WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 — With less than a week before the election, President Bush sought to rally Republican voters on Wednesday with a vigorous defense of the war in Iraq and a vow to keep Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in office until the end of Mr. Bush’s term.

Hrm. That campaign promise didn't last long.

Bush, Trying to Rally Base, Defends Rumsfeld

Kenneth Adelman:

"The most dispiriting and awful moment of the whole administration was the day that Bush gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to [former CIA director] George Tenet, General Tommy Franks, and [Coalition Provisional Authority chief] Jerry [Paul] Bremer -- three of the most incompetent people who've ever served in such key spots. And they get the highest civilian honor a president can bestow on anyone!

That was the day I checked out of this administration.

It was then I thought, There's no seriousness here, these are not serious people.

If he had been serious, the president would have realized that those three are each directly responsible for the disaster of Iraq."

Remember this?

The fact that the President gives these people personal audience is troubling. They are not serious people. Does the president take them seriously? Does he take their counsel?

Neo Culpa: Politics & Power

Let Karl know that you’re not stupid. Let him know that you know that the most patriotic thing to do in this election is to vote against an administration that has — through sheer incompetence — brought us to a point in Iraq that was not inevitable but is now unwinnable.

Let Karl know that you think this is a critical election, because you know as a citizen that if the Bush team can behave with the level of deadly incompetence it has exhibited in Iraq — and then get away with it by holding on to the House and the Senate — it means our country has become a banana republic. It means our democracy is in tatters because it is so gerrymandered, so polluted by money, and so divided by professional political hacks that we can no longer hold the ruling party to account.

It means we’re as stupid as Karl thinks we are.

I, for one, don’t think we’re that stupid. Next Tuesday we’ll see.

Should it bother me that I am warming to Keith Olbermann's special comments?

Insulting Our Troops, and Our Intelligence | Tom Friedman

Decius wrote:

There is not one damn thing that is new about Iraq.

Occam's razor suggests that the people of this country just aren't down with the Republicans in the wake of Katrina, and the conservative pundit class is trying to save itself while diverting attention from that issue. I hope that's the answer.

I have two book recommendations for you.

Recently I mentioned Political Fictions ($12 in paperback at Amazon). Over the weekend, I spotted We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live, an Everyman's Library edition of the collected nonfiction of Joan Didion, including Political Fictions. The collection is only $20 in hardcover. From the Publishers Weekly review of PF:

As the title implies, her focus is how the press, think tanks, political strategists and opinion makers conspire to create stories that reflect their biases and serve their own self-interest. Didion's willingness to skewer nearly everyone is one of the pleasures of the book.

This book will offend many Democrats, particularly of the Democratic Leadership Council persuasion, and many more Republicans, but it is members of the press who fare most poorly. To Didion, they are purveyors of fables of their own making, or worse, fables conceived by political strategists with designs on votes, not news.

My other recommendation for today is David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. In particular I would like to quote from the entry on Godard which I reviewed today:

Godard's collected works are an Encyclopedia Cinematografica, the insistence that all things exist only to the extent that they can be expressed in cinema. Godard more than any other director taunts reality. It is not that life imitates art, but that it is all art, all fictional as much as documentary, and it is cinema once any lens -- in camera or eye -- notices it.

Joan Didion and David Thomson | Two Book Recommendations

In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that "no court, justice, or judge" can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.

The relevant section from Section 9 of Article 1 of the Constitution:

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.

Court Told It Lacks Power in Detainee Cases

I can't help but notice this can now be referred to as the "PERP Act".

Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006 -- H.R. 2679 -- provides that attorneys who successfully challenge government actions as violating the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment shall not be entitled to recover attorneys fees.

With regard to the Boy Scouts angle, see BSA Legal:

Boy Scouts of America appreciates Congress’ interest in the litigation facing Boy Scouts and the solution Congress is pursuing in the “Veterans’ Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006.” For the past decade, Boy Scouts as well as federal, state, and local governments that support Boy Scouts, have been the targets of ACLU lawsuits challenging Boy Scouts’ relationships with government entities. Those lawsuits seek to use the Establishment Clause to sever government relationships with Scouting merely because Boy Scouts pledge a nonsectarian promise to do their “duty to God.” Boy Scouts of America hopes that the Veterans’ Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006 will help eliminate this frivolous litigation against Scouting and government entities.

