1 Boring Old Man

Oriental brush drawings have always seemed to contain wisdom to me. Over the centuries, various masters have written commentaries to describe these drawings - and these commentaries are meant to extend beyond the boundries of the rice paper into life itself. One of my favorites, applied to both haiku and ink drawings is Wabi, "the quiet suchness of things happening by themselves." The drawing on the right uses the "one corner technique" to hint at the moon’s rising [rather than document it]. But this painting also demonstrates the powerful idea that "the most important part of a painting is the empty space" - those places where the paper shows through.

In metapsychological thinking, there is a related idea - "negation." An example relates to the psychic consequences of psychological trauma. In listening to the narrative of a traumatized person’s life, the most important communication is what’s "not said," a symbol of the portion of life removed from consciousness by their overwhelming experience. If you can’t "hear the spaces," you’ll never help the person.

Yet another very concrete example of the most important thing being "what isn’t" is very near and dear to my heart right now. Thirty years ago, I had a show-stopping problem with my back that required a spinal fusion that stablized my spine, but left me modestly crippled. As time progressed, it became just a part of things - always there but simply an aspect of my being. Three weeks ago, it happened again on a long drive to the beach, persisting to the present. In retrospect, there were plenty of warning signs, but I ignored them. Back discomfort, always present, had been "negated" by my mind and I missed the not so subtle signs of a coming catastrophe - common in situations of chronic pain.

I got hold of my MRI before my doctor saw it. MRI’s came after my medical training, and I couldn’t read the problem myself among the sea of "cuts" in the MRI pictures. To his trained eye, the problem was obvious. The empty space [outlined on the right] is a joint cyst from arthritis above the area of my old surgery pressing on the nerve and spinal cord - a state of affairs mercifully scheduled for correction next week.

If you’ve read this far, you might wonder how I’m going to relate all of these examples of "negative space" or "what isn’t" to my usual topic of the Bush Administration. Well, it’s more than some forced analogy, I think. The pages of my blog and a thousand others are filled with the drama of the Bush Administration. Unjust War, Torture, Politicization, Corruption, Secrecy, Power-Mongering - the list has seemed endless. But, in the end, for all of their destructive dramatics, it may well be that their greatest injury to America will be "what hasn’t been" in their two terms of office. Obsessed with foreign conquest and Neoconservative monomaniacal ideology, they’ve essentially ignored most other aspects of the job of running America. When problems arose in the economy, they’ve lowered interest rates, or cut taxes, or given rebates - putting a Band-Aid® in place when what was needed was a thorough physical exam and maybe an MRI. They’ve ignored the National Debt, the Trade Deficit, the Banking practices, Loan regulation, the Oil Market, Global Warming, etc. We learned in 1929 that unbridled Capitalism requires monitoring and regulation. The business-friendly Republicans have eroded the regulatory forces in our government since they were enacted back then. "Deregulation" has been a subtle campaign slogan until the Bush Administration, when it became a roar.

Pretending That Bush is Not a Tyrant

All over the world down through history, political leaders who have engaged in torture and other grotesque crimes of state have justified their actions as necessary to protect their governments or their people or themselves.

It was true when England’s King Edward I had William Wallace – “Braveheart” – drawn and quartered in 1305 for resisting the crown’s rule in Scotland, and a gruesome death was what King George III foresaw for America’s Founding Fathers in 1776 when they stood up to his abuses in the Colonies.

Kings and tyrants often inflicted special pain on people they viewed as challenging their authority and – at such times – they wiped away the rules of justice. But the United States was supposed to be different.

Indeed, reaction to tyrannical monarchs was what compelled the Founders to establish a government of laws, not men, based on “unalienable rights” for all mankind, including protection against arbitrary detention and prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Which is why it was stunning to watch the June 26 hearing before the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution as two representatives of George W. Bush’s presidency responded with disdain when pressed on the administration’s extraordinary vision of an all-powerful Executive operating without legal limits.

While Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington treated the committee Democrats with haughty contempt, former State Department lawyer John Yoo expressed the ultimate arrogance of power with his muddled responses and evasions of direct questions.

The soft-spoken Yoo, who authored some of the key legal opinions justifying the abuse of detainees, wouldn’t even give a clear answer to the simple question of what atrocity might be beyond President Bush’s power to inflict…

Part of it has to be their obsession with wielding Presidential power. They clearly have little to do with their time except sit around being powerful together. But that can’t be all of it. Some may be their binary thinking - "axis of evil," fear-mongering, winning. They depersonalize their enemies regularly in political games, but take it extremes with the Terrorists and other Arabs. I think they really have caught the "Great Satan" metaphor. But underneath it all is something much more obvious. They simply do not have the same set of values that our founders had. I think they really don’t care that they’ve imprisoned and tortured some innocent people. I don’t think that all people really matter to them. Their people matter to them - not even all Americans even - just their Americans.

