Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

John McCain has finally bagged the endorsement that will matter in this election.

Here’s the endorsement:

DICK CHENEY: And in three days we’ll choose a new steward for the presidency and begin a new chapter in our history. It’s the biggest decision that we make together as Americans. A lot turns on the outcome. I believe the right leader for this moment in history is Senator John McCain. John is a man who understands the danger facing America. He’s a man who has looked into the face of evil and not flinched. He’s a man who’s comfortable with responsibility and has been since he joined the armed forces at the age of 17. He’s earned our support and confidence, and the time is now to make him commander-in-chief. I’m delighted to support John McCain and I’m pleased that he’s chosen a running mate with executive talent, toughness and common sense, our next vice president in Sarah Pali

Congratulations to John McCain for securing this all-important endorsement.

Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed tonight on Larry King Live. In it, he confirmed that Alberto Gonzales lied last week to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Below is the exchange between Larry King and Dick Cheney:

Q Moving on to other areas. Alberto Gonzales — do you stand by him?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I do. Al is a good man, a good friend, in a difficult assignment.

Q Are you troubled by what appears to have happened — the appearance of him not telling the truth?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I don’t want to get into the specifics with respect to his testimony and the questions that were asked. I know Al on a personal and professional basis, and I hold him in high regard.

Q You’re going to stand by him?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes, sir.

Q No doubt about that?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Correct.

Q In that regard, The New York Times — which, as you said, is not your favorite — reports it was you who dispatched Gonzales and Andy Card to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital in 2004 to push Ashcroft to certify the President’s intelligence-gathering program. Was it you?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don’t recall — first of all, I haven’t seen the story. And I don’t recall that I gave instructions to that effect.

Q That would be something you would recall.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I would think so. But certainly I was involved because I was a big advocate of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and had been responsible and working with General Hayden and George Tenet to get it to the President for approval. By the time this occurred, it had already been approved about 12 times by the Department of Justice. There was nothing new about it.

Q So you didn’t send them to get permission.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don’t recall that I was the one who sent them to the hospital. [Emphasis added by me.]

Larry King was asking Dick Cheney about "the President’s intelligence-gathering program". In response, Cheney confirmed that by the time the hospital confrontation occurred, "it" had been approved 12 times by the DOJ and there was "nothing new about it". The "it" being the "Terrorist Surveillance Program" as Cheney makes clear in the preceding sentence, even though Larry King had referred to it as "the President’s intelligence-gathering program". There you have it: confirmation from the Vice President of the United States that Gonzo confronted Ashcroft about the "Terrorist Surveillance Program".

In last week’s testimony, Gonzo claimed that the "dissent" and the subject of the hospital bed confrontation with Ashcroft was not about the "Terrorist Surveillance Program":

“The dissent related to other intelligence activities,” Gonzales testified at Tuesday’s hearing. “The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program.”

“Not the TSP?” responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. “Come on. If you say it’s about other, that implies not. Now say it or not.”

“It was not,” Gonzales answered. “It was about other intelligence activities.”  [Emphasis added by me.]

Now, the man who apparently sent Gonzo on his late night errand is directly contradicting him. Time to resign, Gonzo.

[UPDATE (7/31/2007 10:50 PM): I cross-posted at the Daily Kos. The diary has hit the recommended list and there is a lively comment thread.]

[Update 2: TPMMuckraker has now picked up on Cheney’s little admission. Hopefully, the MSM will follow…]

The Vice President of the United States, Richard B. Cheney, should immediately resign from the President’s Cabinet. According to the White House web site, the President’s Cabinet is "drawn from Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution." The web site also states that the Cabinet consists of "the Vice President and the heads of 15 executive departments." To avoid any confusion that the Vice President is part of the Executive Branch, Dick should do the honorable thing and quit.

Earlier this week the Vice President asserted that he was exempt from an executive order requiring him to file reports on classification of records. Dick claimed that he was exempt because he was not strictly an executive branch official:

Vice President Cheney’s office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.

Since 2003, the vice president’s staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney’s staff this year proposed eliminating it.

…

The aggressive efforts to protect the operations of his staff have usually pitted Cheney against lawmakers, interest groups or media organizations, sometimes going all the way to the Supreme Court. But the fight about classified information regulation indicates that the vice president has resisted oversight even by other parts of the Bush administration. Cheney’s office argued that it is exempt from the rules in this case because it is not strictly an executive branch agency.

Oh really Dick?

The Executive Order that the Vice President takes exception to was issued on March 25, 2003. It was an order amending Executive Order 12958 that governs the handling of Classified National Security Information by the Executive Branch of the United States Government. This is the very Order that gives the Vice President his authority to classify documents in the first place. Without this Order, the Vice President has no authority to classify documents. To be clear, the Vice President, and that includes the incumbent, is given classification authority by the Executive Order specifically "in the performance of his executive duties." Section 1.3 of the Executive Order states:

Sec. 1.3. Classification Authority. (a) The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by:

(1) the President and, in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President;

(2) agency heads and officials designated by the President in the Federal Register; and

(3) United States Government officials delegated this authority pursuant to paragraph (c) of this section.

