The Alligator

Excuse me Mr. Attorney General Gonzales, but you are not the White House Counsel anymore you are the people’s attorney.  Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico said in a recent interview that “Attorney General Gonzales needed to decide if he was the nation’s lawyer, the peoples’ lawyer, or whether he was just the President’s political flack.” Richardson did not feel that matters that were essentially “political” should be shielded by executive privilege. Unless it was a matter of national security, Governor Richardson saw the effort to shield Congressional oversight from the Gonzales attorney firings as inappropriate. 

But let’s talk more about the role of the Attorney General.  According to the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) own web site, the Attorney General has a very specific job description.  “The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the Office of the Attorney General which evolved over the years into the head of the Department of Justice and chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government. The Attorney General represents the United States in legal matters generally and gives advice and opinions to the President and to the heads of the executive departments of the Government when so requested.”

The White House’s web site has a simple job description of the White House Counsel’s job.  “The Counsel’s office advises the President on all legal issues concerning the President and the White House.”

These are very different roles.  And while Mr. Gonzales had the role of White House Counsel, that job now is filled by Fred F. Fielding.  Mr. Gonzales should not be acting like the White House counsel.  Ever since the serious allegations of political motivations for the firings of seven US attorneys, Mr. Gonzales has been acting like the White House Counsel, as he often does. 

While US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, they are not there to over reach their prosecutorial duties to destroy political opponents to the President’s party and to ignore illegal behavior of political allies.  This is the heart of the current problem.  

Mr. Gonzales is acting at the political behest of the White House, not at the legal behest of the country and he isn’t being truthful about it. 

At a March 13 news conference, trying to stem the furor over the firings, Gonzales said, “I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood.”   But his Nov. 27 schedule, included in a batch of memos sent to Capitol Hill late Friday, showed he attended an hour-long meeting at which, aides said, he approved a detailed plan for executing the purge.

 Three of the fired U.S. attorneys appeared on “Meet the Press” and “Face the Nation” contending their dismissals were politically motivated.  Asked by NBC’s Tim Russert whether he was removed for political reasons in New Mexico, David Iglesias said: “Absolutely, yes.”  Bud Cummins of Arkansas told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that the reasons for the firings were “petty, maybe personal, and probably had some politics in it.”

“We do serve at the pleasure of the president,” Cummins said. “In this case, that authority was delegated all the way down to Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, Judge Gonzales – and all the way down to a bunch of 35-year-old kids who got in a room together and decided who was most loyal to the president.”

John McKay of Washington state said on “Meet the Press”: “What happened here has to be investigated.  The attorney general is not above the law. He should be held accountable.”

A slavish devotion to protecting the White House’s political operation to the point of corrupting the integrity of the Department of Justice is not part of the Attorney General’s job description.  Mr. Gonzales should go because he sullied that integrity not because he is too embattled.  Let’s be clear why he must go, He has lied to the American people - whom he serves and he has abused his office for political purposes.  Does anyone remember John Mitchell?  

There are a few phrases that have been added to the lexicon of popular English expressions over the years that point to the exasperation that seems inherent in so much of what we deal with in modern culture.  First there was the phrase - “Going postal” which originally referred to a flurry of workplace shootings that were perpetrated by postal workers.  Some sociologists pointed to the dead end and non-personal environment of bureaucracies like the Postal Service as the culprit.  Later the phrase found its way into common usage as a way to describe someone who is going a little crazy because they are fed up.  Then came road rage and air rage- often being triggered by rude and incompetent people.  I have probably been at the precipice of air rage a few times when I have had a cancelled or delayed flight and none of the airline personnel is either willing to acknowledge my frustration or to help me.  But none of that compares to my newest modern life condition- Cell phone rage.  I am not about to go postal or nuclear, I am about to go cellular!

About a month ago my cell phone was stolen.  Sure - I was upset, but I know these things happen and I was just grateful that during the mugging, I escaped unharmed.  But somehow I could deal with that personal violation.  Feeling violated by someone who is ripping you off is expected.  But I really didn’t expect to feel violated yet again by my cell phone company- Cingular. 

