Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

Saddam Hussein, who only a week ago was seen as a murderous tyrant, is today seen as somewhat of a martyr in the Arab world. That transformation from murderer to martyr is emblematic of all that is wrong with George W Bush’s so-called "War on Terror".

The New York Times tonight reports on the refurbishing of Saddam’s image:

In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.

On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”

That Saddam is emerging as a martyr after the spectacle of his execution is not much of a surprise - it was to be expected. It is the reaction of the White House to Saddam’s execution that I find very telling.

President Bush’s first public comment on the execution scandal emphasized justice:

"I wish, obviously that the proceedings had gone in a more dignified way, but, nevertheless, he was given justice that thousands of people he killed were not," Bush said after talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder [Angela Merkel].

Earlier his press secretary, and erstwhile Fox News talking head, asked us to focus on the positives:

And I think — it’s interesting because there seems to be a lot of concern about the last two minutes of Saddam Hussein’s life and less about the first 69 in which he murdered hundreds of thousands of people. That’s why he was executed.

The reaction from President Bush and his press secretary nicely encapsulate this administration’s flawed sense of justice.

The Bush Administration does not particularly care about how justice is carried out - as long as their notion of justice is carried out. Saddam was an evil man; therefore, he had to be killed. Whether he was killed by a mob, lynched, or otherwise humiliated is irrelevant to this administration.

This type of ends-justifies-the-means justice leads to the abuses of Abu Ghraib. This kind of neglect for the rule of law leads to indefinite detentions of American citizens without charge and the torture of detainees. This kind of disregard for the niceties of civilized society leads to the innocents being held without charge at Guantanamo Bay. This kind of callous conduct leads to terms such as "enemy combatant" and to ill-advised utterances like "Bring it on".

"Bringing people to justice" is not only about capturing and killing your perceived enemy. It is also about the fairness of the process. It is this process that America has in the past championed. At the Nuremburg Trials over a half a century ago, Justice Robert Jackson spoke words that today the Bush Administration would be well advised to heed:

Of one thing we may be sure. The future will never have to ask, with misgiving, what could the Nazis have said in their favor. History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. They have been given the kind of a Trial which they, in the days of their pomp and power, never gave to any man.

But fairness is not weakness. The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength. The Prosecution’s case, at its close, seemed inherently unassailable because it rested so heavily on German documents of unquestioned authenticity. But it was the weeks upon weeks of pecking at this case, by one after another of the defendants, that has demonstrated its true strength. The fact is that the testimony of the defendants has removed any doubt of guilt which, because of the extraordinary nature and magnitude of these crimes, may have existed before they spoke. They have helped write their own judgment of condemnation.

But justice in this case has nothing to do with some of the arguments put forth by the defendants or their counsel. We have not previously and we need not now discuss the merits of all their obscure and tortuous philosophy. We are not trying them for the possession of obnoxious ideas. It is their right, if they choose, to renounce the Hebraic heritage in the civilization of which Germany was once a part. Nor is it our affair that they repudiated the Hellenic influence as well. The intellectual bankruptcy and moral perversion of the Nazi regime might have been no concern of international law had it not been utilized to goosestep the Herrenvolk across international frontiers. It is not their thoughts, it is their overt acts which we charge to be crimes. Their creed and teachings are important only as evidence of motive, purpose, knowledge, and intent.

…

Let me emphasize one cardinal point. The United States has no interest which would be advanced by the conviction of any defendant if we have not proved him guilty on at least one of the Counts charged against him in the Indictment. Any result that the calm and critical judgment of posterity would pronounce unjust would not be a victory for any of the countries associated in this Prosecution.

It was the process that exposed to the whole world the atrocities of the Nazis and the justness of our cause. That process has stood the "critical judgment of posterity".

So, yes, Mr. Snow and Mr. Bush, justice is about the last two minutes. The first 69 years of Saddam’s life defined who he was. The last 2 minutes of Saddam’s life defined for all the world who Mr. Bush is.

I have largely ignored the New York Times report about the Bush Administration’s tracking of international banking transactions. I have done so mainly because this is a non-story. Almost everyone with a pulse had to assume that the Government was monitoring the highly regulated world of international banking. It would be monumentally stupid to assume that financial transactions that are so tightly regulated would not be monitored. So, it came as quite a surprise when the Bush Administration started to accuse the New York Times of divulging secrets that the rest of the world already knew.

