From the Folks Who Brought You the Common Law

From the London Telegraph, December 8, 2007: "Meanwhile, in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith said that whether or not the men were dangerous was less important than the rule of law. 'I don't know [whether they're dangerous or not]', he said. 'I do think that [there is a] principle here which is more important. It is not the question of assessing danger or not, which we have to deal with as we have to deal with other people in this country. The principle is fundamental civil liberties. You cannot have people detained for years on end and with no end in sight on the basis of the philosophy the US uses.' He also said that Guantanamo Bay prison should be closed, as it is a 'recruiting sergeant' for terrorists."

Such were the comments of a learned British lawyer asked to comment on the release of four British subjects from the Guantanamo prison camp. Three of the prisoners (from Algeria, Libya and Jordan) will return to Britain; the fourth will be repatriated to his native Saudi Arabia. Lord Goldsmith refers to the "philosophy the US uses" without explanation, but presumably he means the converse of the philosophy he supports: the question whether the men are dangerous "is less important than the rule of law."

I think that used to be the American position on civil liberties prior to the Bush Administration. I have opined before that the concept of the "presumption of innocence" was an application of the scientific method, and Enlightenment ideas generally, to the field of criminal law. As in science, one begins in common law criminal jurisprudence with the idea that the outcome is unknown, and that therefore, in order to assure fairness and to avoid inflicting punishment in advance of the proof, society hazards a little danger in permitting suspects the presumption of innocence. If, in some cases, the danger of allowing the suspect to remain at large seems too great, the defendant is nevertheless assured, by the Fifth Amendment's due process clause, to a speedy trial and determination of his guilt. Overall, this approach served us well for the first 212 years of our nation's history. Not perfectly, but I would say that in the pre-Bush years, our legal system was second to none in the world.

It does not seem hyperbolic to equate the religiosity of the Bushians with their rejection of such Enlightenment ideas. Indeed, the growing theocratic movement in the U.S. does not bode well for the Bill of Rights. As with the a priori assumptions of religion in general, Bush proceeds on the premise that the arrest of the inmates at Guantanamo implies their guilt; if they weren't guilty, why were they arrested? What are they doing in a prison camp like Guantanamo if they're not dangerous? That's about as far as the U.S. "philosophy" goes. Essentially, it is the philosophy of not caring much one way or the other. Since the war on terror is "generational," and since nothing in the Guantanamo enabling legislation (the Detainee Treatment Act or the Military Commissions Act) actually requires a trial, at any time for anyone, the fact of arrest may mean perpetual incarceration in a prison camp without recourse.

If there is a distinction between this approach to "enemies of the state" and the Stalinist gulags, where prisoners were sent to Siberia forever, it must be very subtle. Perhaps a smart British jurist could figure it out. The silence from Congress, or from the presidential candidates, on these problems is complete. Arguing for civil liberties for prisoners Bush has labeled "terrorists" is a kind of political third rail in America. That's a very dangerous sign for all of us. It is not coincidental that coverage of such matters is found on the front page of a British newspaper, and not here at home.

Boumediene under Submission, American Due Process on Trial

Oral arguments were presented yesterday in the Supreme Court case of Boumediene vs. Bush, a case which tests the tenacity of the "Great Writ" of habeas corpus in the wake of Congressional stupidity in passing the Military Commissions Act. Seth Waxman, who was Bill Clinton's Solicitor General back in the era of American Enlightenment, appeared on behalf of six Bosnians who have spent the last six years of their lives in Guantanamo cages, looking for a forum to present the argument that they are not members of al-Qaeda, never fired a shot at an American, and certainly never had plans to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, the putative reason that American government agents gave for kidnapping them in Bosnia and flying them to Guantanamo. As Mr. Waxman stated in his brief, these six Bosnians had been cleared of all charges by a European commission and by Bosnian courts, but were betrayed by Bosnian police acting under pressure from American forces on January 17, 2002, the day of their official, and very short-lived, Bosnian exoneration.

One gets the impression from the indifferent American press and the indifferent American Congress that the inmates at Guantanamo must indeed be the "worst of the worst," as Donald Rumsfeld once described them. In fact, we have no way of knowing if they are or not, and the reason we don't is because the Bush Administration, with the collusion of Congress, has systematically removed the avenues of due process which would lead to a speedy determination of their culpability, if, after six years, one can employ such an adjective without morbid irony.

So that was the question presented: is it Constitutional to maintain a system of indefinite detention in Guantanamo, where the prisoners have no legal recourse other than the kangaroo system of Combatant Status Review Tribunals to test their innocence? Or should they be allowed the writ of habeas corpus in federal court, as provided by the Suspension Clause of Article I, Section 9: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." The United States is not in rebellion and we're not under invasion, other than in the perfervid nightmares of George W. Bush. So two questions remain: should the Bush Administration be allowed to get away with locating its dungeon in Cuba, outside the supposed territorial reach of American courts? And does the court review provision in the Detainee Treatment Act provide an adequate substitute for habeas corpus, if the answer to the first question is "no?"