I admit that I had made a mistake and hadn’t bought insurance for my phone so I realized that I was going to be on the hook for the cost of a new phone.  Somehow I didn’t expect to be on the hook for the price I would have to pay nor for what happened later.  About 6 months ago I upgraded my phone to a Razr- paying abotu $100.00 for the upgrade and promising to extend my contract for 2 years.  No big deal.  Of course I had seen Razrs cheaper at the time, but not a whole lot cheaper. 

Over the course of the past 6 months as other phones became the flavors of the day- I have seen ads for Razrs plummet and even Cingular was offering them for $25.00 for a new phone with new service.  So, while I didn’t expect to get a new phone for $25.00, I didn’t expect them to tell me that I would need to pay $279!  I don’t think I have seen Razrs for that price since the first came out.  I was angry!  When I talked to the Cingular rep on the phone - I told her that I felt that I had been violated a second time- first by the mugger and second by Cingular.  What was the response?  Nothing.  Not even an “I’m sorry you feel that way” or an “I understand but there is little I can do.”  Just dead silence!  If my feelings had at least been acknowledged, it would have helped; I would have left the encounter unhappy but not angry.  If I had decided to pick up my marbles and go to a different carrier- I would have had to pay $175.00 so I bit the bullet but was still angry.

So- I went to the Cingular store and got my phone.  I even went through the hurdles necessary to get the rebate- which included cutting out a piece of the box that included the device number so it could be sent in among the rebate application materials.  I think I had to send less documentation to my alama mater, Cornell, when I was applying for college admittance. Well the phone didn’t work nearly as well as the first one so I realized that it was a defective device.   I called Cingular and they told me that I could return it since it was within the 30 day period and just have it exchanged. 

 I asked them what I needed to bring.  The rep said, “All you need to bring is the phone.”  Great -that’s easy.  Then I asked another question.  When I bought the new defective phone I had asked them to start insuring it.  I was told by the salesperson that it would now be insured.  For some reason I asked the rep who I was talking to if the phone had been insured and she said no.  I expressed frustration because I had asked for insurance when I bought this new defective phone.  She told me that I only had until the 30 day mark to insure the phone (and I couldn’t do it through her- but only through the store where I bought it) or else they would not be able to insure it! 

I guess heaven  was watching over me by giving me a defective phone.  If I hadn’t had any problems- I wouldn’t have known it was uninsured and I wouldn’t have been able to insure it - even if I noticed the charge wasn’t appearing on my bill- since it would be too late!  Geesh!

So yesterday I merrily make my way to Cingular to bring my phone back and get it insured.  I explain all this to a sales rep who looks like he is 12.  He stared at me with a blank look that was more vacant than my computer screen.  I don’t think anything I said registered in his techno-addled brain.  I handed him the phone and he said- “Do you have the original box?”  Well of course I didn’t.  The rep on the phone had told me all I needed was the phone itself and I had to cut the box up in order to send part of it into Cingular for the rebate.  “Well- you will need to pay a $25 re-stocking fee.”

I went cellular!  I asked why I hadn’t been told that, I was angry because I was told one thing by the rep on the phone and now he was telling me something different and besides how could I bring back a box that had been cut up in order to get the rebate.  My tone was not pleasant, but I didn’t intend to be pleasant.   It wasn’t the lousy $25.00 it was the whole experience that had worn me down.

His response was, “Do you want me to help you or not?”  I bit my tongue because I realized I didn’t have much of a choice, but I wondered to myself about how these people are trained.  Whatever happened to “the customer is always right” and “I’m sorry”.  Cingular wasn’t the aggrieved party here- I was.   Besides what do they have to lose by acknowledging a customer’s frustration even if they can’t do anything about it?

Sadly customer service has gone the way of good manners and it has made our world less civilized.   I’m surpirsed we all don’t go “cellular”!

There is no other way to say it- March 19, 2003 is another day that will live in infamy.  The first day was when we were attacked by Japan in WW II, the second is when Al-Qeda terrorists backed by rich Saudis and Afghanistan’s Taliban (not Iraq) flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the third was when President George Walker Bush led this country into the first “pre-emptive” war ever waged by this nation.       

