Obama Administration

Foreign Contributions and the Supreme's Overdue Decision on Campaign Funding
By Michael Collins | Election Fraud News

The Supreme Court of the United States will soon announce a major decision on our lightly controlled system of campaign funding. Will it retain some limitations on corporate influence or will the court blow the lid off and cause a perpetual flood of unrestricted corporate contributions?

An additional outcome may surprise and shock the public.

If the Supreme Court overturns the lower court's decision, foreign nationals, corporations, and governments with partial ownership of U.S. corporations will, in effect, end up contributing to and influencing U.S. candidates in federal elections.

Tomgram: Nick Turse, In Afghanistan, the Pentagon Digs In | Tom Dispatch.com

In his latest TomDispatch post, Turse explores not the arguments in Washington for a widening war in Afghanistan, but the facts on the ground in that country where the Pentagon is already creating the infrastructure for a widening war and passing out massive construction contracts to private companies that are not due for completion until at least 2011....

In Iraq, structures like Balad Air Base or the ill-named Camp Victory just on the edge of Baghdad are so massive, so permanent-looking -- so clearly built for long-term occupation -- that it's still hard to imagine how the Pentagon will abandon them to the Iraqis.

2014 or Bust
The Pentagon's Building Boom in Afghanistan Indicates a Long War Ahead
By Nick Turse

In recent weeks, President Obama has been contemplating the future of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. He has also been touting the effects of his policies at home, reporting that this year's Recovery Act not only saved jobs, but also was "the largest investment in infrastructure since [President Dwight] Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s." At the same time, another much less publicized U.S.-taxpayer-funded infrastructure boom has been underway. This one in Afghanistan.

While Washington has put modest funding into civilian projects in Afghanistan this year -- ranging from small-scale power plants to "public latrines" to a meat market -- the real construction boom is military in nature. The Pentagon has been funneling stimulus-sized sums of money to defense contractors to markedly boost its military infrastructure in that country.

In fiscal year 2009, for example, the civilian U.S. Agency for International Development awarded $20 million in contracts for work in Afghanistan, while the U.S. Army alone awarded $2.2 billion -- $834 million of it for construction projects. In fact, according to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, the Pentagon has spent "roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years" in that country and, "if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation."

Bogged Down at Bagram Read more.

US: Govt Lawyers Seek to Quash Rendition Lawsuit
By William Fisher | IPS

The long road to the proverbial day in court just got longer for five men who claim they were "disappeared" and tortured by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

The men, who say they were victims of the extraordinary rendition programme conducted during the administration of President George W. Bush, have been trying since 2007 to get their cases heard on the merits.

But it is now far from clear that the merits of these cases will be heard any time soon – if ever. The reason is that the Department of Justice – first through Bush administration lawyers, now through Barack Obama administration lawyers - has invoked the so-called "state secrets" privilege, claiming that a public trial would endanger U.S. national security.

The latest development in the case came last week, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals set aside an earlier ruling by three of its own judges and said a majority of its judges had voted to refer the case to an 11-judge panel for a new hearing. The request to rehear the case, now scheduled for Dec. 15, came from the Obama administration.

That decision put on hold the earlier findings of the three-judge panel, which had reinstated the Mohamed suit in April. That 3-0 ruling rejected arguments by the Bush and Obama administrations that the case concerned secrets too sensitive to disclose in court. Read more.

By Dave Lindorff

It would be easy to read too much into the few statewide races that were decided last night, but I think it’s fair to say that the results in New Jersey and Virginia, where Republican gubernatorial candidates won--in New Jersey’s case knocking off a well-funded Democratic incumbent--that the results were a blow to the Barack Obama/Rahm Emanuel strategy of playing to the right, of avoiding confrontation in Congress and of ignoring the progressive voters whose enthusiasm and effort back in the 2008 campaign put Obama in office.

Heeding George Kennan's Wise Advice
By Ray McGovern | November 3, 2009

I can’t remember how many times I have said that the U.S. military adventure in Afghanistan is a fool’s errand.