Mr. Waxman answers the first question "no," and the earlier case of Rasul vs. Bush seems to back him up; however, his case was made much harder by the excision of habeas corpus by the Military Commissions Act. I recall that Arlen Specter, the self-proclaimed great champion of the Constitution, denounced this move as "unconstitutional," then proceeded to vote for the bill, which makes me wonder about his interpretation of his oath of office. The second question is more difficult and gives the hard Right wing of the Supreme Court (Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts) a way to deny the petitioners any hope without ruling on the habeas corpus question. If a prisoner waits long enough and he eventually gets tried for some "war crime" (a term which has never been exactly defined for the Guanatanamo inmates), then at long last he can appeal the decision to the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, who can review, in a limited manner, what the military commission decided. Maybe that's ten years, maybe that's twenty years after initial arrest, and after twenty years of living in a cage on the hot and dusty eastern end of Cuba; and maybe then the D.C. Circuit decides the prisoner never should have been jailed in the first place. Sorry about that; you're a casualty of the Great War on Terror, and after all, you are a Muslim.

Bravo to Mr. Waxman, for his strenuous efforts pro bono publico. He operates in the noble legal tradition of John Adams, who defended the British soldiers tried for the Boston Massacre, as a guarantor of fundamental due process. Sadly, the remedies at this point can never undo the lost six years for those Guantanamo detainees who have been wrongly detained. For make no mistake about it, do not be fooled by the grand references to the "Great Writ," and the eloquent descriptions of "habeas corpus as it existed in 1789," and the august solemnity of litigation in the Supreme Court, with all its "may it please the Court" stuff, and its Roman-numeraled briefs, and the rest of the fancy dress-up. George Bush is running a dungeon in Guantanamo for the same reasons that tyrannical kings in England threw their political opponents in the Tower. As a demonstration of power and to satiate the blood-lust of his foaming-mouth base. It has nothing to do with protecting America; that could be accomplished best by capturing Osama bin Laden and bringing him to trial in a federal court in New York City for crimes against humanity. Osama bin Laden had no right to kill innocent people because of his ideological fantasies; it was a form of collective punishment that is expressly outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. War, to the extent it can ever be legal under international law, is to be fought by the soldiers of one nation against the soldiers of another. But neither should Bush imprison Muslims arbitrarily, forever, without meaningful recourse in American courts, simply to demonstrate that he's "tough on terror," for just as assuredly, that is collective punishment as well.

Mr. Waxman closed his argument (you can hear the recording by going to www.Scotusblog.org) with a heart-rending description of how this "system" leads to perversions of justice. He discussed a former Guantanamo inmate, named Kurnaz, who was held for two years without charges. He was told at his Combatant Status Review, where he had no counsel (since none is permitted) that he had associated with a German terrorist named Bilgen, who, during Kurnaz's detention, had blown himself up. Kurnaz was lucky; ordinarily the detainees not only have no lawyers, they are not told the names of their "accomplices." Such information is "classified." "Kafka-esque," as Mr. Waxman describes it, is not too strong a word. But a lawyer working for Kurnaz on the outside obtained a transcript of the CSRT hearing and within 24 hours produced Mr. Bilgen, who was not only alive and well in Dresden, but had nothing to do with terrorism. The question that hangs in the hot, humid air over Guantanamo, where perhaps hundreds of men wait to see if the Supreme Court still believes in due process as envisioned by Thomas Jefferson: how many more Mr. Kurnazes are being denied a chance to prove their innocence?

Showdown at the Supreme Court

I actually think it works something like this: George W. Bush, whining and petulant, shows up for another day of "hard work" in the Oval Office. He'd rather be on his elliptical trainer, he'd rather be on his custom Trek bike, he'd rather be in a bar in Dallas, he'd rather be just about anywhere than where he is. He's done this job. He has an IQ of about 115, one standard deviation above the population mean, and sure as shootin', that wasn't enough to deal with the complexity of this office. Smart guys like Clinton revel in this whirl of detail and power; it just gives George a headache. He doesn't really like thinking. He never has. He was never a student, never a big reader, and he doesn't like coming up with "creative" ideas. He doesn't write Pulitzer Prize winning histories or paint beautiful watercolors, like his "hero," Winston Churchill. He can't play the sax like Bill Clinton. He is, pure and simple, a bullshitter, and always has been. The reason he was a pretty good jogger and a fair bike rider (when he doesn't fall off) is because the one thing he can do is the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over. Take today's "press conference:" he had to go out there and say that he didn't hear anything about the National Intelligence Estimate declaring Iran's nucular program suspended as of 2003 until one week ago, although the report's been around for a year. He's the President, fer chrissake! Oh, he knows. Karl told him it was best to play it that way, because Fitzgerald is going to wind up giving those Plame transcripts to Henry Waxman, and they're going to be full of Bush's pathetic insistence that although the leakers were his own staff that he met with every day, he still didn't know anything about their identity until...well, you see. You need precedent for the President being treated like a cipher by his own aides. How humiliatin'. But George is good at that, say that for him. Repeating nonsense over and over and over and over and over.

So once in a while, I think Bush just gets fed up with the whole business, storms into the Oval Office, and demands to do something shitty. And the best people to subject to shitty treatment are those Arab-looking people down in Guantanamo, because if there's one group he can beat up on with complete impunity, it's that ragtag bunch of whoever-they-are. So you, Alberto, or John Yoo, or David Addington, or whoever's left around here, get me a goddam memo that says I can throw them in a cage in Cuba and forget about 'em. And, as with torture, black sites and illegal wiretapping, his mouthpieces produced just the authorization he needed.