Frank Rich wrote a sobering and brilliant opinion piece in Sunday’s New York Times, “The Ides of 2003″.  Although it is only available to those who subscribe to the Times or to their Times Select service, it is worth seeking out this thought provoking essay.

It would be flippant to call this Bush’s folly.  It’s much worse.  This is a war that never should have been waged.  Iraq was not any party to 9/11, it had no WMD’s and while Sadaam was a horrible dictator he is one of many most of whom the US treats with benign neglect and he was one that we had a long record of supporting especially during the Iran-Iraq War. 

Let’s take the 9/11 connection.  While the administration cynically played (and sometimes continues to play) the 9/11 card by making statements about Iraq and 9/11 in the same sentence and inferring a connection.  But when asked point blank if Iraq had had anything to do with the attacks on 9//11 even Mr. Bush says no. 

 Let’s take WMDs.  In an interview done 3 years ago, on the first anniversary of the war, the United Nations’ top two weapons experts working at the time of the lead up to war said in interviews on CNN that the invasion of Iraq a year ago was not justified by the evidence in hand at the time.

“I think it’s clear that in March 2003, when the invasion took place, the evidence that had been brought forward was rapidly falling apart,” Hans Blix, who oversaw the agency’s investigation into whether Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, said,  Blix described the evidence Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 as “shaky,” and said he related his opinion to U.S. officials, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. “I think they chose to ignore us,” Blix said.

Mohamed El Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said he had been “pretty convinced” that Iraq had not resumed its nuclear weapons program, which the IAEA dismantled in 1997 during the weeks leading up to war.

Let’s take that Saddam was a horrible ruthless dictator.  He was- no question.  But there are many ruthless tyrants presently ruling countries and we don’t look to depose them.  And in actuality we helped build up Saddam’s strength supporting him when he first came to power and again when the Reagan administration supported his regime during the Iran-Iraq War.

The only reason to go to war was oil money and a neo-conservative academic theory that having an American puppet in the Middle East would be good for American interests (American interests defined as corporations not people).  This is a despicable basis for the first pre-emptive war in our nation’s history. 

Nearly 3,200 Americans dead, 25,000 wounded, at least a half a trillion dollars spent and more than 50,000 Iraqis dead.  Sobering statistics- yet Vice President Cheney ignores these outrageous statistics and says we have had victories.   I suppose that those victories are deposing a dictator who had little fire power, and having elections to set up a government that cannot govern its way out of a paper bag.  We are in the midst of a Civil War, we have given more fuel to terrorist recruitment by our actions, we have given a safe haven for terrorists and we have ignored the true war on terrorism by allowing the Taliban to resurrect and Al Qeda to regroup.   Sorry -but in my opinion this was not worth it.   But how do we extricate ourselves from this mess?

Do we bring the troops home and say to Iraq- “Sorry we broke your country, but you own it?”  My knee jerk reaction is to say - “Get the hell out of there- completely”.  But even though I have always opposed this war- it was our country that broke Iraq and as Colin Powell said- “you break it, you own it.”  I agree with Powell that this is the only moral answer.  The question is “How do we honor our moral obligation that doesn’t leave Iraq in tatters just because our government decided to wage a war on the whim of a bunch of neo-conservative arm chair warriors while not making the situation worse for this country, Iraq and the world?  Pulling out completely will lead to chaos and disaster that would rightly be laid at our doorstep for responsibility.  The Bush strategy will lead to nothing than more of the same horror that is escalating every day. 

I wish I knew the answer.  But the one suggestion  that many smart people who know about such things point out is that we should look for a political solution here that engages the whole region.  The recent Neighborhood Conference was a step in the right direction but has the Bush administration come to this too late and without enough commitment? 

Mr. Bush has left us with an unmitigated disaster.  We have no good options- just the less worse or horrible ones.  How could we have let Mr. Bush and his cronies lead us down this path?  Public fear that can be played like a violin for political purposes since 9/11 is one answer and a press that is afraid to speak truth to power because news people are too afraid to rock their “access to power” boat is another. 