June 29, 2008 War and Piece, Laura Rosen

Seymour Hersh: Preparing the Battlefield:

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

A friend comments:

The Seymour Hersh article is actually really interesting, good, and not overblown - as long as you read out anything coming from Gardiner. There is much in it, but this is sure to provoke a big blowup:

A Democratic senator told me that, late last year, in an off-the-record lunch meeting, Secretary of Defense Gates met with the Democratic caucus in the Senate. (Such meetings are held regularly.) Gates warned of the consequences if the Bush Administration staged a preëmptive strike on Iran, saying, as the senator recalled, "We’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America." Gates’s comments stunned the Democrats at the lunch, and another senator asked whether Gates was speaking for Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. Gates’s answer, the senator told me, was "Let’s just say that I’m here speaking for myself." (A spokesman for Gates confirmed that he discussed the consequences of a strike at the meeting, but would not address what he said, other than to dispute the senator’s characterization.)

This bit strikes me as among the most important issues raised by the Hersh piece:

There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing.

I am also pretty skeptical about the CIA-supporting-PJAK/Baluch to destabilize the Iranian regime stuff that Gardiner, discredited former ABC news consultant and phony Obama interviewer Alexis Debat, and the Islamic Republic of Iran have been saying. Skeptical in large part because people out front saying it like Debat have shown an inclination to make things up, while well meaning and sincere people like Gardiner saying it don’t offer much in the way of evidence beyond their own conviction…

But mostly I’m skeptical because of the fact that former US intelligence sources I consider highly credible tell me the CIA is not working with the Baluch/Rigi, certainly not to destabilize the Iranian regime, and those like British reporter James Brandon who have been up in the Qandil mountains with the PKK/PJAK say the groups have no good weapons, are extremely modestly supplied, and no sign of serious US or western support to be found… As well as because of the fact I talk to several Iranian diaspora oppositionists and hawks some of whom would love the US to support these groups and act more aggressively to destabilize the Iranian regime, who are pretty unhappy with the Bush administration for not doing very much on this issue…

In the end, I just don’t think the Bush administration is trying to seriously destabilize the Iranian regime or change it, while no doubt it would be thrilled if the Iranian Thomas Jefferson suddenly came to power or Ahmadinejad stepped on a poison viper. I think the thrust of the policy is overwhelmingly geared towards the fairly unsexy effort to cobble and keep together however imperfectly an international coalition to try to pressure and isolate this Iranian regime diplomatically, economically, etc. while preparing to turn over that multilateral diplomatic framework to its successor… The policy and expectation are basically to tread water on Iraq for the next six months, barring a major change. And treading water requires a degree of projecting power so that such a major change or provocation from Iran is, at least most in the administration hope (OVP excepting perhaps), averted…

Update: US ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker to Candy Crowley on CNN Late Edition: "I can tell you flatly that US forces are not crossing the border into Iran. … US forces are not operating across the Iran-Iraq border." (Does it depend how you define "US forces?" )

I do think Hersh makes an important larger case that administration and CIA are increasingly going to the defense appropriations subcommittee for authorization for covert budget items … rather than to Congressional intellience oversight committees, which haven’t passed an intelligence authorization bill for a few years; and that the administration, by defining something as military force protection and preparing the battlefield and running it out of the Pentagon rather than the CIA, is legally excusing itself from reporting covert actions to the intelligence oversight committees…

Preparing the Battlefield
The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.
by Seymour M. Hersh

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program…

Senior Democrats in Congress told me that they had concerns about the possibility that their understanding of what the new operations entail differs from the White House’s. One issue has to do with a reference in the Finding, the person familiar with it recalled, to potential defensive lethal action by U.S. operatives in Iran. (In early May, the journalist Andrew Cockburn published elements of the Finding in Counterpunch, a newsletter and online magazine.)

The language was inserted into the Finding at the urging of the C.I.A., a former senior intelligence official said. The covert operations set forth in the Finding essentially run parallel to those of a secret military task force, now operating in Iran, that is under the control of JSOC. Under the Bush Administration’s interpretation of the law, clandestine military activities, unlike covert C.I.A. operations, do not need to be depicted in a Finding, because the President has a constitutional right to command combat forces in the field without congressional interference. But the borders between operations are not always clear: in Iran, C.I.A. agents and regional assets have the language skills and the local knowledge to make contacts for the JSOC operatives, and have been working with them to direct personnel, matériel, and money into Iran from an obscure base in western Afghanistan. As a result, Congress has been given only a partial view of how the money it authorized may be used. One of JSOC’s task-force missions, the pursuit of “high-value targets,” was not directly addressed in the Finding. There is a growing realization among some legislators that the Bush Administration, in recent years, has conflated what is an intelligence operation and what is a military one in order to avoid fully informing Congress about what it is doing…

I will comment only on a few things. When Bush, Petraeus, and Cheney go to great lengths to document that Iranians are involved in the resistance in Iraq, they leave out that we are heavy into covert operations in their country - including assasinations - appropriating millions for the effort secretly. But the most striking facet of this article to me is the Cheney inspired and led modus operandi. Hersh gives us a clear picture of how Cheney undermines our command by separating off areas that get moved out of the military chain of command - and remain under the control of the Vice President. Likewise, areas of responsibility are shifted around in bizarre ways to avoid Congressional Oversight. Using peculiar command structures and jury-rigged lines of authority, multiple loopholes allow their covert operations in Iran to be opaque to Congress. Admiral Fallon, recently retired prematurely, was in command of CENTCOM, but had no control over the special operations in his command area. And these covert plans include assasinations inside of Iran of specified people.

