it’s things like this that make me wonder how long it’s going to have to be before we, the people, take action to preserve this democracy against those who would take it from us, whether those people are our leaders or not.
Rove counting heads on the Senate Judiciary Committee
2/6/2006
The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration’s unauthorized wiretapping.
Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.
“It’s hardball all the way,” a senior GOP congressional aide said.
The sources said the administration has been alarmed over the damage that could result from the Senate hearings, which began on Monday, Feb. 6. They said the defection of even a handful of Republican committee members could result in a determination that the president violated the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Such a determination could lead to impeachment proceedings.
Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the leadership in Congress. The sources said Mr. Rove’s message has been that a vote against Mr. Bush would destroy GOP prospects in congressional elections.
“He’s [Rove] lining them up one by one,” another congressional source said.
Mr. Rove is leading the White House campaign to help the GOP in November’s congressional elections. The sources said the White House has offered to help loyalists with money and free publicity, such as appearances and photo-ops with the president.
Those deemed disloyal to Mr. Rove would appear on his blacklist. The sources said dozens of GOP members in the House and Senate are on that list.
So far, only a handful of GOP senators have questioned Mr. Rove’s tactics.
Some have raised doubts about Mr. Rove’s strategy of painting the Democrats, who have opposed unwarranted surveillance, as being dismissive of the threat posed by al Qaeda terrorists.
“Well, I didn’t like what Mr. Rove said, because it frames terrorism and the issue of terrorism and everything that goes with it, whether it’s the renewal of the Patriot Act or the NSA wiretapping, in a political context,” said Sen. Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Republican.
Q: Does the president think he should obey the law? He put his hand on the Bible twice to uphold the Constitution. Wiretapping is not legal under the circumstances without a warrant.
MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I guess you didn’t pay attention to the attorney general’s hearing earlier today, because he walked through very clearly the rationale behind this program.
Q: There is no rationale —
MR. MCCLELLAN: And Helen, I think you have to ask —
Q: — (inaudible) — the law.
MR. MCCLELLAN: I think you have ask are we — well, he’s not — are we a nation at war.
Q: That’s not the question.
MR. MCCLELLAN: No, that is the issue here.
Q: The question is, the point is, there are means for him to go to — get a warrant to spy on people.
MR. MCCLELLAN: Enemy surveillance is critical to waging and winning war. It’s one of the traditional tools of war.
Q: But he says he doesn’t have running room —
MR. MCCLELLAN: The attorney general outlined very clearly today how previous administrations have used the same authority —
Q: That doesn’t make it legal.
MR. MCCLELLAN: — and cited the same — and cited the very same authority.
Q: (Inaudible) — they broke the law, that’s too bad.
MR. MCCLELLAN: And we’re going to continue doing everything we can —
Q: You know what happened to Nixon when he broke the law.
MR. MCCLELLAN: — within our power to protect the American people. This is a very different circumstance, and you know that.
Q: No, I don’t.
By Andrew Gumbel
08 February 2006
President George Bush led a crowd of 10,000 mourners at yesterday’s funeral for Coretta Scott King, one of the icons of the civil rights movement, only to squirm in his seat as one speaker after another invoked Mrs King’s spirit to lambast his administration on everything from the Iraq war to the response to last year’s Hurricane Katrina.
The lavish occasion, bringing together civil rights veterans, three former presidents, more than a dozen senators, musicians and poets at a megachurch in the suburbs of Atlanta, was both a tribute to the woman who carried on the campaigning legacy of her assassinated husband, Martin Luther King Jr, for almost 40 years and also an opportunity to invoke some of the Kings’ passionately outspoken rhetoric.
President Bush called Mrs King, who died 10 days ago at the age of 78, “one of the most admired Americans of our time”.
Her nearest and dearest pointedly did not return the compliment. “We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” said Joseph Lowery, who co-founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with Dr King more than 40 years ago, “but Coretta knew and we knew that there are weapons of misdirection right down here.”
