running on that ticket against a Club for Growth far-right winger (a man who I think truly needs medical attention) would have been insane and politically stupid. Specter has always been treated like an outcast by the Republicans especially with the recent descent of the GOP into the far right-wing nuttery. After all, Specter entered politics as a Democrat and switched to the GOP in order to win a District Attorney seat on a Republican ticket. But this is what politics is all about! And instead of figuring out how to reshape their party's platform in order to keep people like Spector and draw millions of Americans to their party tent, the GOP reacted with such stupid, shallow aggressiveness that it really makes one concerned for the future of our two-party democracy.

The resigned criticism of Specter also shows that the Republicans have lost their mind if they think they can win on their ideology alone: this country's demography necessitates that the party in power support: gay rights, abortion rights, more activist government, and less belligerent foreign policy.

For their part, the GOP operatives keep railing against Obama's "socialism" (or fascism, depending which side of his bed Glen Beck got up that morning), roaming the dense inhospitable jungle of their wilderness increasingly resembling rabid dogs and not mature political opposition!

I really don't mind them staying in the wilderness for as long as it is humanly possible, but I do worry about the Democrats having unchecked power. Not because of their agenda: in fact, this is one reason we all should be happy right now, in fact thrilled! The Democratic agenda is good for this country and we should make no secret that we want it. But what I worry about is Democrats' lately dormant but inevitable propensity for infighting and the possibility of several camps being established within the Democratic caucus in both houses. The simmering fight over investigations of Bush's torture policies might present the first opportunity for the Democrats to start dividing. But even these divisions (if they are over substantive policy differences) might be good for this country because they fill the never satisfied need of this country for a true multiparty system.

Grading Obama at 100 days

Let me also jump on the 100 days bandwagon even though the White House has called this a "Hallmark holiday," they themselves seem to be readying for it with a prime time news conference scheduled for Wednesday night preceded by a town-hall meeting with the President in St. Louis. The 100 days mark also matters because it allows us to gauge what kind of President Obama promises to be. This is how I would grade him--you are welcome to chime in.

Economy: A-
In the first 100 days he has passed the biggest stimulus bill in the American history and the stimulus is already having affects. Just yesterday, the NYT reported that the people in the small economically depressed Indiana town Anderson are feeling more optimistic about the overall economy, and the city's mayor can begin many reconstruction projects. Our own university budget is not being rescinded 3% (a standard operating procedure during the disastrous Blago tenure), but it is actually being increased 1%. The reason I would give him a - is because the stimulus was stripped of considerable punch by the so-called "moderate Republicans," and the President necessarily had to go along with this. At the same time, however, the plan to fix the housing market seems to be working: the home sales are up, the cost of refinancing mortgages is at its historic low and has triggered a flood of refinancing and seems to have slowed the rate of foreclosures. Further, Giethner's long-criticized plan to save the banking system also seems to be working: Wells Fargo posted its best profit last month and many banks seem to be doing much better. The rallying of the Wall Street in the past few weeks suggest that we at long last may have reached the bottom of the recession.


Foreign Policy: B
Obama has drastically shifted gears from the horrors of the previous administration. He has followed through on his campaign promise to do more listening than talking in the world, to talk to our enemies, and to be more respectful of other points of view. Our relationship with both Cuba and Venezuela seems to be thawing: there are major discussions in the works between the US and Cuba and Hugo Chavez is going to send the Venezuelan ambassador to the US. Obama's popularity in the world, particularly in Europe, has done wonders for our relations. His performance on the world stage has been superb. However, I am very worried about his decision to escalate the fighting in Afghanistan: it seems that Afghanistan is becoming his Iraq and I just can't see what good can come out of it. At the same time, Iraq is almost destined to spiral down into violence once we leave: already the violence is ratcheting up as Maliki is becoming increasingly sectarian, provoking a reaction from the disaffected Sunni exiles who are funding the insurgency. In short, the Iraq quagmire remains just that: a horrible quagmire out of which I see no exit.

Changing America's image in the world: A+
I really think Obama has done a superb job on changing the image of our country in the world. On the second day in office, Obama banned all "enhanced interrogation" techniques (read: torture) that the Bush administration had used with impunity; he has ordered the closing of Guantanamo, and has re-instituted the rule of the Geneva Conventions in our treatment of detainees. His performance on the world stage (as I said above) has been nothing short of superb and he has followed through on every single campaign promise in terms of changing America's image in the world.

