From The Nation:
Opinion
A President Rebuked
Bruce Shapiro, The Nation
Thu Jun 29, 10:08 PM ET
The Nation -- The only surviving World War II veteran on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens, appointed three decades ago by a President as Republican as W., delivered the plain and airtight message: President Bush violated every standard of the military code, the US Constitution and international law with its order for military tribunals at Guantánamo. In its implications if not always its direct findings, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is to Bush what the Pentagon Papers case was to Richard Nixon: a devastating rebuke to a President who thought he had a blank check; a clear reaffirmation of the rule of law even--or especially--in times of national crisis.
The Court's Hamdan ruling emphatically does not shut Guantánamo down. Indeed, the Court majority took pains to assert that the attacks of September 11 ignited the President's war powers and they do not challenge "the Government's power to detain [Salim Ahmed Hamdan] for the duration of active hostilities."
The ruling unambiguously declares that the President may not simply invent trials that conform to no known standard of law, which are not necessitated by urgent battlefield conditions, and deny defense lawyers access to evidence. It also dismantles every element of the Administration's case, from the conspiracy-to-commit-war crimes charges against the Yemeni national who was Osama bin Laden's driver in Afganistan to the necessity of an improvised process governed by no act of Congress. "Any urgent need...is utterly belied by the record," Justice Stevens writes. "Hamdan was arrested in November 2001 and he was not charged until mid-2004. These simply are not the circumstances in which, by any stretch of the historical evidence or this Court's precedents" justify a drumhead military commission.
In particular, Justice Stevens' majority ruling deals a devasating blow to tribunal rules which violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convenions. Indeed, the most signficiant news in Justice Steven's Hamdan majority ruling is fierce insistence on the power of international law, and in particular the Geneva Conventions, which the Administration has long dismissed as irrelevant to non-state actors like Al Qaeda volunteers. Such dismissals are nonsense, according to Justice Stevens' ruling: the Geneva Conventions' Common Article 3 clearly prohibits "the passing of sentences...without previous judgment...by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees ... recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." For three years, Administration lawyers have argued that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to its "war on terror". That argument is finished.
The Administration was probably prepared to lose the Hamdan tribunals. It is not clear, however, that the White House is ready for the sweeping implications of the Supreme Court's firm invocation of internationally recognized human rights standards. Black sites, secret interrogations, torture, the whole panoply of lawless methods embraced by Bush and Rumsfeld now stand exposed.
At bottom, the Hamdan ruling is what legal scholar Jack M. Balkin calls "democracy-forcing": It restores checks and balances, strips the President of illegally-seized powers, and requires the President to go back to Congress for an open debate on any new tribunals he would like to establish, as well as any revision to the nation's adherence to international law. What Justice Stevens and the five-vote Court majority have done is raise the floor on human rights--not just for Bin Laden's driver and not just at Guantánamo, but in Washington itself.
I must really comment Mr. Imposter for indicating that my post on President Clinton( reproduced below) contains factual material. As Mr. Imposter said--OK they are factual but so are the lies perpetrated by Bush to start this war.
I am very much afraid that there is evidence to show that the charges about Clinton are indeed TRUE. There is no evidence that I know of that shows that President Bush lied to start "this war"
First, My comments which Mr. Imposter accepts:
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But Mr. Frank Apisa, despite all the unproven barbs he hurls at the Rebublicans, cannot deny FACTS.
Clinton was the first president IMPEACHED by the House of Representatives since President Johnson in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Clinton avoided indictment by admitting that he LIED in his deposition in the Paula Jones case.
Clinton was fined $80,000 dollars by Judge Wright for his misbehavior in her court.
Clinton paid a $25,000 fine to the Arkansas law commission because of his misbehavior
Clinton's law license was suspended for five years because of his misbehavior.
If Mr. Apisa can show that the items above are not FACTUAL, I ask him to so. If not, he may go on to another thread.
Then Mr.
cicerone imposter's comments:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay, they are factual, and so are the lies perpetrated by Bush to start this war on Saddam's WMDs he never had, and it's costing the American taxpayers two billion every week - and that doesn't even include the 2,500 lost American lives.
Clinton was fined and paid how much? The government spend over $50 million to make those charges against Clinton on a very personal sexual matter. You guys will "never get it."
********************************************************
First of all, the government did not "Spend" over 50 Million to make those Charges against Clintion on A VERY PERSONAL SEXUAL MATTER.