From the record:

The ACLU received $950,000 in a settlement with the City of San Diego in a case involving the San Diego Boy Scouts.

Also:

In Redlands, California, the city council reluctantly capitulated to ACLU's demands and agreed to change their official seal. But Redlands didn't have the municipal funds to revise police and firefighter badges that contained the old seal so, as reported by the Sacramento Bee, `rather than face the likelihood of costly litigation,' Redlands residents now `see blue tape covering the cross on city trucks, while some firefighters have taken drills to `obliterate it' from their badges.'

Further:

The official name of the City of Los Angeles (known as `The City of Angels') is `The Town of Our Lady the Queen of Angels of the Little Portion,' which refers to Mary, Mother of Jesus. Many other California cities contain religious references, including San Clemente, Santa Monica, Sacramento (named for the `Holy Sacrament'), San Francisco and San Luis Obispo (named for Saint Louis the Bishop). Under precedents groups like the ACLU are setting under 42 U.S.C. Sec. 1983, the very names of these cities are in legal jeopardy.

To the section which begins "including, but not limited to, a violation resulting from--", they might as well have added "(5) a government employee's particularly pious demeanor." How can you disagree with that? Shouldn't government employees have the same rights as everyone else, wi... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Legislating Violations of the Constitution

The Soviets understood that these methods were cruel. They were also honest with themselves about the purpose of such cruelty -- to brutalize their enemies and to extract false confessions, rather than truthful intelligence. By denying this, President Bush is not just misleading us. He appears to be deceiving himself.

The author here calls out President Bush for special ridicule, but the absence of outrage is sufficiently widespread that we are apparently reliant on Human Rights Watch to remind us of the consensus reached by our government.

I suspect the author is being theatrical when he suggests that Bush is "deceiving himself." Last week I flipped through OpinionJournal and found all sorts of people on the right, trying to argue that the new DoD rules are "soft on terror."

It should surprise no one that Human Rights Watch can write a persuasive anti-torture op-ed. However, as is often the case, there is more news in what's not in the papers than in what does appear. And what I don't see right now are op-eds from DNI Negroponte and DCI Hayden and the DDO telling us in no uncertain terms how essential these abusive practices are to their operational success. (Negroponte repeatedly says that the ability to conduct interrogations is essential, even if it is not a daily event, which is why he is pushing for additional "clarity" after the SCOTUS ruling.)

If those people were willing to write those op-eds, you can be quite sure that WSJ and others would run them. Instead you find Colin Powell saying that "The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism."

From the DNI, what you will find is this, on Fox News yesterday:

WALLACE: Since the Supreme Court said in June that these interrogations are now covered by the Geneva Conventions, have any CIA officers refused to carry out any interrogations?

...

NEGROPONTE: I think the way I would answer you in regard to that question is, that there’s been precious little activity of that kind for a number of months now, and certainly since the Supreme Court decision.

WALLACE: That has curtailed the kind of questioning that they have done.

NEGROPONTE: There just simply hasn’t been that kind of activity.

If you read between the lines of this interview, it becomes quite clear that the CIA is unwilling to stick its neck out on this any longer, especially now that DoD has come out and publicly abandoned the abusive practices. Actually, you don't even really have to read between the lines; it's pretty clear.

Call Cruelty What It Is

For several years, Javed Iqbal has operated a small company from a Brooklyn storefront and out of the garage at his Staten Island home that provides satellite programming for households, including sermons from Christian evangelists seeking worldwide exposure.

Mr. Iqbal’s home, a modest two-story stone and brick house on Van Name Avenue in Mariners Harbor, stands out because among the children’s toys in the backyard were eight satellite dishes.

