Passive Aggressive Holidays at Nancy's House

"I'm very upset with the de Mourvailleaus," said Nancy, catching a glimpse of her chic hair flip in the hallway mirror as she walked toward the parlor. She paused for a moment and lifted her head, gently brushing the cross-hatch of fine lines on her neck with her ring-encrusted fingers. They looked a little worse this year. It might be time to call Dr. Alberundian down on Post Street.

"Because it's so hard to pronounce their names?" her husband replied good-naturedly, peering over the top of the Journal from his overstuffed chair. A plume of pipe smoke floated lazily toward the high ceiling.

"No, because they've absolutely refused to move the date for their holiday party. If anything, they've become more intransigent than ever. They know it's too close to mine, but they won't do a thing about it."

"Have you let them know how you feel?" her plump husband said soothingly. He was the picture of relaxation in his bulky cardigan and khakis. Nancy glared at him; he could be so irritatingly nonchalant.

"Of course I have," she snapped. "They know I can't force them to operate on my timetable, but a little common courtesy..."

"Frankly, they've never seemed like the kind who do anything out of common courtesy," interrupted her husband. "They're rather gauche, actually."

"So you always say," Nance retorted coldly. "But that's not how things should be done. I've extended the hand of friendship to them, but I've been bitten for my trouble."

"Fire a shot across their bow," her husband said playfully. "Disinvite them to your party."

"One can't do that," Nancy said. "Such barbarities are simply off the table."

"Well, then, I suppose you go ahead with your party as planned," he said, returning to his stock quotes.

Nancy slumped into the butter-soft leather sofa. She looked across the butler's table, through the bay window to the channel of the Golden Gate.

"I won't do that," she said. "That would give them too much satisfaction. No one is going to turn around and come to a party the very next night. They've ruined my plans."

Her husband rustled the paper as he turned the page. "Um-hmm," he murmured. They'd had this conversation five times over the last few days.

"I'm simply going to postpone any consideration of having a party at all until next year."

"So you'll wait till the holidays are over to have your holiday party?" her husband asked from behind the business page.

"Yes I will," Nancy said fiercely.

"That will show them who's boss," said her husband.

"I think so too," said Nancy, leaning back against the sofa and permitting herself a demure smile. "The de...whatever their name is will learn you can't mess with someone like me and get away with it."

Sleazeballs as President

I used to read the Berkeley Barb when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley in the mid-late Sixties, the roaring years of student activism at this now thoroughly tamed and docile campus. Back in the day, the question was whether it was even ethical to go to class, given the complicity in power-structure abuses which such an act implied. Now the question is whether to major in the hot new field of molecular biology (if you're smart enough) or in business administration (if you're not). Although with respect to the latter field, it might not be a bad idea to double-major in mathematics so you can whore yourself out to a hedge fund and handle all those incredibly complicated algorithms necessary to produce completely incomprehensible "tranched" doo-dads like collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed securities. I'm a member of the alumni association so I can use the library. I keep the books until I get my inevitable postcard informing me that unless the volume is immediately returned, I will be charged with the replacement cost ($150) and subject myself to extraordinary rendition. Times have changed.

Anyway, I used to pick up the Barb from one of the many free newsstands along Telegraph and then take it into a coffee shop at the corner of Telegraph and Channing and have a cup of joe and an old fashioned glazed donut, before (or instead of) heading off to my morning class. Robert Scheer wrote for the Barb in those days, back when Herb Caen used to call him "Berkeley Bob Scheer" in his Chronicle columns. I'm glad to see Bob never lost his radical edge, although it apparently cost him his job at the Los Angeles Times. One day in the spring of 1968 I read a piece about a Berkeley poli sci professor, I forget which one (there were so many great ones in those days), who claimed that every morning he stared into the mirror and said: "Richard M. Nixon, President of the United States." He then explained that he said that "to get used to it." Remarkable story, and completely true.

It gave me a frisson of dread when I read that. I couldn't quite believe that Tricky Dick would be elected, and I chose to think the witty prof was simply indulging in something like ritual incantation to keep the evil spirits away. Nah, he was simply acknowledging the inevitable. The Age of the Sleazeball had arrived.

Nixon was indeed a crook, a criminal mentality who debased the office and threatened to undermine the Constitutional foundation of the country. His assaults on the integrity of the system were, in fact, more dire than those of the current Sleazeball-in-Chief, but they were checked by a Congress that still had vestiges of statesmanship and noble tradition on a bipartisan basis. What made Nixon so scary was that he was very smart and completely unconstrained by any sense of ethics. Bush matches his dishonesty, but lacks the same level of cornered-rat cunning. On the other hand, Bush does not confront any sort of principled opposition; the Congress, on both sides of the aisle, willingly go along with any sort of extra-legal bullshit the president can come up with. Repeal habeas corpus? No problem. Retroactively redefine the Geneva Conventions so the war crimes we committed aren't war crimes anymore? You got it. Violate the Fourth Amendment and then change the law so it's okay anyway? When you want that? Bush does less damage because, when you get right down to it, there's nothing much left of American democracy anyway. The American system of checks and balances, representative government, and civil liberties protecting the minority from the "tyranny of the majority" (de Toqueville) are fond memories that do not exist in the real world anymore.

Nixon began the depredations. It's interesting that his popularity fell to the same Filene's-basement level, at about the same point in his presidency, as W. So the American people usually figure out, at some point, they've been had. The Crook-in-Chief was never looking out for them. He was wrestling with private demons (paranoia, thwarted ambition, stinging defeats of his youth) and needed the widest possible stage to work out his vindication. At our expense, because he brought along his ruthless desire to vindicate his past using the tools at hand -- which, in both their cases, were their criminal propensities.

But they got there because they could look like something else when the occasion demanded. Americans, over and over, elect the candidate with the greatest talent for projecting a false image, and now the only serious candidates left are the ones willing to distort themselves, to become what they think will fool enough of the people to get elected. Is it time to look in the mirror every morning and say: "Rudy Giuliani, President of the United States" ?

The Moving Picture

China has apparently "threatened" to diversify its $1.4 trillion stake in U.S. Treasury securities, another in a series of financial body blows offered to explain the 1,000 point fall of the Dow Jones over the last few weeks. Our Commie loan-shark friends only increased their Treasury stake about $13 billion last fiscal year, which was worrying enough. Uncle Sam needs to sell about a quarter trillion of IOU's during the course of a year in order to "balance" the books, or about $20 billion a month. During the seven years of the Bush Administration, this has been accomplished almost entirely by sales to foreign nations and Caribbean "banking centers." The U.S. Treasury pays such a piss-poor return on its debt that only nations with geopolitical aims bother to buy the stuff. China's goal, of course, has been to prop up the American consumer by flooding the Treasury with recycled greenbacks which can be loaned out to cash-strapped Americans through re-fi and lines of credit. They have tolerated the double whammy of a low interest rate and a devaluing dollar (which, acting in tandem, mean that the principal investment of China in America actually loses money in real terms) because of the favorable balance of trade with the U.S. (to say the least).

It's possible that China's veiled "threat" was a shot across Ben Bernanke's bow. The harried Fed Chairman is, like his predecessor, a one-trick pony. When the American economy is flagging, he lowers the interest rate to pump cash into the "consumer" economy. Last time he trotted his little horse around the ring, the dollar sank again and increased Commie losses. The Chinese are letting Ben know that another rate cut (which only provided a temporary boost anyway) might trigger a switch to more stable currencies, such as the Euro. This state of affairs puts Bernanke, and the Bush Administration in general, into a delicate quandary. Bernanke cannot very well explain the real reason he can't do the one thing he knows how to do. If he did that, even the comatose press might think of a tricky question for Bush: was it a good idea to give a bunch of Commies the power to dictate U.S. financial policy? A lot of happy talk about the "flat earth" and the "global economy" isn't going to placate the jingoistic Nascar crowd. It's just better if a subject like that doesn't come up. Yet if Bernanke doesn't lower the rate, the machers on Wall Street who are dying from the liquidity drought are going to scream bloody murder.

When you have arrived at the point where there are no good options, you can reliably guess that the mastodon shit is about to make contact with the helicopter tail rotor. Bernanke can't use the rate panacea without risking a sell-off of the huge Chinese position, which is roughly equal to half the yearly federal budget. Treasury Secretary Paulson will have to find buyers for all that debt to avoid a catastrophic default, which means he will have to increase the interest rate paid, which means raising the Fed rate, which means bringing the moribund American economy into full cardiac arrest.

I notice that the main presidential candidates do not discuss these issues in these terms. The general approach is to talk about "fiscal discipline" with vague references to the trade imbalance and the national debt. The Democratic candidates are making hay with Bernanke's acknowledgment of a slowing economy, and even the possibility of a recession, or two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. However, since the candidates are required, in the main, to be upbeat and respectful of the mighty American economy, talk of dire scenarios is off limits, with the possible exception of the token mavericks, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich. However, the very fact that reality is only discussed by the marginal candidates tends to reinforce the idea that they are talking speculative doomsday strictly to attract attention, and that if they were "serious" candidates, they would fall in line with the business-as-usual approach of the leaders.

The drastic slowdown in the re-fi and housing markets is a leading indicator that about half the "income" previously in the economy (according to figures quoted by Kevin Phillips in "American Theocracy") is in the process of evaporation. If the U.S. economy is 70% consumption-driven, which it is, then a first approximation based on simple math would suggest that the economy could contract by 35% in the absence of equity funding. This would tend to add impetus to the Chinese inclination to diversify its oversea investments; Chinese interest in the United States is limited to the ability of the American consumer to buy Chinese imports. In turn, this would leave the U.S. Treasury in a dangerous position. Add to these factors the prospect of $4 per gallon gasoline and rising food prices, and the happy talk and irrelevant posturing about "homeland security" seem bizarrely off topic.