I am very much afraid that Mr. Imposter eighter never read or has forgotten the charges filed in the House; the charges voted for in the House and the Charges passed on to the Senate-
quote--
"The House of Representatives tried President Clinton on the charge of OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE" p. 37
Mr.Imposter really ought to read the charges before making such an egregious error.
Secondly, there is no objective evidence, evidence of the kind that is collected in a court of law or from a deposition or from an admission that President Bush LIED about WMD's. We have been over this ground again and again and anyone who knows anything about the term LIED cannot bring that charge without looking like an extreme left wing partisan.
note:
NOW, BEFORE MR. IMPOSTER ATTEMPTS TO DENIGRATE THIS NEXT PIECE OF EVIDENCE BY SAYING THAT MR. PODHORETZ IS A NEO-CON, I MUST REALLY POINT OUT THAT HIS SOURCE T H E N A T I O N MAGAZINE WAS ONCE KNOWN AS PRAVDA WEST FOR ITS VERY VERY FAR LEFT WING STANCES.
Now,Proof that Mr. Bush did not LIE!
COMMENTARY
December 2005
Who Is Lying About Iraq?
Norman Podhoretz
Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.
What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.
Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.
The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us and/or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.
This entire scenario of purported deceit has been given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Wilson for having "debunked" (in his words) "the lies that led to war."
Now, as it happens, Libby was not charged with having outed Plame but only with having lied about when and from whom he first learned that she worked for the CIA. Moreover, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who brought the indictment against him, made a point of emphasizing that
[t]his indictment is not about the war. This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.
This is simply an indictment that says, in a national-security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person?-a person, Mr. Libby?-lied or not.
No matter. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, spoke for a host of other opponents of the war in insisting that
[t]his case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the President.
Yet even stipulating?-which I do only for the sake of argument?-that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.
How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Tenet had the backing of all fifteen agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that
Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and?-yes?-France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix?-who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past?-lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:
The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
Blix now claims that he was only being "cautious" here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration "misled itself" in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.
So, once again, did the British, the French, and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell's reading of the satellite photos he presented to the UN in the period leading up to the invasion. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as Secretary of State. But Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:
I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits, and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the UN on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't. I've wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP?-Ammunition Supply Point?-with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they're there, you have to conclude that it's a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet's deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate.
Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was convinced:
People say, well, INR dissented. That's a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That's all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios.
In explaining its dissent on Iraq's nuclear program, the INR had, as stated in the NIE of 2002, expressed doubt about
Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes [which are] central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. . . . INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors . . . in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program.
But, according to Wilkerson,
The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by God, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?
In short, and whether or not it included the secret heart of Hans Blix, "the consensus of the intelligence community," as Wilkerson puts it, "was overwhelming" in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.
Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. "In the late spring of 2002," Pollack has written,
I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).
No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with "high confidence" was that
Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.1
But the consensus on which Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:
If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.
Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:
Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.
Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:
He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.
Finally, Clinton's Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained "absolutely convinced" of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.
Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic Senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President
to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.
Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:
Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.
This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. In a letter to the new President, a number of Senators led by Bob Graham declared:
There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical, and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.
Senator Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Bush's benefit what he had told Clinton some years earlier:
Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 2002:
In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:
There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.
Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush's opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:
We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.
And here is Gore again, in that same year:
Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.
Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:
I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force?-if necessary?-to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.
COMMENTARY
December 2005
Who Is Lying About Iraq?
Norman Podhoretz
Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.
What makes this charge so special is the amazing success it has enjoyed in getting itself established as a self-evident truth even though it has been refuted and discredited over and over again by evidence and argument alike. In this it resembles nothing so much as those animated cartoon characters who, after being flattened, blown up, or pushed over a cliff, always spring back to life with their bodies perfectly intact. Perhaps, like those cartoon characters, this allegation simply cannot be killed off, no matter what.
Nevertheless, I want to take one more shot at exposing it for the lie that it itself really is. Although doing so will require going over ground that I and many others have covered before, I hope that revisiting this well-trodden terrain may also serve to refresh memories that have grown dim, to clarify thoughts that have grown confused, and to revive outrage that has grown commensurately dulled.
The main "lie" that George W. Bush is accused of telling us is that Saddam Hussein possessed an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, or WMD as they have invariably come to be called. From this followed the subsidiary "lie" that Iraq under Saddam's regime posed a two-edged mortal threat. On the one hand, we were informed, there was a distinct (or even "imminent") possibility that Saddam himself would use these weapons against us and/or our allies; and on the other hand, there was the still more dangerous possibility that he would supply them to terrorists like those who had already attacked us on 9/11 and to whom he was linked.
