The anti-war majority, Glenn Reynolds, and the dishonest tactics of the pro-war right

by Glenn Greenwald on Saturday, July 29th, 2006

For almost two years now, polls have continuously shown (.pdf) that a solid majority of Americans opposes the war in Iraq - the signature policy of the Bush administration and its followers - and believes it was a mistake. But a new analysis of Gallup poll data (to which John refers below) reveals that opposition to the war isn't just substantial, but is greater than it was for the Korean War, and roughly equal to the opposition Americans expressed towards the Vietnam War even as late as 1970:

From Editor & Publisher::

An analysis released today by Frank Newport, director of The Gallup Poll, shows that current public wishes for U.S. policy in the Iraq war eerily echo attitudes about the Vietnam war in 1970.

The most recent Gallup poll this month found that 52% of adult Americans want to see all U.S. troops out of Iraq within a year, with 19% advocating immediate withdrawal. In the summer of 1970, Gallup found that 48% wanted a pullout within a year, with 23% embracing the "immediate" option. Just 7% want to send more troops now, vs. 10% then.

At present, 56% call the decision to invade Iraq a "mistake," with 41% disagreeing. Again this echoes the view of the Vietnam war in 1970, when that exact same number, 56%, in May 1970 called it a mistake in a Gallup poll.

Polling data such as this conclusively demonstrates - in a way that even the national media can no longer ignore - just how dishonest and corrupt has been the favorite tactic of pro-war Bush followers: namely, to depict their pro-war views as "mainstream," while even more loudly characterizing truly mainstream anti-war views as being fringe, radical and anti-American.

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Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects

By JAMES GLANZ
Published: July 30, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 - The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.

The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.

In March 2005, A.I.D. asked the Iraq Reconstruction and Management Office at the United States Embassy in Baghdad for permission to downsize some projects to ease widespread financing problems. In its request, it said that it had to "to absorb greatly increased construction costs" at the Basra hospital, and that it would make a modest shift of priorities and reduce "contractor overhead" on the project.

The hospital's construction budget was $50 million. By April of this year, Bechtel had told the aid agency that because of escalating costs for security and other problems, the project would actually cost $98 million to complete. But in an official report to Congress that month, the agency "was reporting the hospital project cost as $50 million," the inspector general wrote in his report.

The report said it suspected that other unreported costs on the hospital could drive the tab even higher. In another case cited in the report, a power station project in Musayyib, the direct construction cost cited by the development agency was $6.6 million, while the overhead cost was $27.6 million.

One result is that the project's overhead, a figure that normally runs to a maximum of 30 percent, was a stunning 418 percent.

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Pentagon to Boost Iraq Troops to 135,000

By LOLITA C. BALDOR
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006

The Pentagon's move to increase U.S. forces in Iraq will push troops levels to roughly 135,000, dashing Bush administration hopes of dropping that figure by tens of thousands by the fall congressional campaigns.

As of Friday, there were 16 Army and Marine brigades in Iraq, two more than the level several months ago. And the total troops there had already reached 132,000, and will climb in the coming weeks, buoyed by the decision to delay the scheduled return home this month of an Alaskan Army brigade.

The move is in response to the escalating violence in Baghdad and the new troop levels could remain intact for much of next year.

The move comes as members of Congress are preparing to return to their home districts, readying their November re-election campaigns — and robs them of the ability to tell an increasingly impatient public that the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will substantially drop by the end of the year, as they had hoped.

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washingtonpost.com

Detainee Abuse Charges Feared
Shield Sought From '96 War Crimes Act

By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 28, 2006; Page A01

An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts.

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S. - held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment.

In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such "protections," according to someone who heard his remarks last week.

Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said.

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Huffington Post
Maliki's Testy Visit: Is This What Our Troops Are Dying For?

What more, Maliki wants to "maintain strong ties to Iran," has sided with Hezbollah in the current hostilities with Israel, and has pledged $35 million in aid to Lebanon (where is that money coming from?). And then we have the speaker of the Iraqi Parliament saying "I personally think whoever kills an American soldier in defense of his country would, have a statue built for him in that country.

So this is what over 2,500 American have died for, what over 18,500 Americans have been wounded for, what the American people have spent over $320 billion helping create: a government that makes nice with Iran, backs Hezbollah, and some of whose members think the killers of American soldiers deserve a statue? We can't bring back those lives, heal those wounds, or recoup that money, but we can say enough is enough.

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Israel Violates US Law With Attack on Lebanon

by Thalif Deen
July 18, 2006

Israel is in violation of U.S. arms-control laws for deploying U.S.-made fighter planes, combat helicopters, and missiles to kill civilians and destroy Lebanon's infrastructure in the ongoing six-day devastation of that militarily weak country.