And then that Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld case. Sheesh. Now they're telling me all these Arabs are human beings with Geneva Convention rights. Which means while we were half-drowning them and beating the shit out of them, we may have committed "war crimes?" What the hell?! We're the war criminals? Okay, get that flighty fat-butt Lindsey Graham on the phone and tell him we need a full-court press on this one. Give these animals their "trial rights" in front of some military brass, but exonerate the hell out of this "war crime" shit, and by the way, get rid of this habeas corpus crap, which another one of these crazy cases, Rasul vs. Bush (how come I wind up in the title of these things?) says these terrists have a right to. And a compliant Senate, wowed by the specious reasoning and sophistry of Lindsey, saw that it was done.

Whew. But now comes Boumediene vs. Bush (me again!). This one says that despite Lindsey's fast one, these ragheads still have a right to habeas corpus. What in the goddam hell? And based on Rasul, and counting noses despite my stacking of the Supreme Court, it looks like Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer and Kennedy are going to prevail over Alito, Roberts, Thomas and Scalia. Missed by that much. And you know what happens then? Every one of these untermenschen (Karl taught me that word) is going to have a lawyer, and every one of them is going to file one of the Great Writs (yeah, real great), and then the world's going to know that a whole bunch of 'em, maybe most of 'em, ain't war criminals, ain't terrists, ain't the "worst of the worst" like I done said they were, but were humanitarian aid workers, opium farmers, teachers, tourists, and lots of other people who happened to have an "al" or "bin" in the middle of their names, and suddenly some Kuwaiti cab driver is going to have a high-priced shyster from a white shoe law firm claiming "illegal detention" and lack of probable cause.

Oh Lord. This gets to be too much. I don't even have anyone to bomb. Where'd my Axis of Evil go? Is it January 2009 yet? I'm going down to the gym.

Ist es nicht schon zu spät?

The headline is from today's Frankfurter Allgemeine. Is it not already too late?, it asks. Accompanying the front page story are many full color pictures about Klimatforschung, providing detail on global warming patterns in anticipation of the Bali conference on climate change, beginning today.

From the front page of today's Le Monde: "On ne pouvait envoyer un signal plus positif : lundi 3 décembre, le jour même de l'ouverture à Bali (Indonésie) de la conférence des Nations unies sur le changement climatique, le nouveau premier ministre australien, Kevin Rudd, a annoncé que son pays ratifiait le protocole de Kyoto." I rely here upon a rusty French first learned in Dwinelle Hall 41 years ago: "One could not envision a more powerful signal: on Monday, 3 December, the same day as the beginning of the United Nations Bali Conference on climate change, the new premier of Australia, Kevin Rudd, announced that his country ratified the Kyoto Protocol."

You will not find anything on the front pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post about the Bali conference. Although the latest IPCC report confirms that scientists have probably underestimated the speed of global warming, and that mankind may have as little as three years to implement heavy-duty changes to avert serious consequences, the American media are still entranced with the mental problems of Britney Spears. To the extent I can follow along with the German article, the data and analysis presented are of a technical quality which presuppose an educated and numerate reading public. This presumption, of course, makes sense in a country where the president is a theoretical physicist.

I consult the foreign press because it reassures me that someone, somewhere, is taking the problem seriously and endeavoring to do something about it. The Bush Administration has dug itself such a deep hole on climate change that its attendance at these conferences is now simply about warding off the most damning accusations by fainthearted references to half-baked measures which Bush claims to have taken. We have now achieved sole possession of the International Pariah Trophy, given to that industrialized country with its head inserted the farthest up its ass. With Australia's nod toward reason and decency, we are now the only advanced nation on the face of the earth which has failed to cooperate internationally.

So take heart, my fellow Americans. Other adults, in other countries with more mature values and with more concern for their lineal descendants, are trying hard to overcome American resistance to enlightenment. We are officially a "work-around" at this point, a speed bump on the path of progress. Do what you can locally; California, for example, is cited favorably by delegations at the conference, as if it were a separate country from Bushland, which, in every way but legally and constitutionally, it probably is.

Chasing the Phantoms of 9/11

It's unfortunate, to say the least, that the 9/11 hijackers chose a suicide route to carry out their horrific act of terrorism. This happens often in the mass murder situation: the "lone gunman" kills a lot of strangers and then in his final act of despair and madness, he turns the gun on himself. Aggrieved humanity is therefore left without a focus for their vengeance and emotional "closure." Something awful has happened and all you can say is that life's like that sometimes.

The United States might have responded differently to 9/11: to do nothing militarily, but to have explored what routes there were for standard police and counter-terrorism work. The hijackers, naturally, are all dead; you can't make them pay any greater price. But if they have living accomplices, let's see if we can track and capture them. I thought that's what Bush meant way back in 2001 when he said he was going to smoke the perps out of their holes, get 'em runnin, and bring 'em to justice. I assumed he was referring to Osama bin Laden and close henchmen, like Zawahiri and Atef, and, as we perhaps didn't know then, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the "Brain" or mastermind behind the attacks. KSM, as he's known in the 9-11 Report, was also instrumental in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. The Clinton Administration apprehended and convicted his nephew Ramzi Yousef, who's now doing a life stretch at the Supermax prison in Colorado. KSM is in Guantanamo, and will never see another free day in this life. And bin Laden and Zawahiri...?