The Rev Lowery issued a searing indictment of the Bush administration’s economic priorities. “For war billions more,” he said, “but no more for the poor.”
Far better received than President Bush was Bill Clinton, who won an enthusiastic ovation as he described how Mrs King might easily have given up the civil rights struggle after her husband’s assassination in 1968. Instead, he said, she asked herself “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”
U.S. policy appears to be "we don’t torture unless it serves our purpose, and then we don’t admit it, or, preferably, let our ‘allies’ take care of it so that we can say it doesn’t reflect negatively on us"… 8/
By MARK SHERMAN
WASHINGTON – The U.S. government wants an Iraqi court to handle criminal charges against a naturalized American citizen who is being held in Iraq on suspicion that he is a senior operative of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The man’s lawyers said he is innocent and likely to be tortured if he is handed over to the Iraqis.
The case is the first known instance in which the government has decided to allow an American to be tried in the new Iraqi legal system. At least four other U.S. citizens suspected of aiding the insurgency had been held in Iraq, the Pentagon has said.
Shawqi Omar, 44, who once served in the Minnesota National Guard, has been held since late 2004 in U.S.-run military prisons as an enemy combatant. He has not been charged with a crime or been given access to a lawyer, said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer representing Omar’s family in the United States.
The government said Omar, who also holds Jordanian citizenship, was harboring an Iraqi insurgent and four Jordanian fighters at the time of his arrest and also had bomb-making materials. He is described in court papers as a relative of Zarqawi who was plotting to kidnap foreigners from Baghdad hotels.
Separately, Omar, Zarqawi and 11 others have been indicted by a Jordanian court on charges they plotted a chemical attack against Jordan’s intelligence agency.
Omar’s family said he is a businessman who was seeking reconstruction contracts in Iraq.
The family is asking a U.S. judge to step in and force the government to charge Omar with a crime and put him on trial in the United States, or release him. They also are seeking to prevent Omar’s transfer to Iraqi custody, which they said would subject the Sunni Muslim to torture by Shiite-dominated authorities.
U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina last week issued an order in Washington temporarily blocking Omar’s transfer to Iraqi custody. The order is set to expire on Monday, but the judge could extend it.
The Justice Department weighed in on Tuesday, arguing that Urbina has no business intervening on Omar’s behalf and denying that Omar is even in U.S. custody.
Instead, the department said in court papers, Omar was captured by the U.S.-led multinational force in Iraq and remains in its custody, the department said in court papers. The multinational force is independent of the U.S. government, the department said.
In any event, Omar would not be handed over to the Iraqis unless he is convicted in an Iraqi court, the government said.
Hafetz, a lawyer at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, said the government is resorting to a legal gimmick to keep Omar’s case out of American courts. “It’s legally incorrect and factually incorrect to say the U.S. does not have control of him,” Hafetz said.
In July, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said five unnamed Americans, including one who also had Jordanian citizenship, were in U.S. military custody in Iraq. Whitman said then that the government had not decided whether their cases would be turned over to the Justice Department or to the new Iraqi legal system, which has handled the prosecution of other foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight the U.S.-led occupation and Iraqi government.
In March, Matthew Waxman, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, said a panel of three U.S. officers determined the Jordanian-American was an enemy combatant and not entitled to prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Convention. The description provided by Waxman and other officials matches Omar’s biography as contained in the government’s court papers.
In its filing Tuesday, the Justice Department said the officers were part of the multinational force.
Omar became a U.S. citizen in 1986, two years after he served in the National Guard. Omar spent about 11 months in the Guard before being discharged in November 1984 without completing his training, said Shannon Purvis, a spokesperson for the Minnesota National Guard. Omar received an “uncharacterized discharge,” meaning he was discharged for such things as health problems or poor performance, Purvis said.
Non-citizens can serve in the Guard as long as they obtain citizenship within eight years of joining, Purvis said.
also:
U.S. Navy constructs permanent bases in Iraq
Top 10 ‘Conspiracy Theories’ about George W. Bush Part I & Part II