The reaction I frequently encounter includes some variant of, “How can you blithely acquiesce in the chaos that will inevitably ensue if we and our NATO allies withdraw our troops?” While the “inevitable chaos” part is open to doubt, the question itself is a fair one.

By way of full disclosure, my answer is based largely on the fact that I asked the equivalent question 43 years ago regarding a place named Vietnam. Been there; done that.

As a young Army infantry/intelligence officer turned junior CIA analyst in 1963, I was given responsibility for reporting on Soviet policy toward China and Southeast Asia and was just beginning to get a feel for the complexities. My degrees were in Russian studies; I knew something about Communist expansion, but very little about Vietnam.

I should have listened to my brother Joe at Princeton, who tried to help me see that it was mainly a civil war in Vietnam, that the Vietnamese had ample reason to hate both the Russians and Chinese (and now us), and that the “domino effect” was a canard.

Joe was openly impatient to find me such a slow learner — so susceptible to the Red-menace fear mongering of the time.

Enter George Kennan

CHOMSKY SAYS PRESIDENT OBAMA CONTINUES BUSH POLICY TO CONTROL MIDDLE EAST OIL
By Sherwood Ross

Political activist Noam Chomsky says that although President Obama views the Iraq invasion merely as “a mistake” or “strategic blunder,” it is, in fact, a “major crime” designed to enable America to control the Middle East oil reserves.

“It’s (“strategic blunder”) probably what the German general staff was telling Hitler after Stalingrad,” Chomsky quipped, referring to the big Nazi defeat by the Soviet army in 1943.

“There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world,” he said.

In a lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London Oct. 27th, Chomsky warned against expecting significant foreign policy changes from Obama, according to a report by Mamoon Alabbasi published on MWC News.net. Alabbasi is an editor at Middle East Online.

“As Obama came into office, (former Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice predicted he would follow the policies of Bush’s second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style,” Chomsky said.

Chomsky said the U.S. operates under the “Mafia principle,” explaining “the Godfather does not tolerate ‘successful defiance’” and must be stamped out “so that others understand that disobedience is not an option.”

By Dave Lindorff

Country Joe McDonald said it best in his iconic "Fixin' to Die" Rag: "Oh, it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for? Don't ask me. I don't give a damn." In fact, we were fighting for nothing in Vietnam. It was a war that started out because the US didn't want the Commies to win a battle in the so-called Cold War, and even though it was on the farthest side of the world, in a poor nation of peasants, even though they had been struggling to throw off colonialism for years and we had simply become the new colonists, no president dared to admit the obvious--we had no business being there, and all the killing and dying had no point.

Bailout-deterrent bill scrutinized by both sides | Washington Times

Mr. Sherman said the bill calls for the "most unprecedented transfer of power to the executive branch to make decisions about both spending and taxes in history."

"All without congressional approval, and a sharp departure from our congressional - from our constitutional - values," he added.

Lawmakers from both parties are concerned that an Obama administration-backed bill intended to deter future taxpayer-funded Wall Street bailouts would have the opposite effect and give the White House too much power over the nation's financial sector.

Some House members are worried the measure would allow the federal government, under certain circumstances, to pump rescue money into failing Wall Street giants with little or no input from Congress - potentially leaving taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars. Read more.

Where Have all the Flowers Gone?
By Cindy Sheehan | Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox

Watching Obama salute a coffin at Dover Air Force Base with all the pomp and circumstance of US Military worship filled me with disgust and sorrow.

Disgust because the White House PR apparatus went into full swing to find a family that would allow their loved ones’ coffin to be photographed in a scene that reminded me of George Bush’s landing on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier on May 2, 2003 wearing a pilot’s suit and a codpiece.

Why did Obama do this? To soften the blow, of sending more troops, for a gullible public that wants to believe someone like Obama could give a crap about the cannon fodder he condemns to pointless death?