I think this is a further instance of the subject discussed in the last post. It has become impossible, in the political sphere, to discuss real problems in empirical terms. Since these huge problems cannot be addressed honestly, they simply gather force and become less susceptible to solutions. Much of the complacency about this central dilemma of American insolvency is based upon a perception that the United States is the cornerstone of world commerce and therefore the other advanced nations cannot afford to see America founder. I think this is true as a temporary snapshot of geopolitics; the problem is that history is a moving picture. We're not adapting to rapid changes in a timely way (although in theory we could, with enlightened leadership), and American's leading-man role, like an aging star of stage and screen, is giving way to hot new actors from foreign countries.

The disconnect between reality and response in American life: Afghanistan as a case study

One of the things you learn about while writing a blog are the severe limitations of your own certainty, and, in a related way, how much of what is commonly accepted as true is in fact based on nothing. You begin to appreciate, when you routinely lay out your thought processes in written form, that we tentatively accept ideas as true in order to navigate through reality in a coherent way that allows us to communicate with other humans who have also conditionally accepted the same "facts" as verified truths. And what we find, in retrospect (after the rejection of a tentative "truth" on the basis of later-acquired information), is that the reason for the consensual "reality" thus constructed was emotional rather than intellectual.

To place some meat on the bones of these nebulous ideas: consider America's Great War on Terror (GWOT). I can recall during the early days of Air America's broadcasts (when I used to listen) that Al Franken was always careful to distinguish his opposition to the Iraq war from his general support for the war in Afghanistan. The invasion of Afghanistan has always received kid glove treatment in the American media, from both sides of the aisle in Congress, and from conservatives and liberals alike in the general public. It is the "good war" that vindicated America's losses on 9/11, and to the extent that Bush has been criticized for the Afghanistan invasion, it has been on the basis of (a) leaving before the "job was done" to invade Iraq, and (b) [similar, but slightly different from the first point] failing to "capture or kill" Osama bin Laden.

The logical foundation for the Afghanistan invasion was that the Taliban "harbored" bin Laden, and thus in Bush's dichotomous, Manichean world were "with the terrorists" instead of with us. We then began hearing about the oppressive nature of the Taliban regime, the squelching of women's rights, etc., all of which are common features of numerous other Muslim regimes (Saudi Arabia being an excellent example), but which gained a stature of complete intolerability in this target country during the run-up to the war. The cable news networks began running an endless loop of hooded terrorists-in-training going hand over hand on a jungle gym and crawling through a plywood box. This single 10-second film stood in for the "training camps" which had to be eradicated in order to deprive the "terrorists" of a "staging area" under state protection.

Conspiracy theorists came out of the woodwork during this period and pointed out that the Taliban had been in negotiations with Unocal for construction of a pipeline across the country, but that the deal fell through prior to the invasion. Michael Moore aired out this idea in his hit movie "Fahrenheit 9-11." Such ideas, to the extent they were offered as the real reason for attacking the Taliban, were generally considered "loony," and in their own way added credibility to the arguments for the "necessity" of the invasion. Thus, a general consensus developed that Bush had made the right decision in partnering up with the Northern Alliance and driving the Taliban from power.

Occasionally, someone would mention (on PBS, for example) that the main 9-11 conspirators (Mohammed Atta, Marwan al-Sheihi, Ziad Jurrah) were from Egypt, the UAE and Lebanon, respectively, and had become radicalized during student days in Hamburg, Germany. About 15 of the 19 conspirators were Saudi nationals (primarily the "muscle.") The four pilots trained extensively in American flight schools, mainly in south Florida. A book by Dore Gold, former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, about Saudi sponsorship of terror ("Hatred's Kingdom"), stated in passing that there was no evidence that any of the hijackers had ever been to Afghanistan. I never saw this assertion specifically challenged; the 9-11 Commission Report develops a conclusion, based on testimony from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that some of them did travel to Afghanistan to meet with bin Laden, and that their passports had been "manipulated in ways typical of al-Qaeda" that suggested they were attempting to conceal prior trips to Afghanistan.

To my way of thinking, even if all of the pro-war assertions were true (and as noted, this is highly questionable), it adds up to a very weak case for invading Afghanistan. This would be true whether or not we had successfully neutralized bin Laden, which we obviously have not. There was no need for a nation like Afghanistan as a staging area for the attacks of 9-11. (The final plans, in fact, were put together in the United States.) If the idea was to capture bin Laden, a large-scale military invasion seemed poorly calculated to bring about the result (as indeed proved the case). Nevertheless, politically speaking, no one can challenge the invasion and remain a viable Presidential candidate in the United States. This is a heterodoxy that is beyond the pale, and it is unsupportable precisely because it is at this point that basic emotional factors weigh in decisively. After seeing the towers fall on TV, America "had to do something." It didn't matter if it didn't make any sense. We obviously rounded up a lot of Afghans and other Muslims while we were in Afghanistan and then established a concentration camp in Cuba. No one in public life spends much time wondering out loud who these people are, what "war crimes" they committed, or what they have to do with 9-11. We've never tried any of them for war crimes and we deny them any right to challenge the basis of their incarceration. In simplest terms, they are a "symbol," like the invasion of Afghanistan itself, of our resolve in the GWOT.

I think a society begins to pay a very steep price when its large-scale actions become fundamentally unhooked from empirical reality. Strong forces now hold the country in a state of cathexis which prevents any logical response to perceived threats. As the emotional environment becomes more hysterical, a larger and larger disconnect develops between real-world events and the nature of our reactions. We now live in a country where practically everyone accepts fundamentally false premises, proceeds to base irrelevant responses in ineffectual ways on such beliefs, and then marvels that nothing has changed for the better. The process itself tends to close off any path toward a different way of thinking and acting and thus becomes self-reinforcing. It looks crazy because, in the most fundamental psychiatric sense, it is the very definition of insanity.

Impeaching Dick Cheney - an Alien Notion

Dennis Kucinich apparently does not dispute an account in Shirley MacLaine's new book that he saw an unidentified flying object near her home in Washington State during the 1980's. "He saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent and observing him. It hovered for about 10 minutes or so and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind." I suspect that the full story has been withheld for reasons of credibility. I think Kucinich's experience was actually a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, and that when the spaceship sped away, Kucinich was on board. The reason that Kucinich could not comprehend the speed is related to the theory of relativity; in order to reach home base in a solar system near Alpha Centauri and return Kucinich to Earth in time to run for President, it was necessary to travel close to the speed of light. Alpha Centauri is about 4.365 light years away, so even if his new googly-eyed friends were humping it at .99(C), Dennis was going to be gone at least 9 Earth-years or so. Because of time dilation on board the triangular craft, which Dennis also could not comprehend, he didn't age much at all, and indeed the Ohio Congressman has a very youthful appearance even today. Returning to Earth at practically the same chronological age as the day he left Shirley's backyard, Dennis looked around for a wife youthful in Earth-years and evidently found her, tongue ring and all.

While he was gone, however, not everything was above board on board. At some point in transit to Alpha Centauri, the aliens, tired of lounging around in their Imperial Barcaloungers, their four eyes bleary from staring at the 1000 inch plasma TV on board, decided to have a little fun. They slipped Dennis a mickey of Versed/Fentanyl, and while he was in a state of hypnotic sedation (even today he seems not to have fully recovered), they opened the hatch behind one of his Spock ears and gained entry into the central processing unit of Kucinich's brain. They swapped out the CPU in favor of an Alpha Centauri upgrade.

With this fuller account revealed, it is easier to make sense of Kucinich's recent attempt to impeach Dick Cheney. Prior to the Close Encounter, I don't think Dennis would have tried this; after alien tinkering, goofy, weird behavior can probably break out at any time.

Kucinich's resolution contains 3 articles of impeachment. The first two concern the invasion of Iraq, Cheney's manipulation of intelligence to make false cases that Saddam had WMD and that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda. The third article refers to Cheney's bellicose posturing regarding Iran, which Kucinich argues amounts to an unconstitutional abrogation of treaty obligations not to engage in preemptive war against nations which have not threatened us.

That's it. That's the resolution. With all the material the Congress has to work with against Bush and Cheney, including the commission of actual felonies under federal statutory law (violations of the War Crimes Act, the FISA law and the Identities Protection Act, e.g. - by no means an exhaustive list), Kucinich chose three points which are arguably political controversies. And he aimed his case against the Vice President instead of Bush, supposedly on the theory that Cheney should be removed first so he does not succeed to the presidency after Bush's impeachment.

This is beyond stupid. Earth to Kucinich (we know you were away for a few years, and things have changed): impeachment is going to fail in both cases. There aren't enough Democrats in the Senate to convict. No one is going to be removed from office no matter how strong the case. The point of impeachment proceedings is to compel the production of evidence on the most serious abuses of the Bush Administration. To air it all out once and for all. Instead, Kucinich placed in motion a resolution so weak and insubstantial that the Democrats ran from it while the Republicans voted to schedule it for debate, resulting in another Keystone Kops moment for the "majority party" and destroying, probably forever, the idea of accountability through the impeachment process. Really, Dennis -- you need to call Intergalactic Tech Support.

