Next time Steve ask me. Of course I am one of those unemployed Americans who won't do any work that an illegal alien will do.

Thanks for the note Ron. I hope your prospects improve. I tend to believe that the absence of serious economic strategy and investment in this nation's high-tech/productive capacity is a huge strategic error and is undermining the jobs base.
Best regards,
Steve Clemons

If I had been there,when Bellinger discussed the legal rationalizations and justifications for many of the Bush Admin positions I probably would've lost my dinner. How DOES one justify torture while touting Geneva Conventions? On a good note, what a great stress reliever, to be able to vent on this guy!!!

And the point of all this is what, Steve? Why
sit at dinner and listen to immoral functionaries
justify the indefensible?

It should be clear after six years of an
administration that makes Nixon look good that
there is no point in dialog. The fish is rotten
at the head. Only political opposition matters.
There is no middle road with these radicals.

I don't really care what justifications these
people come up with for torture and their
other criminal acts. I would be much more
interested in learning why you set up
dinners like this.

Ian

Steve,

Keep going to these meetings. Since when was anyone the worse for wear for listening to others ideas?

I swear some of you guys sound like McCarthy. Heaven forbid there are ideas in this world that are not in total agreement with yours.

Steve,

Keep going to these meetings. Since when was anyone the worse for wear for listening to others ideas?

I swear some of you guys sound like McCarthy. Heaven forbid there are ideas in this world that are not in total agreement with yours.

"I give John Bellinger enormous credit for his willingness to engage in public forums of this sort."
Just one question. Why was he so willing to engage in a public forum? Surely not for personnel reasons.

"The second part of his talk essentially provided legal rationalizations and justifications for many of the controversial positions of the Bush administration."

So, these criminals are still still trying to tell us that torture is A-OK, and anything goes as long as they say it goes. Great Steve, sounds like it was enlightening. Dialogue??? Yeah right. The ONLY dialogue I want to hear from these bastards is is their pleas at triaL.

I met someone recently at the Harvard Club in NYC who said they heard mention of a "Dartmouth Plan" signed by a Publius that was either posted or referenced here. Does anyone know where I might obtain a copy? Apparently, it offers some interesting insights on a progressive approach to national security strategy, esp. Iraq and Iran. Please respond to Bushwhacker_2004@yahoo.com if you have any information concerning it.

Steve,

Has it occurred to people like Bellinger that on our current path we might "win the war on terrorism" and lose our souls? Certainly, we have handed radical Islamists a great victory. For an investment of less than 20 people and less than $1,000,000, we have begun the process of dismantling the very freedoms that our President claims our enemies hate most.

My continual worry is, suppose we win! What will the U.S. look like in 10 or 20 years? What will our remaining rights as citizens be?

At the moment, I am not optimistic.

Oh-oh, I smell hypocrisy... On the one hand, people snark: 'Why talk to these guys at all? - The only thing they understand is raw power. Impeach away!'

At the same time, you hear the same people asking 'Why did the Wilkersons of this administration not speak out while they were on the inside - when it could have made a difference?'

How glib. How pointless. What an easy way to load off your own responsibilities as a citizen on somebody else. Human nature, I guess.

Remember Shinseki? He spoke out against Rumsfeld's 'plan'. Did that change anything? Were any changes made because of Shinseki's dissent?

I thank Wilkerson for speaking out, even if he did it on impulse - having been 'persuaded at the podium' by no other than Steve Clemons to do so ;-) Btw, check out Wilkerson's remarks this week at the Middle East Institute if you haven't already. Pay attention to his remarks on Wolfowitz the MEK, and Iran, short as they are. Oh, and Sam Gardiner tells CNN the US is already waging a clandestine, low-intensity war against Iran as we speak. Boots on the ground, air strikes to follow.

CLANCY: Well, Colonel Gardiner, from what you're saying, it would seem like military men, then, might be cautioning, don't go ahead with this. But what are the signs that are out there right now? Is there any evidence of any movement in that direction?

GARDINER: Sure. Actually, Jim, I would say -- and this may shock some -- I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way.

CLANCY: Why?

GARDINER: And let me say this -- I'm saying this carefully. First of all, Sy Hersh said in that article which was...

