Prometheus 6

And thank you James MacLean!

Obama Voters Protest His Switch on Telecom Immunity
By JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON — Senator Barack Obama’s decision to support legislation granting legal immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with the Bush administration’s program of wiretapping without warrants has led to an intense backlash among some of his most ardent supporters.

Thousands of them are now using the same grass-roots organizing tools previously mastered by the Obama campaign to organize a protest against his decision.

In recent days, more than 7,000 Obama supporters have organized on a social networking site on Mr. Obama’s own campaign Web site. They are calling on Mr. Obama to reverse his decision to endorse legislation supported by President Bush to expand the government’s domestic spying powers while also providing legal protection to the telecommunication companies that worked with the National Security Agency’s domestic wiretapping program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

You know why all this stuff from 2004 is popping up? Because I'm a slave to fashion.

You remember how every 5 minutes in 2004 we got a TERROR ALERT from Homeland Security, and then after Bush was re-elected the TERROR ALERTs seemed to go away? And then Tom Ridge admitted that at least a few of them were politically motivated?

Welcome back.

“The White House said Monday it agreed with an assessment by U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, who warns terrorists could test the next president with an attack.”

The likelihood of this working this time is essentially zero (nobody trusts the party of Katrina and Iraq with their security anymore) but it is a pretty perverse thing for a government to be engaged in.

It really is. Consider the thought of getting folks to trust you then willfully lying to them, consciously constructing a false view of the world, being shameless enough to defend your right to lie to those who trust you, just to get your way...

This is as close to objective evil as I am willing to admit exists.

In addition to the terrible toll of Americans and Iraqis killed and wounded, the war in Iraq has diverted attention and resources from critical problems here in the U.S., where the housing market has been crippled, the stock market has tanked, gasoline has soared past $4 per gallon, unemployment is increasing and an extraordinary number of debt-ridden working families are staring into a financial abyss.

Even as oil companies are enjoying staggering profits, many Americans — in July! — are already worried sick about the potentially ruinous cost of heating their homes next winter.

‘Oh Happy Day’
By BOB HERBERT

It’s getting harder and harder to remain deluded. With each day comes new facts to drag our heads out of the sand.

Two weeks ago, The Times reported that four Western oil giants were on the verge of signing no-bid contracts that would return them to Iraq, the third-most bountiful petroleum playground on the planet. The deals, expected to be finalized in the next 30 days, were the kind of news that big oil lives for.

Giddy executives singing “Oh Happy Day” could be heard in the corporate offices of Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP, which had been shut out of Iraq for three and a half decades.

Here's the thing about magic...it works via misdirection. The magician directs your attention away from what's really going on.

The story of how Al Qaeda, whose name is Arabic for “the base,” has gained a new haven is in part a story of American accommodation to President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, whose advisers played down the terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House shifted its sights, beginning in 2002, from counterterrorism efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, Al Qaeda now has a band of terrorist camps from which to plan and train for attacks against Western targets, including the United States. Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired C.I.A. officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago.

Which makes Bush the magician.

Amid Policy Disputes, Qaeda Grows in Pakistan
By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID ROHDE

Preparing the Battlefield
The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.
by Seymour M. Hersh
July 7, 2008

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Ideology-Based Hiring at Justice Broke Laws, Investigation Finds
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 25, 2008; A11

Senior Justice Department officials broke civil service laws by rejecting scores of young applicants who had links to Democrats or liberal organizations, according to a biting report issued yesterday.

The report by the Justice Department inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that a pair of high-ranking political appointees who are no longer with the department had violated department policy and the Civil Service Reform Act by using ideological reasons to scuttle the candidacy of lawyers who applied to the elite honors and summer intern programs.

In one instance, steering committee member Esther Slater McDonald deemed "unacceptable" an applicant who professed admiration for the environmental group Greenaction and passed over another with ties to the Poverty and Race Research Action Council, the report said.

White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail
By FELICITY BARRINGER

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

Sometimes I can't believe what he screws up the nerve to write.