The Vice President’s role as the President of the Senate, given to him in Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution, does not give him classification authority according to the Executive Order - it is his executive duties that give him authority in this Executive Order.

The Vice President has also started to use a new classification designation called "Treated as Top Secret/SCI". This is a new classification which is specifically prohibited by the Executive Order:

Sec. 1.2. Classification Levels. (a) Information may be classified at one of the following three levels:

(1) "Top Secret" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.

(2) "Secret" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.

(3) "Confidential" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.

(b) Except as otherwise provided by statute, no other terms shall be used to identify United States classified information.

So, either Dick Cheney has properly classified information that he wants to keep secret, and therefore is bound by this Executive Order, or all of the documents he has "classified" as "Treated as Top Secret/SCI" has not been properly classified. In trying to exempt himself from the laws, Dick Cheney may have jeopardized national security. Very clever, Dick.

The Vice President’s office has also claimed that Dick Cheney is not covered by the order because his office is not an "agency" as defined by the Executive Order. The Executive Order however defines "agency" as follows:

"Agency" means any "Executive agency," as defined in 5 U.S.C. 105; any "Military department" as defined in 5 U.S.C. 102; and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.

So unless Dick Cheney is storing all his "classified" information in his Senate office and unless all of that information was not gathered in the performance of executive duties, he is bound by this Executive Order.

The latest news out of the White House is that the President meant to exempt himself and the Vice President from the Executive Order, though he failed to spell it out in the Order itself. Of course the President of the United States may choose to clarify his position and issue an Executive Order exempting himself and the Vice President from the laws of the United States and from common sense. In that case, we the people may have to seek recourse to Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.

Last week Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi led a congressional delegation to the Middle East. The delegation visited Israel, Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories, Syria and Saudi Arabia. However, it was the delegation’s trip to Syria that drew the ire of the White House and other fantasists. Chief among the critics were the Washington Post Editorial board and Mr. Fantasy himself, Dick Cheney. Mr. Fantasy called the Speaker’s trip "bad behavior" - perhaps akin to invading the wrong country for the wrong reasons, something Mr. Fantasy knows a great deal about.

The Speaker was accompanied on the trip by a bipartisan group of lawmakers. They were representatives David Hobson of Ohio, Tom Lantos of California, Henry Waxman of California, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, Louise Slaughter of New York, and Keith Ellison of Minnesota. A few days earlier, a Republican delegation from congress, including Frank Wolf of Virginia (my congressman), visited Syria. The Speaker’s office released the following statement regarding the Syria leg on her return from the Middle East trip:

In the interest of our national security and the stability of the region, the delegation strongly urged President Assad to control Syria’s border with Iraq to stop the flow of foreign fighters who are a threat to U.S. troops and to the Iraqi people.  Syria must also stop supporting terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, and must end any interference in Lebanon’s internal affairs. 

We emphasized to President Assad that peace with Israel is essential to a U.S.-Syria relationship. We conveyed to him Prime Minister’s Olmert’s overture for peace talks when Syria openly takes steps to stop supporting terrorism.

President Assad declared that he is ready to resume the peace process and enter into negotiations.  The test will be whether Syria ceases its support for terrorism, engages in a productive and realistic effort to resolve its differences and live in peace with the State of Israel, and acts to stop the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq. 

We requested Assad’s help in freeing missing and kidnapped Israeli soldiers including: Gilad Shalit; Ehud Goldwasser; Eldad Regev; Guy Hever; Zachary Baumel; Tzvi Feldman; Yehuda Katz; and Ron Arad.  And we requested the return of the remains of Eli Cohen for burial in Israel. 

In Damascus, we met with opposition leaders and representatives of families of dissidents.  We conveyed our strong interest in the cases of Iraqi Democracy Activists Anwar al-Bunni; Aref Dalila; Kamal al-Labwani; Mahmoud Issa; Michael Kilo; and Omar Abdullah.

In response to her trip, the Washington Post editorial board penned a juvenile screed entitled "Pratfall in Damascus" taking issue with her delivery of a message from Israel to Syria. They also attacked her for talking to Syria:

Ms. Pelosi was criticized by President Bush for visiting Damascus at a time when the administration — rightly or wrongly — has frozen high-level contacts with Syria. Mr. Bush said that thanks to the speaker’s freelancing Mr. Assad was getting mixed messages from the United States. Ms. Pelosi responded by pointing out that Republican congressmen had visited Syria without drawing presidential censure. That’s true enough — but those other congressmen didn’t try to introduce a new U.S. diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. "We came in friendship, hope, and determined that the road to Damascus is a road to peace," Ms. Pelosi grandly declared.