CLANCY: Yes, but that's one unnamed source.

GARDINER: Let me check that. Not unnamed source as not being valid.

The way "The New Yorker" does it, if somebody tells Sy Hersh something, somebody else in the magazine calls them and says, "Did you tell Sy Hersh that?" That's one point.

The secretary point is, the Iranians have been saying American military troops are in there, have been saying it for almost a year. I was in Berlin two weeks ago, sat next to the ambassador, the Iranian ambassador to the IAEA. And I said, "Hey, I hear you're accusing Americans of being in there operating with some of the units that have shot up revolution guard units."

He said, quite frankly, "Yes, we know they are. We've captured some of the units, and they've confessed to working with the Americans."

The evidence is mounting that that decision has already been made, and I don't know that the other part of that has been completed, that there has been any congressional approval to do this.

My view of the plan is, there is this period in which some kinds of ground troops will operate inside Iran, and then what we're talking about is the second part, which is this air strike.

CLANCY: All right. You lay this whole scenario, but there are still a lot of caution flags that one would see out here.

GARDINER: Sure. True.

CLANCY: If they do decide on a military option...

GARDINER: Right?

CLANCY: ... what's the realistic chance of success? What's your -- your prognosis for that kind of reaction here?

GARDINER: Yes. Let me give you two answers to that. First of all, the chance of getting the facilities and setting back the program, I think the chances go from maybe two years to actually accelerating the program. You know, we could cause them to redouble their efforts. That's on one side.

The other side is this sort of horizontal escalation by the Iranians.

My assessment is -- and it's because of regime problems at home -- that if we strike, they're likely to want to blame Israel. Now that's -- because that sells well at home.

Blaming Israel means that there's a chance that we could see Hezbollah, Hamas targeting Israel. We could very easily see this thing escalate into a broader Middle East war, particularly when you add Muslim rage.

You know, if you take the cartoon problem and multiply it times a hundred -- you know, the Danish cartoons, you could see how we could end up very quickly with a very serious problem in the Middle East.

CLANCY: Former U.S. Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner. Not a very rosy outlook here. A man who thinks the decision may have already been made.

Thank you for being with us.

GARDINER: Certainly.

Back to Wilkerson: could he have had an impact on the course of events had he gone public with his concerns while he was Powell's chief of staff? No idea. I doubt it. I believe his speaking out last October has most certainly had an impact.

AFAIK Steve is trying to establish where - exactly - the battle lines are being drawn between Defense and State with Rice at the helm. I for one would like to see him post whatever conclusions he comes up with.

However the ground is truly shifting. The system of government is breaking down further every day, even faster than before. Now we have the (recently retired) military leadership of the United States, stepping into the political arena and shouting 'No more! Stop this madness! Remove these lunatic civilians from the levers of power!'

Let that sink in for a moment.

The military says the civilian leadership is crazy, out of control and needs to be reigned in.

To wit:
There were indications on Thursday that the concern about Mr. Rumsfeld, rooted in years of pent-up anger about his handling of the war, was sweeping aside the reticence of retired generals who took part in the Iraq war to criticize an enterprise in which they participated. Current and former officers said they were unaware of any organized campaign to seek Mr. Rumsfeld's ouster, but they described a blizzard of telephone calls and e-mail messages as retired generals critical of Mr. Rumsfeld weighed the pros and cons of joining in the condemnation.

Even as some of their retired colleagues spoke out publicly about Mr. Rumsfeld, other senior officers, retired and active alike, had to be promised anonymity before they would discuss their own views of why the criticism of him was mounting. Some were concerned about what would happen to them if they spoke openly, others about damage to the military that might result from amplifying the debate, and some about talking outside of channels, which in military circles is often viewed as inappropriate.

Three more years of this? Pardon my french but you have *got* to be shitting me.

"The military says the civilian leadership is crazy, out of control and needs to be reigned in."