This entire scenario of purported deceit has been given a new lease on life by the indictment in late October of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, then chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby stands accused of making false statements to the FBI and of committing perjury in testifying before a grand jury that had been convened to find out who in the Bush administration had "outed" Valerie Plame, a CIA agent married to the retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV. The supposed purpose of leaking this classified information to the press was to retaliate against Wilson for having "debunked" (in his words) "the lies that led to war."
Now, as it happens, Libby was not charged with having outed Plame but only with having lied about when and from whom he first learned that she worked for the CIA. Moreover, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who brought the indictment against him, made a point of emphasizing that
[t]his indictment is not about the war. This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.
This is simply an indictment that says, in a national-security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person?-a person, Mr. Libby?-lied or not.
No matter. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, spoke for a host of other opponents of the war in insisting that
[t]his case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the President.
Yet even stipulating?-which I do only for the sake of argument?-that no weapons of mass destruction existed in Iraq in the period leading up to the invasion, it defies all reason to think that Bush was lying when he asserted that they did. To lie means to say something one knows to be false. But it is as close to certainty as we can get that Bush believed in the truth of what he was saying about WMD in Iraq.
How indeed could it have been otherwise? George Tenet, his own CIA director, assured him that the case was "a slam dunk." This phrase would later become notorious, but in using it, Tenet had the backing of all fifteen agencies involved in gathering intelligence for the United States. In the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 2002, where their collective views were summarized, one of the conclusions offered with "high confidence" was that
Iraq is continuing, and in some areas expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear, and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions.
The intelligence agencies of Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Israel, and?-yes?-France all agreed with this judgment. And even Hans Blix?-who headed the UN team of inspectors trying to determine whether Saddam had complied with the demands of the Security Council that he get rid of the weapons of mass destruction he was known to have had in the past?-lent further credibility to the case in a report he issued only a few months before the invasion:
The discovery of a number of 122-mm chemical rocket warheads in a bunker at a storage depot 170 km southwest of Baghdad was much publicized. This was a relatively new bunker, and therefore the rockets must have been moved there in the past few years, at a time when Iraq should not have had such munitions. . . . They could also be the tip of a submerged iceberg. The discovery of a few rockets does not resolve but rather points to the issue of several thousands of chemical rockets that are unaccounted for.
Blix now claims that he was only being "cautious" here, but if, as he now also adds, the Bush administration "misled itself" in interpreting the evidence before it, he at the very least lent it a helping hand.
So, once again, did the British, the French, and the Germans, all of whom signed on in advance to Secretary of State Colin Powell's reading of the satellite photos he presented to the UN in the period leading up to the invasion. Powell himself and his chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, now feel that this speech was the low point of his tenure as Secretary of State. But Wilkerson (in the process of a vicious attack on the President, the Vice President, and the Secretary of Defense for getting us into Iraq) is forced to acknowledge that the Bush administration did not lack for company in interpreting the available evidence as it did:
I can't tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits, and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the UN on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can't. I've wrestled with it. [But] when you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical-weapons ASP?-Ammunition Supply Point?-with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they're there, you have to conclude that it's a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the UN inspectors wheeling in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP, and everything is changed, everything is clean. . . . But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [Tenet's deputy] was convinced, that what we were presented [for Powell's UN speech] was accurate.
Going on to shoot down a widespread impression, Wilkerson informs us that even the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was convinced:
People say, well, INR dissented. That's a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That's all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bios.
In explaining its dissent on Iraq's nuclear program, the INR had, as stated in the NIE of 2002, expressed doubt about
Iraq's efforts to acquire aluminum tubes [which are] central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear-weapons program. . . . INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors . . . in Iraq's nuclear-weapons program.
But, according to Wilkerson,
The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by God, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?
In short, and whether or not it included the secret heart of Hans Blix, "the consensus of the intelligence community," as Wilkerson puts it, "was overwhelming" in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam definitely had an arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and that he was also in all probability well on the way to rebuilding the nuclear capability that the Israelis had damaged by bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981.
