New Quaker Notebook

Well, it's not like we haven't been expecting this situation, but yesterday's government challenge to court inquiries into the Bushevik's illegal, expansive domestic surveillance program needs to be watched—carefully. Start reading here:

US asks for dismissal of NSA wiretapping suit

Reuters
Sat May 27, 2006 11:46 PM ET

DETROIT (Reuters) - The US government has asked a pair of federal judges to dismiss legal challenges to the Bush administration's controversial domestic eavesdropping program, arguing any court action in the cases would jeopardize secrets in the ongoing war on terrorism.

Rights activists, who argue the National Security Agency's wiretapping violates the rights of US citizens, said the Bush administration's position threatened constitutional checks on the power of the presidency.

"The Bush administration is trying to crush a very strong case against domestic spying without any evidence or argument," said Shayana Kadidal, an attorney with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought one of the parallel lawsuits against the NSA program in January.

"I think it's a clear choice: can the president tell the courts which cases they can rule on? If so, the courts will never be able to hold the president accountable for breaking the law," he said.

Filed just before a midnight Saturday deadline and only partly made public, the arguments by the Justice Department marked the latest skirmish in a battle over an NSA program to listen in on international communications involving Americans.

President George W. Bush said in December he had authorized the eavesdropping without a court order shortly after the September 11 attacks in order to track suspected communication from al-Qaeda operatives. US officials have since declined to provide details on how widely the NSA wiretaps have been used or what communications have been intercepted.

In asking federal judges in Detroit and New York to throw out challenges to the eavesdropping, the Bush administration invoked a doctrine known as the "state secrets privilege" it has used to head off other court action on its spy programs.

[ READ MORE » ]

I think it's significant that the government's argument for dismissal was filed late on Friday, a Memorial Day weekend, and "only partly made public."¹ Hmm, as if done in secret.²

1. See the AP/CBS News version of this story.
2. Secrecy is the rule with this administration: against the March 9, 2006, law requiring Justice Department officials to "give reports to Congress by certain dates on how the FBI is using the USA Patriot Act to search homes and secretly seize papers," the president's signing statement stipulates that he "can order Justice Department officials to withhold any information from Congress if he decides it could impair national security or executive branch operations." See "Examples of the president's signing statements," in Boston Globe, April 30, 2006. For more detail on this, see Charlie Savage's full article, "Bush challenges hundreds of laws," in the Boston Globe, April 30, 2006. Media Matters complains that the Savage exposé has been routinely ignored by the mainstream media.

Presidents vs Idols

Okay, so Taylor Hicks won the election for American Idol for 2006, but the real story here is that he won on 63.4 million votes—more than in any US presidential race, as host Ryan Seacrest proudly pointed out.¹

1. Of course, one would think this could also be the beginning of another "voting scandal" investigation. See, for example, "American Idol: The voting scandal," phillyBurbs.com, May 2, 2005; "American Idol Outrage: Your Vote Doesn't Count," Broadcasting & Cable, May 17, 2004. Wikipedia maintains a good article on the plural voting system in the "American Idol controversy." Just for the record, I was an admirer of Katharine McPhee from her very first song on the show. Her incredible talent makes the Hicks win irrelevant to her future success as a songstress.

Bush's War and Peace

My jumping off point here is a May 18 BBC News story on the outcome of the ACLU lawsuit against CIA officials for the alleged "extraordinary rendition" program involving German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who said that in 2003 he was picked up by the CIA in Macedonia and flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, and tortured there. The judge said two interesting things. One, he said that allowing the lawsuit to go forward in the courts "might endanger security"; two, he said: '"In times of war, our country, chiefly through the executive branch, must often take exceptional steps to thwart the enemy."'¹

Two years ago I likened the so-called "war on terror" to the still-ongoing "war on drugs."² At the time all the necessary connections hadn't been made, but now I think it's certainly appropriate for us to appreciate the Busheviks' great fiction being presented as fact, especially after we've witnessed our president touting himself as the "commander in chief"³ and saying such obnoxious things as, "I'm a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind."⁴ It is the "war on terror" that is here the great fiction. We are not at war with Afghanistan (although our soldiers are still there fighting) and we're not at war with Iraq (although our soldiers are still there fighting) and we seem not to be clear just who the enemy is in this "war on terror." It could be all terrorists, and in that case it looks more and more like Nixon's "war on drugs," which we're still fighting. After all, we do have the president's admission in his September 2001 Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People that "Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." I think his actual words should be reviewed again, because what he said then tells us what the great fiction is going to be for us today:

Americans are asking: How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command—every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war—to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.

So it doesn't matter that the US let Osama Bin Laden escape from Afghanistan⁵ and instead blundered on over to Iraq. It really doesn't matter anymore that the Busheviks did it while trying to blind us with the Ninja dust of lies. If this is the outline for the "lengthy campaign," then we can make sense of several current unpleasant facts, but we also have much to fear. Not merely fear that the War on Terror will go on forever, but that the illusion of war will enable the president to consolidate a special power in the "commander in chief" through a massive campaign of secrecy.⁶ And this is certainly happening now.