Being the Commander in Chief of the United States Military has only meant one thing for the past sixty years or so: being the tool of the War Machine. And even though a tool has no say in whether it is used to build or destroy, did Obama have no shame when he went to salute the coffin of a young person that he (the buck stops here) killed? Does he not have the courage to sign the orders to start withdrawing our troops from these wars that were begun by the War Machine when his predecessor was in office, but roll bloodily on while he wears the imperial mantle of carnage? Read more.

New Law Could Allow Military Commissions to Continue Indefinitely
By Daphne Eviatar

In signing the Defense Authorization Act, which, among other things, amends the laws governing military commissions, President Obama confirmed yesterday that he plans to keep the controversial military commissions alive. The effect is to deny at least some suspected terrorists — now called “unprivileged enemy belligerents” — the right to a trial in a civilian federal court. And though Obama has promised to use the commissions sparingly, the new law sets up a parallel justice system that could outlive the Obama administration and leave an indelible stamp on its legacy.

READ MORE AT WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT.

See also Center for Constitutional Rights.

Mark Crispin Miller comments on the following news:

So Chuck Hagel "represents the brand of pragmatic Republican national security decisionmaking that President Obama needs to hear much more from"--a statement that's as comforting as it is eloquent.

"Pragmatic Republican national security decisionmaking" would be like, what? Nixon and Kissinger? Bush the Elder? So Hagel's like those "good" Republicans Who Aren't Bush II (even though he's long earned sky-high ratings from the Christianist far right).

And there's also that wee matter--which the press, both centrist and left/liberal, has stalwartly ignored for years--of Hagel's service as the CEO of ES&S, whose e-voting systems were fortuitously used in his two Senate races in Nebraska, both of which (surprise!) he won by startlingly high margins.

So now he's going to co-chair the president's intel advisory board; and HuffPost is applauding.

What am I not getting?

MCM

BBDY 4 Pack

Even the least of us deserves justice and accountability starts with you. So why don't you send out a reminder. Even Bush deserves all the justice he can get and we should ensure he gets his day in court.

Use these images as a 4 PAK and send 4 different cards to the same person; or, choose your favorite and send the same postcard to 4 different persons.

It's easy. Each individual postcard is formatted to the dimensions of 4.25"x5.5". Quarter a sheet of paper and combine the cards as you like. Don't forget to print the other side. Remember the postage stamps. Then mail one to your best beloved, your friends and neighbors, some acquaintance--your politicians and their parties. Show someone you care about them and about justice. Don’t forget Cheney, Condi, Gonzales and Rove: CCGR 4 PAK.

MAY BE USED AS HANDBILLS W/O REVERSE SIDE.

Justice for Bush

Justice for Bybee

Justice for Delahunty

Justice for Yoo

Reverse Side Postcard

By Dave Lindorff

Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose, just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”

Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the world’s major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the CIA payroll.

Obama Declares Swine Flu a National Emergency
Obama declares national emergency for swine flu; faster treatment for infected in a disaster
By Phillip Elliott, Associated Press Writer | ABC News

President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency and empowered his health secretary to suspend federal guidelines at hospitals and speed up how infected people might receive treatment in a disaster.

The declaration that Obama signed late Friday means Health and Human Services chief Kathleen Sebelius to bypass federal rules when opening alternative care sites, such as offsite hospital centers at schools or community centers, if needed.

Hospitals could modify patient rules — for example, requiring them to give less information during a hectic time — to quicken access to treatment, with government approval.

The declaration, which the White House announced Saturday, allows HHS in some cases to let hospitals relocate emergency rooms offsite to reduce flu-related burdens and to protect noninfected patients. Read more.

~Chip's note: At the time of publication here on ADS, neither the White House, nor the DHSS or CDC websites had published the declaration the ABC article states Obama signed late Friday.

Cheney falsely accuses Obama of ‘libel’ against CIA over torture
By Ron Brynaert | Raw Story

Torture is not torture, according to former Vice President Dick Cheney, and to refer it to as such should be considered libelous. Even if it doesn't actually qualify as libel.