Additional confirmation of this latter point comes from Kenneth Pollack, who served in the National Security Council under Clinton. "In the late spring of 2002," Pollack has written,
I participated in a Washington meeting about Iraqi WMD. Those present included nearly twenty former inspectors from the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), the force established in 1991 to oversee the elimination of WMD in Iraq. One of the senior people put a question to the group: did anyone in the room doubt that Iraq was currently operating a secret centrifuge plant? No one did. Three people added that they believed Iraq was also operating a secret calutron plant (a facility for separating uranium isotopes).
No wonder, then, that another conclusion the NIE of 2002 reached with "high confidence" was that
Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons-grade fissile material.1
But the consensus on which Bush relied was not born in his own administration. In fact, it was first fully formed in the Clinton administration. Here is Clinton himself, speaking in 1998:
If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program.
Here is his Secretary of State Madeline Albright, also speaking in 1998:
Iraq is a long way from [the USA], but what happens there matters a great deal here. For the risk that the leaders of a rogue state will use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons against us or our allies is the greatest security threat we face.
Here is Sandy Berger, Clinton's National Security Adviser, who chimed in at the same time with this flat-out assertion about Saddam:
He will use those weapons of mass destruction again, as he has ten times since 1983.
Finally, Clinton's Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, was so sure Saddam had stockpiles of WMD that he remained "absolutely convinced" of it even after our failure to find them in the wake of the invasion in March 2003.
Nor did leading Democrats in Congress entertain any doubts on this score. A few months after Clinton and his people made the statements I have just quoted, a group of Democratic Senators, including such liberals as Carl Levin, Tom Daschle, and John Kerry, urged the President
to take necessary actions (including, if appropriate, air and missile strikes on suspect Iraqi sites) to respond effectively to the threat posed by Iraq's refusal to end its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.
Nancy Pelosi, the future leader of the Democrats in the House, and then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, added her voice to the chorus:
Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons-of-mass-destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.
This Democratic drumbeat continued and even intensified when Bush succeeded Clinton in 2001, and it featured many who would later pretend to have been deceived by the Bush White House. In a letter to the new President, a number of Senators led by Bob Graham declared:
There is no doubt that . . . Saddam Hussein has invigorated his weapons programs. Reports indicate that biological, chemical, and nuclear programs continue apace and may be back to pre-Gulf war status. In addition, Saddam continues to redefine delivery systems and is doubtless using the cover of a licit missile program to develop longer-range missiles that will threaten the United States and our allies.
Senator Carl Levin also reaffirmed for Bush's benefit what he had told Clinton some years earlier:
Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a threat to the peace and stability of the region. He has ignored the mandate of the United Nations, and is building weapons of mass destruction and the means of delivering them.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed, speaking in October 2002:
In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical- and biological-weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaeda members.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, agreed as well:
There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. . . . We also should remember we have always underestimated the progress Saddam has made in development of weapons of mass destruction.
Even more striking were the sentiments of Bush's opponents in his two campaigns for the presidency. Thus Al Gore in September 2002:
We know that [Saddam] has stored secret supplies of biological and chemical weapons throughout his country.
And here is Gore again, in that same year:
Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter, and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power.
Now to John Kerry, also speaking in 2002:
I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force?-if necessary?-to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.
Bush Resurrects False Claim That Congress Had "Same Intelligence" On Iraq
In his speech today, President Bush claimed that members of Congress who voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution "had access to the same intelligence" as his administration. This is patently false.