Restoring the Constitution: C
I am afraid this is where he gets lowest marks from me. While he did change the direction of our country, Obama has also been lukewarm at best and politically cowardly at worst in reversing the serious damage the Bush administration had done to our Constitution. In particular, he has been very disappointing with restoring the habeaus corpus to detainees, arguing that those at the Bagram prison in Afghanistan do not have the right to due process that our Constitution guarantees. Further, his continuing defense of the wiretapping program that he voted for while a candidate is really worrisome. He needs to completely restore the habeus corpus to everyone and outlaw warantless wiretapping. Finally, probably the most worrisome thing about his restoration of the Constitution has been his lukewarm support for holding the torturers-in-chief accountable for their grave violations of our laws. His support for a "bipartisan Commission" is a transparent political ploy to push the issue out of the White House. He needs to step back and allow Eric Holder of the Justice Dept to appoint a Special Prosecutor who will investigate these potential war crimes. Obama's mantra that he is interested in "looking forward, not looking backward" drives me nuts because it doesn't mean anything! Looking forward is impossible without looking backward because it would mean that the words in our laws and our Constitution mean nothing and can be violated at will.

Restoring America's confidence: A+
This is another area where he gets the highest marks. The polls show the country is generally optimistic about the direction we are taking (compared to only 28% who thought we were going in the right direction during the last thralls of the Bush regime). Obama's approval rating stands at the historic high of 69%, which is higher than Reagan's at this time, and all of his predecessors, with the exception of Eisenhower. This morning the NYT also reported that Obama is changing the perception of race relations in this country with more than half seeing the conditions of race relations improved and the number of black Americans who think so has nearly doubled since July! The mood of the country is extremely important not just for our economy, but for the very soul of our country. What is particularly a positive development of Obama's young presidency is the shift in the public perception of the role of government in our lives. People increasingly view the government as the solution and not as the problem (as Reagan idiotically claimed!). Obama's budget priorities coupled with the stimulus are making the government cool again. This might give Obama the necessary public support to push through the long overdue health care reform and move the country to the left.

So for the most part, Obama has kept his campaign promises. His personal favoribility ratings are also at a historic high: 74% and Michelle Obama's are 85%! The image of the first family in the White House has also done wonders for America's image in the world.

Ali Soufan: The American hero

As the fallout from the torture revelations continues, there are several officials of the US government who emerge as true heroes who resisted the impulse of the moment to engage in brutal tactics, and instead, passionately defended American values. The star of these brave souls is the former FBI agent Ali Soufan who, seven years after, is speaking out in this Newsweek article. Ali Soufan was a veteran FBI interrogator and a student of John O'Neill, the famous FBI agent who had warned about Bin Laden and was ignored of course. A son of Beirut immigrants who moved to Philadelphia as a child, he was eventually recruited into the FBI anti-terrorism unit and spoke fluent Arabic. His knowledge of the Kur'an was legendary according to his former colleagues: during interrogations he would cite Kuranic verses, and argue with terrorists about the meaning of certain passages, the legacy of Muhammad, etc. Eventually, he would gain their trust and information would start pouring out. He was a lead investigator of the USS Cole bombing.

In the spring of 2002, Ali Soufan was thrown in the middle of the brewing conflict between the CIA and the FBI over the methods for interrogating terrorism suspects. The subject of contention this time was Abu Zubaydah a fiery and borderline szchizophrenic Palestinian who was seen as a chief logistics chief of Al-Q. He was badly wounded in a firefight in Pakistan and was transferred to US custody by the Pakistanis, and was taken to an unknown location (probably Thailand). He was turned over to Ali Soufan and his fellow FBI interrogator. Together, they nursed the terrorist's wounds: Soufan held ice to his bruised lips, and his colleague nursed his buttocks! Eventually Abu Zubaydah opened up and started telling them valuable information. In the meantime, Soufan had poured through his FBI file and started addressing him by the nickname that his mother had used for him, shocking Abu Zubaydah into talking! In fact, they even started arguing about US influence, and globalism, after which Abu Zubaydah asked for a Coca-Cola a request which had them both laughing. In any case, Abu Zubaydah soon identified Khalid Sheikh Muhammad as one of the plotters of 9/11 and told them in detail valuable information about terrorists training camps.

However, the FBI agents were soon interrupted by CIA contractors, led by James Mitchell who became the architect of the interrogation program. Soufan became alarmed when he saw a coffin-like box outside of Zubaydah's cell, saw him naked, and even heard Mitchell talk about waterboarding him. Furious, he phoned his headquarters and soon the FBI director Muller became involved. After CIA interrogators repelled Soufan's advice that this was illegal (arguing that they had Gonzales' authorization), Soufan threatened to arrest them! At which, he was told by his headquarters to leave CIA premises, and Muller ordered his agents to stay clear of the CIA.