As Dan Froomkin pointed out in today’s Washington Post, the "double super secret" organization that the New York Times mentioned in its article is not so secret. SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide InterBank Financial Telecommunication, is a very public organization that facilitates international bank-to-bank communications. According to its very public website:

SWIFT is the financial industry-owned co-operative supplying secure, standardised messaging services and interface software to 7,800 financial institutions in more than 200 countries. SWIFT’s worldwide community includes banks, broker/dealers and investment managers, as well as their market infrastructures in payments, securities, treasury and trade.

So, it is quite clear that SWIFT is not a "secret" organization. SWIFT also claims on its website that it cooperates with law enforcement, including the US Department of Treasury, to prevent illegal acts and it complies with valid subpoenas. However, tonight on Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC, terrorism analyst Roger Cressey suggested that though SWIFT may have had a website, it was not widely publicized until the New York Times splashed it across its front page. So, I decided to take a look at how well-known SWIFT was before the New York Times published its article.

Since I am originally from Bangladesh, and Bangladesh is a Third World Muslim majority country, I thought a good place to start would be to find out if an ordinary Bangladeshi might be familiar with SWIFT. With that in mind, I decided to take a look at what a Bangladeshi might have to do if he or she wanted to send money back home. A reasonable place to start would be the Bangladeshi Embassy. It turns out that the Embassy offers its citizens advice on how to remit funds to Bangladesh through participating American banks. It also lists the participating banks’ SWIFT Codes to facilitate the wire transfers. For example, if you wanted to use the Bank of New York to wire money to Bangladesh you would contact the bank at:

Bank of New York
Head Office: One Wall Street, New York, NY 10286, USA
Tel:+ 1212 495 1784, Fax:+1 212 635 1799
E-mail: comments@bankofuy.com SWIFT: IRVTUS3N

Clearly, a Bangladeshi national abroad will become familiar with SWIFT if he tries to wire money home.

But, what about Bangladeshis living in Bangladesh? It turns out that SWIFT is quite the marketing tool in Bangladesh. Banks regularly tout their membership in SWIFT to demonstrate their stability and international connections. For example, the Bangladesh Krishi Bank, which was founded to provide banking services to farmers in Bangladesh, proudly advertises its membership in SWIFT:

Bangladesh Krishi Bank is now a proud member of SWIFT. It is connected with modern international financial tele communication system. L/C advising/transferring and quick transfer of remittances as well as other financial correspondences have become very easy & speedy with the installation of SWIFT.

So, apparently Bangladeshi farmers are also aware of SWIFT.

Ok, so what happens if you are not a Bangladeshi farmer or living abroad. Perhaps you might read a newspaper in Bangladesh and happen to browse the business section of one of the major newspapers, The Daily Star. You might run into an article announcing:

CM Koyes Sami, managing director of The Oriental Bank Limited, has been re-elected chairperson of SWIFT member Group of Bangladesh for the term 2004-2005.

SWIFT is a worldwide community, with head quarter in Belgium, having over 7,500 financial institutions in 199 countries as its members, says a press release.

The guiding principles of SWIFT are to offer the financial services industry a common platform of advanced technology and access to shared solutions through which each member can build its competitive edge.

The organisation is engaged in supplying secure, standardised messaging services and interface software to its members.

The SWIFT community includes commercial banks, investment managers, as well as other market infrastructures requiring payments, and transferring securities, treasury and trade.

The fact of the matter is that SWIFT is ubiquitous in the Third World and known to anyone who attempts to transfer money overseas. If you want to do business with a Bangladeshi company and would like to transfer funds, you must know the company’s bank account number and the bank’s corresponding SWIFT Code. Here is a tariff card of a Bangladeshi company. Feel free to send some money to them.

In case you might be under the impression that Bangladesh might be an exception, here is a link to Nepal’s tourism website that announces that major banks in Nepal use the SWIFT system to transfer money abroad. My guess is that since most of the Third World seems to know about SWIFT, I would not be going out on a limb if I posited that al Queda also knows about SWIFT.