Rough Disbarment in Islamabad

To cement his grip on power, Pakistani junta leader Pervez Musharraf has been rounding up lawyers and throwing them in jail. Life imitates art, I suppose, since Googling the subject turns up all kinds of references to the immortal line from William Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2: "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." This sounds like the first lawyer joke (it probably is), but the "sophisticated" view finds its way into most of the analyses of Pervez's overthrow of his own government (which he installed after he overthrew the government preceding his). The enlightened interpretation is that lawyers are guardians of public order and guarantors of due process and legality -- in a sense the conscience of society; ergo, a tyrant gets them out of the way first in order to break down restraints and organized resistance. I'm pretty sure that the exchange between Dick and Jack Cade in Henry VI wasn't about that. Theirs was a vision of a simple utopia where everyone had plenty to eat and there were no lawyers to bum you out by driving you off your land or throwing you in jail for debt. The other interpretation is a nice fantasy, but Shakespeare was going for a laugh with his lawyer joke. And I'll bet he got one.

I'm not sure why Pervez is incarcerating lawyers and judges. I suppose it's because they protested his suspension of elections and house-arresting the Chief Judge of the Supreme Court. Bush is now dithering in this moment of absurd Realpolitik. Everyone is quoting his Second Inaugural speech and its "freedom on the march" theme. The one about "standing with the oppressed," etc. Look, folks, you can't shame this man. If what's happened in Iraq doesn't bother him, a speed bump like this isn't going to disturb his adolescent slumber. He's hunkered down with his line about Pervez supporting our mighty war on terror, and while he's distressed (he indicates) about the Sheriff's suspension of democracy, the money Pervez needs to run his junta will keep on flowing from the U.S. Treasury to army HQ in Islamabad.

Matters are complicated by the Islamic Bomb, of course. That's the primary point, in fact. Thug that he is, Pervez seems reliable; he's not going to sell one of his A-bombs to al-Qaeda or send A.Q. Khan to Tehran to run a PowerPoint on nuke-construction. Benazir Bhutto (in a NY Times Op-Ed) tells us that the vast majority of Pakistanis are moderates who should be trusted with democracy, but Bush isn't buying. Last time he trusted the democratic process in a Muslim country, he wound up with Nouri al-Maliki. Which brings up an interesting point. I think I've seen a guy dressed up in a military uniform, wearing a moustache and squashing sectarian dissent in that part of the world before. As recently as 2003. He had to go, of course, because...you know something? It gets confusing. Sometimes it seems our foreign policy operates with no principles whatsoever. Saddam didn't have the bomb, but we said he did. Pervez actually has missiles loaded with A-bombs, which we freely acknowledge. Saddam suppressed Muslim dissenters, just like Pervez. Saddam operated a police state, just like Pervez. Saddam was a bulwark against Iranian ascendancy, just like Pervez. On the other hand, Pervez seems to protect Osama bin Laden, and Saddam was his mortal enemy.

I think I'm clear here. Pervez never threatened George W. Bush's daddy. Or: since Poppy Bush never invaded Pakistan, there was no way for Junior to go him one better. Beyond the looking glass, where the Bush Administration dwells, you take your principles where you find them.

A wild surmise

From Hale Stewart's column in the HuffingtonPost, Oct. 22, 2007:
"However, the big foreign buyers of US debt aren't buying this debt like they used to. According to information from the Treasury Department, the five largest holders of US debt (Japan, China, UK, Oil Exporters and Brazil) owned a combined total of $1.224 trillion in August 2006 and $1.459 trillion in August 2007. That's an increase of $235 billion. And over that same time, the really big purchases came from the UK ($189.4 billion) and Brazil ($63.6 billion.) China only increased their holdings by $13 billion and Japan decreased their holdings by $37.9 billion. In other words, Asian Central Banks -- who used to be reliable purchasers of US debt just aren't that interested in buying anymore right now."

And then this subtle datum: "M3 includes all of M2 (which includes M1) plus large-denomination ($100,000 or more) time deposits, balances in institutional money funds, repurchase liabilities issued by depository institutions, and Eurodollars held by U.S. residents at foreign branches of U.S. banks and at all banks in the United Kingdom and Canada."

As of March, 2006, the United States government stopped publishing data on the M3 money supply. The reasons given were unconvincing; to "save money," was one excuse. Saving money on a government program? The mind reels. Or: because you can calculate the M3 supply by reference to other data, such as the M1 and M2 numbers. Huh? Someone needs to do a Venn diagram. M1 and M2 are supposed to be included in the M3 supply.

Admittedly, all of this is a bit arcane, shadowy and abstruse, and I may choose to make this third adjective My Word for the Day, and if I use it three times -- it's mine! So I'm told. It means "recondite" or perhaps "hidden," from the Latin abstrusus, meaning, well, "hidden." But I come around to what I think is a logical question. Why did the British suddenly become our #1 purchaser of Treasury debt among foreign investors? I see plenty of Land Rovers around my neighborhood, I admit that, and "Benny Hill" in syndication must bring in a fortune (okay, not really). Still -- what's going on? Between August 2006 and August 2007 the British suddenly became the chief financiers of America's ongoing slow-motion bankruptcy.

Persistent rumor has it the U.S. printing presses are working overtime making lots and lots of money. Some have speculated this is the true reason for the relative stability of the U.S. stock market despite the deflating housing bubble -- all that money has to go somewhere. But suppose (and this is where the wild surmise takes shape) that the United States, which must finance about 1/2 trillion dollars per year to "balance" its crazy books, has hit on a scheme which eluded the Weimar Republic in its disastrous hyperinflation days of 1922 and following. One way you might do it would be to concoct a system for buying your own debt. And to conceal what you're doing, you stop publishing data on Eurodollars (U.S. dollars held in banks in the UK and Canada, chiefly), because you (yo! Treasury -- I'm talking to you) are using an elaborate system of straw men to "buy" Treasuries from yo'self. You're cash-strapped, you're running wars you can't afford while cutting taxes, and the Asians signal that they're tired of watching their dollar holdings depreciate in value while receiving a measly return on Treasury notes, especially now that the tapped-out American consumer is making fewer trips to Wal-Mart to buy lead-based toys and dog food with Ikea dust in it.

Meanwhile, back at Prairie Chapel Ranch, Bush is frantic to keep the pipeline open between the American treasury and American mercenaries and defense contractors in Iraq. If it were to leak out that America is now printing money, sending it to UK banks which in turn buy our own debt, it could put a real damper on war funding, and also turn Bush's last year into the waking nightmare he has so far somewhat eluded. Such a disclosure would probably spell the end of the U.S. dollar's reign as the world's "fiat currency." Not to be too abstruse (2), but it didn't work for the Confederate States of America and it probably won't work for the Union either. As I say, a wild and abstruse (3) surmise, but if we've learned anything about the Bushians, it's that they're capable of any kind of deceit, large or small.

You can do it too, George

"ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4, — About 500 opposition party workers, lawyers and human rights activists were arrested today as the government of General Pervez Musharraf tried to consolidate its control after imposing emergency rule." New York Times.

George W. Bush must be sitting in the den at Camp David, getting ready for a long afternoon watching the Colts-Patriots game, and thinking: Why can't I do that? I think we all know by now that W has nothing but contempt for the democratic process, the bothersome routine of having to ask Congress for money, for "authority" to bomb the next country on his list. He's a natural-born autocrat, but unfortunately for him, he ascended to his father's ancestral throne in a nominal democracy, the United States of America, and so far the practice of locking up your political opponents has not gained the traction here that it enjoyed in Nazi Germany or the Stalinist Soviet Union. Bush has done everything he can to move this country toward a banana republic with a junta-style leadership. Secrecy, duplicity, Guantanamo, Jose Padilla, Abu Ghraib, illegal wiretapping, illegal wars, massive corruption, the evisceration of the currency. He's accomplished so much, yet there's so little time left. I think that's why he finds his partner in terrizm-fighting, Pervez the Sheriff, so inspiring. You see, Pervez came to power 8 years ago in a military coup, not unlike Bush's stolen election of 2000. And Pervez's "term," like Bush's, was nearing completion. The Pakistani Supreme Court seemed determined to dash Pervez's hopes for tenure as Strongman-for-Life. Musharraf's response was a model of elegance and clarity: he got rid of the Supreme Court, then closed down the TV stations and the telephone system and the hostile press, then started arresting everyone who opposed him. It was an "emergency," the emergency being that Pervez was about to have his death-grip pried away from the levers of power.

What to do? Pakistan has been such a valuable ally in the war on terror that it seems folly, so we're told, to cluck-cluck about the Sheriff's tyrannical response to dissent. We have to remember that among his chief detractors are Muslim fundamentalists, terrorists, in other words. Strict insistence on democratic purity might result in another Muslim theocracy, like the one we've installed in Iraq, only this Muslim country would be fully armed with the Islamic Bomb. Haven't we learned anything from deposing Saddam Hussein?

Interesting as all that might be, it's a different "lesson learned" that I'd like to pass along to our own Tyrant-in-Waiting. It would be easier here to maintain power illegally than in Pakistan. You don't just have to wish, George; you can have it too. I hope you bear in mind when you're rounding people up that I gave you the idea. Let's look at things practically:

First, the Pakistani militant Islams are a tough crowd. They take to the streets, they get violent, they burn things. Americans are push-overs. They write blogs and letters to the editor. So what? Once you announce that you're not leaving, Americans will just roll over for it. Trust me, I know a lot of Americans.

Second, Congress won't do anything. The Republicans will stand behind you, and a lot of the Democrats will sign on to a nonbinding "sense of the Congress" that you did what you had to do, and to do otherwise would make America weaker in the face of its enemies, the ones who would do America harm.

Third, the mass media will like it. A coup d'etat is something new, and nothing sells like a new product. The cable news networks will rig up some new logos: "American Junta." "America: The Bush Coup." Their ratings will go way up.

Fourth, the military will play along. Don't they always? Chain of command, blah blah blah, the President must know what he's doing.