After the dust settled at the World Trade Center, a decision was made within the Bush Administration that the Great War on Terror (GWOT) should be 10% anti-terrorism and 90% show biz. Thus and always in the media age. Slowly but surely, as we reduce the world to a set of electronic images, reality loses its familiar feel and internal logic and is reduced to...11110000001100001100001001011101100111111011101100000000111100.

I've been reading "Imperial Life in the Emerald City" by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who served as the Washington Post's Baghdad bureau chief during the initial year of the American occupation. By now the ideas are familiar to me, having read "Fiasco" and "Cobra II." These books tightly converge toward an inescapable conclusion that the occupation was completely botched. I was struck by one image early on in the book: in the main mess hall of Saddam's palace in the Green Zone, which had been converted to Coalition Provisional Authority use, giant murals of the Twin Towers were painted on the walls. I suppose, when they were painted, these pictures were to remind the soldiers what they were fighting for - to avenge the attacks of 9/11. I have a feeling this didn't convince many members of the military, at least not after a few months in Iraq. It might serve as an operational definition of cognitive dissonance. Eventually, even their Commander in Chief, weary of the occasional questions at his staged press conferences, simply said Saddam had "nothing" to do with the attacks of 9/11. So from that point, I guess, the murals were just to remind the soldiers of life in New York.

More than six years after 9/11 we're still fighting two military wars in Aghanistan and Iraq to avenge the crimes of 19 Arabs from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Yemen and the UAE. The CIA tells us that the threat of terrorism has increased worldwide as a result. If you board a plane today at Chicago's O'Hare or at Los Angeles International, the chances are less than half that the poorly-paid TSA employees can spot bomb components taken on board in carry-on luggage. The ports, nuclear facilities and chemical plants in the country remain unguarded. The "security tax" added to airline tickets was not used to purchase screening devices for all cargo luggage in every major American airport, as required by legislation. The strength of the military and national guard units has deteriorated because of the unending battles. Because of the very bad ideas of gung-ho lawyers close to Bush and Cheney, the Geneva Conventions were abandoned in the treatment of detainees at Bagram in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at Guantanamo, leading to the systematic commission of war crimes, including torture and murder. Congress then said that was okay, and exonerated all of it. As a result of all that, America's moral leadership in the world has taken a vicious pounding.

Ah hell -- if we had just caught the 19 Arabs in the act, as they boarded the four planes. As we could have, probably, given that the "lights were blinking red," as George Tenet said. The way we caught the German saboteurs in World War II, the ones tried in ex parte Quirin. All those lives saved, all that money not wasted.

Major Sheikh-up at Citigroup

Meet Robert Rubin's new business partner: Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, managing director of...well, Abu Dhabi. Any distinction between the political and business spheres in that richest of all the world's cities is, shall we say, chimerical (today's word, meaning "imaginary, unreal;" from the Greek "chimera," referring to a fire-breathing monster which apparently was part goat, part lion and part serpent. Sounds like something you might see with a bad ouzo hangover, if that resinates with you. No typo there, I simply demand that my readers pay attention; for example, did you miss the pun about "oxen being gored" in yesterday's installment about global warming? Stop sleeping through these things. Part of the mission statement here at the Pond includes waking Americans from their TV-induced stupor). Abu Dhabi decided to invest $7.5 billion in Citigroup on very favorable terms, guaranteeing itself an 11% return on securities convertible to stock at designated strike prices a few years down the road. Abu Dhabi immediately became Citigroup's largest investor. The second largest is an L.A. investment group, which sounds reassuring, but the third is a Saudi prince, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Thus, Citigroup got rid of one prince, Charles Prince, its CEO, but retained a much wealthier and more influential one. But I'm concerned that Alwaleed is going to get pissed off at his demotion and buy some more of America's biggest bank. If he decides to do that, money won't stop him. The United Arab Emirates (of which Abu Dhabi is the "capital") and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia pull in a combined $1.3 billion per day from petroleum sales, and as that light, sweet crude in which they specialize nears one hundred bucks a barrel, I imagine the prince must have a setup like Scrooge McDuck; he has a tower full of gold coins and a steam shovel to move it all around.

By the way, Abu Dhabi recently bought a 7.5 % stake in the privately-held (very privately held) Carlyle Group, that mysterious and politically influential holding company which once employed George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, along with James Baker and lots of other Washington insiders. It's all pretty cozy, isn't it? Senator Charles Schumer (Turncoat,-N.Y.) thinks the Citigroup deal is just dandy. The bank needs money, Abu Dhabi has more money than God, so where's the problem? The stock market sure likes the deal; it went skyward like a Patriot missile closing on a Saudi-financed Pakistani missile. Schumer did get exercised about that "Dubai ports deal;" remember that? The very idea! We were going to turn over our port security to a country which two of the 9/11 hijackers called home! Under this logic, of course, we shouldn't let Prince Alwaleed own anything like the huge stake which he holds in America's biggest bank, since fifteen of the hijackers came from our "ally," Saudi Arabia. And didn't we recently discover that about 40% of the foreign jihadis in Iraq originate in Saudi Arabia, along with lots of money to fund their killing of American soldiers and Iraqi citizens? Why this kid-glove treatment? Oh, now I remember. Still, shouldn't someone organize a "Fair Play for Dubai" committee? Is that idea so chimerical?

