Stunned I am- Unlawful Surveillance Made Lawful

I guess I should have seen the writing on the wall. Naively thinking that our Congress and Senate would fulfill their Constitutional role to act as a balance against an unchecked imperial presidency. In the Republican party, where are the Howard Baker's? Where are the Bill Cohen's? And among Democrats, why is it that that only 25 Democrats willing to stand up to the Bush Administration and defend our Constitutional values.

And whenever I hear our brave Utah Senators talk about defending the Constitution, we need to remind them that when it was hanging by a thread, they bore their scissors and cut away. And Obama showed a glimpse into who he really is, which is someone who covets power enough to compromise on principle.

Hatch and Bennett- Support the Rule of Law

Let's see some noise among the Republican bloggers who support the Fourth Amendment and believe in the rule of law. I already know both Hatch and Bennett, and my opinion generally does not matter to them. Perhaps it does to liberty loving Republicans.

Today, the vote for telecom amnesty goes before the United States Senate. Sen. Hatch and Bennett will show whether they blindly support a corrupt president who spied on Americans without oversight in violation of the law. And they will show that the rule of law means nothing to them, because we can just retro-actively legalize those who broke the law.

So to my Republican friends, I lay the challenge before you. If you support the FISA bill going before the Senate, justify and defend that support. If you oppose the bill, speak up to your Republican U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Robert Bennett. I'm counting on you.

Two Hundred and Thirty Years Later, Who are we?

As we celebrate Indepence Day, I ask the question, "who are we?" I am well aware of what we were. I have studiously studied history and my mentor J.D. Williams told me to embrace and appreciate the uniqueness that it is to be an "American." Our country was much influenced by enlightenment thinking from the 18th and 19th century. The wisdom of Rousseau, Locke, Hume, Hutchison, Voltaire and Klopstock enabled a colony subservient to monarchy to break free of this constraint and devise a system of government that was accountable to the people, but constrained by the Constitution. Individauls became important, with inalienable rights, not wardens of the state or Dukedom. Certainly, our founders feared rash actions, and wanted to suppress the pashions of public opinion. David Miller in his fine blog has done a wonderful job of analyzing the "federalist papers" and examining what our founders had in mind.

But life today, seems to be dominated by fear. The attacks on 9/11, created an environment where Americans gave unprecedented powers to the executive branch under the guise of protecting us. Many Americans, magnified the Al Qaeda victory over us on 9/11 by discarding the Constitutional provisions that provided for oversight of the Executive Branch. Republicans in lock-step, and Democrats fearing appearing soft on terrorism, surrendered without condition freedoms that many of us took for granted.

Let me put it plainly. Every liberty we surrender in our quest for better security is an appeasement to Al Qaeda. Every freedom we give up tells Al Qaeda, "uncle."

Listen, I am not willing to say uncle to a bunch of uber-religious morons like Al Qaeda. But the adminstration of George W. Bush has done nothing but emboldended the religious fanatics I despise. Bush is incompetent on many levels. But his handling on the war on terror will be used for generations regards a "not what to do" warning.

Admittedly, I supported the surge, and showed a certain confidence in Gen. Petraeus, Sec. of Defense Gates and others. Not because I supported the invasion of Iraq, which I didn't, but because we are actually there, and we now have a responsibility to the Iraqi people to give them a fighting chance to secure a better life. The positions I've taken are not popular with liberals or conservatives, but are based upon my own analysis.

BTW, I hope everyone enjoys the 4th of July and contemplates upon what is the best things that have made our Republic a remarkable experiment.

My Message Sent to Barack Obama

Barack:

I think Glenn Greenwald from Salon.com got it right when he wrote:

"A typical line in Barack Obama's stump speech throughout the primary season was that "the era of Scooter Libby justice . . . will finally be over." But this new FISA bill -- and the immunity it bequeaths -- is the very essence of "Lewis Libby justice": ensuring that our highest political officials and other well-connected elites can break our laws with total impunity. Courts keep ruling that the President and his allies have no excuses for having broken our laws, while our political establishment acts to ensure that they are protected from the consequences."

It's not too late to show the kind of leadership many of us thought we were going to get when we whole-heartedly supported your campaign. Please step up and not only oppose, but lead other Democrats in opposition to this evisceration of the Fourth Amendment.

Obi wan liberali's IRL Name

Matheson, Matheson, Matheson.....

Sorry for the Ferris Buehler reference.

Just an update- I still have not heard back from our "blue-belly" democratic congressman from the 2nd Congressional District. Neither he, nor one of his staffers has sought to contact me and explain his vote, despite two requests. I'm entertaining plausible explanations for the silence:

1- My e-mail came accross a little strong and therefore I hurt Jim's feelings and he and his staff felt such an e-mail is unworthy of a response from someone with the inherent uprightness of Jim Matheson.

2-Jim has no good explanation for his vote for telecom amnesty. However, he is told by his pollsters that giving his Republican candidate any ammunition at all on being "soft" on the Bush Administration's war on terror is a bad thing, so hopefully, he'll just go away and the issue will die.