Fifth, you don't have to arrest anyone or close anything down. No one will care. After a slight initial shock, it will dawn on Americans they don't have to watch Presidential campaigns anymore, or ever hear the words "Hillary Clinton" or "Rudy Giuliani" again. This will go a long way toward alleviating the slight discomfort at seeing the American experiment end.

Finally, the world won't care either. They're so tired of our hypocritical democratic posturing, it will be a relief when we begin admitting what we've become.

It's up to you, George. I don't know if this country is worth the trouble, but it's yours if you want it.

Why Mukasey doesn't want to come clean on waterboarding

Early in his confirmation hearing, Judge Michael Mukasey seemed to be sailing along on an incoming tide of goodwill and bonhomie, that sort of vaguely nauseating insider reach-around that the Senate, particularly senators like Joe Biden, love to indulge themselves in when they are feeling good about anointing another public servant as rightful heir to a governmental sinecure replete with hefty salary, lots of bennies, and of course heavy-duty stature. In other words, making the supplicant just like them. All of this is done in the hope the public will see the Judiciary Committee in a halcyon light of statesmanship and nonpartisan magnanimity. It is, in other words, to puke.

Then some tricky questions came up about America's new pastime, the routine torture of Arabs and Arabesque-types, like Afghanis, all of whom we can fairly lump together as "Arabs," because the Bush Administration does not strain itself to find distinctions without a difference. They're brown, Muslim and from the Third World. That's a sufficient taxonomy; let's not get anthropological about all this. A large cohort in the Bush Administration enjoys torturing Arabs. They have tortured many of them in many ways, and for a long time they thought they could do so with complete impunity. Arabs (all of whom we labeled "terrorists") are not actually people in Bush's species classification system; they are unlawful combatants, non-state actors, etc., or at least become so once they are detained by the U.S. and stuffed into Guantanamo or Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in a CIA black site in Poland or somewhere. At least, this was Bush S.O.P. until the disquieting case of Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld came along and ruled that Arabs were in fact people, that they were entitled to protection under the Geneva Conventions, including that nettlesome Common Article 3, and that you couldn't try them in Guantanamo any old way you wanted, but actually had to provide a modicum of due process. Imagine that: if this ultra-conservative Supreme Court thought Bush had pushed things too far, how bad was it?

The Hamdan case marked a kind of turning point in the Bush reign of barbarity. For the first time, it dawned on L'il George that his ass might be in a sling for ordering routine violations of international standards of human decency. He never thought it could come to that; they were only Arabs, for crying out loud. Thus, Bush had to add a second agenda item to the business plan for his presidency. The first, which was still in place, was to spend as much as Americans paid in taxes, and as much as he could borrow from abroad, on war, and specifically on funneling federal revenue to Halliburton, Blackwater, Boeing, Bechtel, United Technologies, Sikorsky, Bell Helicopter, Northrop Grumman, subsidiaries of the Carlyle Group and other insiders benefiting directly from the the security state. Compare the stock prices of these companies between 2002 and 2007 to the performance of the stock market in general. Mission Accomplished. But Bush now had to add a second to-do box, in some ways complicating the first. He had to guarantee he could leave office without the "Pinochet Perplex," meaning, a carefree retirement without prosecutions for violations of the Federal Anti-Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act. The Hamdan case screwed this up royally.

While he sat moping, either wishing he could drown his misery in five gallons of beer or actually doing so, Dick Cheney brought his trusted accomplices, David Addington and other members of the Pennsylvania Avenue Inquisition, to his rescue. True, all that waterboarding and torture violated the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Statute as they read now. But laws can be amended. In fact, we've got a new twist, an innovative torque, as in Torquemada. We'll make what we did, which was illegal at the time, legal now. We'll take the Torture Memo of 2002 and smoosh it into federal law by redefining torture, and for good measure we'll write it up so that even if what we did, what you ordered, Mr. President, was a violation of the Geneva Conventions even as extended by our CYA redefinition, we'll say that's okay too, as long as "advice of counsel" made you think it was okay. And since the "advice of counsel" we're talking about is the advice given by the creepy, necrophiliac lawyers who wrote the Torture Memo in the first place, it's a closed loop. Huh?, Mr. Cheney said to W. Who loves ya, baby?

But, spluttered W, like a little boy caught in a horrible mess who's afraid to hope. Congress won't go along with something that stupid. Of course they will, said Darth. But you gotta hit the hustings and sell this sucker right now, because Congress changes in November, 2006. The American people are slowly awakening to the idea we're a bunch of self-serving, merciless assholes, and we're going to lose control. And you know what that could mean in 2009.

How? How to do it? Bush wanted to know. Cheney whispered in his ear. Now's the time to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to Gitmo. Which means we've got to have that Military Commissions Act presto pronto, because we have to try him. Now! Now! And we'll stick in the mother of all exoneration clauses, retroactive to the signing of the Declaration of Independence if we have to. So get to it!

Bush did. Congress, of course, had no problem with giving American officials a free pass on torture and inhumanity to man. To do otherwise would have been "soft on terror." And, you'll note, not a single trial of a detainee in Gitmo has proceeded since Bush's breathless exhortations to prompt passage of the MCA in September, 2006.
Funny, huh?

So when Mukasey faltered on that first day, the Bush team took him aside and explained how it was. We did a lot of hard work, they told him, to make a clean getaway. You ain't messing it up. If you go in there and declare unequivocally that waterboarding is torture, you screw up our artful re-writing of the War Crimes Act and the Anti-Torture Act, and, worst of all, you could undercut our "advice of counsel" defense on which we're counting for a blissful sojourn in retirement. And that, ol' Mike, just ain't gonna happen.

Bush & His Persian Carpet Bombing

“I’ve told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III,” said the President. “It seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” W, in a recent press conference.

It's all there. The bellicosity, the imprecision, the condescension and most of all, the illiteracy. One might think, if you're interested in avoiding World War III, that you might choose to speak about such a decisive subject, just for once, with carefully chosen words that communicate the exact meaning of your statement. Not this guy, not even when talking about World War III.

Most Americans are so interested in avoiding World War III that they can't wait for Bush's term to be over. Even with declining rates of literacy in this country, most of the populace is aware that stating that Iran should be prevented "from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon" means Bush thinks the bombing of Iran should already have commenced. The only way to prevent Iranian scientists from have the knowledge is to kill them all now, because the science of nuclear fission in a bomb is freely available. Actually constructing a bomb is the difficult part, but any country which undertakes the problem and which has an advanced academic and scientific infrastructure can get there. Iran fits the description. So many countries have succeeded in "have the knowledge" that scientific consultants abound throughout the world whose services are available on the open market. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani father of the A-bomb, ran a kind of nuclear mail-order business for a while, until Musharraf placed him under "house arrest" to mollify Bush's mild protests about proliferation.

If Bush orders a bombing war against Iran, several things are going to happen. The first is that all hell is going to break loose. It is impossible to guess just how messed up things will get, but another war, the third war in six years or so which Bush has ordered against a country from which none of the 9/11 hijackers originated, will unleash a horror of chaos and death. On that we can rest assured. Another thing that will happen is that the United States will never be remotely the same again. A war against Iran, in the current state of wall-to-wall conflagration in the Middle East and South Asia, will cross a Rubicon of fate. I think ultimately it will be seen as Bush's cognate to Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, the decision to attack the Soviet Union while Germany was already heavily engaged in the occupation of Western Europe and North Africa. Financially, militarily and spiritually, the United States will pass a horizon of viability, and then just as rapidly as the war was commenced, we will undergo a sudden contraction and implosion. The process will be turbulent and unpredictable, but I don't think the USA will be recognizable in its current form when we're done. A finished police state? A road warrior nightscape of primitive barbarity? Dissolution into warring regions? All are distinct possibilities.

I suppose Cheney is the guiding force behind all this. I saw a picture of Cheney sleeping through a briefing on the California wildfires. There were the usual barbs: it wasn't about war, so he wasn't interested, etc. We're not a terribly astute country, in many ways, and I didn't read anywhere the actual reason. Dick Cheney has a concretized vascular system. When he sits still, the pinhole apertures of his carotid arteries block the flow of oxygenated blood to his brain, he becomes hypoxic, and he nods off. In addition to his quadruple bypass and numerous heart attacks, and the insertion of a defibrillating pacemaker in his chest, Cheney has undergone popliteal surgery (behind the knees) to clear the femoral arteries, and numerous other cardiac procedures. He's grossly overweight and living on borrowed time. And this is the man who urges that the living, those whose lives may still be all before them, commence the final, epic battle of civilization. What a strange pass we've come to.

The Ungrateful Nouri, Revisited

Our very own King Midas, George W. Bush, seems to have struck again. Nouri al-Maliki wants to break up with us. Well, what else is new? I keep thinking that international relations seem increasingly inseparable from the intimately personal, and one of America's big problems (far from the only one) is that the President of this country is a snotty little brat that no one likes, and we keep paying the price for that. We all knew snotty little brats when we were growing up. They engendered an emotional push/pull reaction in us, if you'll recall; on one hand, they were so irritating that you felt a compulsion to attack and revile them at every opportunity. Yet on the other, you just wanted to avoid the vexation of their presence at all costs. Now, with a snotty little brat as President, we're forced on almost a daily basis to endure the sight and sound of the Brat-in-Chief, with his whining, unhappy complaints about Congressional intransigence, or that cheap shot he took at Louisiana's governor when he did his big photo-op at the California wildfires. There, see, he did it to me again; I don't even want to think about him, yet here I am going through a riposte in my mind to that gratuitous whack he took at Governor Blanco, who in fact wrote the Brat days before Katrina hit to warn him that the state's resources were inadequate. And, hey Bush, what about...? Oh never mind. You see how this goes. This is the pull part of the pendulum swing. Bush's utter indifference to the catastrophes he casually brings about as he careens through the world drives so many of us nuts.