Never mind that that statement is ludicrous: As any diplomat with knowledge of the region could have told Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Assad is a corrupt thug whose overriding priority at the moment is not peace with Israel but heading off U.N. charges that he orchestrated the murder of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. The really striking development here is the attempt by a Democratic congressional leader to substitute her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president.

The Washington Post’s contention that Speaker Pelosi was substituting "her own foreign policy for that of a sitting Republican president" is false on its face - there is a long history of congressional delegations traveling overseas to visit trouble spots all over the globe. A quick survey of trips by members of congress and congressional leaders should shame the Washington Post editorial board into reality.

The trip to Syria was not about the Israel-Syria relationship - regardless of what Mr. Fantasy and his merry band of fantasists claim. The main reason to go to Syria is Iraq. Like it or not, Iraq’s future is crucially important to Syria. Syria has genuine interests in a resolution to the Iraq crisis. Syria has 1 million reasons to expect a seat at the table when it comes to Iraq - those 1 million reasons are the Iraqi refugees that Syria currently hosts.

Here is the bottom line: Iraq is more of a national security problem to Syria than it is to the United States.

Syria has acted as a safety valve for Iraq and a safe haven for Iraqis fleeing Iraq. While America’s allies, including Egypt and Jordan, turned their backs on fleeing Iraqis, Syria welcomed them until its economy reached a breaking point. In doing this, Syria has received no help from the United States:

Syria, the last Arab country welcoming large numbers of Iraqi refugees, is now all but closing the gates and leaving 40,000 Iraqis who flee their country each month with almost no place to go.

The new rules _ imposed without any official announcement _ also strike fear of deportation into the 1 million Iraqis already here. The worsening humanitarian crisis has resulted in calls for action by members of the U.S. Congress and a plea from the United Nations for more countries to help out.

"It’s not fair that the burden is not being shared effectively. A very limited number of countries is paying a very heavy price," Antonio Guterres, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said on a recent tour of the Mideast.

Syria kept its doors open even after others, including Jordan and Egypt with 700,000 and 130,000 Iraqi refugees respectively, said they could take no more. But the strain on its small, state-controlled economy apparently has become too great.

Until last week, Iraqis could come to Syria without a visa and stay for up to six months. At that point, they could drive to any border, leave briefly and re-enter immediately and stay for another six months _ meaning they essentially were allowed to stay indefinitely.

Syria is at a breaking point. Syria has been the prime mover in preventing an unfolding tragedy from turning into a full-bore humanitarian nightmare. The Iraqi refugee problem, which the Bush Administration has largely ignored, is perhaps the single most destabilizing element of the Iraq war. It is a problem the Bush Administration unleashed and has left to the neighboring Arab states. Far from exporting stability, Mr. Bush’s fiasco in Iraq has been exporting instability.

Now, we can keep hurling insults at Syria like children in a school-yard, or we can bring them to the table to address a problem where the United States and Syria has common cause. The 1 million Iraqi refugees in Syria are real - by refusing to talk to Syria, Mr. Bush has turned his back on the refugees he created. Perhaps if he and Mr. Fantasy felt so strongly about not talking to Syria (with whom, by the way, we have diplomatic relations), they should have considered sealing off the Iraq-Syria border so no refugees could flee across to Syria. It seems to me, having exported the problem to Syria, Mr. Bush and Mr. Fantasy are obligated to engage Syria at least on humanitarian grounds. Until that dialogue begins, stability in the Middle East and the resolution of the Iraq problem cannot begin to take shape.

I hope that Speaker Pelosi’s visit and that of my congressman, Frank Wolf, and others will open the door to much needed dialogue between the world’s remaining superpower and one of Iraq’s key neighbors. These trips have become especially important in light of the inexplicable failure of the Bush Administration to practice anything resembling foreign policy. The road to peace in Iraq does indeed go through Damascas. Assad is not a boyscout, but neither are the Saudis or the Iraqis. Finding a way to leverage common goals while at the same time pressing conflicting interests is the essence of diplomacy.

It is well past time for mature leadership at the White House. People are dying. Play time is over.

The New York Times today puts Mr. Cheney at the center of Plame-gate. This bit of news will not come as a surprise to anyone. The real "news" in the article is buried deep.  The article portrays Mr. Bush as a passive figure in the leaking of a covert CIA agent and a National Intelligence Estimate.

Here is the astonishing passage from the article:

Mr. Libby said he found a way around that resistance by getting backdoor approval from the president. In a hush-hush meeting described in testimony, Mr. Libby asked the vice president’s chief counsel, David S. Addington, whether the president could declassify intelligence personally, effectively without C.I.A. knowledge or approval.