"Section 4 of the [U.S.] Arms Export Control Act requires that military items transferred to foreign governments by the United States be used solely for internal security and legitimate self-defense," says Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.

"Since Israeli attacks against Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and population centers clearly go beyond legitimate self-defense, the United States is legally obliged to suspend arms transfers to Israel," Zunes told IPS.

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Israel Violates US Law With Attack on Lebanon

by Thalif Deen
July 18, 2006

Israel is in violation of U.S. arms-control laws for deploying U.S.-made fighter planes, combat helicopters, and missiles to kill civilians and destroy Lebanon's infrastructure in the ongoing six-day devastation of that militarily weak country.

"Section 4 of the [U.S.] Arms Export Control Act requires that military items transferred to foreign governments by the United States be used solely for internal security and legitimate self-defense," says Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.

"Since Israeli attacks against Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and population centers clearly go beyond legitimate self-defense, the United States is legally obliged to suspend arms transfers to Israel," Zunes told IPS.

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BUSH: I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq, where there’s a free press and free religion. And I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia will do the same thing. I fully understand, however, that there will be a Russian-style democracy.

PUTIN: We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.

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counterpunch
Does a State of War Give Bush a Right to Commit War Crimes?
By Dave Lindorff
7-11-06

Right-wing columnist Charles Krauthammer has weighed in against the Supreme Court's latest ruling in Hamdan, claiming that the Court erred in barring President Bush from denying Guantanamo detainees the protections of the Third Geneva Convention. The basis for his argument is that the U.S. is at war, and that traditionally "supreme courts have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict."

Let's look at this assertion for a minute.

First of all, the fact that in the past, presidents have grievously abused their power during wartime, and damaged the Constitution in the process, is hardly grounds for letting this president do so again. Krauthammer cites, for example, President Lincoln's famous revocation of the age-old common law right of habeas corpus--the right to have one's imprisonment brought before a judge--to justify Bush's current denial of habeas corpus to captives in Guantanamo Bay.

Well, what Krauthammer fails to mention is that in 1866, the Supreme Court slapped down the administration of the assassinated President Lincoln, overturning the detention and execution order (never carried out) of one Lambdin P. Milligan, who had been arrested on orders of the president on a charge of treason and denied habeas rights. In that ruling, the Justice David Davis wrote:

The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism, but the theory of necessity on which it is based is false, for the government, within the Constitution, has all the powers granted to it which are necessary to preserve its existence, as has been happily proved by the result of the great effort to throw off its just authority. (Milligan, 71 U.S. 2 (1866))

Those stirring words should be mailed to every member of Congress as they now consider the Supreme Court's Hamdan ruling, with many Republicans clamoring to pass a law exempting the Guantanamo detainees from the Geneva Convention's jurisdiction.

Is the country at war?

Neither the fighting in Afghanistan, nor the larger fighting in Iraq--which was certainly a war (with us as the invader!), but which is now a police action at the request of a sovereign government, in the words of our president himself--is a war.

The only "war" that can be at issue then, is the so-called "war on terror." But is this in any way a real "war"? Unless one believes the self-serving clap-trap of the administration that the soldiers in Iraq are fighting in the war on terror--an absurdity because there were no terrorists in Iraq before the U.S. invaded that country, and now what is called "terrorism" in Iraq, at least as directed against U.S. interests, is nothing but garden variety guerrilla warfare against a foreign army (ours)--the answer has to be no. As Bush famously declared back on April 30, 2003, major combat ended in Iraq over three years ago. There is no war in Iraq.

That leaves the global "war" on terrorism. But let's get real. This is no more a war than was the "war" on drugs or the "war" on poverty. Sure, there may be a few soldiers who are involved, but mostly it's about spying, monitoring, infiltrating and arresting suspected terrorists. To call that kind of thing a war is to debase the currenty of the language beyond recognition. (The truth is there are probably more actual U.S. military forces involved in the so-called "war" on drugs than there are involved in the so-called "war" on terror.)

Moreover, while terrorists certainly can threaten the lives and safety of Americans, they cannot threaten the survival of or the territorial integrity of the United States, which is after all what wars are all about.

Furthermore, Krauthammer speaks of presidents needing to be able to suspend Constitutional rights and to claim special extra-constitutional powers during wars, and of the tradition of them then restoring those rights after a conflict ends. But the administration has made it clear, in between stirring calls for "total victory," that there will be no end to this "war" on terror. And indeed there cannot be, for there will always be those who will seek to disrupt or punish a global power like the U.S. through the use of terror. To accept the argument that fighting against such threats requires a suspension of rights and a president with dictatorial powers is to say that the Constitution, with its separation of powers and its Bill of Rights, is finished.