Probably even Nouri al-Maliki. You know, while George was hoisting that megaphone back at Phillips Academy and gaily encouraging his fellow privileged children to give it the old siss-boom-bah, Nouri, four years younger than Bush, was an Iraqi Shiite living in a Sunni-dominated world. Nouri, however, was not a push-over for tyranny. During those years when Bush was drinking his way through life, getting busted on a DUI in Connecticut (1976), contriving admission to the Harvard Business School and "earning" an MBA (1977), and then running a series of oil companies into the ground (Arbusto, Harken Energy, early 1980's), Nouri's anti-Sunni activities for the Dawa Party in Iraq earned him a death sentence from none other than Saddam Hussein. So that by 1980, Nouri left Iraq for the relative safety of first Iran and then Syria. There he became a director of jihadist operations against the Saddam regime. Nouri, in other words, knows something about mounting a guerrilla campaign against a superior force. You need guile, cunning and, above all, an indomitable spirit.

Nouri also knows that he has not come across with the one thing that the Brat came to Iraq to get: those 300 billion barrels of oil which are inconveniently located beneath Iraq's sands. As the saying goes, what's our oil doing in their desert? And Nouri: where the flock is the oil law prominently featured in our list of benchmarks we've put together for you as a to-do list? Huh? In fact, Nouri, all the other benchmarks are simply camouflage for this one. It's what we call The Single Benchmark Theory. It's the reason the Democratic leadership lies to the American people like crazy about "not having the votes" to end the war. They're not going to be the ones to pull the plug on the Great Game of horking Iraq's oil after we've blown through about 600 billion bucks (which we don't have), 4,000 lives, and many amputated, blind, brain-damaged and permanently insane soldiers. You're getting to be a pain in the ass, Nouri!

It gets worse. Nouri has now announced, through his foreign minister, that as of December 31, 2008, the United Nations multi-national security mandate, the regime which "legitimizes" our squatting in Iraq, will not be renewed. This change will create a free-for-all as far as development of all that sweet light crude is concerned. Any other nation, China, France, even (gulp) Iran can contract with the "sovereign" Iraq for a piece of the action. Ever wonder why Bush didn't raise a peep about Hunt Oil, whose owner sits on Bush's Foreign Policy Board, cadging a side-deal with the Kurds for their oil? Even though it undermines the "revenue sharing" regime of the mythical "oil law," that may be as good as it gets for American petroleum cartels.

Note the timing: December 31, 2008. Right at the point where Bush can't do anything about it anymore. Does that seem a little...vindictive? The kind of payback for the class brat that you used to, you know, dream about?

1/(1-f)

The recent Nobel Peace Prizes (awarded in Oslo, remember, not Stockholm) were given to two entities, one an association of climatologists, atmospheric and oceanic scientists, physicists, chemists and related political hangers-on called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). And the other to an increasingly rotund megalomaniac with a chronic need for idolatrous attention named Al Gore. Guess which one a grateful world turns its lonely eyes to?

I don't mean to be too hard on Al. Certainly he popularized the issue of global warming in a way that a celebrity-entranced nation needed. He is a kind of supermix of Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton when it comes to climate change. Throw in Anna Nicole too if you want. If the world goes into green rehab (crashing its Ferrari on the way there), Al Gore will deserve much of the credit.

I've written before that my first awareness of the problem of CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere came about when I read Moment in the Sun back in 1969. I was in Honolulu at the time. Mauna Loa readings recorded a 6% rise in concentrations which were graphed on the Keeling Curve, named after Dr. Charles David Keeling of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Gee, too bad we didn't act then, because we understood the basic nature of the problem. It was called the "greenhouse effect." Scientists have spent the ensuing 38 years trying to overcome vested interests who wanted to downplay the significance of turning the Earth's atmosphere into a steam bath. According to "An Inconvenient Truth," this is about the time Al Gore, as a history major at Harvard, became fascinated by the concept, because Professor Roger Revell fired his imagination with his lectures about...blah blah blah. This is Al's back story. I think he understands that his credibility depends on a back story, and this is the one he's got. We're all fortunate that Al took his youthful passion to Washington, because while Al was Vice President, he kept the issue of global warming front and center and would not let Clinton take his eye off the issue for one minute, forcing all those changes which have led to near-universal use of photovoltaics and wind power, the nationally mandated 60 mpg requirement for U.S. cars, and America's extensive high-speed rail network. Imagine if none of those things...I'm sorry, I think I just suffered a transient ischemic attack. Give me a moment while my lucidity returns.

Al's slide show, now of iconic status thanks to the movie, of course went for dramatic effects, such as the 20 ft. rise in sea levels possible if all the ice atop Greenland melts. The less dramatic IPCC tended to center its predictions around 23 inches, because of the uncertainties noted in the formula above. Global temperature rise cannot be correlated linearly to CO2 level increases, at least in any simple way, and in part this is because temperature bears a non-linear relationship to f, which are feedback mechanisms. Within this bland statement may hang the viability of the human species, but its practical effect is that temperature predictions are constrained by this uncertainty principle. A rough doubling of CO2 concentrations by the year 2050 may bring about global temp changes most likely in the range of 2.0-4.5 C; if the change falls outside this bracket, the probability distribution indicates that it is much more likely that the increase will be greater than 4.5 than less than 2.0. This is where the probability estimates cluster; however, because of the "long tail" of probability estimates related to the non-linear relationship between f and temperature, a temperature rise of 11 degrees C is also predictable. Since C = 1.8F, we're talking 19.8 F, or another way of saying what we're talking about: game over for modern civilization.

Al Gore makes an easy target for climate deniers because he's a history major and really has no more of a scientific background than anyone who attended a liberal arts college with a breadth requirement. This asshat named Bjorn Lomborg, whom Sen. James ("the Troglodyte") Inhofe (Idiot-Ok.) likes to call before a Senate panel when he wants to spread a little dangerous misinformation (daily, in other words), has made a career out of attacking Gore's misstatements. Gore says stuff like, "Scientists may disagree with some of my points, but we agree on the main trends." Al, a question: how could you possibly have any of your own points on the science of global warming? It's not a good idea for Al to debate with climate deniers with scientific credentials, but his avoidance of such confrontations makes it look like they have realistic objections when they don't.

I'm not even sure what I'm complaining about. I guess I wish that someone like Steven Chu of Berkeley were allowed to tour the world and take on the deniers. He has a PowerPoint program. He's got slides. He won what you might call a "hard" prize from the Nobel people (physics). He's actually a charismatic, galvanizing speaker, even though he never strains in the slightest for effect and never exaggerates. Imagine if he took his formidable teaching skills to the lectern (or even took a ride in Al Gore's sky bucket) while the cameras roll. He could explain this 1/(1-f) nightmare with perfect clarity, and then the world would see that absolutely, positively, we are dealing with this possibility that business as usual could actually lead to a 20 F degree rise in global temperature within the lives of our children. And no one would be able to refute the statement of that possibility. It would be much like the moment when Woody Allen pulls Marshal McLuhan out of the movie theatre line to trash that blowhard behind him. The power of Chu's explication comes from one main source: he knows what the hell he's talking about. Also, he's in a lot better shape than Al Gore. Alas, that's not how democracy works. Philosopher kings are simply creatures of Greek philosophy.

No one says the Sahara is in a drought

The Southern California wildfires have been turned into a political football, of course; everything gets turned into a political football these days, since the red/blue, lib/neocon, green/mean divides have become so acrimonious. Whatever happens gets blamed on the other side, and in the case of the wildfires, the controversy has assumed two shapes. On one hand, the Bush Administration has been faulted for depriving California of necessary fire-fighting equipment because of the Iraq War; and on the other, the fires are blamed on global warming, about which Bush doesn't give a flying fuck. America has become like a truly terrible marriage, in which the husband drinks and philanders, and the wife suffers and nags and tries to take care of the children, and pretty soon no matter what happens, the problem gets blamed on the husband's drinking and fooling around. "You see! Do you think those aliens just happened to land in our backyard? Don't you think they're aware you just don't pay attention anymore!"

Sort of like that. The country hates Bush, it's that simple, and if we can discover a way to name his contributing role to any calamity, we'll do it. Meanwhile, back on Earth, or in the troposphere just above it, the CO2 levels continue their inexorable rise. The most recent bad news came in the form of a message from the oceans; they're full up with CO2, and they don't want to absorb anymore. This has led to an acceleration of concentration in the atmosphere. The ocean's laundering service has gone on strike. We're at 380 parts per million, up from 280 in the pre-industrial era, which is a 36% increase. Yet, it still seems so tiny - parts per million, we're talking. Well, get used to it; lots of natural processes run on eensy-weensy margins of error. Your blood needs to stay at a pH around 7.4; you might temporarily survive as low as 6.8 or as high as 7.8, but your body will struggle to get you back to that golden mean of slight alkalinity as soon as it can. Just as the atmosphere strives for a certain mix of gases with the delicate interplay of ocean absorption, photosynthesis, combustion...ah, how beautiful it all was! Don't all you Deists work from the assumption that such perfect balance is the ultimate proof of God? Then why wouldn't you work His side of the table instead of voting for that apostate in the White House?

But I digress. If we assume that the existence of the Northwest Passage in the Arctic relates to global warming, along with the melting state of 75% of the world's glaciers, and the demonstrable rise in sea levels and in average global temperature -- if we assume that all these things have already happened, then it is probably not a great irrational leap to think the intensity of drought across Ameria's southern latitudes, the super-low humidities in SoCal, and the abnormally ferocious Santa Ana winds are too. If some of this stuff is already here (which it is), then it would seem logically inconsistent to think that it's not everywhere, because the atmosphere is a continuous ocean of air without boundaries or walls. Atlanta is down to a 90-day supply of water in Lake Lanier (can you imagine that the city fathers thought that one 38,000 acre lake ought to do the trick for 4 million people?). Northern California had a lousy snowpack last year; L.A. had a record-shattering drought. Also true: the year before it had a lot of rain.