Mr. Addington testified that as he explained to Mr. Libby that indeed the president could do so, Mr. Libby shushed him. “He extended his hands out and pushed down a little like that, that would indicate, ‘Hold your voice down,’ ” Mr. Addington said at the trial. Mr. Libby testified that Mr. Cheney then went to Mr. Bush and got a presidential declassification.

White House officials have said Mr. Bush did not know how Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby intended to use the intelligence. [Emphasis added by me.]

To paraphrase Mr. Bush: what is worse, the President actively leaking a National Intelligence Estimate or the President declassifying an NIE without knowing why?

If we are to believe the New York Times and the "White House officials", then Mr. Bush is rather careless with this nation’s secrets. The President of the United States declassified a highly classified NIE without discussing it with the intelligence community or without bothering to find out why it should be declassified. The question is not whether the President has the power to do so (he does), the question is of judgment. If Mr. Bush chose to declassify the NIE for political purposes, he has chosen politics over national security. If Mr. Bush chose to declassify the NIE without a valid reason, he has displayed very poor judgment indeed. Either scenario does not put Mr. Bush in a favorable light.

In its attempt to spin a story that keeps Mr. Bush in the dark while throwing Mr. Cheney under the bus, the article also suffers from a timeline problem. According to the article, on July 8 2003, after speaking with Judith Miller, Scooter Libby leaked to Andrea Mitchell later in the day:

Cathie Martin, Mr. Cheney’s former communications director, recalled her discomfort at seeing Mr. Libby reading from the estimate later in the day while he called back reporters covering the story, at Mr. Cheney’s direction, among them Andrea Mitchell of NBC News.

Other senior officials were perplexed when they apparently saw some of Mr. Libby’s handiwork from those phone calls in action. After Ms. Mitchell reported that night on NBC News that “The White House blamed an October C.I.A. report for ignoring Wilson’s information,” the president’s deputy national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, indicated that he had got an earful from Mr. Tenet, according to Ms. Martin’s testimony.

Ms. Martin testified that at a senior staff meeting the following morning Mr. Hadley strongly hinted he thought she was responsible and told her the finger-pointing had been a disservice to the president. According to Ms. Martin’s testimony, Mr. Libby let her take the blame and “looked down” as Mr. Hadley shared his chagrin. Mr. Cheney, she said, later told her not to worry about it. [Emphasis added by me.]

Mr. Hadley is portrayed on July 9 2003 as upset that the NIE was leaked. Yet, the very next day, July 10:

At a meeting on July 10, Mr. Hadley had suggested to Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney that the intelligence estimate could be leaked to a friendly reporter, Mr. Libby testified that his notes said. But neither he nor Mr. Cheney told Mr. Hadley that they had started trying to do so days earlier. [Emphasis added by me.]

Why the change of heart in a matter of 24 hours? It seems unusual for Mr. Hadley to be upset about the leak one day and then become an advocate of leaking the very next day. It stretches credulity that Mr. Hadley became a sudden convert to leaking overnight.

It is clear that Mr. Cheney was a major player in Plame-gate. However, while the article tries to portray Mr. Bush as a hapless bystander, the chronology of events and Mr. Bush’s own actions, and those of his deputy national security advisor, leave a lot of unanswered questions.

As the White House circles the wagons to contain the Iraq fallout, it is time for the New York Times and the mainstream media to ask hard questions of Mr. Bush. The citizens of this country deserve no less.

Is this the mission? (Warning: Please do not watch the following video if you cannot handle reality.)

Does this man know what the mission is?

BLITZER: But there is a terrible situation there.

CHENEY: No, there is not. There is not. There’s problems — ongoing problems — but we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime…

BLITZER: And…

CHENEY: … and there is a new regime in place that’s been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically written constitution, the first ever in that part of the world. They’ve had three national elections. So there’s been a lot of success.

We still…

BLITZER: How worried are you, Mr. Vice President…

CHENEY: We still have more work to do to get a handle on the security situation…

BLITZER: How worried…

CHENEY: But the president has put a plan in place to do that.

BLITZER: How worried are you of this nightmare scenario — that the U.S. is building up this Shiite-dominated Iraqi government with an enormous amount of military equipment, sophisticated training, and then, in the end, they’re going to turn against the United States?

CHENEY: Wolf, that’s not going to happen. The problem is you’ve got…

BLITZER: They’re very — very — warming up to Iran…

CHENEY: Wolf…

BLITZER: … and Syria right now.

CHENEY: Wolf, you can — you can come up with all kinds of what- ifs. You’ve got to be deal with the reality on the ground. The reality on the ground is we’ve made major progress. We’ve still got a lot of work to do. We’ve got a lot of provinces in Iraq that are relatively quiet. There’s more and more authority transferred to the Iraqis all the time.

But the biggest problem we face right now is the danger than the United States will validate the terrorists’ strategy, that, in fact, what will happen here, with all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, with the pressures from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorists’ strategy that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task…

What is the United States doing in Iraq’s civil war?