But the really ugly reason this country allowed this to happen was that there was no pain for us during this war.  The effort we were asked to make during this war was to go shopping and keep the economy humming.  If that isn’t a cynical play to the worst of  our nature, I don’t know what is.  During war we should be asked to access our better nature, not our worst.  

And the economy has gone on humming.  Before the Iraqi War- one share of Halliburton sold for $20.50  The value when then market closed on Friday (with an adjustment made for a 2006 split) was $64.12.  That is a 313% increase in 4 years - an average annual increase of 78%    The S&P 500 increase over the past year has been about 8% and as for one of the hottest stocks- Google has an average increase of 29.7%. 

I guess it was about our economy after all.  Didn’t a wise man once say “It’s the economy stupid!”  I am sure that no one ever expected that to be more than a presidential campaign mantra and not a war slogan.

What is it with the political religious right’s obsession with sex- and particularly gay sex?  A psychoanalyst would worry that there is some major problems going on for these people .  Such obsessions aren’t healthy- and as we have seen too often - this need to make sex a societal taboo ends up costing many of these people to act out in perverse ways that actually make the act of sex (a celebration of life and love that is a lot of fun) into something that is sordid and distorted: Remember Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggart, and a quarter of the Roman Catholic priesthood? 

Now here come some more outrageous obsession with sex in general and gay sex in particular.  Thank you Mr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Mr. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council and  Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

The “Hatred not Compassion is Christianity Award” goes to Mr. Perkins and Mr. Dobson.  These men sent a letter to the National Association of Evangelicals  leaders this month accusing the policy director, the Rev. Richard Cizik, of “using the global warming controversy to shift the emphasis away from the great moral issues of our time,” which they defined as abortion, homosexuality and teaching children sexual morality and abstinence.

Can you imagine?  It is more important to villanize sex than it is to save the planet’s and therefore humanity’s future.  God would be SO PROUD! 

Board members say that the notion of censoring Mr. Cizik never arose last week at their meeting in Minnesota, and that he had delivered the keynote address at their banquet. In addition, the board voted 38 to 1 to endorse a declaration, which Mr. Cizik helped to write, that denounces the American government’s treatment of detainees in the fight against terrorism. The board also voted unanimously to reaffirm the platform adopted three years ago, which enumerates seven policy priorities, including the environment, human rights and poverty.

Can you imagine Christians thinking about human rights and poverty, decrying torture and concerned about the future of our planet?  How outrageous.  Dobson and his gang of sex-obsessed hypocrites (they all eventually turn out to be hiding some dark and kinky secret) dismiss theconcerns of the Evangelical group- which no doubt are the concerns Jesus Christ would have today- and instead cast stones at people doing no harm to others just because they cannot sex out of their misguided and sick brains. 

Add to this lunacy the remarks from Rev. R. Albert Mohler Jr.  In an article he posted on his website - “Is Your Baby Gay? What If You Could Know? What If You Could Do Something About It?” - Mr. Mohler said in the article that scientific research “points to some level of biological causation” for homosexuality.

That suggestion offended fellow conservatives, Mr. Mohler said. Proof of a biological basis would challenge the belief of many conservative Christians that homosexuality, which they view as sinful, is a matter of choice that can be overcome through prayer and counseling.  But Mr. Mohler said he was criticized even more strongly by supporters of gay rights, who were upset by his assertion that homosexuality would remain a sin even if it were biologically based, and by his support for possible medical treatment that could change an unborn child’s sexual orientation.

“He’s willing to play God,” said Harry Knox, a spokesman on religious issues for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group. “He’s more than willing to let homophobia take over and be the determinant of how he responds to this issue, in spite of everything else he believes about not tinkering with the unborn.”