My belief is that the military upper echelon believes that these crazy bastards are about to ESCALATE our military involvement in the middle east by committing some act of insanity like nuking Iran, and they recognize the ramifications of such an act. Meanwhile, Iran's leader is mouthing off about Israel, and we are rapidly approaching an apocalyptic showdown. Israel will surely seek to capitalize on Iran's rhetoric, using the blood and treasure of the U.S. to counter the threat. Israel is not beyond doing a false flag attack against our interests, that implicate Iran as the agressor. In light of the incompetence and dishonestty that has been the rule of thumb in Iraq, we can only expect any military action launched against Iran to be just another outrageous and costly display of wasted lives, military failures, and false justifications. We are going to be damned lucky if Bush's actions, coupled with and fueled by Israel's dangerous grip on our foreign policies, do not light an inferno that will be impossible to extinguish.

A question for sovietologists out there (is that why they hired Rice?)

What are the chances of ruling a superpower, population 300 million, with an approval rating close to single digits?

How many years, tops?

Now, we all know who's running the country, and it's not the chimp.

Hint: Look for the guy who shoots off people's faces.

Some say 30%. Some say 18%

According to the WaPo, that makes America's most powerful man..

· Less popular with Americans than Joseph Stalin is with Russians. In 2003, fully 20 percent said Stalin, blamed for millions of deaths in the former Soviet Union during the 1930s and 1940s, was a "wise and humane" leader. Thirty-one percent also said they wouldn't object if Uncle Joe came back to rule again, according to surveys conducted by Russian pollsters.

· Much less popular than former Vice President Spiro Agnew in his final days in office. Forty-five percent approved of the job that Agnew was doing as President Richard Nixon's veep in a Gallup Poll conducted in August 1973, little more than a month before Agnew resigned and pleaded no contest to a criminal tax evasion charge arising from a bribery investigation.

Anyone clear that up for us?

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A progressive agenda for America.

I demand that the Republican Party hold a press conference and accede to these demands. Until such a press conference happens and the legislation and/or actions gets passed I will boycott products from Republican contributors Dell Computers, Walmart, Wendy's, Outback Steak House, Dominos Pizza, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Eckerd, CVS and Walgreens, Curves for women health clubs, General Electric and Exxon/Mobil.

I demand that congress pass legislation ending the war in Iraq and withdraw the troops and arrange with the United Nations to replace US troops with UN troops to defend Iraq until The Iraqi army can defend Iraq.

I demand that the Republican party end their aggressive and hateful action to end a woman's right to choose abortion or not.

I demand that the Republican party end their aggressive and hateful action to harrass immigrants to this country.

I demand that the Congress of the United states and the president of the United States enact a law to increase the minimum wage to TEN dollars an hour and also to extend unemployment benefits to a year or more for all people whose unemployment benefits expired after 6 months even though they still seek work.

I demand that the Congress of the United States to not privatize social security benefits in any form including taking a percentage of the social security tax and placing it in private accounts. People can already create their own pensions with money after taxes in the private sector.

I demand that the congress make all of a person's earned income taxable for social security FICA tax purposes and remove the 88,000 dollar taxable income limit. This will make social security solvent for many years to come.

I demand the congress increase the payroll tax in order to make social security solvent as well.

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I demand congress repeal the faulty Medicare law HR 1 / S 1 passed by congress in Nov 2003.

I demand congress enact single payer universal health insurance for every citizen as minimum coverage.

I demand that congress and the president enact universal vote by mail throughout the 50 states of the United States of America with paper ballots easy to fill out and difficult to change or invalidate by Republican Party officials. This will prevent Republicans from vote suppression by skin color and political party which happened electronically and in person in the 2000 and 2004 elections.

I demand that congress and the president enact that civil servants on every state payroll keep track of voter registrations and vote counting of mail in votes in each precinct and not companies such as Choicepoint. We need to take the Republican Party out of the business of keeping track of voter registration and counting votes.

I demand that congress and the president ban the secretary of state in each of the 50 states from engaging in politics especially acting as a campaign official for a presidential campaign.

I demand congress enact legislation protecting private pensions from corporations deliberately declaring bankruptcy or ending pensions outright.

A few posters have suggested that it is close-minded
to not listen to the "ideas" of people like Mr.
Bellinger. That it is close-minded to not listen
to his justifications for torture, holding people
without trial or any release date, secret prisons,
rendition, and the "unitary executive" where the
president gets to do what ever he wants, unconstrained
by law.