The Bush Administration is spiraling down into a major conflagration in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. To some extent, it is traveling on auto pilot. Left to its own momentum of inaction and massive overreaction, this Administration will almost certainly embark on a war with Iran.

It has been on this course for a long time.

Last Spring when Seymour Hersh first stirred up the pot, I wrote the following:

I recall quipping to a friend a few weeks ago that I thought the way out of Iraq for this Administration was through Iran. What I meant at the time was that since this Administration had haplessly shifted the center of gravity of Iraqi politics to Iran, without Iran having to fire a shot, that the only way to exit out of Iraq with "credibility" was to attack Iran. Iran then becomes a continuation of a larger war "on terror" and it can then not be said that Iraq was lost since it will only become an unfinished chapter in a larger war.

It is now becoming apparent that the way out of Iraq, for this Administration, is indeed through Iran.

The eternally confused cheerleader of the Iraq invasion, Kenneth Pollack, was quoted in the New York Times stating the obvious:

“The administration does have Iran on the brain, and I think they are exaggerating the amount of Iranian activities in Iraq,” Kenneth M. Pollack, the director of research at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, said Sunday. “There’s a good chance that this is going to be counterproductive — that this is a way to get into a spiral with Iran that leads you into conflict. The likely response from the Iranians is that they are going to want to demonstrate to us that they are not going to be pushed around.”

Mr. Pollack is half right. The Administration does have Iran on the brain, but Iran is not likely to respond so easily to such provocations. I think the latter statement is a little bit of wishful thinking on Mr. Pollock’s part.

Last week, in a confusing and contradictory speech, Mr. Bush went squarely after Iran (and threw Turkey a much overlooked bone regarding the Kurds):

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of the extremist challenge.

This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.

We will expand intelligence sharing, and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.

Since then his loyal surrogates - Bob Gates, Condi Rice, Stephen Hadley and Dick Cheney - have spread out across the world beating the drums of war.

Mr. Cheney, emerging from his secure undisclosed location, found it easy to replace "q" with "n" in his doomsday messages:

“So the threat that Iran represents is growing,” he said, in words reminiscent of how he once built a case against Mr. Hussein. “It’s multidimensional, and it is, in fact, of concern to everybody in the region.”

We can expect the bombs to start flying when the threat from Iran goes from "growing" to "grave and gathering".

This latest bravado is not only a signal by this Administration of defeat in Iraq; it is also a signal of defeat to Iran. The United States has been outmaneuvered by Iran, both in Iraq and on the nuclear issue. Having lost the war on the geo-political battlefield, the Bush Administration’s only option left is to lob missiles and drop bombs. The Bush Administration is out of its depth when it comes to foreign policy. Its only weapon, which it has so far failed to wield effectively, is the military option.

Mr. Bush’s plan to interdict Iranian agents inside Iraq is ill-conceived and naive. Iran’s power in Iraq does not come from supplying IEDs or other weapons to attack American troops. The Sunni Iraqi insurgents, those who make up the bulk of the force attacking American troops, are not supplied or supported by Iran. Most of Iran’s support structure in Iraq has been decades in the making. It is not limited to a few agents supplying arms to Shia militias. Iran has been, for decades, supporting Shia parties in Iraq. The most prominent of these are the SCIRI and the Dawa party - both of which hold the reigns of power in Iraq. They control many of the key ministries, including the Ministry of Interior. SCIRI’s Badr Brigade has become fully integrated into the Ministry of Interior and regularly carries out its death squad activities under official sanction. The SCIRI and the Dawa party were founded and trained by Iran in the 1980s. Most of the leaders of the two parties were exiled in Iran, if not Syria, for much of the last two decades - and a significant number of these leaders speak Persian as well as Arabic. When the SCIRI and Dawa party leaders speak of foreign interference in Iraq’s internal affairs, they are not talking about Iran, they are talking about the United States and the Sunni Arab countries.

Iran’s support does not end with the Shia. Iran has also been supporting elements within Iraqi Kurdistan since the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war. Iran’s roots in Iraq run deep and wide. It is fortified each year with millions of Iranian pilgrims who descend upon the Shia holy sites in Iraq. So, when Stephen Hadley asserts that the United States is resisting Iranian "hegemony" in the region, he is remarkably naive. Iran already has hegemony over much of Iraq, and the odds of the United States countering that hegemony are slim to none.

The irony is that when Mr. Bush talks about going after death squads in Iraq, he is talking about going after Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army. Iran would like nothing better. Although al-Sadr is Shia, he is also an Arab nationalist. He is against partitioning Iraq to form a southern homeland for the Shia. By going after al-Sadr, once again Mr. Bush would be doing Iran’s bidding. To add further to the mess of Mr. Bush’s policy, Mr. Bush’s latest best friend in Iraq is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of SCIRI. al-Hakim also happens to be Tehran’s man in Iraq, and for an independent Shia homeland in the south. By eliminating al-Sadr’s influence and positioning SCIRI to take over the leadership in Iraq, Mr. Bush will have ensured Iranian dominance of Iraq.