Nevermind that much of the intelligence offered to the public and to Congress was inaccurate and misleading, or that according to the Downing Street memo and other documents, such intelligence was likely intentionally "fixed." It is simply not true to state that Congress received the "same intelligence" as the White House:
FACT ?- Dissent From White House Claims on Iraq Nuclear Program Consistently Withheld from Congress:
[S]everal Congressional and intelligence officials with access to the 15 assessments [of intel suggesting aluminum tubes showed Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program] said not one of them informed senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent. They described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the intensifying debate." [NYT, 10/3/04]
FACT ?- Sen. Kerrey: Bush "Has Much More Access" to Intel Than Congress:
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE), ex-Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman: "The president has much more access to intelligence than members of Congress does. Ask any member of Congress. Ask a Republican member of Congress, do you get the same access to intelligence that the president does? Look at these aluminum tube stories that came out the president delivered to the Congress ?- ?'We believe these would be used for centrifuges.' ?- didn't deliver to Congress the full range of objections from the Department of Energy experts, nuclear weapons experts, that said it's unlikely they were for centrifuges, more likely that they were for rockets, which was a pre-existing use. The president has much more access to intelligence than any member of Congress." [10/7/04]
FACT ?- Rockefeller: PDBs, CIA Intel Withheld From Senate:
Ranking minority member on the Senate Intelligence Committee Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): "[P]eople say, ?'Well, you know, you all had the same intelligence that the White House had.' And I'm here to tell you that is nowhere near the truth. We not only don't have, nor probably should we have, the Presidential Daily Brief. We don't have the constant people who are working on intelligence who are very close to him. They don't release their ?- an administration which tends not to release ?- not just the White House, but the CIA, DOD [Department of Defense], others ?- they control information. There's a lot of intelligence that we don't get that they have." [11/04/05]
FACT ?- War Supporter Ken Pollack: White House Engaged in "Creative Omission" of Iraq Intel:
In the eyes of Kenneth Pollack, "a Clinton-era National Security Council member and strong supporter of regime change in Iraq," "the Administration consistently engaged in ?'creative omission,' overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had evidence to the contrary. ?'The President is responsible for serving the entire nation,' Pollack writes. ?'Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the US government - and withholding or downplaying some of that information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility.'" [Christian Science Monitor, 1/14/04]
FACT ?- White House Had Exclusive Access to "Unique" Intel Sources:
"The claim that the White House and Congress saw the 'same intelligence' on Iraq is further undermined by the Bush administration's use of outside intelligence channels. For more than year prior to the war, the administration received intelligence assessments and analysis on Iraq directly from the Department of Defense's Office of Special Plans (OSP), run by then-undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas J. Feith, and the Iraqi National Congress (INC), a group of Iraqi exiles led by Ahmed Chalabi." [MediaMatters, 11/8/05]
Now, here is my rebuttal to the Nation's article---and I will point out the critical elements---
*********************************************************
Supreme Court Invalidates Gitmo Tribunals
By Tony Mauro and Jason McLure
Legal Times
June 29, 2006
In a remarkable repudiation of the Bush administration's exercise of power in the war on terror, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the military commissions established to try Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainees violate both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions.
Handed down on the final day of the Court's term, the 5-3 decision could affect government policies beyond Guantánamo, jeopardizing U.S. interrogation techniques used on detainees and prisoners, which human rights groups say also violate the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners.
Ruling in the long-awaited case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Court also rejected the Bush administration's contention that Congress had stripped the Court of jurisdiction over detainee appeals in a law it passed last December. That law, the Detainee Treatment Act, does not apply to cases pending when it passed, the high court said.
"In undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the majority opinion. Stevens announced the decision Thursday at the Court.
Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen, has been detained at Guantánamo Bay for the past four years. A driver for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, he was charged with conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, and challenged the constitutionality of the military commission that was about to try him. Stevens said conspiracy alone was not the kind of violation of the law of war that should be tried by a military commission.
The Stevens opinion did not foreclose other methods of dealing with Hamdan or the other 450 Guantánamo detainees, suggesting that they could be tried in standard military courts-martial. He also indicated the commissions could be acceptable if Congress explicitly authorized them. Several members of Congress on Thursday indicated they would introduce legislation to respond to the Court's decision, and President George W. Bush indicated he would work with them.
"To the extent that there is latitude to work with the Congress to determine whether or not the military tribunals will be an avenue in which to give people their day in court, we will do so," the president said at the White House. "The American people need to know that the ruling, as I understand it, won't cause killers to be put out on the street."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who supported the military commissions, said the Court "opened the door to a legislative remedy, and as Congress plays a key role in this debate, we'll work with the administration to reach a solution." Cornyn also emphasized that the ruling did not question the administration's power to detain terrorists. "We're not talking about simple criminals," added Cornyn. "These detainees include the most violent terrorists in the world."
Administration officials said Thursday afternoon that they were studying the ruling and had not decided what course of action to pursue. "There is no particular direction we're headed in right now except to review the decision and consider all options available to us and Congress," said one senior administration official.
Stevens' summary of his 73-page decision triggered angry dissents, read from the bench by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. For 30 minutes, spectators in the Court chamber saw a dramatic display of tensions between the moderate and conservative wings of the Court.
For Thomas, it was the first time he had read from a dissent in his 15 years on the high court. Scalia made his pique apparent by departing from the tradition that, when justices dissent, they end their opinions by saying, "I respectfully dissent." Scalia's written dissent omits "respectfully," and when he read from his dissent from the bench, he said, "I vigorously dissent." Justice Samuel Alito Jr. also dissented, but he used the word "respectfully," as did Thomas.