As we know, upon the media disclosure of the NSA's program for eavesdropping on international communications between citizens in the US and persons overseas without a warrant granted by a FISA court (as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978), the president's response was mainly outrage that his "secret" program was disclosed at all:

Q Mr. President, thank you, sir. Are you going to order a leaks investigation into the disclosure of the NSA surveillance program? And why did you skip the basic safeguard of asking courts for permission for these intercepts?

THE PRESIDENT: Let me start with the first question. There is a process that goes on inside the Justice Department about leaks, and I presume that process is moving forward. My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy.

This brings me back to the ACLU lawsuit on behalf of the German citizen Khaled el-Masri. Because we are a country at war, engaged in the War on Terror, it is therefore okay to suspend basic judicial rights in the name of state secrets. This was brought up early when the Busheviks claimed the right to detain US citizens without a hearing simply by naming them "enemy combatants," thereby tossing aside basic habeas corpus rights and even denying rights covered by the Geneva Conventions. Even attempts to investigate the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping program (also called the domestic spying program, but now called the "terrorist surveillance program"⁸) have been stymied because the National Security Agency refused to give Justice Department lawyers the necessary security clearance.⁹ I have no doubt that there will be other efforts made to shield the government from scrutiny by invoking the War on Terror. Perhaps the next stage will be martial law. (Perhaps the Busheviks really don't want to capture Bin Laden: fear of al-Qaeda is necessary to the continuance of the illusion of war.)

In all of this, I am reminded of the scorn heaped upon the crazy, murderous former-president of Uganda, Idi Amin Dada, who would parade around in a elaborately decorated military uniform he designed for himself. Even his title he made up.¹⁰ When I think of that, I just can't get out of my head the image of Mr Bush on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, stepping out of the Navy S-3B Viking jet wearing a green flight suit and carrying a white helmet. Mission accomplished.¹¹

1. "CIA 'torture' lawsuit thrown out," BBC News, May 18, 2006.
2. See my April 4, 2004, blog, where I also quote then-US Attorney General John Ashcroft in Las Vegas in 2003 praising law enforcement officials with the words: "Thanks to you, we are winning the war on terror."
3. Washington Post, September 13, 2004.
4. "Bush sets case as 'war president'," BBC News, February 8, 2004. Bush spoke these words to Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press.
5. "How bin Laden got away," Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2002.
6. The Bushevik mantra is that the US is in a state of war and the president, as Commander-in-Chief, has both the right and responsibility to do what is necessary to protect the American people. See Press Conference of the President, December 19, 2005: "As President and Commander-in-Chief, I have the constitutional responsibility and the constitutional authority to protect our country. Article II of the Constitution gives me that responsibility and the authority necessary to fulfill it. And after September the 11th, the United States Congress also granted me additional authority to use military force against al Qaeda." And see also President's Remarks [President Visits Troops at Brooke Army Medical Center], January 1, 2006: "The NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers, called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people. In other words, the enemy is calling somebody and we want to know who they're calling and why. And that seems to make sense to me, as the Commander-in-Chief, if my job is to protect the American people... / Now, some say, well, maybe this isn't a war; maybe this is just a law enforcement operation. I strongly disagree. We're at war with an enemy that wants to hurt us again, and the American people expect the Commander-in-Chief to protect them, and that's exactly what I intend to do."
7. See "Detentions of US Citizens," WikiThePresidency.
8. On this interesting propaganda move, see Media Matters, January 31, 2006.
9. "Domestic spying inquiry killed," AP, CNN, May 10, 2006.
10. Ryszard Kapuscinski gives one of the best characterizations of this madman: "He looked like something from an operetta in his splendid military uniform decorated with finery and medals he had invented and awarded himself. For example he awarded himself the Order of World War Two, and the Order of Conqueror of the British Empire. He declared himself president for life, a field marshal, the King of Scotland. He not only spoke lousy English, but even his knowledge of Swahili was very mediocre. Basically, he only had a command of his own dialect, Kakva. So very few people understood what he was talking about." See "Idi Amin Dada and African Dictatorships," Info-Poland, Polish Academic Information Center, University at Buffalo.
11. "Commander in Chief lands on USS Lincoln," CNN, May 2, 2003: "It was the first time a sitting president has arrived on the deck of an aircraft carrier by plane. The jet made what is known as a 'tailhook' landing, with the plane, traveling about 150 mph, hooking onto the last of four steel wires across the flight deck and coming to a complete stop in less than 400 feet. / The exterior of the four-seat Navy S-3B Viking was marked with 'Navy 1' in the back and 'George W. Bush Commander-in-Chief' just below the cockpit window. On the plane's tail was the insignia of the squadron, the 'Blue Wolves.' / Moments after the landing, the president, wearing a green flight suit and holding a white helmet, got off the plane, saluted those on the flight deck and shook hands with them. Above him, the tower was adorned with a big sign that read, 'Mission Accomplished.' / Bush said he did take a turn at piloting the craft."

Related Tags: Domestic surveillance, el-Masri, FISA, NSA, war on drugs, war on terror

It's all okay. It's secret.

Presidents vs Idols

Bush's War and Peace