The political outlook in Iraq does not look good for Mr. Bush. The die was cast on this course when the first American bombs started falling on Iraq in 2003. There is now only one option for Mr. Bush to avoid defeat in Iraq - and that is to attack Iran. Mr. Bush and his coterie of advisors certainly knows their machinations in Iraq will not effectively counter Iranian "hegemony". So, they are going through the motions and getting ready to go for the jugular.

Mr. Cheney warned yesterday about Iran:

They are in a position where site astride the Straits of Hormuz, where over 20% of the world’s supply of oil transits every single day, over 18 million barrels a day.

There is really one solution to Mr. Cheney’s geographic quandary. That solution is to wipe Iran off the map so they no longer sit "astride the Straits of Hormuz".

"Even assuming that Hamden is a dangerous individual who would cause great harm or death to innocent civilians given the opportunity, the Executive nevertheless must comply with the prevailing rule of law in undertaking to try him and subject him to criminal punishment. " - Justice John Paul Stevens writing the majority opinion of the United States Supreme Court in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, et. al.

The United States Supreme Court today rejected the Bush Administration’s contention that it could ignore the United States Constitution and laws and set up kangaroo courts in which to try detainees held at Guantanamo Bay. The Court rejected the argument that the Congress had stripped its jurisdiction by enacting the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. The Court also held that the Executive Branch must obey the law of war, the Geneva Conventions (including Common Article 3), and the UCMJ. In short, the Court held that the President is not above the law, even in a time of war.

By holding that the President must obey the laws, Justice Stevens took a giant bite out of the Unitary Executive theory that the Bush Administration loves and cherishes so much.  In rather short order, the legal arguments put forth by John Yoo justifying torture now begin to crumble. The Court’s holding that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions binds the actions of the Executive nullifies the argument used by this Administration to exclude parts of Article 3 from the latest Army Field Manual on interrogation. A house of cards built on the fantasy of an unchecked ruler has crumbled today upon colliding with the United States Constitution.

The Bush Administration’s arguments for Executive overreach have never had firm legal grounding. Their grounding has been based on fear and fanaticism. The debate has always been between fanaticism and reason. Today reason won a temporary reprieve. But the fanatics are still in charge of the Ship of State. The Administration’s principal premise, whether it is to justify torture or to justify indefinite detention, has been that the people we are holding are bad, evil, horrible. Therefore, anything we do to them is justified. Every overreaching act of the Bush Administration has been predicated on that fundamental premise.

The Bush Administration tortures a prisoner because it assumes a priori that the prisoner is a terrorist. Therefore, to extract valuable intelligence that might save lives the Administration must torture the terrorist. The bush Administration detains a prisoner indefinitely because it assumes a priori that the prisoner is a terrorist. Therefore, to protect the safety of all Americans the Administration must detain the terrorist indefinitely.

This underlying premise that all we hold are terrorists has emotional appeal to supporters of the Bush Administration and many Americans who are terrified of an unseen and unpredictable enemy. The Administration knows this and never misses an opportunity to perpetuate this notion:

“The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people.”

“I mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the al Qaeda network."

”We’ve already screened the detainees there and released a number, sent them back to their home countries. But what’s left is hard core.”  - Vice President Dick Cheney, June 2005

The Administration’s supporters duly follow this line that everyone at Guantanamo Bay and everyone the United States tortures is a terrorist. However, there is plenty of evidence that this is not the case. Many prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were sold to the Americans by enterprising Pakistanis and Afghanis for hefty fees. A large number of these detainees were later found to be innocent and some have been released. There are others at Guantanamo, like Abdur Sayed Rahman and Muhibullah, who are being held there for reasons that defy sanity:

But there are many more, it seems, who sound like Abdur Sayed Rahman, a self-described Pakistani villager who says he was arrested at his modest home in January 2002, flown off to Afghanistan and later accused of being the deputy foreign minister of that country’s deposed Taliban regime.

"I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan," he protested to American military officers at Guantánamo. "My name is Abdur Sayed Rahman. Abdur Zahid Rahman was the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban."

…

At one review hearing last year, an Afghan referred to by the single name Muhibullah denied accusations that he was either the former Taliban governor of Shibarghan Province or had worked for the governor. The solution to his case should have been simple, Mr. Muhibullah suggested to the three American officers reviewing his case: They should contact the Shibarghan governor and ask him.

But the presiding Marine Corps colonel said it was really up to the detainee to try to contact the governor. Assuming that the annual review board denied his petition for freedom, noted the officer, whose name was censored from the document, Mr. Muhibullah would have a year to do so.

"How do I find the governor of Shibarghan or anybody?" the detainee asked.