Mr. Mohler wins the “Hypocrite and Hubris Award of the Millennium”!  A staunch advocate for “the rights of the fetus” through his anti abortion and anti stem cell stance is suggesting science that smacks in the face of these positions.  God forbid you allow God’s plan for the unborn fetus to exist.  God MUST have made a mistake- let’s fix it! Isn’t that the definition of hubris?  What’s next-  Abortion will be illegal in all cases including rape and incest, but it will be allowed if you find that your fetus is gay? H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-S-Y!!!!

These people need to get to a good Freudian and work out their issues. 

In January of 2007, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that politics was not a factor in the dismissal of U.S. Attorneys.  “I would never, ever make a change in the United States attorney position for political reasons,” Mr. Gonzales said with a straight face and the hubris that has come to be the hallmark of the administration. 

Yet, in January of 2005, while serving as White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales plotted with the White House political “mastermind,” Karl Rove, about getting rid of U.S. Attorneys. 

Karl Rove, the senior presidential adviser, inquired about firing United States attorneys in January 2005, e-mail messages released Thursday show. The request prompted a Justice Department aide to respond that Alberto R. Gonzales, soon to be confirmed as attorney general, favored replacing a group of “underperforming” prosecutors. 

The e-mail messages, part of a larger collection that the Justice Department is preparing to turn over to Congressional investigators, indicate that Mr. Rove and Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, had considered replacing prosecutors earlier than either has previously acknowledged.

In a message on Jan. 6, 2005, one White House lawyer wrote to a colleague: “Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting) ‘how we planned to proceed regarding U.S. Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them or selectively replace them, etc.’ ”  

D. Kyle Sampson, who resigned this week as chief of staff to Mr. Gonzales, responded by e-mail three days later. Discussing a plan to replace 15 percent to 20 percent of all 93 prosecutors, Mr. Sampson noted: “Judge and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago.” (Mr. Gonzales is known to associates as the Judge from his tenure on the Texas Supreme Court.) Mr. Sampson predicted that any dismissals could stir protests. “If Karl thinks there is the political will to do it, then so do I,” he wrote. 

Surely, Karl Rove never did anything for political reasons. I’m not sure you noticed the sarcasm in my voice when I wrote that!  Rove, Bush’s brain and his hatchet man, doesn’t know how to breathe without a political motive.  It’s just one lie after another.Mr. Gonzales should follow Mr. Sampson out the door.  Mr. Gonzales is the people’s attorney, not the President’s personal council.  Maybe he forgot that being attorney general was different than his previous White House role. 

As for Karl Rovehe he should exit by crawling out a White House basement window- the same way this dangerous, slimy, vindictive scum sucker came into the West Wing!

When General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff described homosexuality as immoral- he did nothing but show his own ignorance and blatant prejudice and was outrageously offensive to the gay and lesbian servicemembers that are currently bravely serving their country and who operate under the General’s command.  Of course his stupidity was heightened by the fact that this statement was made in order to support the adbsurd military policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. 

“Don”t Ask, Don’t Tell” was always an absurd policy.  Although I admire President Clinton - this policy compromise on gays in the military was ridiculous and has been a failure.  Mr. Clinton attempted to follow through on a promise he made during his first campaign to lift the ban of gays and lesbians in the military.  At the time the President was obviously naive as to some of the shenanigans of the beltway and ignited a firestorm of controversy.  The compromise - “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” really satisfied neither side in this debate. 

 The policy’s failure is obvious.  In a January 2007 Op/Ed piece for the New York Times General John Shalikashvili - who was Chair of the JCS at the time that the policy was enacted- has changed his mind about the policy and about gays serving in the military.  He now supports gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military. 

In the Op-Ed article, General Shalikashvili wrote that conversations with gay soldiers and marines had showed him “that gays and lesbians can be accepted by their peers.”

“I now believe that if gay men and lesbians served openly in the United States military, they would not undermine the efficacy of the armed forces,” General Shalikashvili wrote. “Our military has been stretched thin by our deployments in the Middle East, and we must welcome the service of any American who is willing and able to do the job.”

And what about the gay men and lesbians that were in the military that fluently speak Arabic?  Many of these servicemembers were dismissed under “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” at a time when the military concedes it has a severe shortage of servicemembers who speak Arab languages.  