Yet that's what we would expect, too, at the leading edge of fundamental climate change. Chaos and unpredictability as the climate moves from one paradigm to another. Until, of course, the changes settle in. In the meantime, we'll get bailed out by big rainstorms in drought areas, and maybe even the autumn colors will occasionally return to New England, where residents now find themselves playing golf well into December. But someday, and not so far from now, not nearly so far away as we used to think even a few years ago, we'll think of the changed condition as the status quo. No one says the Sahara is in a drought.

The burden of proof

I noted recently that the military prosecutors at Guantanamo, faced at last with the actual prospect of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, have sought the help of the FBI in enhancing and corroborating the evidence against him. The concern of the military, even in such a favorable forum as the kangaroo courts of the Military Commissions Act, is that Khalid was under the jurisdiction of the CIA for almost all of his pre-Guantanamo detention after his capture in Pakistan in March, 2003. During his detention, he confessed to involvement in practically all unsolved crimes of the past century, possibly including the Lindbergh kidnapping, but certainly the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Bojinka plot (Phillipines multiple-plane hijacking), the Millenium Conspiracy (foiled at the Canadian border by an alert guard in 2000), the shoe bombing plot, and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He may have been in on the O.J. Simpson hotel room heist of a couple of months back. It's all documented; he copped to it. And given the many restraints on an effective defense, and admissibility of hearsay evidence even when such evidence is extorted through torture or compulsion, what more could they possibly need?

Well - it seems they're nervous. The CIA agents know what they did, and they're very concerned it's all going to come out when they try Khalid. So maybe what they'll try to do is to convict him without using his confessions. Here's an interesting sidebar to the question at hand, one I picked up while studying constitutional law. The doctrine of "fruit of the poisonous tree," which bars use of evidence obtained through violations of the civil or constitutional rights of the defendant (greatly expanded during the years of the Warren court), is based, in the case of extorted confessions, on the 5th Amendment. Interesting, eh? The 5th Amendment declares that a person may not be compelled to be a witness against himself. So if you confine him to an incline board, cover his face with plastic, and start pouring water on his mouth, and then ask him questions about how often he hung out with Osama bin Laden, you might run afoul of this doctrine because you're compelling him to testify contrary to his own interests. Oh sure, I know. Why worry about coddling terrorists, especially after they've just confessed? "Off with their heads!" cried the Queen of Hearts.

So that's an interesting problem, and I wouldn't fall out of my chair if the trial of Khalid was delayed until after a new President is installed in January, 2009. But it does raise another interesting point, which I might limn briefly. If you care to improve your citizenship in our participatory democracy, I commend to you the official government publication "Report of the 9/11 Commission" (short title). In paper, inexpensive, available in lots of places. You will be interested to see just how much the entire case against Osama bin Laden, Mohammed Atef and Ayman al-Zawahiri rests on Khalid's "interviews" with the CIA. Of course, in the staff reports of the Commission, no context is given for Khalid's statements. You could get the general idea that he's sitting with a George Clooney-type operative at a riverside cafe in Cairo instead of...where he really was. But the main narrative of the "back story" for the 9-11 attacks, the meetings with Osama and the other plotters, the recruitment of the hijackers, the changes in the plot as it was developed, etc. -- this is almost all KSM data. When you think about it, it starts reading like a kid's "term paper" in the 4th grade, when you're up against the deadline and you know you've only read one chapter from one book, but you're trying to use the footnotes and bibliography to flesh out your "authorities," but it still sounds like, you know, a rehash of one part of one book. "According to KSM," the report will say; "KSM then stated that he met with bin Laden and Atef in Afghanistan," it goes on; "KSM also stated that..." it concludes.

So then you think: wait a minute! The military commissions lawyers have confessions from KSM that they're concerned about using in his own trial under the exclusionary rule, because they might be ruled unreliable or unbelievable; and yet these very same confessions constitute the generally accepted, official version of the 9/11 attacks. In moments of dark doubt, which I know many of us share, I sometimes think that George W. Bush's apparent indifference to capturing bin Laden might not just reflect the military difficulty of the operation. I think he likes the story the way it's been told, and it's not that I buy into any of the 9/11 government conspiracy thinking. I don't. But torturing KSM in the frenzy after 9/11, before we knew about the CIA's black sites and their "enhanced interrogation techniques," was one thing. A capture of bin Laden, where such techniques probably could not now be applied because of the laser-like focus of the world on America's actions, might mean that bin Laden would be free from coercion, and would tell his version of the story in his own terms. And no telling where that might lead.

Bush Flies to the Wildfires in SoCal

Memorandum
aboard Air Force One, westbound
To: POTUS
From: P.R. Staff, White House
Date: 10/23/07

Mr. President: You have asked for our input on your important trip to Southern California, where you will meet/greet important Calif. leaders and be seen as offering fed. help to stricken area. Dana, Josh and I have met to discuss key points to hit. Some comments are based on way in which Katrina was kicked around the block in 2005. This could be redemption/payback time, and photo-ops could play key role in comeback.

First, some vocab items. "Santa" in "Santa Ana winds" is pronounced just like Santa in Santa Claus. Would urge don't multiply degree of difficulty by going all Spanish-language on it. Be local, act local. Second, wildfires are raging out of control partly because of extreme "relative humidity," in the single digit range. Would suggest respectfully stay away from atmospheric science of water-carrying capacity of warm vs. ...let's just black that out, Mr. President, and just say stuff like "dry air." Sample sentence: "We know these ferocious fires gain strength because of the very dry air, and these Santa Ana winds are challenging the good folks of this region with their ferocious strength." We've foc-group tested "ferocious" and it's a winner. Remember that "winds" when you use it like this is plural, so please stay away from phrases like "Santa Ana winds is a huge part of the ferocious attack of these killer fires." Better yet, just say "Santa Ana winds" a lot without trying to fit it into a complete sentence. It's very reassuring when locals can hear you use their day-to-day words. Part of "reg guy rehab" which has taken pounding with S-CHIP.

Next, we don't know whether the severe drought and high temperatures and Santa Anas are related to global warming, although libs of course are going to try to hang that on you. Suggest stay away from "big picture," and if comes up, turn it around on them and say that "the middle of a ferocious disaster like this is not the time to play partisan politics, but to help these good folks of California to deal with a ferocious fire which is interfering with their love of their region and their freedom to live in the kind of peace they want." We've foc-tested the play-over from Iraq war languaging, and it's a go. If you compare the fire to evil-doing Arabs, the media will back off and most Calif. politcos (Feinstein, particularly) and prob. Arnold will cool it on the attack mode.

We've set you up for a couple of copter rides within a mile or so of actual flames, so good backdrops for photo ops. Don't worry about safety. Telephoto will draw in fire and make you appear right in middle, and we'll give you hard hat with local firefighter logo, of course, but you'll be closer to Wilshire Boulevard than the fire line. You're booked at The Peninsula, btw.

We think it's a win-win, and see no big downsides. It's a big primary early in '08 this year, so Rudy & Mitt will appreciate what we can do, but of course, let's not lose focus. Your loyal staff is naturally looking at what the wildfires can do for you.

The Spy Stares Back into the Eyes of the Cowboy

TEHRAN, Iran -- "Vladimir Putin issued a veiled warning Tuesday against any attack on Iran as he began the first visit by a Kremlin leader to Tehran in six decades _ a mission reflecting Russian-Iranian efforts to curb U.S. influence.

"He also suggested Moscow and Tehran should have a veto on Western plans for new pipelines to carry oil and natural gas from the Caspian Sea, using routes that would bypass Russian soil and break the Kremlin's monopoly on energy deliveries from the region." Washington Post, October 16, 2007.

On Real Time with Bill Maher recently, Bill interviewed the wily Vicente Fox, former president of Mexico, who has generated a little buzz lately with his less-than-complimentary take on the Decider himself. In the interview he took his previous comments that Bush was a "windshield cowboy" who speaks "grade school Spanish" to a new and definitely snarkier level. He told Maher's audience that while Bush was visiting Vicente at the old family hacienda in Guanajuato, Fox offered to let Bush try out his favorite stallion, a caballo which Fox himself often takes for long rides. Bush demurred, Fox said, and then el presidente described with malicious glee how Bush seemed to "tremble" as he stood next to the horse and tentatively patted its head.

This shouldn't be that surprising. Bush is not actually a cowboy. When he puts on his Wild West costume, as Bob Cesca hilariously noted, he looks like a "preening line dance instructor." Bush was a cheerleader at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, which is possibly as effete a background as a guy can claim without actually undergoing a sex-change operation. The nation's oft-noted gullibility in mistaking image for reality does the rest, so that perhaps many Americans assume that Bush was a rodeo clown in Yuma, Arizona in the lost years before he became president. All the Bush guys go to Phillips Academy, and they aren't cowboys. Bush can walk around bowlegged and squint into the sun and speak with that phony drawl all he wants -- he ain't no cowpoke and that ain't his horse. He's the lazy and spoiled scion of a rich Connecticut family that uses the well-greased track of the Ivy League Brahmins for their connections and success. (Brahmin bullshit - that's as close as Bush comes to the rodeo.)