Ironically, the whole episode re-opened the deeply entrenched rift between the FBI and the CIA regarding anti-terrorism struggle with the latter seeing FBI as weak and too patient with terrorists. As the 9/11 Commission report pointed out, it was the FBI-CIA rivalry that had caused serious missteps in the prelude to 9/11. And now, the rift was greater than ever before.

Ali Soufan must be feeling pretty good about himself right now as does the FBI director Muller. As they all should. These are the true American heroes.

Conspiracy established

The flood of information on Bush administration's torture policies has clearly established a well-organized conspiracy that will definitely hold up in the court of law. It all started when President Bush signed the Executive Order of Feb 7, 2002 ordering the suspension of the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in our treatment of detainees. This triggered a chain-reaction of flurry of legal activities within the Office of the Legal Counsel of the Justice Department, the Pentagon's legal counsel office, as well as Vice President's Legal Counsel David Addington. What is particularly important in this case is that it has been clearly established that those who drafted the torture memo KNEW they were violating the law at the time those memos were drafted.

The clear evidence of this is the fact that as early as December 2001, the Dept of Defense asked the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), which had devised the interrogation training of our own servicemen0--the similar methods were to be used against the detainees--to comment on these interrogation methods and if they were successful. Not only did the advice from the JPRA refer to these methods--including water-boarding--as "torture," but they were confused as to why the DoD wanted to use these interrogation methods to obtain intelligence in a fast manner. The whole point of these methods--initially used by North Koreans and the Chinese--was to extract FALSE information from our servicemen. This is why our PoWs were captured on camera saying that they believed in Communism, that the US was bad, etc. You know "The Manchurian Candidate" kind of staff. (The movie was actually inspired by these methods). So, for the administration to argue that they used these methods to gather information fast in order to prevent an attack is completely ridiculous. This is further confirmed by the memo of the former legal counsel to Condi Rice, Philip Zelikow who warned the administration that this would violate the US law and would be ineffective. Of course, both Zelikow's memo and the dissenting opinions of the JPRA were quashed, ignored, as the administration frantically proceeded to implement its torture policies. In fact, just a few days after a high-level visit to the GITMO by high officials of the Bush administration, GITMO started using the same methods. Once the war in Iraq started and Abu Ghraib became a US prison, the methods were employed there, as it was confirmed by the shocking photos we all saw in 2004.

So, why would the administration do this? It turns out that the torture of Abu Zubayda started when someone from the administration asked the CIA to probe him about Iraq-AlQ links. After the CIA interrogators said he did not know anything about such a link, they pushed the CIA to employ the tougher methods. Yes, the administration used torture for political purposes! In order to drum up the fake case for the war in Iraq!

This stuff is simply unbelievable. Attn General Eric Holder needs to appoint an independent and credible and respected Special Prosecutor, give him free reign, and allow him to follow the trail of evidence. What we have, from what we have learned in the last week or so, is a clear conspiracy to violate the law. This, in a nutshell, is a war crime.

I am increasingly confident the Obama administration will let its Justice Dept. do its constitutional duty.

Another Torture Bombshell

If anyone had any doubt as to the absurdity of the Bush administration's argument supporting torture, they should read the article in today's Foreign Policy issue written by a former Bush official. The official in question is a man by the name of Philip Zelikow. He was appointed as Secretary of State's Condolezza Rice's counsel and was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission. But because he had a high security clearance he vowed to secrecy (even though he had seen the memos) and spoke out only today after the memos became public knowledge.

It turns out that Zelikow wrote an alternative memo at the time Gonzales and his clan were writing their torture memos. The memo offered an alternative view of their interpretation of the US and international law. In particular, Zelikow argued that their interpretation of "cruel, human and degrading" was not legally sound: and in fact, that those methods clearly violated Article 16 of the Convention against Torture, as well as the Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. By the way, the violation of Common Article 3 is a federal offense, a war crime, punishable up to life imprisonment! In addition, this bureaucrat argued for moral standards to be evaluated before approving these methods. In other words, what was the unique value of the information we learned from the terrorists? And what did that do to us? In other words, the question is not who these terrorists are, but who we are, as Zelikow eloquently puts it. In addition, he pointed out that the memo ignored the 8th amendment, "conditions for confinement," by approving the confinement of prisoners in small boxes. Finally, he also suggested that the methods would be legal if they would not "shock the conscience" of the American people and if the federal courts could impose the same methods on the American citizens in American jails if national security was at stake. This obviously would never be possible! Hence, the methods are illegal under US law in the opinion of Mr. Zelikow.

Ok, but even this damning memo is not the end of the story. It is what the Bush cronies did with it! Not only did they ignore it, but they tried to destroy every single copy. This sounds much like obstruction of justice and tampering with crime scene! I mean, this stuff just keeps getting nastier and nastier.