 The bigotry and dull-headedness behind “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is heinous.  The fact that this policy has short shrifted the military in its military operations and objectives is not only short sighted but counterproductive to our national interest.  

 General Pace’s support of a failed policy is flat out wrong.  His comments are bigoted and offensive to thousands of US servicemembers.  Back in World War II, a very talented but outspoken and inappropriate military leader- General George S Patton was nearly fired for slapping one servicemember.  Using that as a barometer- shouldn’t General Pace be forced to resign for the offense he made against thousands of servicemembers? 

Scooter Libby did the Bush administration’s dirty work.  He took one on the chin for his old boss.  Envoking the Republican icon of the late 20th century- Scooter took one for the Gipper!  

Denis Collins- Juror No. 9  who was interviewed extensively after the verdict said the jury wondered why Libby but not the leaker — Richard Armitage — or Karl Rove, among others, had been brought before them. He believed that Libby’s lawyer, Ted Wells, may have been correct in saying Libby was a fall guy for the administration. It just didn’t excuse Libby’s lies.

I agree with the jury’s verdict, but I feel cheated.

I believe there was an orchestrated attempt by the White House — and Cheney in particular — to discredit Joseph Wilson by alleging his trip to Africa in 2002 to check on intelligence claims that Iraq was attempting to acquire uranium from Niger for use in weapons of mass destruction was the result of nepotism. Cheney’s handwritten notes, introduced at trial, plainly asked whether Wilson had been sent on a junket by his wife.

This trial should have been about whether the vice president of the United States — in an effort to justify going to war by hiding the truth from the American public that there was no intelligence establishing that Iraq was in the process of acquiring materials for weapons of mass destruction — used Libby and other officials to manipulate the media and cause them to disclose the identity of a classified CIA agent.

Instead, because Libby clammed up, as is his right, and took a bullet for the team, even claiming to the grand jury he forgot the details of his conversations with Cheney, prosecutors weren’t able to get to the truth and decide if they had a case against Cheney. As Fitzgerald said when he announced Libby’s indictment, Libby had thrown sand in the face of the umpires.

In the end, while Libby’s lawyers were unsuccessful in defending their fall guy, they did a heck of a job for the administration.

The Bush administration has painted any efforts by the Democrats to curtail spending on the War in Iraq in order to bring home our troops as being nonsupportive of our troops.  One word comes to mind- HYPOCRISY! 

Army Major General Paul D. Eaton (Ret.) who was the original Commander in charge of training Iraqi troops has made his feelings known both in an interview on “Real Time with Bill Maher” on Friday night and in an Op/Ed piece in the New York Times earlier in the week.  The General didn’t mince words when asked about the horrific conditions at Walter Reed hospital when he said, “We’ve got this thing that so many military believe that Republican administrations are good for the military.  That is rarely the case.  And, we have to get a message through to every soldier, every family member, every friend of soldiers that the Republican party, the Republican dominated Congress has absolutely been the worst thing that’s happened to the United States Army and the United States Marine Corps.”  

In the New York Times piece General Eaton puts much of the blame squarely at the door of former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld.  “The general effort by Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Harvey (former Secretary of the Army) to privatize services at Army bases needs to be reined in. Some of the problems at Walter Reed seem to have been caused by the contracting out of maintenance services and other support jobs.”

It is appalling that this administration - that doesn’t give a fig about the troops who need support the most- bandies about the accusation that any strategy that differs from their absurd newest surge policy is one that doesn’t support the troops!   

Let’s be clear- this war was completely unnecessary.  Ambassador Joe Wilson who, with his wife Valerie Plame, paid dearly for crossing this administration by calling them on the “uranium in Africa” lie recently described the debacle in Iraq as a failed experiment of an academic premise (i.e., the Neo-Conservative theory that having an American puppet in the Middle-East would be good for the US - or more cynically US oil and business interests).  The Ambassador went on to say that this academic premise was a flawed hypothesis to begin with.  Of course I agree with Mr. Wilson. 