And then there's Putin. The after-thought child of a factory worker mother and a World War II vet, Putin lost two much older brothers to childhood diseases, one to diphtheria during the German siege of Leningrad, where Putin was born in 1952. As a kid he lived in a communal apartment with other families, but he did well in school and went to the State University in Leningrad, where he attracted the attention of KGB recruiters (his father worked during the war with a sabotage unit of the NKVD, the predecessor to the KGB). Putin has a decidedly checkered past, with accusations of corruption and even plagiarism (his PhD dissertation was allegedly lifted from an American monograph) following him wherever he goes. He's fluent in German from his days as a KGB operative in Dresden during the Cold War, and speaks English well.

Bush claims that by looking deeply into Putin's eyes he saw his soul and declared him a good man. My guess is that Bush's SoulVision needed focusing. However, I also guess that this cunning and probably ruthless spy who worked and maneuvered his way to the top of the Russian ziggurat, beginning from very humble origins, was taking Bush's measure at the same time. I've often thought that Bush's personality represents one of the most serious threats to American security. He just pisses people off, to the point where a danger arises that foreign leaders will behave irrationally simply because they can't stand the guy. Vicente Fox called Bush the "cockiest" guy he'd ever met, which probably explains his delight in his needling story. Putin doesn't seem interested in name calling, only sabre rattling. There were the joint air force exercises with the Chinese, with the resumption of Russian fail-safe flights approaching American airspace. Then Putin, in retaliation for the American abrogation of the ABM treaty and plans to place missiles near Russian borders, announced Russia's intention to target European cities with Russian ICBMs. And now the rapprochement with Iran. Putin has announced, with his own form of Russian Monroe Doctrine, I guess, that none of the -Stan states around the Caspian can be used as a jumping-off point for an American invasion of Iran, and has gone even further in supporting Iran's claim that only the "littoral" countries bordering the Caspian have a right to its oil and gas, or to construct pipelines in the region. Putin is still playing cute about Russia's intention to cooperate in building Iran's nuclear power plant at Bushehr, as if acknowledging that he recognizes he can't alienate the rest of NATO just to bug the United States.

But my guess is that Putin has spent enough time around Bush to see some of what El Presidente Zorro says that he saw. A KGB operative no doubt learns to read the subtleties of human weakness. It's also an interesting contrast in relative bravado that Putin, who received credible death threats before traveling to Tehran (the first Russian head of state to visit in 60 years), nevertheless made the trip in a very public way. Bush, by contrast, has made his very few journeys to Iraq as complete surprises and is gone almost before the outside world is aware he's there.

Putin has probably also figured out that America's anemic Congress is no doubt completely incapable of standing up to Bush and denying him the authority for a preemptive strike against Iran. Thus, if the American runaway train in the Persian Gulf area is to be slowed, Vlad the Devious has decided it's up to him, and he keeps pumping up the Cold War rhetoric as he goes. Like Bush, he only has about a year left in office. You have to wonder whether either one of these egotists can bear the thought of leaving Hadleyville on the train at high noon without seeing which one would back down from a real fight. One way or another, the international seems dangerously dependent on the personal. Bush once invaded a whole country just to prove he was manlier than his father. Now he has another guy failing to give him his props. And I'm wondering: how far would Putin go to stop a U.S. invasion of Iran before Bush leaves office?

Klaatu barada nikto

from the Manchester, New Hampshire Union Leader -
Sunday, during a town-hall meeting in Exeter, Giuliani assured a young questioner that preparedness will be key for all crises, including those from outer space.

"If (there's) something living on another planet and it's bad and it comes over here, what would you do?" a boy asked.

Giuliani, grinning, said it was his first question about an intergalactic attack.

"Of all the things that can happen in this world, we'll be prepared for that, yes we will. We'll be prepared for anything that happens," said Giuliani, who was mayor during the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Personally, I doubt it, and not just because neither Giuliani in particular nor the United States in general was prepared for the attacks of 9/11. A better answer would have been, for example: "How the hell would I know?" Or: "I don't think we'd stand a chance. Better hope it doesn't happen." As many cosmos-oriented thinkers have noted (including, of course, Neal the dog), the sudden, surprise arrival of space aliens here on Earth carries with it certain presumptions. First, they found us before we found them. Second, wherever they're from, they managed to get here, and we've never gotten farther than about 240,000 miles from where we're sitting right now. Third, if they can build a vehicle to get here, and survive the multi-light year trip to Earth themselves, God knows what other kind of nasty stuff they've come up with.

So to say, blithely and without explanation, that "we'll be prepared, yes we will," did not fool that young boy in New Hampshire. He was so on to Giuliani and his bullshit. Rudy must be a tone-deaf cornball if he couldn't see that the last thing his 11 year old questioner was looking for was reassurance. The kid wanted Giuliani to acknowledge that the monsters of the kid's imagination could beat the USA every time out.

And, of course, they probably could. These candidates have to inhabit such an artificial world that even admitting that giant green aliens, from a solar system in the region of Alpha Centauri, who look like a genetic crossing of an octopus and an alligator gone horribly wrong--to concede they might be too much to handle -- you can't even do that now. Instead, you have to assert, in the complete absence of any information whatsoever concerning the nature of the beast or his weaponry, or his designs on Earth, or even whether he exists in the same dimensional coordinates as we think we do, that you'll be prepared to deal with him when he comes.

Suppose we can't stop Gort this time? The phrase, after all, was a lucky guess, especially since no one has ever been able to translate it. How can Giuliani know he'll be able to guess right again?

The Potsdam Conference on the Climate, Currently at a Venue Nowhere Near You

"Next speaker was the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself a theoretical physicist by training. She pointed out that inaction on the climate issue would be at least five times more costly than reducing emissions, and she called for a reduction of global emissions by 50% by the year 2050. She reaffirmed that the European Union has pledged to reduce its emissions by 30% by the year 2020 if others join in, and that the target of the German government is a 40% reduction by 2020...Several physics and chemistry Nobel laureates highlighted the tremendous potential of solar power for solving the world's energy and climate problems. Carlo Rubbia (NP physics 1984) pointed out that a square of the size 210 x 210 km receives as much solar power as the whole world consumes in energy today. This is just a small pixel on the world map he showed, and just 0.13 % of the world's desert area. Walter Kohn (Nobel Prize Chemistry 1998) reported from a meeting in China a few weeks ago, presenting a number of interesting facts, such as that the solar cell production in China is growing at a rate of 40% per year. Alan Heeger (Nobel Prize chemistry 2000) presented an inspiring lecture on cheap plastic solar cells - his lab is working on solar cells that can literally be printed on a roll of plastic sheeting, from a polymer solution. Present status is that they achieve an efficiency of 6.5 % with these printed solar cells, with much promise for rapid improvements."

I know. You're trying to get your mind around the idea of a major Western country with a theoretical physicist as its head of state. There are 15 Nobel laureates at this Potsdam Conference, and I'm thinking: Angela Merkel not only understands, in rigorous detail, what they're talking about, she probably can follow them in their native languages. Can you imagine? Suppose we had a president in this country who not only knew what the double-slit/electron experiment of quantum physics was, but could explain it to you in entertaining and clever detail, instead of telling you that childrens do learn and acknowledging how hard it is to put food on your family. A theoretical physicist making decisions at the top of government. What would public discourse have been like if Richard Feynman had ever been president of this country? He actually told us in one of the last books he ever wrote. He said when he had a problem to solve, he'd get the smartest people he knew within the field of inquiry to research the hell out of it and then make suggestions on the best approach. Then he would decide. I guess my question is: why is it ever done any other way?

Meanwhile, back in the U.S.A., we must first explain a couple of things to W. For example, .13% of the world's desert area is not the same as "thirteen percent" of the world's desert area. It is thirteen one-hundreths of one percent. Okay, let's try that again. Suppose, Mr. President, you had ten thousand marbles. You'd have all your marbles! Get it? Okay, let's move on. If you gave away thirteen, you'd still have...how many? That's right, math was your higher...reported score on the SAT. 9,987 marbles. Perfect. (While we're doing this at the easel with a marker pen, Angela Merkel is sitting in a comfortable chair near the window reading a book in French about string theory.) Why did I use ten thousand? I multiplied 100 by 100, thinking that each of the 100 percentage points had one hundred parts, and then...no, you're right, Mr. President. Too much information! Cut to the chase: we'd still have 99.87% of the world's desert left for unmolested use by camels, gila monsters, and all-terrain three-wheelers, if we can capture the solar power falling on a square...oh no, here we go again. Can you look over this way for a minute and stop waving at those people through the window? Those aren't really people. They're statues along the roof line of that old building across the street, actually. They used to build a lot of that stuff like that here in Europe.That "km" that Signor Rubbia is talking about is a metric measurement, but it's not one of Donald Rumsfeld's "metrics," you know, that word he would use to talk about "progress" in Iraq because he thought it sounded smarter than "measurement." The Nobel Prize winner (don't worry, that's one award they'll never bother you with) is referring to kilometers. Most of the world uses the metric system; we use it here, in fact, in science and medicine, two activities which I know you oppose. A kilometer equals one thousand meters, and it's about 62% of a mile. Can we try multiplying 210 by point 62? Why? To get an equivalent...look, Mr. President, take my word for it. We're almost done here. You could build this power plant near Midland, and it could get lost out there. I mean, as a practical matter, you'd build a whole bunch, but the idea is...the idea is...I'm going down to the ratskellar and see if I can score ein grosses helles Bier, Mr. President. I'm gonna try and get Angela to explain to you about why it's cheaper to cut emissions now, by a factor of five...huh? Factor is like "times." No, it has nothing to do with Bill O'Reilly. What? Oh. He's okay, I guess. Not really, but I gotta run.