Justice Anthony Kennedy was the key vote in the decision, joining most but not all of Stevens' opinion, but giving Stevens the majority he needed on its major points.
"Respect for laws derived from the customary operation of the Executive and Legislative Branches gives some assurance of stability in time of crisis," Kennedy wrote. "The Constitution is best preserved by reliance on standards tested over time and insulated from the pressures of the moment."
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. did not participate in the case because he joined the ruling against Hamdan when he sat on the D.C. Circuit, before he joined the Supreme Court last year.
Even though Roberts was not in the case, the Hamdan decision was viewed as a test of whether the new Roberts Court would look at terrorism cases differently or follow the recent pattern of skepticism of executive power ?- a path charted in part by now-retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
In a nod toward O'Connor, Justice Stephen Breyer in a concurrence wrote, "The Court's conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the Executive a ?'blank check.' " The "blank check" phrase was drawn from O'Connor's opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a 2004 decision that also trimmed back executive power.
"The post-Rehnquist Court continues to be engaged in policing the powers of the executive," said an elated Deborah Pearlstein of Human Rights First.
"The democratic institutions in this country are stepping forward to take their power back from a president that has tried to seize it the past five years," said Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents roughly 200 Guantánamo detainees.
The ruling also rejected the administration's argument that the post-911 Authorization of Use of Military Force that Congress passed gave the administration all the authority necessary to create the military commissions.
"At the broadest level, the Court has rejected the basic legal theory of the Bush administration since 9/11 ?- that the president has the inherent power to do whatever he wants in the name of fighting terrorism without accountability to Congress or the courts," said Covington & Burling partner David Remes, a leading strategist in the challenge to the commissions.
At 86, Stevens is the Court's oldest and longest-serving justice. His decision contained echoes of post-World War II decisions issued close to the time when he was a law clerk for Justice Wiley Rutledge, in 1947 and 1948.
"Stevens must have felt proud and honored to vindicate the views of his former boss and mentor," said University of Oklahoma College of Law professor Joseph Thai, who has written on Stevens' role as a law clerk in the postwar Court.
SOURCE
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=115
************************************************************
The key items in the above indicate:
l. The ruling DID NOT question the Administration's power to detain the terrorists
2. The ruling said that the court martials could be acceptable if Congress specifically authorized them.
3. The ruling did not foreclose other methods of trying Hamdan and the other 450 Detainees.
It now remains to be seen which methods the Congress will authorize. The bottom line is that the GITMO prisoners will remain in custody for the foreseeable future( everyone knows how long trials take) and when they are tried, the trials will most probably be along the line of court martial trials.
************************************************************
Now, Mr. Imposter, it is your turn to show specifically where Mr. Podhoretz has not told the truth. If you can't, I will understand but please understand that I am rebutting your NATION article to show you how it can be done!
Here is my rebuttal to the Nation's article---and I will point out the critical elements---
*********************************************************
Supreme Court Invalidates Gitmo Tribunals
By Tony Mauro and Jason McLure
Legal Times
June 29, 2006
In a remarkable repudiation of the Bush administration's exercise of power in the war on terror, the Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the military commissions established to try Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detainees violate both U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions.
Handed down on the final day of the Court's term, the 5-3 decision could affect government policies beyond Guantánamo, jeopardizing U.S. interrogation techniques used on detainees and prisoners, which human rights groups say also violate the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners.
Ruling in the long-awaited case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the Court also rejected the Bush administration's contention that Congress had stripped the Court of jurisdiction over detainee appeals in a law it passed last December. That law, the Detainee Treatment Act, does not apply to cases pending when it passed, the high court said.
"In undertaking to try Hamdan and subject him to criminal punishment, the Executive is bound to comply with the Rule of Law that prevails in this jurisdiction," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the majority opinion. Stevens announced the decision Thursday at the Court.
Salim Hamdan, a Yemeni citizen, has been detained at Guantánamo Bay for the past four years. A driver for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, he was charged with conspiracy to commit terrorist acts, and challenged the constitutionality of the military commission that was about to try him. Stevens said conspiracy alone was not the kind of violation of the law of war that should be tried by a military commission.
The Stevens opinion did not foreclose other methods of dealing with Hamdan or the other 450 Guantánamo detainees, suggesting that they could be tried in standard military courts-martial. He also indicated the commissions could be acceptable if Congress explicitly authorized them. Several members of Congress on Thursday indicated they would introduce legislation to respond to the Court's decision, and President George W. Bush indicated he would work with them.