It's a neat loop. Citigroup is in deep doo-doo because of all the subprime loans and worthless mortgage-backed securities on its books. It's slowly and grudgingly letting the news out, little by little, about just high deep the poop is piled. All those cheap loans were made possible by all the money invested by China, Japan and "sovereign wealth funds," such as those in Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, in U.S Treasuries. All those cheap loans crapped out and Citigroup began going under. Now the "sovereign wealth funds" are back, only instead of buying U.S promises to pay at measly Treasury rates (and then enduring the devaluation of their investment because of the tanking greenback), they're cutting out the middlemen, Henry Paulson and
Ben Bernanke, and just buying the goddam bank, like they shoulda in the first place.

Well, yeah. Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. aren't exactly democracies. And in that thrilling second Inaugural, Bush did promise to transform the world with the "gift of freedom," just like in Iraq. But let's get real here; we have to take on one despotic regime at a time. And man, do we need the money in the meanwhile. So while democracy spreading is a nice idea, it's a little unrealistic to slay all these lion-goat-serpent thingies all at one go. Chimerical, to say the least.

Chicken Little vs. the Pipe Smoker

I write more about legal matters than other blog subjects because my education and work life have made me more familiar with the language and concepts of law than, say, economics or neurosurgery. In the age of the blog, however, any subject seems like fair game, especially impressionistic reactions to the "state of society" or the world in general. I read many such mind farts on the blog-aggregating sites such as the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos. To generalize about the generalizations, you can break them down into the Chicken Littles and the Reassuring Realists, or The Pipe Smokers. The Pipe Smokers dislike theories of massive economic collapse or climate crises. Chicken Littles revel in apocaplyptic scenarios and conspiracy theories. One way you can resolve the "controversy" is to settle at a midpoint; each has "something to say." And yet, when you think about it, there is no reason such moderation is necessarily closer to reality when it comes to scientific subjects.

Climate crisis is probably a good case in point. The Realist viewpoint is that global warming is a problem like other human problems and that gradualist responses will work just fine without the social dislocations of a frenzied reordering of energy use in transportation and industry. I see this style epitomized in the relaxed and confident analyses of such pundits as Patrick Buchanan and George Will; they are bemused by the Chicken Littles and their hysterical raving. There is no particular reason that these journalists know a damn thing about climate science; rather, their "conservative" response has been conditioned by the success or vindication of their opinions about other fields of human activity, such as politics and the economy. These metaphors or analogies, of course, have nothing to do with Earth's atmosphere. The presence of heat-trapping gases in the troposphere and the myriad feedback processes which lead to warming of the air and oceans, acidification of the seas, and changing weather patterns are not, in any sense, related to the human psychology which affects the outcomes of political races or economic activities. They think because humans temper their irrational reactions over time and behave in predictable and cyclical patterns that the atmosphere will do the same thing; the Earth will "settle down," see what's best for it, and cooperate with human beings. At base, such thinking is flat-out stupid; it arises from an inability to distinguish factual situations from each other on the basis of their disparate elements.

As an example, if you place a small pan of water on an oven burner, and you know the BTU output of the burner, the conductivity of the the pan, the atmospheric pressure in the room, and the starting temperature and quantity of the water, you can make intelligent estimates about when the water will boil. Chicken Little has no advantage over the Pipe Smoker; there is no "Liberal" or "Conservative" position on this experiment. Multiply this experiment by the complexities of climate change and you essentially have the political situation vis-a-vis global warming. The only difference is that the variables and feedback processes are so complicated that there is room for differences of opinion; how one resolves the difference depends, I would be willing to bet, on two factors: one's natural temperament and the extent to which one is familiar with the science of the subject. Where a pundit or politician (such as Buchanan, George Will or George W. Bush) has no empirical grasp of the problem, the "conservative" attitude that all changes must be incremental and gradual is decisive (in Bush's case we have to add the element of corruption). The same thing, of course, happens on the "liberal" side; a politician or journalist who favors "progressive" positions identifies the "Chicken Little" response as the hip way to think, with or without any handle on atmospheric science.

It isn't difficult to see why climate change presents a scientific challenge distinct from the usual arcane questions posed by the scientific world. If we were dealing with a question of brain surgery, for example, Patrick Buchanan and George Will would not weigh in with the "conservative" position on the right approach to excising a tumor; nor would they inquire into the "liberal" or "conservative" biases of the neurosurgeon, as such troglodytes as James Inhofe (Cretin,-OK) routinely do about climate scientists. But adapting to the problem of greenhouse gases gores the oxen of the conservative lifestyle, which first and foremost favors comfortable affluence based upon the existing state of things. So they have to react, and since there is just enough wiggle room to hem and haw about the "pace" of change, and the relative necessity of Draconian versus gradual adaptation, the "conservative position" on climate change arises.

As I say, none of this posturing has anything whatsoever to do with the greenhouse effect. If we could, in some way, transport ourselves to a high vantage point, looking down upon Earth and its comical dominant species, and listen in on their stupid reactions as they boil themselves alive, we could get some sense of how ridiculous all of this is. Since we can't do that, we'll have to wait till 2009 and then see if the world's largest polluter, in throwing away eight critical years near the tipping point of the change, can lead the world away from the abyss.