The Washington Times' Amanda Carpenter reports, "Maintaining his stature as one of the most forceful defenders of the Bush Administration's defense policies former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Obama of committing 'libel' against CIA interrogators on Wednesday" during a speech at the Center for Security Policy.

"In the speech, Mr. Cheney charged that President Obama has 'filled the air with vague and useless platitude' when talking about torture and by calling enhanced interrogation techniques 'torture" he has committed 'libel' against CIA interrogators whom Mr. Cheney described as 'dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause,'" Carpenter adds.

Cheney's full comments Wednesday:

"In short, to call enhanced interrogation a program of torture is not only to disregard the program’s legal underpinnings and safeguards. Such accusations are a libel against dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country’s name and in our country’s cause. What’s more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future, in favor of half-measures, is unwise in the extreme. In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half exposed."

As Salon's Glenn Greenwald noted last June, "The U.S. has prosecuted those acts as torture in the past. Multiple media outlets and even the U.S. Government have routinely described those acts as “torture” when used against Americans, rather than by Americans. The tactics are ones we copied from manuals designed to inure our own troops to the torture techniques used by some of the world’s worst tyrants. They resulted in numerous deaths. Until the Bush administration decided to call it something other than 'torture' so that they could do it, nobody had any questions about whether this was 'torture.'" Read more.

Coverage of Watson taking refuge in a Vancouver Church: War resister takes refuge in Vancouver church CBC.ca News

Iraq war deserter takes sanctuary in Vancouver church Vancouver Province

Iraq war deserter takes sanctuary in downtown church Vancouver Sun

How you can help:

1.) Write a letter in support of Rodney to your local paper. Use this handy tool, care of the Council of Canadians.

Keep letters under 200 words and include name, address and daytime phone number for confirming authorship.

2.) Support the legal fundraising effort in defence of war resisters facing deportation by the Harper government. Give online. Send a cheque to the campaign.

3.) Join the War Resisters Support Campaign - we need your support! Updates and info on how to contact your Member of Parliament, Minister Kenney and Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Why the White House Probably Doesn’t Want a Public Option
By Scarecrow | The Seminal/FDL

The question many health reform advocates have been asking about the public option debate is “what’s the problem”??? Why isn’t the President demanding it, pushing it, selling it? Well, maybe he doesn’t want it.

Why, given strong Congressional majorities in favor of a public option, continuing strong polling support across the country, and overwhelming support from Democratic voters, is Harry Reid treating the matter as though it were a close call?

To be sure, getting 60 votes for cloture is a challenge, but that is not the same as needing 60 votes for a public option, no matter how many times the media equates the two. Only 5 or 6 Senate Democrats are even opposed in concept. Yet not one of these holdouts has publically declared that he/she would join a filibuster to keep a public option from getting a simple majority-rule vote. Sen. Harkin correctly asks, why should these five be empowered to force over fifty to give in? Everyone also knows that if Harry Reid puts a viable public option in the Senate bill, there aren’t 60 votes to remove it. So why is Harry Reid behaving as though Democrats had something to fear if they demand party loyalty on a cloture vote and then push through a measure that has more voter support than any health reform measure they’ve proposed outside banning insurers from denying coverage to the sick? Read more.

Tomgram: Nick Turse, What the U.S. Military Can't Do | TomDispatch.com

This past weekend, the New York Times Magazine had a cover story by Dexter Filkins, "Stanley McChrystal's Long War," which ended with Afghan War commander McChrystal's pledge to an Afghan governor that the U.S. military would stay in the country "until our Afghan partners are completely secure." "Even," he continued, "if that means years."

Similarly, Filkins quoted McChrystal's deputy, Michael Flynn, this way: "I believe that it's probably going to take us three years to really turn the insurgency to the point where it's waning instead of waxing... And then I think... we are looking at another two years when the government of Afghanistan and the security forces of Afghanistan begin to take a lot more personal responsibility." And keep in mind -- nowhere in that quote is there the slightest indication that Flynn expects U.S. troops to be departing Afghanistan at the end of that five-year stretch when Afghan forces will just "begin" to be taking more "personal responsibility."

