Category Archives: Constitution

Suskind Pens Another Bombshell

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By Mark Adams

This one’s huge.  From Politico’s Mike Allen (Hat Tip: TPM):

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from [Iraq's former intel director] Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”

Obligatory quotes from the likes of Bill O’Reilly are included which helped spread the fabrication written about at the end of 2003 on the front page of the London Daily Telegraph the very day they (supposedly?) captured Saddam, and the reporter was interviewed on Meet The Press soon after.  The letter was crafted by the CIA, but used to “prove” the 9/11 hijackers were connected and even trained by Iraq.

They absolutely lied us into a war.  Suskind seems to concentrate on the angle that it was illegal to use the CIA this way, influencing domestic politics, and that’s grounds for impeachment.  It seems to me there’s got to be a law somewhere out there that mandates the gas chamber for anyone who commits mass murder on the scale this represents.  The invasion of Iraq was not an act of war, it was an act of homicidal mania.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

Evidently, they secreted Habbush to Jordan and paid him $5 million in hush money, even though he still has a $1 million bounty on his head at the State Department.

The legendary tone-deafness and refusal to listen to advice that didn’t match the White House’s pre-conceived notions is also explored as well as a study on the rise of “plausible deniability” to a high art form under Dick Cheney’s influence.

So just how much time and money and lives did it cost us to go through the motions and act like they were really looking for WMD’s they knew weren’t there?

And for that matter, do you really trust them when the likes of Osama bin Laden conveniently shows up on our TV screens on the eve of an election, his authenticity “verified” by a CIA who could also magically produce letters “proving” the biggest lie of the 21st century?

Somebody’s got to charge someone with a goddamn crime sooner or later dammit, or we might as well shut this charade we call Truth, justice and the American Way down.

One more word on Obama & FISA

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From Kevin at American Street:

We are being robbed of our liberties. And Obama and McCain are equals in that theft. Both deserve to lose for their failure to defend the very essence of our country.

Well, yes, but … tomorrow is another day.

In other words liberty, and the fight for it, is an ongoing process. Soon, the ACLU will sue to overturn the legislation and it will wind it’s way through the courts. Maybe we’ll luck out and the SCOTUS will strike it down. Stranger things have happened — even with this version of the court.

Better yet: Obama will (hopefully) win and the next Congress may have an opportunity to reverse the legislation as well.

Then there’s the prospect of Atty Gen. Edwards prosecuting every single one of the telcos on criminal charges.

So it’s never “over.”

One thing for sure: FIRST, you need to win the freaking election, or most of what I just said is flushed down the toilet.

Hang together or hang separately

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This is a significant day in the campaign, but we go on. Mark has a great post below and there are also lots of good posts around blogville today. I just got done reading Kevin’s post over at American Street and he, too, makes a good case for why we should be disgusted with the Democrats and their nominee.

I was struck by Mark’s mention of the founding fathers and of Voltaire; Franklin in particular held him in high regard — no surprise there. I also note Mark’s mention of John Adams who, as President, signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law, a heinous blot on constitutional history (part of which was still legal in 2008). Despite that, we remember Adams as a giant of the American Revolution, easily Jefferson’s equal. That Adams could be both things — a genius and yet a seriously flawed politician — should give us some insight into the quandaries (and temptations) of leadership in the American system of governance.

So here’s the thing: those of you who want to quit the game at this point are ceding the field to others who take comfort in our disunity. We’ll survive yesterday’s vote — one of many to come — in the Senate. But only if we don’t break apart. Tomorrow the sun will come up again and for many days to come. We’ll get another chance to get it right.

Attention should be paid to Russ Feingold, a champion of civil liberties but also a politician:

Maddow: With this vote, voters have to be asking if there is any meaningful difference between the parties on executive power, between the Democratic vision of executive power and the GOP. Certainly your vision of executive power is different than the president’s. But can you say the same for your party?

Feingold: I’m very concerned about it. People have a great right to be disappointed and to look at the 2006 election both rigard to Iraq and say, “What are they doing?” But having a Democratic president, in particular Barack Obama, should allow us to greatly change this mistake.

Barack Obama believes in the Constitution, he’s a Constitutional scholar. I believe he will have a better chance to look at these powers that have been given to the Executive branch. And even though he’ll be running the Executive branch, I think he will understand and help take the lead in fixing some of the worst provisions.

So this is a huge setback. It would have been better for Democrats to stand together and not let it happen in the first place because it is much harder to change it after the fact. But I do believe that Barack Obama is well-positioned in terms of his knowledge and his background and his beliefs to correct this. So I do think the people have a right be disappointed, but they also have a right to hope for change on this issue particularly, starting in January.

As Franklin said, we must all hang together or we will surely hang separately.