In these circumstances, it’s amazing that George Bush decided on the surge. And looking back, one thing is clear: Every personal trait that led Bush to make a hash of the first years of the war led him to make a successful decision when it came to this crucial call.

Bush is a stubborn man. Well, without that stubbornness, that unwillingness to accept defeat on his watch, he never would have bucked the opposition to the surge.

Bush is an outrageously self-confident man. Well, without that self-confidence he never would have overruled his generals.

Without that stubbornness he would never have invaded. And that self-confidence made him override his generals during, if you'll forgive my loose use of language, the planning stages of the invasion of Iraq.

In fact, when it comes to Iraq, Bush was at his worst when he was humbly deferring to the generals and at his best when he was arrogantly overruling them.

Electronic transaction reporting requirements slipped into Housing bill
By Julian Sanchez | Published: June 20, 2008 - 12:54PM CT

A bill under consideration in Congress to bail out homeowners affected by the mortgage crisis enjoys strong bipartisan support, despite a recent White House veto threat. But the free-market advocacy group FreedomWorks is drawing attention to a provision introduced on the Senate side that has little to do with housing loans: a measure that would require credit card companies and electronic payment processors, such as PayPal, to file aggregate transaction reports with the IRS listing their total annual payments to individual merchants who receive more than $10,000 and conduct more than 200 transactions each year.

Providing a rare glimpse of high-level, behind-the-scenes string-pulling, they show how Abramoff, now serving a prison term for fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy, relied on key White House contacts, including Susan Ralston, executive assistant to political adviser Karl Rove; Monica Kladakis, then deputy White House personnel chief; and Ken Mehlman, then the White House political director.

Abramoff Used White House To Help Get Rid of Roadblock
E-Mail Shows How Key Officials Aided Lobbyist in Ousting Foe
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 19, 2008; A17

If lobbyists find the path to their clients' riches obstructed by an implacably hostile federal official, they might achieve success by an end run or an appeal to more senior authorities. But a more extreme solution -- if the foe has high-level support -- is to pull strings at the White House and orchestrate the official's removal.

That option was chosen by Jack Abramoff and his colleagues at the Washington office of Greenberg Traurig in the Bush administration's early days, to oust Alan Stayman from a State Department negotiating job. Stayman had earned their ire by advocating labor reforms in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate where Abramoff's clients wanted to keep paying immigrants less than the federal minimum wage to work in textile factories.

The evaluations backed up the men's stories of physical and sexual assault and documented psychological damage that had left many of them severely impaired, the report said. For example, exams and X-rays of one of the former detainees showed scars and joint injuries that supported his description of being suspended for hours by his arms at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

All 11 men were eventually released from custody without being charged with crimes.

Exams Back Up Reports of Detainee Abuse, Group Says
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 19, 2008; A07

The first extensive medical examinations of former detainees in U.S. military jails offer corroboration for prisoners' claims of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their American captors, a Boston-based human rights group said in a report released yesterday.

Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

A second committee report, also made public on Thursday, detailed a series of clandestine meetings between Pentagon officials and Iranian dissidents in Rome and Paris in 2001 and 2003. It accused Stephen Hadley, now the national security advisor, and Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary, of failing to properly inform the intelligence agencies and the State Department about the meetings.

Senate Panel Accuses Bush of Iraq Exaggerations
By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — In a report long delayed by partisan squabbling, the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday accused President Bush and Vice President Cheney of taking the country to war in Iraq by exaggerating evidence of links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in the emotional aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

McCain's new position plainly contradicts statements he made in a December 20, 2007 interview with the Boston Globe where he implicitly criticized Bush's five-year secret end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

"I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is," McCain said.

The Globe's Charlie Savage pushed further, asking , "So is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?" To which McCain answered, "I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."

McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too
By Ryan Singel
June 03, 2008 | 5:06:25 PM

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

via Republic of T

Memo to Scott McClellan: Here's what happened

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

(Click here, here and here to get just a taste of what we mean).