In the end, I was really heartened by President Obama's statement today that it would not be up to him to decide if those who drafted the memos would be prosecuted. This is up to the Justice Department! Well said, Mr. President. You truly make us all proud!

Torture Investigation(s) Imminent

There are some good news this morning on the possibility that many branches of our government might conduct special investigations of those who approved torture methods outlined in the memos President Obama released. Despite Obama's reluctance to prosecute even those who drafted the memos (John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury), Eric Holder's Justice Department leaked the news late last night that Mr. Holder is seriously considering appointing a special prosecutor to look into the ways in which these torture methods were authorized at the top. At the same time, the White House went back on Rahm Emmanuel's slip on "This Week" that no one should be prosecuted, retracting that wide-ranging blank check by saying that President's Chief of Staff meant to say that those who carried out orders would not be prosecuted and not those who ordered them. This was an obvious move to leave the door open to these prosecutions. Furthermore, there is a growing pressure in the Congress on the Justice Department to investigate: the Judiciary Committee and the Armed Service Committee are both conducting their own investigations. Finally, the pressure from the international community is building: UN's chief torture expert said yesterday that the US is obligated under the Convention Against Torture to investigate.

The fact that our Attorney General Holder (who is emerging to be my favorite guy in Obama's administration) is seriously considering this, despite Obama's objections, shows the level of independence this Justice Department has from the White House, contrary to what it looked like under the Bush regime. It is also interesting that today we hear of the terrible scandal implicating Rep. Jane Harman (D-California) in a complicated scheme, involving indicted Israeli lobbyists and Attorney General Roberto Gonzales. According to the still sketchy reports, Harman was inadvertently picked up by NSA's wiretapping program as she promised to the Israeli lobbyists to push for the FBI investigation of their espionage activities to be dropped in return for their help in getting the chair of the Intelligence committee. At the same time, Alberto Gonzales pressured his department to slow down the investigation in return for Harman's cooperation on the Bush administration's desire to keep the wiretapping program secret. I mean, this reads like a depressing spy novel! And it shows the level of incest between Bush's White House and their Justice Department. And finally, it shows the need for Obama's Justice Department to assert its independence and this would be the issue to do it with!

That an investigation seems imminent is confirmed by the increasingly panicked Dick Cheney who rushed to the Fox News Channel yesterday and hysterically argued that Obama revealed "our national secrets," of course ignoring the fact that all those memos had been revealed by the leaked International Red Cross report in the New York Review of Books, including day to day interrogations of the suspects. He also (falsely) argued that during those interrogations, we got some useful information that saved lives, again ignoring the testimonies of many CIA agents that by the time the torture started, the suspects had already told them everything they knew. Yesterday's NYT report that one of the suspects was waterboarded 183 times in a month (!!!) shows the ineffectiveness of the method. Leaked interviews with those CIA interrogators shows that even before the torture started they alerted their headquarters that the suspect had told them everything he knew but it was from the higher echelons of power that the orders for those methods came.

Which brings us to why Cheney seems so panicky these days. As he should be!

President Ahmedinejad: Shut up!

The Iranian President Mahmud Ahmedinejad just a few minutes ago confirmed the wisdom of Obama's decision not to attend the annual UN conference against racism. The Iranian leader began his speech by calling Israel "completely racist," and arguing that the European "settlers and emigrants" were allowed to flood Palestine after WWII. But he did not mention why they were allowed to settle there? Hmm, maybe because 6 million of them had just been murdered and gassed?! Ahmedinejad's rhetoric is not only "vile," as the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it, but it is also extremely unhelpful to Obama.

President Obama has staked a lot of political capital on his calm, deliberative, respectful foreign policy and has truly opened up new channels of dialogue with the Iranian regime(s). Ahmedinejad has responded by repeating (for the hundredth fucking time!) the same old anti-Semitic mantra against Israel and listing (again for the hundredth time) all the sins of the US in the world. More substantively, the Iranian regime at large has responded by jailing a US citizen and journalist on the obviously drummed up charges of treason. And of course by continuing to enrich uranium.

I still believe that Obama's foreign policy will yield much better results, and already is yielding these results, than Bush's cowboy showmanship. In fact, Obama's reception at the South American conference, his chat with Hugo Chavez and his overtures to Cuba, have really opened up a new era of US' relations with the rest of the world. It is also true that the US had been inflicting damage on many other countries for decades, it will take more than a couple of nice words from a well-intentioned President, to change the image of the US. But, having said that, the rest of the world, especially countries like Iran, have to meet Obama at least halfway!

Repeating the same-old anti-Semitic delusions, which we thought had been forever discredited by the horror of the Holocaust, is beyond unhelpful. It is criminal! So, President Ahmedinejad: shut up! And get off the stage!