Pondering the future of this great country of ours

I've occasionally tapped into the dismal spectacle of candidates' "debates," both Republican and Democratic, and like you I have become quickly dyspeptic at the unedifying spectacle of robotic sloganeering by all the "serious" candidates (the ones without any controversial ideas which could possibly have any effect on the country's real problems). The marginal candidates, such as Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul, naturally have all the "radical" proposals, that is, ideas which upset America's moribund status quo. To be taken seriously in America as a presidential candidate, you have to find a way to adopt and announce "positions" which (a) retain your base without (b) saying anything so "outrageous" that you make yourself a laughingstock with the political arbiters of the mainstream media. As an example of a completely outrageous idea, take Dennis Kucinich's proposal for a "Department of Peace." We don't do peace in the United States; we are the New Sparta, and you will listen a long time before you hear Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or Barack Obama say anything about substantially reducing America's military budget. In fact, listen as long as you want; you'll never hear it. We don't say stuff like that.

I remember, as an undergraduate, becoming interested in the political theory based on the concept of the "normative tendency of the factual." Essentially, this idea is that the essential inertia of a political system derives from the citizenry's identification of what is with what ought to be. So keeping America "strong" has become unassailable gospel in American politics. Is this because America has more enemies than anyone else? Consider that 9/11 was followed by the Madrid train and London transit bombings, not to mention terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Bali, Russia and many other places where America was not the direct target. The Spanish and British apprehended the perpetrators; the United States, with the possible exception of Khallid Sheikh Mohammed, has never actually caught anyone directly and materially involved in the 9/11 attacks, though, practically speaking, those 19 hijackers must have had many accomplices for logistical and financial support. The overriding point is that virtually all Western countries are vulnerable to terrorist attack, and indeed endure such attacks. This is viewed as the essential and existential danger of the modern world. Yet the United States alone feels the need to maintain this huge military-industrial complex with such a disproportionate part of its federal budget devoted to a high-tech military designed, obviously, to fight wars in foreign countries.

If a presidential candidate were to challenge this orthodoxy by venturing the "radical" idea that this military complex is not for the purposes of fighting the "global war on terror," he (the sole woman in the race would never say such a thing) would be McLuhanesque toast by the following morning. Suppose the candidate said: I think the MIC exists because it's a business arrangement between government, military contractors and the defense industry, and because we want a big expeditionary force to protect our access to vital resources, mainly oil. We both know that would be it for that flake. Chris Matthews would bray himself scarlet in the face. Rush Limbaugh would demand a Senate resolution accusing the candidate of sedition. Game over. You can't say stuff like that and be taken seriously.

The interesting thing about the "stuff" is that it's true. If the real threat to the USA is a band of terrorists trying to infiltrate the country with a nuclear bomb, say, then it's obvious that F-15 fighter/bombers and cruise missiles and up-armored Humvees and the rest of it aren't going to do any good. For specific example, they didn't stop 9/11. They didn't stop the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. They didn't stop the bombing of the USS Cole or the African embassies or the Marine barracks in Lebanon. The reason they didn't stop any of these things is because a huge military establishment has nothing to do with a group of terrorists fighting "asymmetrical" warfare. The way you counteract asymmetrical warfare is by making it symmetrical, the way Israel uses the Mossad. Infiltration, espionage, bribery, blackmail, assassination. All in a self-defensive way, of course. Aircraft carriers in the Mediterranean are not going to stop a group of Wahhabist Saudis sitting around a dining table in a condo in South Florida.

So we're at the point where a candidate is not electable unless they avoid saying logical and obvious things. There is a very narrow bandwidth of acceptable ideas in the presidential race. On the environment, say, the idea is to "reduce" greenhouse emissions by cap-and-trade or by voluntary reductions. Are these ideas actually related to the inexorable demands of atmospheric science? Who cares. Sound good, anyway. On oil: let's increase CAFE standards by the year 2020 so we're somewhere in the neighborhood of where the rest of the industrial world already is and has been for sometime. Let's grow some corn and make some ethanol, so we have 15% ethanol mixtures by, I don't know, 2020 or so. 2020 is a good year, since it's far enough away to avoid actually doing anything now. On healthcare: that's tough. Let's do something. We'll get back to you.

The leading Democratic candidates have these advantages: Clinton - her last name. Edwards - his haircut and boyish charm. Obama - he's African-American. Since these advantages are decisive over all other candidates, it does not matter whether their actual ideas do any good or change anything, because as long as they remain safely inside the bandwidth, they're good to go. The winner will be chosen on subjective criteria similar to "American Idol."

One might ask: but what about Reality? Won't Reality at some point impose some nonnegotiable demands of its own? Won't the country founder, and break up, and be torn asunder by its inability to adapt to changing circumstances? Well -- sure it will. But remember: that's not what the candidates are talking about.

Trials continue at Guantanamo

Colonel Blick Mordred presides over the 3-officer tribunal in Guantanamo Court Room 3, United States vs. Ahmed bin-Mavri. Appearing for the United States is Captain Pierce Rechtman, JAG; for the defendant, attorney Sam Leinwold.

Col. Mordred (Judge): We're on the record in Mavri, day 2. Ready for the United States, Captain Rechtman?
Rechtman: Sir!, yes sir!
Judge: Mr. Leinwold?
Leinwold: As we'll ever be.
Judge: Mr. Rechtman, you're continuing today with your case in chief?
Rechtman: Sir! yes sir! I'd like to present to the court Exhibit 16, an affidavit signed by Abdullah Kalar, not his real name, detailing the defendant's complicity in a conspiracy to attack American interests overseas.
Judge: Marked next in order. Please approach the bench.
(Rechtman does so, hands two page document to judges, who begin reading.)
Leinwold: Can I see this one, judge?
Judge: I'm afraid not. Under the terms of the pretrial order, matters of national security cannot be divulged to the defendant or to his counsel.
Leinwold: We don't even know who Kalar is.
Rechtman: Sir! He doesn't actually go by that name, sir!
Leinwold: How do we know he exists at all?
Judge: Counsel, are you suggesting the United States is fabricating evidence?
Leinwold: How can I cross-examine a piece of paper which I can't read?
Judge: I can assure you this is devastating evidence, counsel, and unlikely to have been made up. I am a little concerned about these water stains on the document. Mr. Rechtman?
Rechtman: Sir! it rains in Cuba, sir!
Judge: Very good. The affidavit is admitted into evidence.
Leinwold: (shrugging) I suppose I can ask. Was that statement voluntarily given?
Rechtman: Sir! the United States does not torture, sir!
Judge: Anything further for the United States?
Rechtman: Sir! the prosecution rests, sir!
Judge: Very good. Mr. Leinwold?
Leinwold: Call the defendant, Ahmed bin-Mavri. (defendant is sworn by Arabic translator). Mr. bin-Mavri, how were you arrested?
bin-Mavri: Near Kandahar, December, 2001. I was tending my poppy field when I was approached by U.S. Special Forces and informed I was under arrest for war crimes.
Leinwold: And what were those crimes?
Rechtman: Sir! objection sir! The indictment is sealed and protected by national security order, sir!
Judge: Sustained. The defendant is aware he has been charged with conspiracy to harm the U.S.A. That is sufficient for your purposes, and strikes a fair balance with our need to protect America.
Leinwold: My apologies to the court. I was seeing if I could get lucky and find out who my client conspired with. What did the U.S. forces tell you?
bin-Mavri: That the son of a devil dog, may his eyes burn in the sun, who lives near my farm, whose cursed name is --
Rechtman: Sir, objection sir! Informant's name is classified, sir!
Judge: Sustained.
Leinwold: But my client knows, Judge. So..
Judge: But you do not, and it is you who will return to the mainland at the conclusion of this trial.
Leinwold: Gotcha. Okay, so devil dog, what did he say?
bin-Mavri: I know that he received $5,000 American, and sold me out just so he could take my crop.
Leinwold: Have you ever...done anything against the U.S.?
bin-Mavri: No!
Leinwold: Which brings us to this signed confession, where you admit you wanted to blow up...
Rechtman: Sir, objection, sir! Target is classified information.
Leinwold: Yeah, but I know what it is, and the defendant knows...
Rechtman: Sir, the court reporter does not know, sir!
Judge: Sustained. There's no point in taking unnecessary risks.
Leinwold: Did you do these things in your confession?
bin-Mavri: May Allah chasten me for untruths, I did no such thing.
Leinwold: Yet...?
bin-Mavri: First, they tied my hands and feet to an eye-bolt in the floor...
Rechtman: Sir, objection, sir! Move to strike and to bar all inquiry into mode of inquiry on grounds all enhanced interrogation techniques are top secret, sir!
Judge: Sustained. You may ask if the statement was voluntary.
Leinwold: (shrugging) Was it voluntary?
bin-Mavri: No. It was coerced by torture.
Leinwold: Your honor, I move to strike the confession from the record on the ground it was coerced.
Judge: And your proof?
Leinwold: My client just said so.
Judge: In a conclusory manner without factual support.
Leinwold: You won't let me get the facts.
Judge: That hardly changes the situation.
Leinwold: Why can't I ask him to describe what they did to him?
Rechtman: Sir! That's classified information which in the hands of terrorists could allow them to prepare better for interrogation, defeating the purposes of enhanced techniques, sir!
Judge: Exactly.
Leinwold: How would they do that? Grow gills?
Judge: Your motion is denied on the basis of an insufficient record of coercion.
Leinwold: Then the confession remains in the record?
Judge: Of course.
Leinwold: So you have a pile of hearsay affidavits from a bunch of people we've never seen and never questioned, and you may have tortured that stuff out of them. And now you won't let me prove you tortured the confession out of my own client. What chance do we have?
Judge: The same one you had when you walked in here. Submitted?
Leinwold: Why not.
Judge: Bailiff will call the case of United States vs. Saleem al-Nouri, Case No....