I've bookmarked so many articles on malfeasance and incompetence in Washington that I've decided to condense them all into one entry for the purpose of saving time, even though each merits an essay of its own.
-From The Washington Post: The CIA has decided to release files about its covert, not-always-legal activities from the early 1950s to the early 1970s. There was warrantless domestic spying against political opponents ordered by Presidents Johnson and Nixon (the more things change....). The files also revealed details on the CIA's long suspected, but never confirmed, role in the assassination of then-Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba. The agency also apparently offered a Mafia boss $150,000 to kill Cuban strongman Fidel Castro. A decade later, then-director William Colby stated, "I can say, under oath if need be, that the CIA has never carried out a political assassination, nor has it induced, employed or suggested one which occurred." Perhaps his spirit was responsible for the 'Iraq has weapons of mass destruction' determination.
-From The Washington Post: yet another appeal to close the Guantanamo Bay kidnapee camp. Though the paper warned that shutting down the camp, however warranted, would not automatically undo the damage it caused to America's credibility and moral authority. It also cautioned the government against merely shipping the kidnapees back to their home countries, where they may be subjected to torture and other forms of abuse. The administration doesn't want them moved to American soil because then they might be subject to the rule of law, legality being something the White House has always been desperate to avoid.
-From The Washington Post. Where do I get off saying that the White House has always been desperate to avoid respecting the law? It's not exactly a secret. The president has openly flaunted this contempt. The Post notes that President Bush has asserted that he is not necessarily bound by the bills he signs into law, and yesterday a congressional study found multiple examples in which the administration has not complied with the requirements of the new statutes. Basically, if he doesn't like part of legislation that HE HIMSELF SIGNS INTO LAW, he just decides to ignore it. If this is the Iraqi government's model for how to conduct democracy, then that explains a lot.
-From Reuters: The CIA doesn't have a monopoly on abuses. FBI officials admitted that they may have violated the law or its rules more than 1,000 times since 2002 in collecting data about phone calls, e-mails and financial records while investigating terrorism or espionage suspects. Apologists told us that we should just give the executive (that's the presidency, not the vice-presidency, it seems) any power it desires without question because nothing wrong could possibly come of it. Privacy? That's sooooo 19th century.
-From Amnesty International: In the same vein, the human rights' organization took the CIA to task for kidnaping people. A practice euphemistically known as 'enforced disappearance,' a term that eerily invokes similar actions taken by fascist South American juntas during the 1970s and 1980s against that era's boogeyman: communists. AI also reports, even more sickeningly, that the CIA has kidnaped the wives and children of suspects for interrogations and... to 'secure the capture of their husband or father.' Click your heels twice and repeat after me: they only reason they hate us is because we're free.
-From Newsweek: Think Bush is the first president to invoke Divine Right in rationalizing a foreign military aggression? Not exactly. In 1898, President William McKinley was trying figure out an excuse to conquer the Philippines. "I walked the floor of The White House night after night until midnight," he recalled. "I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance. There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them ... " Newsweek pointed out that the Filipinos were already Christianized (Roman Catholic) and probably weren't to keen on being dominated by a foreign power. The brutal insurgency that followed cost the lives of over 4,000 Americans and more than half a million Filipinos. The weekly noted that this is where the torture technique of waterboarding, so eagerly championed by Vice-President Cheney (oops, I mean Senate president Cheney), was developed. This war (and Algeria with the French), not Vietnam, is no doubt the closest analogy to the disaster that's happening in Iraq.
-From: The Associated Press. Oh wait, Iraq is not a disaster. After four years, the world's most powerful military and its allies control a whopping 40 percent of Baghdad. At this rate, it'll only take until 2013 until we control the whole city and can declare once again Mission Accomplished!
-From: Democracy Rising. Maybe this is why the man who commanded US forces in Iraq for the first year said, "I am absolutely convinced that America has a crisis in leadership at this time." Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said that America should get real about its expectations. "I think if we do the right things politically and economically with the right Iraqi leadership we could still salvage at least a stalemate, if you will -- not a stalemate but at least stave off defeat." He must hate America and want the Evil Doers to win too!
-From: Alternet. Remember when the snake oil salesmen were trying to peddle us the aggression against Iraq? They promised us the war would be quick and relatively painless. We'd go in there. Iraqis would welcome us with open arms. We'd be in and out of there in a few years, just like after World War II. Now, Bush is saying that our troops will be in Iraq for another half century... or more. To Bush, the model is not West Germany or Japan, but South Korea, where US troops have been stationed since 1953 (earlier if you count the war). Alternet called it such a naked acknowledgement of America's long-term designs on carving out a strategic foothold in the region that even the milquetoast American press had to acknowledge it. Wonder why they didn't mention this in 2002?
-From Tomdispatch.com. But wait a second? America doesn't have 'long-term designs on carving out a strategic foothold' in the Middle East or anywhere else. The US military is only ever used for the sole purpose of defending American soil, not for any economic reasons. Tomdispatch.com adds As Chalmers Johnson has pointed out in his book The Sorrows of Empire, the United States has, mainly since World War II, set up at least 737 [foreign military] bases, mega and micro -- and probably closer to 1,000 -- worldwide. An astonishing number when you consider there are only about 200 countries in the world. According to our national fairy tale, the US is a republic, not an empire. Well, our 'republic' that spends almost as much on 'national defense' as the rest of the world combined. So wouldn't you think that a country that by itself accounts for 48 percent of all global military spending should feel a lot more secure than Americans do right now? It makes you wonder when Americans will finally connect the dots and realize that our meddling, expansionist foreign policy has served to make us less safe, not more.
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