Second, we find it a wee bit preposterous -- and we are being diplomatic here -- that a man who slavishly - no, robotically! -- defended President Bush's policies in Iraq and elsewhere is trying to "set the record straight" (and sell a few books) five years and more after the invasion, with U.S. troops still bravely fighting and dying to stabilize that country.

But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.

Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq
By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 28, 2008; A01

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

McClellan includes the charges in a 341-page book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a "lack of inquisitiveness," says the White House operated in "permanent campaign" mode, and admits to having been deceived by some in the president's inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative's name.

Here's the first place you look.

New Troops in Iraq Will Keep Number at 140,000
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 20, 2008; A08

Seven active-duty Army brigades have been scheduled to deploy to Iraq later this year, the Defense Department announced yesterday, a plan that would allow U.S. commanders to keep troop levels at about 140,000 through the end of the Bush administration and into the next president's term.

The deployments will be part of the regular rotation of troops into Iraq and will come on the heels of the "surge" of troops, which is expected to end this summer. The increased U.S. presence in Iraq -- which topped out at about 170,000 troops -- is expected to go down to 140,000 by the end of July. U.S. officials plan to keep 15 combat brigades in Iraq through the end of the year, though ongoing assessments could allow commanders to change those numbers.

Hat tip to James MacLean.

Part of the problem may be the White House's haphazard system for email archiving. As we discussed in our recent feature on the e-mail controversy, the White House scrapped the Clinton administration's automated e-mail archiving solution in favor of a clumsy system called "journaling" that involved the manual backup of ".pst" files that were stored on various servers in the White House network. As a former White House IT staffer put it, "The process by which e-mail was being collected and retained was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high."

So it's not surprising that five years after the fact, the Bush administration still has not been able to produce a comprehensive inventory of which e-mails have been preserved and which have gone missing. 

White House insists it has e-mail recovery under control
By Timothy B. Lee | Published: May 12, 2008 - 10:26AM CT

The Bush administration last week filed responses to a federal magistrate judge's questions relating to ongoing litigation over what critics say is thousands of missing e-mails. Administration lawyers submitted a 22-page legal brief and a 7-page declaration from Theresa Payton, CIO of the White House's Office of Administration. The brief strenuously objected to the demands of the lead plaintiff, the National Security Archive (which filed suit alongside Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington), that special measures be taken to preserve hard drives and removable media that could be useful in future forensic efforts to retrieve e-mails.

Federal law requires executive branch agencies, including the Executive Office of the President, to preserve e-mails related to the performance of their official duties. The National Security Archive (NSA) claims that the White House has failed to preserve approximately five million e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005.

The White House protests that it has already preserved sufficient backup tapes to enable future recovery of any missing emails. It says that there are now 60,000 backup tapes in storage, including 438 "disaster recovery" backup tapes that were made during the critical period of March to October of 2003. Payton says that these backup tapes "should" contain "substantially all" of the emails in question.

But in a statement released last week, the NSA questioned Payton's claims. It noted that by Payton's own admission, the earliest backup tapes that have been preserved are from May 23, 2003. Although these backup tapes should contain many e-mails from earlier in 2003, the NSA notes that any e-mails deleted prior to May 23 would not have been preserved on those tapes.

“What is most shocking is that if anyone at the White House was deleting their e-mails during the invasion of Iraq, those e-mails are not on any back-up tapes,” argued NSA director Tom Blanton in a written statement. The NSA general counsel, Meridith Fuchs, added, "In May 2008, the White House still can't figure out which e-mails are lost but continues to speculate that the e-mails 'should' be on back-up tapes.”

Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths, U.S. Says
By Avram Goldstein

May 5 (Bloomberg) -- The number of suicides among veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may exceed the combat death toll because of inadequate mental health care, the U.S. government's top psychiatric researcher said.

Community mental health centers, hobbled by financial limits, haven't provided enough scientifically sound care, especially in rural areas, said Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He briefed reporters today at the American Psychiatric Association's annual meeting in Washington.