Quiet Days in Baghdad

It is a right-wing canard that those on the "left" (I love how we use these political designations borrowed directly from the despised French) revel in the daily reports of mass carnage from Iraq. No doubt among the true political die-hards on the liberal side, especially those who in some way have tied their livelihoods to opposition to the Bush regime, there is an element of barely-suppressed glee at a picture of another red and black cloud erupting on a Baghdad street. I have never felt that way myself. I have always hoped that Iraqis might some day live in peace and prosperity. The idea that thousands of Iraqis, men, women, children, have been slaughtered in the anarchy unleashed by the American invasion has always made me sick. As it would be for us, each one of those deaths was endured by someone with one life.

So if things are genuinely quieter in Iraq now, that's okay with me. It might discomfit factions of the Democratic opposition, especially those like Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer who have in some sense entangled themselves in the simplistic calculations of Bush himself. If violence has decreased, then the war was always a good idea, according to Bush. I saw this coming a long time ago, if I may say so now. That's what the war had become "about;" Reid insisted the war was "lost," but those words can have only one meaning to the barely-discerning general American public: the mighty U.S. military had been defeated in battle. The conniving George Bush, whose own intellectual limitations place him closer to the general perceptions of average Americans, saw his opening. Of course, we hadn't "lost." There was no combination of Iraqi regular army, home-grown insurgents or foreign jihadists who could actually defeat the American military. And John Q. Public measures success or failure by one "metric," and by one metric only: how many American soldiers are being killed.

I imagine this statistic can be manipulated. For example, the unctuous and importuning little commander on the ground, Gen. David Petraeus, could limit American casualties simply by curtailing street patrols where Americans get blown up. He could use aerial bombing more, and there is evidence this is exactly what he's doing. He could arm and bribe local Sunnis into directing their general antipathy toward changed circumstances against foreign jihadists and "al-Qaeda in Iraq," and this is announced official policy. All of these things dial down the American death-o-meter

Still, things do seem generally quieter in Baghdad and elsewhere, and that's a good thing that may be separate and apart from anything the Americans have done or not done. I would imagine, for example, that a young Iraqi insurgent, Sunni or Shiite, would simply tire of battle. It's been going on for several years, and it's a lousy way to live. It's made thousands of American soldiers completely crazy and dysfunctional, and compared to an Iraqi fighter, Americans have layers and layers of social and medical support. From the Sunni perspective, the ascendancy of the Shia is now a fait accompli; they greatly outnumber the Sunni and they dominate the army, police and militias. One of their number, Nouri al-Maliki, an old anti-Sunni guerrilla fighter, leads the notional Iraqi government, and no progress is being made toward power-sharing. The Sunni, on the other hand, have consolidated their control of western Iraq, and the independence of Kurdistan in the north (where they don't even bother to fly the Iraqi flag over government buildings) is another accomplished fact. So the remaining question, really, is Baghdad, a city which is likely to be embroiled in turmoil much as other multi-ethnic and -sectarian cities in the Middle East, including Jerusalem and Beirut, have been for decades. It's quieter, but it will never be completely quiet.

So maybe before too long we can actually assess the Iraq War as a crystallized experience, with a beginning, a middle and an end. It was a war the true purpose of which, gaining enhanced access to huge oil reserves, was camouflaged behind talk of weapons, al-Qaeda and regime change. After a relatively easy military victory (not unexpected), the occupation was completely botched, leading to the loss of thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, and maybe $2 trillion in war-related costs before all is said and done. America, it might be said, has tremendous brute force but little finesse, as can be confirmed in any American parking lot of any NFL football stadium a few hours before kickoff. Loutish? Yes. Competent? No. The opportunity cost to the USA in spending all that money on one project, the true purpose of which has not been realized, is real and gigantic (possibly decisive), but no one will ever bother to measure it. We don't do body counts, and we don't calculate squandered resources.

More likely, in this dumbed-down country of ours, the Iraq war will be chalked up as a "win" for George W. Bush. To figure it out any other way is just too subtle and too mentally taxing. But I'm still glad if an Iraqi family somewhere in Baghdad today can enjoy their Friday as much as I'm enjoying mine.

You mean...Bush knew about the Valerie Plame leak?

Knock me over with a feather. Scott McClellan, in his artlessly artful way, appears to imply that President George W. Bush was in on the ground floor of the Plame cover-up. In a careful leak of one excerpt from his new book, which apparently will not be published until April, 2008, McClellan exonerates himself and throws Bush, Cheney, Rove, Libby and Andrew Card under the bus. Then he declined interviews. Thus, McClellan can enjoy his Holiday season with a clear conscience, held in high esteem by his friends and relations once again, while leaving everyone else to pore over one paragraph like the entrails of a perfectly preserved pterodactyl. This is what passes for integrity in high places these days.