But this week, the budding entrepreneur’s house and storefront were raided by federal agents, and Mr. Iqbal was charged with providing customers services that included satellite broadcasts of a television station controlled by Hezbollah — a violation of federal law.

Yesterday, Mr. Iqbal was arraigned in Federal District Court in Manhattan and was ordered held in $250,000 bail. The Hezbollah station, Al Manar — or “the beacon” in Arabic — was designated a global terrorist entity by the United States Treasury Department in March of this year.

One wonders whether MEMRI, SITE, and LinkTV would be arrested for reposting selected segments from Al Manar. (Presumably not; the Wikipedia entry suggests MEMRI played a role in having the bans put in place.)

I don't know if this link will work for you, but you can see where LinkTV has featured them in the past (though not within the last two years):

Al Manar TV, Lebanon
Israeli Aggressions Leave Palestinians Dead

A new Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip area of Khan Yunis left five Palestinians dead and at least 15 injured. The Occupation army also demolished several houses. This came after PM Arial Sharon predicted that his planned withdrawal from Gaza would lead to new negotiations with Khan Yunis.

BTW, Al Manar is also banned in France, as has been covered by LinkTV:

Al Manar to Remain Banned in France

Al Manar TV chain will remain prohibited in France. This decision came after a request contesting an earlier decision taken in 2004 was rejected. The French state council, the highest administrative body in the country, declared yesterday that Al Manar’s editorial society had called for the annulment of the higher audio/visual in December of 2004 forbidding the transmission of al Manar in France. In its verdict, the state council considered that Al Manar did not have the right to request the annulment of the higher council's decision taken on December 17, 2004, which sanctioned the Lebanese station for transmitting "anti-Semitic messages." The Higher audio/vision council decision followed an order of the state council which on December 13, 2004, called for the society operating the satellite which diffused in France to stop transmitting the chain for 48 hours. However, the state council ordered the halt of the transmission after realizing that taken as a whole the programs were diffused in a militant perspective and carried anti-Semitic connotations.

New York Man Charged With Enabling Hezbollah Television Broadcasts

As it stands now, little with regard to search queries is private. No laws clearly place search requests off-limits to advertisers, law enforcement agencies or academic researchers, beyond the terms that companies set themselves.

"This is a discussion that we as a society need to have," said Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Mr. Bankston’s group, which is spearheading a class-action lawsuit against AT&T for sharing consumer phone records with the National Security Agency, issued an alert this week calling the AOL incident a "Data Valdez," asserting that it may be in violation of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act, which regulates some forms of online communications.

Sounds like EFF may eventually pursue a class-action case against AOL.

"This AOL breach is just a tiny drop in the giant pool of information that these companies have collected. The sensitivity of this data cannot be overemphasized."

A similar sentiment was at the heart of an e-mail message sent to employees by AOL’s own chief executive, Jonathan F. Miller, on Wednesday.

"We work so hard to protect this kind of information, and yet it was made public without review by our privacy experts, undermining years of industry leadership in a single act," Mr. Miller wrote. "The reaction has been a powerful reminder of how quickly a company such as AOL can forfeit the good will we have worked for years to engender."

This is Friedman's Super-Empowered Man. In the military, they talk of the Strategic Corporal, [2].

Your Life as an Open Book

Back in 1947, the 27-year-old John Paul Stevens was Justice Wiley Rutledge's clerk, so LCDR Swift, Hamdan's defense lawyer, was consulting Rutledge's dissent in Yamashita for clues.

Swift read me stirring words from Rutledge's opinion:

"The immutable rights of the individual, including those secured by the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment, belong not alone to the members of those nations that excel on the battlefield or that subscribe to the democratic ideology. They belong to every person in the world, victor or vanquished, whatever may be his race, color or beliefs. They rise above any status of belligerency or outlawry."

Swift paused and then added, "I think tomorrow's going to be a good day."

And of course it was.

We were told that after 9/11, everything had changed -- or that nothing had changed. Now that our fear will be tempered by hope, the real conversation can begin.

A Check Against Fear