"Long War", or long haul, indeed! Here's the odd thing, though: our military leadership in Afghanistan acts, to judge by Filkins piece, as if winning were a hard but typical thing to do, if only things were done right this time. (By the way, if Filkins had written a piece similar in tone about LeBron James, it would be considered embarrassingly fawning. Why is it that our objective reporters for major newspapers regularly fall in love with their military subjects and cast them as stars? And why is such work never considered embarrassing?)

In any case, back to the issue of the American military winning. It's a premise that TomDispatch associate editor and Vietnam War expert Nick Turse considers remarkably far-fetched based on the last half-century of American war-fighting; in fact, it's a point he's raised for years at this website. The real question is: Can an American general win much of anything, no matter how many years, and how much money, Americans are willing to spend, or how much good press he gets? Tom

Failed War President or the Prince of Peace?
By Nick Turse

When the Nobel Committee awarded its annual peace prize to President Barack Obama, it afforded him a golden opportunity seldom offered to American war presidents: the possibility of success. Should he decide to go the peace-maker route, Obama stands a chance of really accomplishing something significant. On the other hand, history suggests that the path of war is a surefire loser. As president after president has discovered, especially since World War II, the U.S. military simply can't seal the deal on winning a war.

While the armed forces can do many things, the one thing that has generally escaped them is that ultimate endpoint: lasting victory. This might have been driven home recently -- had anyone noticed -- when, in the midst of the Washington debate over the Afghan War, a forgotten front in President Bush's Global War on Terror, the Philippines, popped back into the news. On September 25th, New York Times correspondent Norimitsu Onishi wrote:

"Early this decade, American soldiers landed on the island of Basilan, here in the southern Philippines, to help root out the militant Islamic separatist group Abu Sayyaf. Now, Basilan's biggest towns, once overrun by Abu Sayyaf and criminal groups, have become safe enough that a local Avon lady trolls unworriedly for customers. Still, despite seven years of joint military missions and American development projects, much of the island outside main towns like Lamitan remains unsafe."

In attempting to explain the uneven progress of U.S. counterinsurgency operations against Muslim guerillas in the region after the better part of a decade, Onishi also noted, "Basilan, like many other Muslim and Christian areas in the southern Philippines, has a long history of political violence, clan warfare and corruption." While he remained silent about events prior to the 1990s, his newspaper had offered this reasonably rosy assessment of U.S. counterinsurgency efforts against Muslim guerrillas on the same island -- 100 years earlier:

"Detachments of the Twenty-third and Twenty-fifth Infantry, with constabulary and armed launches assisting, are engaged in disarming the Moros on Basilan Island. The troops are distributed around the coast and are co-operating in a series of closing-in movements."

Days after Onishi's report appeared, two American soldiers were killed on nearby Jolo Island. As a Reuters story noted, it "was the first deadly strike against U.S. forces deployed in the southern Philippines since a soldier in a restaurant was killed in 2002..." As in Basilan, however, the U.S. counterinsurgency story in Jolo actually goes back a long way. In early January 1905, to cite just one example, two members of the U.S. military -- the 14th Cavalry to be exact -- were killed during pacification operations on that same island.

That U.S. forces are attempting to defeat Muslim guerrillas on the same two tiny islands a century later should perhaps give President Obama pause as he weighs his options in Afghanistan and considers his recent award. It might also be worth his time to assess the military's record of success in conflicts since World War II, starting with the stalemate war in Korea that began in June 1950 and has yet to end in peace, let alone victory. That quiescent but unsettled conflict provides a ready-made opportunity for the president to achieve a triumph that has long escaped the U.S. military. He could help make a lasting peace on a de-nuclearized Korean peninsula and so begin earning his recent award. Read more.