Young men and women have put their lives on the line because they believed that they were doing the right thing for this country.  These men and women are true patriots.  They believed the administration when the case for war was made- a case we now know to be untrue.  They believed that Iraq was part of the global war on terror- when in Iraq had no tie to 9/11.  They believed that it was a noble cause to bring down a heinous dictator like Sadaam when in fact Sadaam is just one of many heinous dictators that the US has never had any interest in deposing and Sadaam had been supported often by the US in the past.  These brave young men and women did not bargain to be chess pieces in a real life and death experiment devised by arm chair warriors like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz (The Neo-Con Three).  

We owe these young people a great deal.  An apology for the war would be appropriate but  supporting them when they come home and ensuring a quality of life for them is the very least we can do.  This administration does not and has not supported our troops- they use the military in a life and death chess game.  

Guess what-  CHECK MATE! 

Well- knock me down with a feather!  The FBI has abused the powers granted to it under the Patriot Act!  Those of us who warned about the Patriot Act’s disassembling of the Constitution were dismissed as lunatics who were really doing nothing than protecting the actions of terrorists.  Protecting civil liberties were not a priority in the paranoid landscape of a post 9/11 United States.  Through fear- real and manufactured- the American people allowed an unconscionable bill to be rammed through based purely on emotion.

The FBI underreported its use of the USA Patriot Act to force businesses to turn over customer information in suspected terrorism cases, according to a Justice Department audit.  One government official familiar with the report said shoddy bookkeeping and records management led to the problems. The FBI agents appeared to be overwhelmed by the volume of demands for information over a two-year period, the official said.  “They lost track,” said the official who like others interviewed late Thursday spoke on condition of anonymity because the report was not being released until Friday.

The FBI in 2005 reported to Congress that its agents had delivered a total of 9,254 national security letters seeking e-mail, telephone or financial information on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents over the previous two years.  Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine’s report says that number was under-reported by 20 percent, according to the officials.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) , a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI, called the reported findings “a profoundly disturbing breach of public trust.”  YA THINK?????

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, warned that the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation had severely abused their already expansive powers under the Patriot Act by misusing National Security Letters to gain warrants for surveillance, as reported in multiple news sources today.  “Many of us have been saying that the potential for abuse of the Patriot Act’s National Security Letter authority is almost without limit. This report demonstrates how that potential has now become a reality,” the Judiciary chairman said. “The Justice Department’s total lack of internal control and cavalier attitude toward the few legal restrictions that exist in the Act have possibly resulted in the illegal seizure of American citizens’ private information.”

Again- should we be shocked? ”Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety”.   While the authorship of this quote is debatable (either Benjamin Franklin or another 18th century diplomat- Richard Jackson) the sentiment is oddly prophetic. 

On Friday, the ACLU “refuted” FBI claims of “unintentional” Patriot Act abuses in a press release.  “Claims that the FBI’s reported Patriot Act abuses were the ‘unintentional’ result of outmoded computer systems and human error are not credible, the American Civil Liberties Union said today, citing evidence that agents contracted with phone companies to obtain customer records and later sought to cover up the illegal requests,” the ACLU press release stated.

According to the ACLU, “The report also shows that the FBI is issuing hundreds of thousands more National Security Letters than ever imagined, and that tracking of the NSLs is sloppy, resulting in thousands of innocent Americans being entered into databases that are shared with numerous U.S. agencies and foreign governments.”

“It seems that every time the American people entrust the Bush administration with some new power, it not only abuses that power but also seizes additional powers without our knowledge,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said in the press release. “It is long past time for Congress to take back the civil liberties of the American people and right these wrongs. The Attorney General and the FBI are part of the problem and cannot be trusted to be the only solution.”

 Well everyone- is this a big surprise-  Legislation that is developed quickly as a knee jerk response to fear is never a model of good public policy development.  But one might be even more cynical and suggest that this slippery slope is EXACTLY the path that the Bush administration intended.    After all their actions with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame already reeks of Nixonian dirty tricks and enemies lists.  Is it shocking that the Bush administration would be willing to stroll down the oil slick of the dismantling of civil liberties? I think not!