"Write to them," the presiding officer responded. "We know that it is difficult but you need to do your best."

"I appreciate your suggestion, but it is not that easy," Mr. Muhibullah said.

The Bush Administration not only detains people without charge who are not terrorists they have also kidnapped and tortured people who are not terrorists. By not following the laws or international Conventions, the Bush Administration has denied itself the tools to determine who is truly a terrorist and who is being unjustly held and tortured. But, based on their principal premise, the distinction between guilt and innocence need not be made.

Having lost the legal fight it remains to be seen if the Bush Administration will be able to stoke the flames of fear enough to convince the American people to look the other way as it continues to torture and detain "terrorists". The Supreme Court has spoken; will the President listen?

The Iraq debate in Washington is all about "cutting and running" versus "stay the course". The war in Iraq now is being spun by domestic American politics. However, notwithstanding the food fight in Washington, there is still a real war raging in Iraq. The politics in Washington is still overshadowed by events in Baghdad. Such is the predicament of the Bush Administration. It has led the United States into a conflict that it cannot control.

Last week President Bush, fresh from his victory lap in Baghdad, announced his determination to "stay the course" in Iraq:

"One message I will continue to send to the enemy is, ‘Don’t count on us leaving before the mission is complete,’ " Bush said at a White House news conference.

"Don’t bet on American politics forcing my hand, because it’s not going to happen," he said. "I’m going to make decisions not based upon politics but based upon what’s best for the United States of America."

"What you hear from me no matter what these polls and all the business look like, is that it’s worth it, it is necessary and we will succeed," Bush said.

After surprising Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki in Baghdad, Mr. Bush was undoubtedly feeling his oats. He was back to the tough talking Commander-in-Chief that his handlers believe wins votes.

The Republicans in the House last week outmaneuvered the Democrats by passing a resolution connecting Iraq to the War on Terror and supporting Mr. Bush’s policy in Iraq:

The House voted 256 to 153 yesterday to back President Bush’s policies in Iraq after two days of passionate and partisan debate that saw Republicans try to recast an unpopular conflict as part of a broader war on terrorism and totalitarianism.

Forty-two Democrats bucked their leadership to join a virtually united Republican Party and to declare that the United States must complete "the mission to create a sovereign, free, secure and united Iraq" without setting "an arbitrary date for the withdrawal or redeployment" of U.S. troops

The Republicans in the House succeeded in devolving a much-needed debate on the war in Iraq to campaign slogans for the upcoming Congressional elections in November.

Earlier the Republicans in the Senate flexed their political muscle by rejecting any notion of an Iraq withdrawal:

Across Capitol Hill, Republicans and Democrats alike provided a preview of potential strategies for discussing the three-year-old conflict in the run-up to November’s midterm elections.

As the U.S. death toll in Iraq reached 2,500, the Senate soundly rejected a call to withdraw combat troops by year’s end, and House Republicans laid the groundwork for their own vote.

In a move Democrats criticized as gamesmanship, Senate Republicans brought up the withdrawal measure and quickly dispatched it — for now — on a 93-6 vote.

By week’s end, the Democrats were cowering.

Over the weekend, Senate Democrats regrouped and today presented an Iraq pullout plan to try to regain the political upper hand. The Democratic plan calls for the United States to begin pulling out troops by the end of the year but does not set a deadline for complete withdrawal. With this plan, the Democrats hope to show the voters in November that they are serious thinkers and not wimps who just want to "cut and run".

But, the political debate in Washington ignores the reality in Iraq. The reality in Iraq is that the Bush Administration has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams in installing an Islamist regime in Iraq. The Islamists in Iraq have played the Bush Administration masterfully. They have used the American occupation as cover to do a little bit of house cleaning (ethnic cleansing) and have consolidated power within the military and the police forces. Having consolidated power, now it is time to give the Americans the boot.

In a particularly well-timed op-ed in the Washington Post, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s National Security Advisor, shows the United States the door:

With the governors of each province meeting these strict objectives, Iraq’s ambition is to have full control of the country by the end of 2008. In practice this will mean a significant foreign troop reduction. We envisage the U.S. troop presence by year’s end to be under 100,000, with most of the remaining troops to return home by the end of 2007.

So, there’s your timetable: Leave Iraq by the end of 2007. This kind of clarity from the Iraqi government makes the debate in Washington, to borrow our Attorney General’s word, "quaint".

Mr. al-Rubaie also kicks a little bit of sand in Dick Cheney’s eyes by labeling Americans as "occupiers", albeit by indirection:

The eventual removal of coalition troops from Iraqi streets will help the Iraqis, who now see foreign troops as occupiers rather than the liberators they were meant to be. It will remove psychological barriers and the reason that many Iraqis joined the so-called resistance in the first place. The removal of troops will also allow the Iraqi government to engage with some of our neighbors that have to date been at the very least sympathetic to the resistance because of what they call the "coalition occupation." If the sectarian issue continues to cause conflict with Iraq’s neighbors, this matter needs to be addressed urgently and openly — not in the guise of aversion to the presence of foreign troops. [Emphasis added by me.]