In March, 2007, on the Larry King show, McClellan was somewhat easier on Bush. McClellan: "I spoke with those individuals [Libby & Rove], ... and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. ... said what I believed to be true at the time. It was also what the president believed to be true at the time based on assurances that we were both given. Knowing what I know today, I would have never said that back then." This makes it sound like McClellan was told by Libby and Rove that they played no role in leaking Plame's name to the press, and that Bush was told the same (false) thing. Bush went around the country from July to the end of September, 2003, asserting that he intended to "get to the bottom" of the leak scandal, and assuring everyone that anyone involved in the leak would be fired, although this promise morphed into a threat to can only those "convicted of a crime." So if Bush was genuinely ignorant of the truth, that can only mean that Rove, Libby and Cheney sat mute while the Chief Executive discussed an "investigation" which they knew was completely unnecessary. Then, when the complete truth came out in the context of the Libby prosecution, and it was established that not only were Cheney, Libby and Rove aware of the leak, but in fact had orchestrated it, Bush took no action against the cabal. And these conspirators purposely kept him in the dark and allowed him to make a complete fool of himself at the same time he was looking stupid already for finding no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Huh?

That version of events has never made much sense. Bush has gotten away with it only because the comatose Washington press corps is too lazy to look at clues lying around in plain sight. I sit here this morning possessed only of my native logic, various quotes and a sense of the time line, plus the revelation from a hearing conducted by Henry Waxman, where James Knodell, the White House chief of security, confirmed that no internal investigation of the leak had ever been requested by Bush. How did Bush propose to get to the "bottom" of anything, other than the moral bottom where he and his Administration always dwell?

So when McClellan now writes that Bush was "involved" in McClellan's dissemination of false information about the leak, the logical inference to be drawn is that Bush knew from early on that Libby, Rove and Cheney were involved in the intentional outing of a covert operative. Bush's innocence simply does not make sense. An early decision to make him appear innocent does fit the case, and since he was widely regarded as a simpleton, this possessed an inherent credibility. The general approach of the cover-up was taken directly from the Watergate playbook, to insulate the top man from the shenanigans of his subordinates. But, as with Nixon, Bush wasn't innocent. If Scott McClellan ever expatiates on the subject, I imagine the true extent of Bush's complicity will become more apparent. Maybe Scottie's rehabilitation could follow the lines of John Dean's, il capo di tutti capi among historic whistle blowers.

The astounding thing is that the Washington press corps never figured this thing out, and that Bush was reelected in November, 2004. Dorothy, I don't think we're in 1973 anymore.

Sigmund and Marshall

I tend to think of Marshall McLuhan as a visionary in the same style as Sigmund Freud, someone whose ideas were ahead of the physiological neuroscience available to him at the time of his landmark work. As a result, the theories of both tended toward the heuristic and metaphorical rather than the rigorously scientific. I suppose a brain surgeon might plumb around all day in someone's cranium without actually finding the site of an id, or an ego or superego. As a result, Freud has been often dismissed by serious psychologists who are impatient with his references to Greek myths about killing the father as an explanation for a patient's neurosis. Well, he was doing what he could with what he knew; still in all, his hypothesis of an unconscious was extraordinarily fruitful in understanding the mysteries of human mental life, and for that alone he is justly regarded as a pioneering genius.

And McLuhan more than other theorists cast light on the pervasive influence of the electronic "extensions" of human consciousness found in "media," a term which was not widely used until his work. His writing is dense, allusive and elusive, and jargoned-up to the point where it's difficult to make sense of a sentence. Still, you knew something important was contained in his idea that the "medium was the message." I think we're now fully enclosed by the world he described, in fact. He once explained what he meant by saying the "content" of the medium, say a television program, was irrelevant to its effect; we could turn the airwaves over to public television and televise debates, educational programs, Shakespeare's plays or serials of Henry James's books on a 24/7 basis, and the effect on the viewers would be the same as nonstop "American Idol" and "Survivor." That's hard to accept, and given the state of neuroscience at the time, McLuhan seemed like a crackpot. Later research unearthed the reality that brain wave patterns when "consuming light" from a television are different from those when reading. The latter are conducive to retention and synthesis (sometimes called "learning"), whereas TV is a form of hypnotic relaxation. Furthermore, as described by Jerry Mander in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, constant consumption of television images distorts our perceptions of reality, substituting a "mediated world" in place of the real one that sustains our lives. Perhaps as a direct result of this substitution, humans have become increasingly careless about the appearance and health of the natural environment. And maybe you've noticed, as I think I have: you can't go anywhere out in public anymore without finding yourself surrounded by people using the gestures and stock phrases of television and movie characters. "Extensions" of consciousness, indeed; or have we become the extensions of it?

America always leads the way in these degenerate processes, of course. A new study by the National Endowment for the Arts revealed that Americans just don't read books very much anymore, and as a result, they can't write either. 72% of the employers surveyed said that recent high school graduates in their employ lacked basic proficiency in writing English. About half of all Americans aged 18 to 24 read a book "voluntarily" as a form of entertainment or self-improvement. Reading rates for all other Americans, and the amount spent per capita on books, are on steep downward trajectories over the last 20 years. I sometimes think that shows like "Hardball" and the rest of those irritatingly crappy programs should forswear Pat Buchanan and George Will for one afternoon and just bring a panel of public high school teachers and ask them what they think of the future of American democracy. Keep bringing them on, panel after panel, hundreds and hundreds of teachers on the front lines of America's future, until we get the idea. It might put a stop to this silly notion that one more "election cycle" is all that is necessary to transform the American polity into its former vibrant, productive self. It's probably truer to say we ain't seen nothin' yet. We think it can all be done with a conjurer's trick, as wish-fulfillment, instead of looking at the actual architecture of the "electronic village" and seeing how horribly wrong it's all gone while we weren't paying attention.