Like the administration he serves, Krauthammer is simply wrong, and surely in making such a preposterous claim has surrendered the right to call himself a conservative.

Justice Davis, writing at a time right after the nation had fought a four-year war for its very survival, a year after the president had been slain by an agent of the enemy, and while forces of resistance in the South were continuing to battle U.S. occupation troops, had it exactly right when he said: "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace."

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Specter touts deal on eavesdropping review
By Katherine Shrader
7-13-06

WASHINGTON - The White House has conditionally agreed to a court review of its controversial eavesdropping program, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter said Thursday.

Specter said President Bush has agreed to sign legislation that would authorize the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's most high-profile monitoring operations.

"You have here a recognition by the president that he does not have a blank check," the Pennsylvania Republican told his committee.

An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement.

The official said that Bush will submit to the court review as long the bill is not changed, adding that the legislation preserves the right of future presidents to skip the court review.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee's senior Democrat, said Bush could submit the program to the court right now, if he wished. He called the potential legislation "an interesting bargain."

"He's saying, if you do every single thing I tell you to do, I'll do what I should have done anyway," Leahy said.

"The key point in the bill is that it recognizes the president's constitutional authority,"

• Some Key Points in the bill
• • Require the attorney general to give the intelligence court information on the program's constitutionality, the government's efforts to protect Americans’ identities and the basis used to determine that the intercepted communications involve terrorism.
• • Expand the time for emergency warrants secured under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from three to seven days.
• • Create a new offense if government officials misuse information.
• • At the NSA's request, clarify that international calls that merely pass through terminals in the United States are not subject to the judicial process established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
• • The administration official, who asked not to be identified because discussions are still ongoing, said the bill also would give the attorney general power to consolidate the 100 lawsuits filed against the surveillance operations into one case before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

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Mixed signals on Guantanamo trials
McCain says what he heard is different from what officials testified

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain said Thursday that senior officials in the Bush administration had agreed to prosecute suspected terrorists using a court system similar to the military’s code of justice.

Citing recent meetings with Stephen Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, and other top administration officials, McCain said the White House would not insist upon legislation authorizing military commissions established by the Pentagon.

Such a promise would contradict testimony heard earlier this week from administration officials, who told lawmakers that Congress should not turn to the Uniform Code of Military Justice because it would grant terrorists too many freedoms and would be impractical on the battlefield.

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23% of Us are Fuc*ed!

Acording to his findings [Dean], a vast majority of Conservatives are drawn into the Leader/Follower archetype, where the Leaders are considered infallable, and the loyalty of the Followers is completely unshakable. About "23% of the populace falls into the follower category" said Dean. "These people are impervious" to fact, rationality and reality. And their "Numbers are growing".

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The paramountcy of neoconservatism and Joe Lieberman

American political conflicts are usually described in terms of "liberal versus conservative," but that is really no longer the division which drives our most important political debates. The predominant political conflicts over the last five years have been driven by a different dichotomy -- those who believe in neoconservatism versus those who do not. Neoconservatism is responsible for virtually every significant political controversy during the Bush administration -- from our invasion of Iraq to the array constitutional abuses perpetrated in the name of fighting terrorism -- and that ideological dispute is even what is driving the war over Joe Lieberman's Senate seat. It is not traditional conservatism or liberalism, but rather one's views on neoconservativsm, which have become the single most important factor in where one falls on the political spectrum.

To neoconservatives like Kristol, Americans have abandoned the President and the U.S. has lost credibility around the world because we have been insufficiently militaristic and belligerent. We haven't threatened and invaded enough countries, and we are too eager to leave Iraq.

Pushing this theme of excess American weakness even further, The New York Sun yesterday published an admirably honest editorial entitled "Bring Back the Neocons," which argues that American foreign policy is failing becasue we stopped listening to warrior-genuises like Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Scooter Libby. As a result of America's failures to live up to the demands of neoconservatism, we have become weak and ineffectual...

Much of the criticism directed at the challenge to Joe Lieberman is based on the premise that dissatisfaction with Lieberman is driven merely by one little issue - Iraq. But that argument is at once both factually false and absurd. Lieberman is supportive of the neonconservative agenda almost across the board. And this ideological conflict, far from being one little issue, is really the issue, and Joe Lieberman is on the other side, politically and ideologically, from those who are opposing his re-election. He has even adopted the neoconservative rhetoric of equating criticisms of George Bush with undermining American interests and national security. What could be more legitimate than urging the defeat of an elected official who has enthusiastically embraced and promoted a disastrous and destructive philosophical approach to the most significant foreign and domestic issues our country faces?