This turn of events should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following events in Iraq over the past few years. Although it may come as a surprise to the still significant number of Americans who believe we are bringing "freedom" to the Iraqi people. It should also not have been a surprise when the Iraqi government declared last week that they would grant amnesty to insurgents who had killed American troops. Even though the Iraqis backtracked from that declaration, it was nonetheless symptomatic of the environment in Iraq where Americans have long been viewed as occupiers.

We have handed the reigns of power in Iraq to the al-Dawa party and the SCIRI, both Iranian backed and nurtured parties. We have handed power to the very terrorist organization that killed American soldiers in Kuwait and Lebanon in the 1980s. Mr. al-Rubaie himself was the spokesman for this terrorist organization in the 1980s. In his latest incarnation, Mr. al-Rubaie speaks not only for the al-Dawa party but also the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. So much so, the President of the United States, on his Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, had the following exchange with Mr. al-Rubaie:

American officials in Iraq are well aware of al-Rubaie’s ability to navigate in both worlds; when President Bush landed in Baghdad for Thanksgiving dinner, clearly he’d been briefed. As al-Rubaie remembers their encounter, the president pointed at him and said, "Dr. al-Rubaie, I want you to convey this message to Mr. Sistani. Tell him that I pray to the same god he prays to… Tell Sistani I have nothing but praise for your religion. I have many millions of Muslims in my country back home." [Emphasis added by me.]

I am sure Mr. Bush’s evangelical friends on the right really appreciate that Mr. Bush prays to the same God as Muslims.

To complete the humiliation in Iraq, the same terrorists who killed Americans in the 1980s are now telling us to get out of Baghdad. I wonder if Mr. Bush will consider such an exit to be in the best interests of the United States. I have long argued that the United States does more harm to Iraq and its own credibility by staying in Iraq. Our credibility is already damaged in Iraq. Withdrawing from Iraq under our own terms would not have damaged our credibility that much more. However, being told to leave by the Iraqi government will round out the humiliation. That is exactly what is now happening.

It appears that Mr. Cheney was partially right about "last throes" in Iraq, only it is our occupation that is in its last throes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin apparently does not like being lectured to by Dick Cheney. Before running off to break bread dipped in oil with an odious thug, the Vice President of the United States decided it was a good idea to lay a little verbal smackdown on ol’ Pooty-Poot. Cheney delivered these lines in a speech in Vilnius:

America and all of Europe also want to see Russia in the category of healthy, vibrant democracies. Yet in Russia today, opponents of reform are seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade. In many areas of civil society — from religion and the news media, to advocacy groups and political parties — the government has unfairly and improperly restricted the rights of her people. Other actions by the Russian government have been counterproductive, and could begin to affect relations with other countries. No legitimate interest is served when oil and gas become tools of intimidation or blackmail, either by supply manipulation or attempts to monopolize transportation. And no one can justify actions that undermine the territorial integrity of a neighbor, or interfere with democratic movements.

Russia has a choice to make. And there is no question that a return to democratic reform in Russia will generate further success for its people and greater respect among fellow nations. Democratization in Russia helped to end the Cold War, and the Russian people have made heroic progress in overcoming the miseries of the 20th century. They deserve now to live out their peaceful aspirations under a government that upholds freedom at home, and builds good relations abroad. [Emphasis added by me.]

Gee, a fine time to smack the Russians in the face. If I were the suspicious type, I would think that Cheney was trying to eliminate any possibility that the Russians might be able to work with the Americans in resolving the crisis with Iran. But, hey, I’m not the suspicious type. Perhaps the Vice President was just being avuncular and giving some friendly advice to an immature child about choices one should make in life.

The Russians apparently were not impressed with Cheney’s sanctimony:

"Cheney’s speech looks like a provocation and interference in Russia’s internal affairs in terms of its content, form and place," former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin expressed annoyance that Russia had not been invited to the conference of former Soviet republics and allies.

Vladimir Putin, in his state of the nation address, was decidedly not acting like Pooty-Poot:

"Where is all this pathos about protecting human rights and democracy when it comes to the need to pursue their own interests?" said Putin, who also used a fairy-tale reference to criticize the aggressive U.S. course in global affairs.

"We are aware what is going on in the world," he said. "Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, it eats without listening and it’s clearly not going to listen to anyone."

I think it is time that Mr. Bush look into Mr. Putin’s soul again. I am thinking that Comrade Pooty-Poot just threw sand in Mr. Bush’s face and that the two soul mates may be breaking up.

Perhaps in an attempt to salvage the relationship with his soul brother Mr. Bush could sing this ode to Pooty-Poot.