I gotta run; can't miss "Countdown" with Keith Olbermann. After all, he must have the answer to everything.

The IPCC lays it out

As part of my ongoing quest to fulfill the twin goals of my blog, that is, (1) to be as informative and entertaining as possible while (2) being as sharp a thorn in the side of the Bush Administration as possible, I commend to you the report of the Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change, linked right here at the Pond. I continue to think that those guys and gals, 2,000 scientists from relevant disciplines, deserve their Nobel Prize just as much as Al Gore, even though, unlike Al, they do not have seats on the Board of Directors at Google and Apple, and are not partners in a Palo Alto investment banking firm. Nor do they necessarily own a condo in a San Francisco high-rise, as Al and Tipper do, a pied-a-terre convenient for Al's show-and-shine appearances at Silicon Valley Internet events. Forget the "Draft Al Gore" malarkey; the guy is not going to take the pay cut and the step-down in stature. From Patron Saint of the global warming movement to just another sullied politician is a long fall indeed.

This report is such big news that it made the front page of today's San Francisco Chronicle, the Voice of the West. The Chronicle's account ran to a second full page, which, however, contained this puzzling observation: "Despite the exhaustive work by the U.N. Panel, much is still not known, the scientists said. For example, it is not clear whether the planet is more likely to be 2 to 3 degrees, or 10 degrees warmer by the end of the century. Other unknowns are the amount of sea level rise and how precipitation will be affected in different parts of the world."

Just as a style note, I wonder why the writers (Jane Kay and David Perlman) would refer to "the planet." It's Earth we're talking about; it's true we live on a "planet," but for now the only planet where global warming is an issue for us is the one we're trapped on. A cavil, true, but this "planet" stuff, which is intended to sound so Universe-hip, kind of grates on my classicist's nerves. Beyond the trivial, however, I have to say that's a helluva "for example." I assume that the writers are referring to the "scenario table" laid out by the IPCC, where they contrast different outcomes depending on the response of humanity to the crisis. (Of course the Chronicle writers also use constructions like "the data supports" [sic], which also grate on my classicist's nerves, but for different reasons; I think Bush's chronic difficulty with noun-verb agreement has infected common usage.) Back to the scenarios in the IPCC tables, which in fact answer the "mysteries" the Chronicle seems baffled by: Business as usual leads to an outcome known as humans-are-shit-on-toast, e.g., where global average temperatures might be 6 degrees C. higher by 2100. This would represent a continuation of the policies of the Bush Administration, world leaders in seeking human species extinction. White House flacks are busy eviscerating the IPCC Report as we speak, seeking to make it consistent with a world view that holds the Earth (our "planet") is 6,000 years old on which Man was given Dominion over all the beasts of the oceans and the fish of the world (or the other way around, it doesn't really matter), and the best thing that could possibly happen would be to speed up our ascension to Glory. So if those ideas go on...I still continue to maintain that Bush runs a very serious risk with his intransigence on this issue. It is becoming increasingly obvious in places like, oh, Atlanta, that this climate change problem is not some futuristic, sci-fi dystopia, but something you think about now when you turn on the water tap. He keeps talking about the need for more money, huge amounts of it, to send to a desert country busily installing an Islamic theocracy while Bush pays no attention to the imminent collapse of a second major Southern city during his presidency. Where Bush is most obtuse (and it is a characteristic which came back to haunt other rulers who mistook transient invulnerability for lifetime immunity) is in thinking that if things go really, really bad, an aroused American mob won't be looking around for people to blame and punish. Suppose that the good folks of Atlanta are forced, within the next 6 months, to begin dispersing to other parts of the country where they can finally take a shower. Why isn't this a realistic danger? They're down to 80 days of water, and Governor Sonny Perdue is now holding prayer meetings on the state capitol steps. I hope he has better luck with Divine intercession than indicated in all the controlled experiments on the practice. Shouldn't the USA be engaged in yet another "Manhattan Project" (so many Manhattans, so little time) to develop desalination using solar power to run a reverse osmosis system? And figuring out useful ways to handle all the osmotic sludge you pile up from doing so? Atlanta (and Los Angeles and Phoenix and New York City) are not that far from huge reservoirs of water (known as the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans) that are positively brimming with H2O, and which, in fact, are getting deeper every day! Research and industry like that could make the USA a world leader in...something again. Is ensuring a thriving Kurdistan really more important than all that? Do people down in the Peach State know how badly they're being neglected by this regime they, more than most states, put in power?

Another 14 months of this clown. While Atlantans pack up and move to Manitoba, Bush wants to keep sending all the taxpayer money he can get his hands on, and all he can borrow, to Baghdad. Of course, Georgians will have to cross a lot of decrepit bridges and overpasses to get there, and it will cost a fortune, what with $4 or $5 or $6 a gallon for gas, if, in fact, OPEC still accepts the greenback for oil. We may have to start laundering our money through a hard currency, like the Mexican peso.

I suppose one kind of prison for environmental criminals could be built on a remote and low-lying Pacific island. Suppose the jail is built right at (present) sea level. But the sentences are long, 20 or 30 years, and the inmates are told that no matter what happens, they won't be transferred somewhere else. The cells are only a few yards from the surf, and they're all on the ground floor. And what's worse, the world has chosen that very first scenario, business as usual...

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.