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Camp Democracy.org

Cindy Sheehan and activists in the growing peace movement plan to move Camp Casey to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., September 8 - 21. The camp on the Mall will carry the name Camp Democracy at Fort Fed Up. Organizers intend the camp to bring together peace activists with activists for social justice, united in demanding a shift of public resources from war to the needs of people. Participants will lobby Congress to end all funding of the occupation of Iraq, and will demand that Congress hold the Bush Administration accountable for the falsehoods that launched the war and the abuses of power here at home that have accompanied it. Camp Democracy is launching an outreach effort to include organizations in the planning of the camp's activities, which are all in the initial stages.

Mission Statement

A camp for peace, democracy, and the restoration of the rule of law. Camp Casey will move from Crawford, Texas, to Washington, D.C., to create a larger camp focused not only on ending the war but also on righting injustices here at home and on holding accountable the Bush Administration and Congress. Tents will provide activist activities, trainings, workshops, and entertainment on these themes: War/ Peace/ Nonviolence | The Constitution/ Accountability/ Censure/ Impeachment | Poverty/ Katrina/ Immigration/ Labor | Environment/ Health Care/ Education

Sponsoring Organizations

Gold Star Families for Peace AfterDowningStreet.org National Immigrant Solidarity Network Traprock Peace Center CODE PINK Global Exchange Progressive Democrats of America Democrats.com Democracy Cell Project The World Can't Wait Velvet Revolution ACORN   •   NOW New Orleans Voices for Peace Cities for Peace Backbone Campaign Hip Hop Caucus

Democracy Rising VotersforPeace DC Labor for Peace and Justice U.S. Labor Against the War Reclaim the Commons Veterans for Peace Iraq Veterans Against the War Stop the War Coalition (UK) San Juan Peace Network Consumers for Peace Texans for Peace Buddhist Peace Fellowship Campus Antiwar Network Cedar Valley United for Peace and Justice (Iowa) One Global Community Bake Sales for Body Armor

Camp Democracy.org

On being a patriot

I wasn't sure what to say on this fourth of July. I am labeled unpatriotic because I don't think the United States can do no wrong. E. J. Dionne has some thoughts today in A Dissident's Holiday. Go read the entire piece but here are a few snips.

Most reformers guard their patriotic credentials by moving quickly to the next logical step: that the true genius of America has always been its capacity for self-correction. I'd assert that this is a better argument for patriotism than any effort to pretend that the Almighty has marked us as the world's first flawless nation.

[.....]

This telling of the Fourth of July story identifies the day as part of a long, progressive history and turns "agitators" and "plotters of mischief" into the holiday's true heroes. The Fourth is transformed from an affirmation of continuity into a celebration of change. The republic's founders are praised not because they inaugurated a system designed to stand forever, unaltered, but because they blazed a path toward what Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has called "active liberty." They set the nation on a course that would, as Breyer put it, expand "the scope of democratic self-government."

This is not a philosophy for the stand-patter nor a recipe for living in the past. And it emphatically rejects any definition of true patriotism that cedes to a current ruling group the right to declare what is or is not "Americanism."

When I look at this picture I wonder if the symbol of this great nation was shedding tears because of the attack on the United States by al-Qaeda or if he was anticipating the internal attack on everything this country stands for from those in power.

Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight

Firedoglake has all the info on this welcome development, including video of him squirming around at his announcement today.   Jane and the crew have been instrumental in backing Ned Lamont in his bid to unseat the democrat turned pachyderm lover.

Cut and Run - Firedoglake - By Jane Hamsher

Sore Loserman - Firedoglake - by Christy Hardin Smith

Call the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee at 202-224-2447

Email them at DSCC : Contact Info WebPage

Contact Shumer at the DSCC and let them know not to spend one dime on Joementum if he runs as an independant.   They need to hear our voices loud and clear.

The Court Enters the War, Loudly

By Adam Liptak
Published: July 2, 2006

The court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Professor Yoo said, may signal the collapse of the entire enterprise. "It could affect detention conditions, interrogation methods, the use of force," he said. "It could affect every aspect of the war on terror."

The logic of the ruling and its requirement that Congress directly authorize presidential actions even in wartime has broad implications. For one thing, said Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard, it seems to destroy the administration's argument that Congress blessed the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program when it voted for the authorization.

Because Article II of the Constitution, among other things, anoints the president as commander in chief, Professor Yoo and other administration lawyers have argued the president can ignore or override laws that seem to limit his authority to conduct war. In the current struggle against terrorism, they argue, the entire world is the battlefield.

Perhaps not any more. Steven G. Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern and a founder of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, said this second argument is also in trouble.

"The court is certainly not embracing the broader Article II power," he said.

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