So, is Tony Snow that stupid? After all, when asked about how national security was compromised by the New York Times he said this at the White House briefing: "I am absolutely sure they didn’t know about SWIFT." Someone should tell Mr. Snow that most of the underdeveloped world knew about SWIFT well before the New York Times published its article. It appears the only people who thought this was a secret were the Bush Administration. The question then becomes: Is the Bush Administration’s intelligence that bad or do they think we are idiots?

The prospect of a $200 billion class action lawsuit has the effect of clearing the mind and clouding the facts. After the initial shock of the USA Today report on collection of domestic phone records by the NSA wore off the accused phone companies have now circled the wagons. Verizon and BellSouth have both issued statements denying involvement in the phone records gathering program.

After a week of bobbing and weaving by the Administration and its surrogates, the phone company denials need to be scrutinized carefully. First the President made a hastily organized public statement the morning after the USA Today report was released claiming NSA activities were lawful without confirming the program. Then Administration surrogate Richard Falkenrath delivered a fantastical and deeply flawed defense of the NSA program in a Washington Post opinion piece. Over the weekend Senator Frist went on national television and confirmed the existence of the NSA program before realizing his mistake and trying to back away from it.  Yesterday the President appeared with Australian Prime Minister John Howard in a joint news conference and appeared to confirm the existence of the program. Later White House spokesman Tony Snow denied the President had confirmed the existence of the program. In doing so, Snow bizarrely noted that a Washington Post poll showed that the majority of Americans approved of the program (the existence of which of course he could not confirm or deny). Finally, the often-confused Senator Orrin Hatch stated yesterday that two FISA judges had been briefed on the program but had not necessarily approved the program. Again, a spokesman for Hatch had to later clarify that the Senator had not meant to confirm the existence of the program.

With the waters muddied by the Administration, BellSouth announced in its statement:

As a result of media reports that BellSouth provided massive amounts of customer calling information under a contract with the NSA, the Company conducted an internal review to determine the facts. Based on our review to date, we have confirmed no such contract exists and we have not provided bulk customer calling records to the NSA. [Emphasis added by me.]

Verizon announced firmly in its statement:

Contrary to the media reports, Verizon was not asked by NSA to provide, nor did Verizon provide, customer phone records from any of these businesses, or any call data from those records. None of these companies - wireless or wireline - provided customer records or call data. [Emphasis added by me.]

The key to interpreting these denials are the words "provide" and "phone records". Verizon and BellSouth both are denying that they did not provide phone records to the NSA. BellSouth cuts this even finer by saying they did not provide bulk phone records. They do not however deny that they may have allowed the NSA to tap into their phone traffic and gather the phone data real time. This is a very crucial distinction from the phone companies’ point of view. By not providing the NSA stored call data, the phone companies are not in violation of the Stored Communications Act. However, if the NSA is collecting the data real-time from taps on the phone traffic the Government would be in violation of the "pen register" and "trap and trace device" statutes. It is not clear if by simply allowing the NSA to tap into their traffic whether the phone companies are in violation of the Telecommunications Act and the resulting $1000 per violation penalty.

Verizon and BellSouth’s narrow denials may be designed to muddy the waters and protect the companies from the massive class action suits against them. The phone companies may also be depending on the Government to intervene on their behalf in the lawsuits on national security grounds. In the meantime, the denials from the phone companies and the lack of confirmation from the Administration may sufficiently cloud the issue so that the facts of the NSA program will be obscured from the general public. The phone companies need to be challenged on their denials. Specific questions need to be asked about the nature of their transactions with the NSA and whether they are allowing the NSA to tap into their phone traffic. This is the time for reporters to aggressively follow up on the USA Today story. Nothing less then the civil liberties of the American people is at stake.

Fox News has been often accused of being a mouthpiece for the Bush Administration. They have always denied the charge and asserted that they are "fair and balanced". Tonight Fox News decided not to fight the truth anymore and has wholeheartedly embraced the moniker. Tony Snow of Fox News is now the official mouthpiece of the Bush Administration.

I finally understand the tag line of The Tony Snow Show on Fox News: "The Power of FOX. The Connections of Snow."