"To the extent that there is latitude to work with the Congress to determine whether or not the military tribunals will be an avenue in which to give people their day in court, we will do so," the president said at the White House. "The American people need to know that the ruling, as I understand it, won't cause killers to be put out on the street."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who supported the military commissions, said the Court "opened the door to a legislative remedy, and as Congress plays a key role in this debate, we'll work with the administration to reach a solution." Cornyn also emphasized that the ruling did not question the administration's power to detain terrorists. "We're not talking about simple criminals," added Cornyn. "These detainees include the most violent terrorists in the world."
Administration officials said Thursday afternoon that they were studying the ruling and had not decided what course of action to pursue. "There is no particular direction we're headed in right now except to review the decision and consider all options available to us and Congress," said one senior administration official.
Stevens' summary of his 73-page decision triggered angry dissents, read from the bench by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. For 30 minutes, spectators in the Court chamber saw a dramatic display of tensions between the moderate and conservative wings of the Court.
For Thomas, it was the first time he had read from a dissent in his 15 years on the high court. Scalia made his pique apparent by departing from the tradition that, when justices dissent, they end their opinions by saying, "I respectfully dissent." Scalia's written dissent omits "respectfully," and when he read from his dissent from the bench, he said, "I vigorously dissent." Justice Samuel Alito Jr. also dissented, but he used the word "respectfully," as did Thomas.
Justice Anthony Kennedy was the key vote in the decision, joining most but not all of Stevens' opinion, but giving Stevens the majority he needed on its major points.
"Respect for laws derived from the customary operation of the Executive and Legislative Branches gives some assurance of stability in time of crisis," Kennedy wrote. "The Constitution is best preserved by reliance on standards tested over time and insulated from the pressures of the moment."
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. did not participate in the case because he joined the ruling against Hamdan when he sat on the D.C. Circuit, before he joined the Supreme Court last year.
Even though Roberts was not in the case, the Hamdan decision was viewed as a test of whether the new Roberts Court would look at terrorism cases differently or follow the recent pattern of skepticism of executive power ?- a path charted in part by now-retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
In a nod toward O'Connor, Justice Stephen Breyer in a concurrence wrote, "The Court's conclusion ultimately rests upon a single ground: Congress has not issued the Executive a ?'blank check.' " The "blank check" phrase was drawn from O'Connor's opinion in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a 2004 decision that also trimmed back executive power.
"The post-Rehnquist Court continues to be engaged in policing the powers of the executive," said an elated Deborah Pearlstein of Human Rights First.
"The democratic institutions in this country are stepping forward to take their power back from a president that has tried to seize it the past five years," said Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents roughly 200 Guantánamo detainees.
The ruling also rejected the administration's argument that the post-911 Authorization of Use of Military Force that Congress passed gave the administration all the authority necessary to create the military commissions.
"At the broadest level, the Court has rejected the basic legal theory of the Bush administration since 9/11 ?- that the president has the inherent power to do whatever he wants in the name of fighting terrorism without accountability to Congress or the courts," said Covington & Burling partner David Remes, a leading strategist in the challenge to the commissions.
At 86, Stevens is the Court's oldest and longest-serving justice. His decision contained echoes of post-World War II decisions issued close to the time when he was a law clerk for Justice Wiley Rutledge, in 1947 and 1948.
"Stevens must have felt proud and honored to vindicate the views of his former boss and mentor," said University of Oklahoma College of Law professor Joseph Thai, who has written on Stevens' role as a law clerk in the postwar Court.
SOURCE
http://www.law.com/jsp/dc/PubArticleDC.jsp?id=115
************************************************************
The key items in the above indicate:
l. The ruling DID NOT question the Administration's power to detain the terrorists
2. The ruling said that the court martials could be acceptable if Congress specifically authorized them.
3. The ruling did not foreclose other methods of trying Hamdan and the other 450 Detainees.
It now remains to be seen which methods the Congress will authorize. The bottom line is that the GITMO prisoners will remain in custody for the foreseeable future( everyone knows how long trials take) and when they are tried, the trials will most probably be along the line of court martial trials.
************************************************************
Now, Mr. Imposter, it is your turn to show specifically where Mr. Podhoretz has not told the truth. If you can't, I will understand but please understand that I am rebutting your NATION article to show you how it can be done!