What sort of ideas are these, exactly? These
"ideas" are no better than the ideas of the
proletariate dictatorship and the communist
utopia which gave rise to the Gulags and tens
of millions of deaths. There are no justifications
for torture. There are no justifications for
trampling our constitution and our laws. To
host a dinner for someone like Bellinger is to
treat his justifications for the unjustifiable
as if they are a matter of argument.

Again, I would be curious to read what Steve has
to say about all of this. Why should anyone
listen to Bellinger, or anyone from this
corrupt administration? What do they have to
say that is not empty justification for
shameful actions?

Ian

I wonder whether someone got to Mr Bellinger to try to justify this...

Thanks for your blog and thoughful analysis
of these important matters. It sure feels like the world is spinning out of control reading the newspapers. Its nice to know some thoughtful work is going on in Washington.

Man, I sure hope some responsible, moral grown-ups get together and stop this administration before it unleashes WWIII. Col. Gardiner's statements on CNN, Sy Hersh's article, and other comments I hear on the grapevine indicate there is probably NOTHING we can do to stop war in Iran. I heard special forces are already there.

I am so frightened of what our leaders are doing, and what they are failing to stop.

Bellinger can take his justifications and rationalizations and shove them right up his complicit evil ass. These people are DESTROYING everything America once stood for, and if we are one TENTH of what we claim to be, 3/4's of Bush's cabinet will one day languish in a federal prison.

--------------------------------------------------

New Report: Rumsfeld 'Personally Involved' In Torture Allegations at Gitmo
ThinkProgress.com

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041506Z.shtml

Editor's Comment: The revelations regarding the sexual degradation of one detainee, Mohammad al-Qahtani, at the Guantanamo Bay prison in late 2002 and early 2003 do not stand alone. These are the practices that became the subject of the scandalous photographs that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison facility a year later. This was the point at which sexual degradation became - at the direction of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Geoffrey Miller - a practice for US military interrogators.

Friday 14 April 2006

Salon reports new evidence that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was intimately involved in prisoner abuse at the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

According to a Dec. 20, 2005 Army inspector general's report on Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commanding general in charge of Gitmo, Rumsfeld approved an interrogation plan for Mohammed al-Kahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker:

In a sworn statement to the inspector general, [Lt. Gen. Randall] Schmidt described Rumsfeld as "personally involved" in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary was "talking weekly" with Miller.

Rumsfeld developed an interrogation plan that required the Gitmo detainee to "stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform 'dog tricks' on a leash." Schmidt said that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the wide-scale abuse to take place.

The report contradicts Rumsfeld's earlier statements.

The people down there at Guantanamo Bay, under the President's orders, have been treated humanely and they should be treated humanely…There's no torture going on down there and there hasn't been. [WPHT-AM Philadelphia, 6/21/05]

And let there be no doubt, the treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay is proper, it's humane, it's appropriate, and it is fully consistent with international conventions. No detainee has been harmed, no detainee has been mistreated in any way. [DoD Briefing, 1/22/02]

Only relatively low-ranking military officials have been punished but the abuse of detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere started at the top.

Paying compensation to civil victims of war is quite new in international politics. It's not in international law, is it?

I am trying to draw your attention to Marla Ruzicka, who convinced Congress to compensate civilian victims of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Today is the sad anniversary of her death. Steve wrote last year: "Mourn an American We Can Be Proud Of: Victims' Crusader Marla Ruzicka Killed in Iraq":http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000479.html

To keep her memory alive, I posted this in our Atlantic Review: Marla Ruzicka: Civilian Victims of War. The director of Marla's NGO is concerned about more airstrikes and more civilian victims...

It has been several days since you posted on this, Steve, and I'm wondering where the results are -- the media results, I mean. I would like to think that this meeting and the presentation by Daniel Levy might somehow produce something meaningful about our failure to come to grips with the way we underwrite the Israeli government's policies toward Palestinians and Israeli Arabs -- which in turn, ratchets up the problems we face in the middle east. But I don't see anything out in the media world that suggests these seminars and meetings and discussion go very far from the NAF meeting room.