• Seymour Hersh deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. The Pulitzer isn’t big enough.
• Impeachment was the right thing to do. Congress missed its chance.
• Cheney remains the most dangerous man on the planet.

 

The Hidden Power
July 3, 2006

…Another memo sanctioned torture when the President deems it necessary; yet another claimed that there were virtually no valid legal prohibitions against the inhumane treatment of foreign prisoners held by the C.I.A. outside the U.S. Most of these decisions, according to many Administration officials who were involved in the process, were made in secrecy, and the customary interagency debate and vetting procedures were sidestepped. Addington either drafted the memos himself or advised those who were drafting them. “Addington’s fingerprints were all over these policies,” said Wilkerson, who, as Powell’s top aide, later assembled for the Secretary a dossier of internal memos detailing the decision-making process.

On November 13, 2001, an executive order setting up the military commissions was issued under Bush’s signature. The decision stunned Powell; the national-security adviser, Condoleezza Rice; the highest-ranking lawyer at the C.I.A.; and many judge advocate generals, or JAGs, the top lawyers in the military services. None of them had been consulted. Michael Chertoff, the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, who had argued for trying terror suspects in the U.S. courts, was also bypassed. And the order surprised John Bellinger III, the National Security Council legal adviser and deputy White House counsel, who had been formally asked to help create a legal method for trying foreign terror suspects. According to multiple sources, Addington secretly usurped the process. He and a few hand-picked associates, including Bradford Berenson and Timothy Flanigan, a lawyer in the White House counsel’s office, wrote the executive order creating the commissions. Moreover, Addington did not show drafts of the order to Powell or Rice, who, the senior Administration lawyer said, was incensed when she learned about her exclusion.

The order proclaimed a state of “extraordinary emergency,” and announced that the rules for the military commissions would be dictated by the Secretary of Defense, without review by Congress or the courts. The commissions could try any foreign person the President or his representatives deemed to have “engaged in” or “abetted” or “conspired to commit” terrorism, without offering the right to seek an appeal from anyone but the President or the Secretary of Defense. Detainees would be treated “humanely,” and would be given “full and fair trials,” the order said. Yet the order continued that “it is not practicable” to apply “the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts.” The death penalty, for example, could be imposed even if there was a split verdict. Moreover, in December, 2001, the Department of Defense circulated internal memos suggesting that, in the commission system, defendants would have only limited rights to confront their accusers, see all the evidence against them, or be present during their trials. There would be no right to remain silent, and hearsay evidence would be admissible, as would evidence obtained through physical coercion. Guilt did not need to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. The order firmly established that terrorism would henceforth be approached on a war footing, endowing the President with enhanced powers.

The precedent for the order was an arcane 1942 case, ex parte Quirin, in which Franklin Roosevelt created a military commission to try eight Nazi saboteurs who had infiltrated the United States via submarines. The Supreme Court upheld the case, 8–0, but even the conservative Justice Antonin Scalia has called it “not this Court’s finest hour.” Roosevelt was later criticized for creating a sham process. Moreover, while he used military commissions to try a handful of suspects who had already admitted their guilt, the Bush White House was proposing expanding the process to cover thousands of “enemy combatants.” It was also ignoring the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which, having codified procedures for courts-martial in 1951, had rendered Quirin out of date.

…

Under attack from defense lawyers like Mori, the military commissions have been tied up in the courts almost since the order was issued. Bellinger and others fought to make the commissions fairer, so that they could withstand court challenges, and the Pentagon gradually softened its rules. But Administration lawyers involved in the process said that Addington resisted at every turn. He insisted, for instance, on maintaining the admissibility of statements obtained through coercion, or even torture. In meetings, he argued that officials in charge of the military commissions should be given maximum flexibility to decide whether to include such evidence. “Torture isn’t important to Addington as a scientific matter, good or bad, or whether it works or not,” the Administration lawyer, who is familiar with these debates, said. “It’s more about his philosophy of Presidential power. He thinks that if the President wants torture he should get torture. He always argued for ‘maximum flexibility.’ ”

…

Meanwhile, Addington has fought tirelessly to stem reform of other controversial aspects of the New Paradigm, such as the detention and interrogation of terror suspects. Last year, he and Cheney led an unsuccessful campaign to defeat an amendment, proposed by Senator John McCain, to ban the abusive treatment of detainees held by the military or the C.I.A. Government officials who have worked closely with Addington say he insists that legal flexibility is necessary, because of the iniquity of the enemy; moreover, he does not believe that the legal positions taken by the Bush Administration in the war on terror have damaged the country’s international reputation. “He’s a very smart guy, but he gives no credibility to those who say these policies are hurting us around the world,” the senior Administration legal adviser said. “His feeling is that there are no costs. He’ll say people are just whining. He thinks most of them would be against us no matter what.” In Addington’s view, critics of the Administration’s aggressive legal policies are just political enemies of the President.

…

When President Bush signed