3-Jim truly believes that the government should be able to spy on it's citizens without any oversight from the FISA court and that the Telecoms were doing their patriotic duty in fighting the war on terror. Above all, the fact that this liberal blogger is against telecom immunity, suggests he is not a real American and shouldn't be answered by his office, but referred to the FBI for further investigation.

4- Jim and his staff have been busy receiving campaign contributions from telecommunication company execs and will answer the e-mail as soon as he can catch his breath.

I'm betting on either 3 or 4.

General Richard Meyers- War Criminal

An investigation into the systematic use of torture as an interrogation technique has found that Gen. Richard Meyers, while acting as Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, quashed legal review of the approved techniques. From an article by Mark Benjamin of Salon,

"In late 2002, documents show, officials from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps all complained that harsh interrogation tactics under consideration for use at the prison in Guantánamo Bay might be against the law. Those military officials called for further legal scrutiny of the tactics. The chief of the Army's international law division, for example, said in a memo that some of the tactics, such as stress positions and sensory deprivation, "cross the line of 'humane treatment'" and "may violate the torture statute."

However, General Myers put an end to the legal debate. When all four branches of the military have reservations, I would think, that maybe the commanding General would as well.

I remember watching the series Battlefied: Stalingrad, Prelude to Battle. The narrator said something to effect, "that German soldiers would descend to a level of barbarism, that soldiers of previous generation would have considered unthinkable." And so it is with our Secretary of Defense, and top military officer, that they would authorize actions that would descend to a level of barbarism, that the previous generation would have considered "unthinkable." And it seems that only a bunch of left-wing liberal bloggers could actually care less. That is very worrisome.

Frontline- Bush's War I, II- Some Thoughts

First of all, I find it embarrassing that it takes public television to really look at what has happened in Iraq and Afganistan. Even so, the wonderful documentary they put together has it's flaws. I would suggest that anyone who watches it also go to PBS.org and read the extended interviews to get the whole picture because PBS kind of picks and chooses among the quotes to use in the documentary, to generally support certain theses regarding what went wrong in Iraq and who was responsible.

Clearly, L. Paul Bremer, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and arguably the most incompetent nincompoop who ever had a high position in government, Douglas Feith, look pretty bad in this documentary. The lack of a strong President to reel in and focus the strong countervailing personalities of Cheney/Rumsfeld and Powell/Tenet shows Bush to be clearly over his head as an executive. Never having the intellect to ask the right questions, he was easily led, and made one bad decision after another. There are many people who really think Bush is a good person, who means well. That may be, but I'm not convinced. At best you can say he has been incompetent. At worst, you can argue that he is a war criminal. But it surprises me to this day, how few Utahns see it. I think some of it is, a refusal to admit a mistake. People who buy bad cars, often stick by them, even though they empty their wallets paying for repairs. Just as Bush would never admit that he was easily led, Utahns seem incapable of admitting the same.

But for those who have not watched the documentary, I suggest they do. It is still available to be viewed online. It interviews people who were close to the action, who were major players. It dissects both the decision to go to war, as well as the lack of a coherent strategy for reconstruction and dealing with the insurgencies in Iraq. To some extent, it extolls the virtues of the surge, a surge I actually supported. Though I opposed going into Iraq, once there, I have always argued that we need to succeed or the consequences would be dire. Past posts regarding Iraq out me in that regard. My biggest concern has been that the surge may be too little and too late, and without a significant increase in the size of our military, that we are overextending the military we have. I've also argued that we need to reinstitute the draft so that if we are truly committed to this war, the burden should be shared. I have also argued, that we should increase taxes to pay for the additional divisions and to increase the pay and benefits of our men and women who serve in harms way. Going into debt to fight a war just doesn't make sense. If we as citizens of this country truly support this thing, we need to pay for it.

I also have argued for more counter-insurgency training in U.S. troops. Obviously, the Rumsfeldian military view of going in small, mobile and with great air support, though good at overthrowing a government, is insufficient for maintaining or re-establishing order. The PBS documentary provides a much better analysis of military strategy, than seems to have occured in the back rooms of the Bush Administration.

Who looks good in the documentary? General Thomas Keane, retired, Colonel H.R. McMaster (who begs the question of how in the hell did General Sanchez make general and McMaster remains a Colonel) also looks good as he does in Thomas Rick's book "Fiasco". The CIA looks like victims of Cheney's strong-armed tactics to market a case for war in Iraq. Richard Armitage covers his arse rather well in the Frontline documentary and makes a plug for his old boss Colin Powell.

In the end, I find it a remarkable documentary. But what I find even more remarkable, is that none of the major news networks put together anything as informative as this documentary. We as a democratic society are dependent upon our press, and it takes public broadcasting to even let us glimpse what went on in our government at the highest levels in the most important issue of our nation at war. The press in our country has failed us. There is no other conclusion that I can come to. However, a few courageous journalists such as Thomas Ricks, Ron Suskind and others did provide us some valuable information. But we all had to search for it. Hannity and Colmes never really touched the subject, nor did Anderson 360.

My thanks to PBS for their Frontline documentary on Bush's War I and II. I recommend everyone watch it online, and just as important, read the extended interviews of the important players.